Why Do I Want a Content Marketing Strategy? Content marketing can be used to solve several business challenges, including, but not limited to, engagement, demand generation, lead generation and nurturing. Who is My Ideal Audience? Use audience persona to identify your ideal audience. Some unique features of B2B audience persona are firmography (industry, revenue size, etc.) and behavioural and geographical data. Lead Generation Sales 85% 84% Lead Nurturing ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS FOR B2B CONTENT MARKETING PERCENTAGE OF B2B MARKETERS WHO HAVE A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY 78% Brand Awareness 77% Engagement Customer Retention / Loyalty 76% 74% Customer Evangelism / Creating Brand Advocates 61% Up sell / Cross-sell 58% Linkedln Twitter 66% 55% YouTube EFFECTIVE RATINGS FOR B2B SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS CONTENT FOCUS 51% SlideShare 41% Facebook Instagram 30% 22% Pinterest 20% Google 13% 1. 2. Which Platform is Best For Me? Your content publication platform should be your own blog (the hub). Use appropriate social media channels (the spokes) to engage with your audience. 3. What Should My Content Convey? What type of topics should you cover? Use keyword research tools from Google, Buzzsumo, websites like Quora, and actual interviews to discover your audience’s interests. 4. Where are the Content Gaps? A content audit can map your existing content to your medium, persona, and buying stage to identify content gaps, and what content you can repurpose. Ensure content consistency and accuracy. 5. How Can I Distribute Content? The visibility of content pieces on the internet is crucial. Without proper distribution or syndication, content--no matter how great--has little value. 6. How Do I Know I’m Effective? Monitor, measure, and optimize your content marketing performance and strategy periodically. 7. Not Documented 58% Documented 32% Find out where your target audience’s watering holes are: Where they get together and share ideas e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter Create and prioritize your audience personas Undertake a content audit Produce content “Don’t build your content house on rented land.” Identify audience media consumption patterns Hub-and-Spoke model: Own the content, syndicate in different channels STEPS TO PLAN B2B CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY Prioritise goals and set KPIs What your audience want to hear YOUR CONTENT FOCUS SHOULD BE THE CONFLUENCE OF WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS TO HEAR, WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY, AND WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR STORY. What’s unique about your story What you want to say Create an editorial calendar TOFU MOFU BOFU Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Promoted Post (e.g. Promoted Tweets) 55% 48% Content Discovery Tools EFFECTIVENESS RATINGS FOR B2B PAID ADVERTISING METHODS 45% Social Ads (e.g. Linkedln ads) Native Advertising (long-form paid content placement on external sites) 45% Print or Other Offline Promotion 40% 31% Traditional Online Banner Ads 29% Organic Syndication Monitor and measure your content marketing performance against KPIs defined originally Optimise your content to align with your content marketing mission statement Sales Lead Quality Sales Other Higher Conversion Rates SEO Ranking/ Subscriber Growth Sales Lead Quantity Brand Lift Website Traffic Source: 2016 B2B Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs THE MOST IMPORTANT METRICS B2B CONTENT MARKETERS USE Paid Syndication SEO optimization 31% 5% 6% 9% 3% 13% 23% 7% Zero down on ‘Why Content Marketing’ and get buy-in from all stakeholders + GETIT COMMS Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License Awareness Interested Named Prospect Lead Opportunity Sales Customer Lifecycle – Content Matrix Channel - Content Matrix Persona - Content Matrix Document the content marketing mission statement content marketing Create Content Curate Content Repurpose Content A PROPER CONTENT AUDIT ENABLES BUSINESSES TO TARGET SPECIFIC BUYER PERSONAS ALONG THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF A BUYING CYCLE.