My answer is that content marketing’s influence permeates all aspects of the sales process throughout the buyers’ journey, though it may not always be obvious.

With so much information available online, buyers are spending more time researching and becoming more informed before any conversation with a salesperson. Experts disagree on how much of the buying process occurs before a sales touch (some studies estimate between 50% and 70%), however but they do agree that interactions with sales are still a hugely important influencer during the buying process.

This means that before a lead ever speaks to a sales rep, he or she has likely engaged with content on one of your channels. Your prospect has likely taken a visit to your website, read an email, seen your posts on social media, heard a presentation at an event, or experienced your brand through any number of your channels.

Sometimes a lead will discover and access content on their own; other times sales will direct a lead’s attention to relevant content. Content marketing and sales shouldn’t operate as completely separate spheres operationally because there’s so much crossover in practice. Content marketing and sales work in tandem to attract relevant leads and helps those leads arrive at a purchasing decision.

To help attract, convert, and retain customers at every stage of the sales funnel, you should align your content strategy to the buyer’s journey, from discovery and consideration through evaluation and decision–and beyond.

Content Marketing Buyers’ Journey: Discovery

The companies that rely on content marketing the most are high-consideration products or services with longer sales cycles. Discovery to purchase isn’t meant to take place within a few minutes or even a few days. But providing great content opportunities where the prospect can engage more deeply sets the stage for a consultative sales process.

Let’s start where your prospect starts–with discovery. If a prospect’s first interaction is with your website, it is likely that they got there via search. And if they started via search, they are beginning with a specific intention, such as looking for a solution to a problem or more information about a specific issue. The intent at this stage is informational and is often self-directed, that is, without the intervention of the demand gen or sales teams.

The company blog is often the first digital touchpoint for search traffic. Therefore, content on this dynamic area of your website should be highly targeted, relevant, and timely. A blog should primarily seek to educate, inspire, and help. Essentially, it’s a relationship building channel and its purpose is to lay the groundwork for future conversations that will lead to revenue.

A heavy-handed approach (read: lots of self-serving sales messages, aggressive retargeting, or too many annoying popups) can be counterproductive on your blog. A prospect can be easily turned-off because they feel “pushed” to take action instead of “pulled.”

Additionally, social media content is also a prevalent discovery channel. More specifically, amplification by macro or micro peers and influencers can be a very effective first line of interest. The “discovery” of your brand comes with the context or even the endorsement of someone they know.

Content Marketing Buyers’ Journey: Consideration

Once a prospect understands who you are and what you’re about, they’ll begin to explore how you might help them solve a problem. For example, when reading Curata’s blog, any visitor would instantly know that we play in the content marketing space because we cover topics related to those issues and opportunities. But to get more specific about what we do, we’d have to lead them to content that specifically communicates how we help our customers.

At this point, prospects are typically still engaging with content (not sales) to understand the basics of what your company can do for them. Once your prospect has consumed this content, sales can more readily have next-level conversations when they get leads on the phone. Used in this way, content marketing is helping to create a more efficient sales funnel. However, that comes with a big “if;” success at this step can only come if the content effectively communicates who the company is, why they exist, and what they have to offer.

Most B2B companies have a “Solutions” area of their website. But often this messaging can be overly complex or not differentiated enough for a prospect to get a clear understanding of what a company actually does. If sales has to spend a precious call clarifying basic concepts and clearing up misconceptions, that’s wasted time and goodwill that could have been spent guiding a lead further down the buyer’s journey.

Great consideration content doesn’t begin and end with your “solutions” section, however. Having strong “leave behind” sales enablement content that a sales team can utilize in their follow-ups reinforces the key messages that a sales rep may introduce during a discovery call or a product demo. This kind of content helps your company frame the sales discussion even if no one from your team is in the room. Imagine that content–be it a link, video, or even a guide–being shared by a potential customer with his or her boss and peers.  

Content Marketing Buyers’ Journey: Evaluation

The line between consideration content and evaluation content can sometimes be a bit fuzzy. My rule of thumb is that during the consideration phase, a lead or opportunity is seeking to understand what your company does and which problems you solve. During the evaluation stage, they are seeking to understand how well your solution might work for them.

There’s a lot of variation amongst B2B companies in terms of how much evaluation content they should make publicly available, i.e., what can be published on their website versus what is exclusively in sales enablement materials. Some companies don’t like to make too much publicly available because of competitive or intellectual property issues. Regardless of where this information lives, evaluation content is crucial not just for making the sale, but in setting expectations for your post-sale relationship.

Evaluation content needs to be specific and clear to avoid misconceptions. Though these materials should be well-designed and clearly communicated (like everything else you do), substance over style rules the day in this instance. Some examples of evaluation content might be descriptions of integrations, competitive comparisons, and case studies.

A note about case studies: often companies think of case studies and testimonials interchangeably. I think there are some important distinctions. A testimonial is essentially an endorsement of your company by someone in a specific role at a specific company. Often testimonials are on your website where someone in the consideration stage can see a person like them having success with your product. Testimonials are typically short and sweet.

A case study, by contrast, should be much, much more specific. Good case studies detail what the company did, how they did it, the role your solution played, and what the outcomes were. True case studies are intended for the evaluation and/or decision making stages.

Third Party Content

When it comes to evaluation stage, another opportunity to consider is where the prospect is sourcing their information. A company website may be a primary source, but it’s certainly not the only one. Review sites, long part of the ecommerce world, have begun to make a big impact in B2B. G2Crowd, TrustRadius, and GetApp are just a few examples of peer-to-peer review sites that your prospects may check to get the unvarnished truth. And, of course, expert review sources such as Forrester’s Wave Report or Gartner’s Magic Quadrant can help buyers verify any preconceptions or claims.

Being proactive about the content that appears on those sites is a great way to build positive consensus on your product or service. Asking successful customers to leave reviews and addressing negative ones can help you manage your company’s reputation. Additionally, developing relationships with the big consulting houses is certainly a long-term strategy, but can one that can certainly payoff.

Content Marketing Buyers’ Journey: Decision

In the decision stage, victory is close, but it is far from certain. The buyer is now seeking to understand if the cost of your product or service is worth the price. They need to have a reasonable expectation of what their gains will be and what is included in their costs. The price of the product is just one factor. They also need to understand their internal costs for launching, integrating, and maintaining your product.

A healthy relationship between your content marketing and your customer success organizations can help you create content that answers these questions and supports the decision phase. This content helps the buyer understand what resources they will have access to and what they can expect post-sale.

For example, resources that describe training and adoption plans, educational tools, peer-to-peer networks, and even technical implementation will give the buyer confidence that this isn’t your company’s first rodeo. Planning templates that outline the steps your primary buyer will have to take can be especially helpful.

Content Marketing Buyers’ Journey: Retention

After the sale closes, many marketers forget about customer retention. But content marketing can play a big role in supporting customer retention, too. If your company continues to provide information and resources that speak deeply to the needs and interests of your customers, it will keep that relationship strong and support the value they get out of your product or service. Building trust isn’t a one-time activity; it needs to be continuous, especially in subscription-based business models. 

Though the focus tends to be at the top of the funnel, content marketing is influential at every stage of the customer relationship. Your content is more than what you put on your website; it’s present in every interaction your company has with your customers.

But as videos offer a wide variety of content types, marketers should be very careful to identify their audience’s needs in order to hit the mark with the right video format. And how can you determine which type of video will be more effective? A good strategy is to focus on the buyer’s journey, this basically means to use a specific video format according to the different stages of the buying process and the user’s informational needs. Let’s take a look.

Buyer’s journey: What is it and why is it so important?

The Buyer’s Journey is the entire process that a customer goes through from the moment they become aware that they have a problem or need, to the moment they finally purchase a product or service.

In this video produced by explainer video company Yum Yum Videos, you can check out a more detailed explanation of what the buyer’s journey is and how the inbound marketing funnel works.

This is how the process works, in a nutshell:

Awareness Stage: First, the customer realizes that he or she has a potential problem (or a particular problem) that needs to be solved.

Consideration Stage: Then, he or she starts to do some research on how to solve it and evaluates the options to finally come up with a solution.

Decision Stage: The cycle ends when the customer decides from which company he or she will purchase the product or service that will solve their problem.

For marketers, it’s essential to identify the target’s needs in each part of the cycle, in order to provide them the right content that will make a greater impact and lead them through the sales funnel. And video content is the best option to nurture your audience with the information they need while keeping your audience’s attention. If used wisely, they can be a great tool to boost sales as they can increase conversion rates by 80%. So in this article, we will analyze which types of videos will work better in each stage of the buyer’s journey to boost engagement throughout the process.

Awareness Stage

This is the starting point of the sales journey: Your potential customer realizes he or she has a problem or need and begins the quest for a solution. Here you have an opportunity to answer their questions and guide them while you position your brand as a reference in the subject. You only have one chance to make a good impression and engage them to continue with your brand, so make sure your content is on the right track and, equally important, high quality. These are the best video formats to make your debut:

1. Educational Videos

Your potential buyers are looking for a useful answer to their problems. With educational videos, you can educate them about certain subjects while you generate brand awareness, positioning yourself as an expert. This way, you can increase visibility and drive more visitors to your site.

2. Commercials

These are short videos created to attract people into your sales funnel with a fun and engaging storytelling technique. They are extremely effective to gain visibility with paid ads, increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.

3. Social Media Videos

The special feature of Social Media Videos is that they are created by taking into account each network’s practices and values, in order to optimize the content to the social platform of your desire. This kind of format will let you gain visibility in social media, increase engagement and drive visits to your site.

Consideration Stage

At this point, the buyers have already defined their problem or need, so videos in the Consideration Stage should educate them about solutions for their specific needs. The goal is to help the customer in their research by showing them the best solution to their needs. Let’s see which options you can use to guide them:

1. Explainer Videos

This type of content can explain products or services in a brief and friendly way. Basically, it starts with a certain pain point and then explains how that product can solve it. Mainly, it’s used in websites’ home pages and landing pages, because it’s an easy hook to catch the audience’s attention and explain an idea in just a few seconds, quickly delivering the most fitting information for this stage of their journey (when it’s done the right way). In addition, it’s a successful tool to use in YouTube ad campaigns and, to a lesser extent, Facebook and Twitter, due to its structure and short length -less than two minutes-

The main reason to use explainer videos in the consideration stage is that their main goal is to increase conversions and boost qualified leads.

2. Webinars

A webinar is a web based video presentation that is transmitted over the internet. The main objective is to educate the audience thoroughly on a certain topic but in a friendly and human way, because it’s usually lead by an expert on the specific subject matter. By doing this, it can position your brand as a reference on that subject and then increase subscriptions to your site and rise your conversion rate.

3. How-To Videos

As the name suggests, How-To Videos are made to offer your customers helpful guidance in a fun and entertaining way. It’s a step-by-step process that educates potential clients on certain topics or products using an easy and educative tone. This way, they can build product trust and increase up-selling. This allows your audience to get to know the solution you are offering them, and to choose your company over the other possible solutions they are considering.

Decision Stage

Now that the prospects are aware of their problem and have found a satisfying solution, it’s time for them to decide which company will solve that problem.

The Decision Stage is all about building trust with your brand and your product, so they will finally decide to purchase from you. Read on to know which videos will work best: 

1. Customer Testimonial

Frequently, prospects require external reviews from peers before deciding to purchase a product, and the numbers don’t lie, those reviews work. A customer testimonial video is a good solution to use to share your client’s experience with your product or service. It’s a powerful tool to build confidence and generate brand trust with potential prospects, which can lead to  growth in your sales rates.

2. FAQ Videos

The main goal of FAQ Videos is to provide, in simple terms, relevant information about common inquiries on the product and clear up any doubts the buyer may have. These kinds of videos are great for lead nurturing and lead trust -create a quality bond with your customer by clarifying doubts- and can help you reach a higher number of conversions, close more deals, and build product trust. 

3. Company Story Videos

These videos, also known as “About us” videos, present your brand, the working team and the values that you stand for. It’s a good strategy to show the human side of your company and build a strong connection with potential customers. If you can build trust with them, it’s a huge step towards the final goal: increasing sales rates.

4. Product Videos

A video about your Product should show its best features as well as the whole experience of using it: the benefits of your product and how it works, all of that in a brief and entertaining video. It allows you to build trust about your product, position it in the search engines and also bring your leads closer to the final purchase.

Summing-up

Understanding all the steps that a buyer goes through before purchasing a product will let you provide the right video content to make a greater impact. Because you already know that videos are highly effective for increasing conversions, if you  use them correctly. And choosing the right format according to the stage of the buyer’s journey – awareness, consideration and decision stage- will allow you to guide your potential customers through your sales funnel.

A successful video campaign requires a high quality video, and that’s not a cheap thing to do. So if you want to make the most out of your video marketing budget, it’s essential to customize your videos according to your customer’s needs.

Want more on creating a content marketing strategy for your organization? Check out Curata’s content marketing strategy guide below.

Robert Rose and I just launched our combined sixth book, Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost into Profit, at Content Marketing World this September. The book’s key idea makes a case that the majority of businesses approach marketing entirely the wrong way … and that we need to kill the marketing we know and replace it with a new approach: marketing as a profit center.

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of the book that we will also discuss on this upcoming webinar courtesy of Curata. Robert and I truly believe that tomorrow’s businesses are in the process of transforming marketing into something completely new and different, and that building audiences and monetizing those audiences are the future of our practice. Enjoy!

Reprinted with the permission of Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose in association with McGraw-Hill Education.

In the 1970s, Israeli psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a research paper titled “Belief in the Law of Small Numbers”. The findings were that even professional academics mistook a very small part for the whole when making decisions. For example, even though flipping a coin is always a 50/50 proposition, if a subject was to flip it 100 times, but the first two times turned up heads, the subject would believe that the majority of flips would turn up heads – at least higher than the true probability. This is also known as the “gambler’s fallacy” where in Roulette we see red or black running hot, and we begin to think that red or black is more likely to occur, when statistically, it’s not.

As human beings, the more we see something, the more this becomes our reality, regardless of whether our sample size is too small to draw any real conclusions.

In the mid-1980s, Don Redelmeier was assigned to Sunnybrook Hospital just outside Toronto to serve as a check against certain hospital decisions. Specifically, Redelmeier was brought in to question each doctor’s diagnosis and provide feedback as to the probability the doctor was correct.

Obviously, this was something that the Sunnybrook doctors were not fans of … at first. Where did a generalist from the trauma center (Redelmeier) get the right to question a qualified physician?

But Redelmeier, and others like him, found that doctors “… had exaggerated confidence based on their expert experience.” Simply put, doctors would see problems and solutions around their core expertise, and would often times ignore other signals where they were not as familiar.

The problem was not what doctors didn’t know, it’s what they knew that would get them into trouble.

In November of last year, I took my son Adam to a high school open house. While he was taking a few of the sample classes during the morning sessions, I was doing the same with a group of parents. My first class of the day was called the “Theory of Knowledge”.

The assignment was simple: view a painting of a building and discuss what you “know” about the painting. Our group tried to discern when it was created, whether it was real or fictitious, and, if it was real, was it a famous place?

Once the discussion was completed, the instructor told us that the painter was Adolf Hitler. From that moment on, everything about the conversation was immediately altered. A few people even became emotional upon hearing thisinformation. The truth was, once the majority of the class found out this one piece of information, they could no longer view it as a piece of art.

What the class “knew” could never be undone and would affect their perception of that piece of art, and perhaps others like it, forever.

Does What We Know Hold Us Back in Marketing?

No, this is not a psychology, medical, or art history book, but the previous examples are definitely applicable. For the past 20 years, Robert and I have worked with CEOs, chief marketing officers, VPs of sales and marketing, and marketing practitioners from brands around the world. In each case, some part of their marketing and/or sales process was broken.

We go in, we analyze, we advise and (hopefully) compel these marketers and sales professionals to fix what they can with the resources they have. But what we’ve realized in the past few years has become, to say the least, disturbing.

Combined, this book, Killing Marketing, is our sixth such effort. Normally when creating the work-product such as a book, we start with the answer to a question. For example, in my 2013 book Epic Content Marketing, I talk about how marketers can build loyal and profitable relationships with customers by delivering consistently valuable content in order to drive sales. In 2015, Robert (with Carla Johnson) wrote the book Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, which outlines an approach on how content-driven experiences can be created, managed, scaled, promoted, and measured in today’s business environment.

This book, however, does not start with an answer … it begins with questions … questions that Robert and I are desperate to find the answers to.

What if what we’ve been taught or experienced in marketing doesn’t show us the full picture?

What if we’ve limited our view of marketing to one area (what we know), and that is not allowing us to see the full potential of what can be accomplished (what we do not know yet)?

What if placing marketing solely in the marketing department is killing the approach of marketing as a strategic business process?

In other words, what if everything we KNOW to be true about marketing is actually what’s holding back our business?

The Day Hollywood Changed

Let’s try to make this more tangible with a popular movie example.

American Graffiti, still today, is one of the most profitable movies of all time. The film grossed over $140 million USD at the box office; it was made on a budget of less than $1 million. After the success of Graffiti, director George Lucas was in demand, and he started pitching his next venture, a science fiction movie called “Star Wars,” to Hollywood studios.

At the time, Hollywood was seeing a number of science fiction flops, and the industry did not see Star Wars as a bankable concept. Ultimately, 20th Century Fox decided to take a chance on the film. Still, the executives at Fox were sure the movie was going to be a flop and decided to let Lucas pass on an additional $500,000 directing fee in exchange for full licensing and merchandising rights. The studio believed they just saved a half-million dollars with no downside.

From 1977 to 2015 (before the Disney release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Star Wars movies pulled in just over $5 billion in ticket sales. During that same period, merchandising sales were $12 billion.

That’s right … 20th Century Fox sold off merchandising rights to George Lucas for pennies and lost out on a vast majority of the franchise revenue. They believed, as most of Hollywood insiders did at the time, that you make money from movies on ticket sales. Period.

George Lucas looked at the business in an entirely different way, and changed the industry forever.

Is it possible that the majority of CEOs and chief marketing officers are looking at marketing based on their own limited references (what they believe to be true about marketing), and not seeing the full potential (what they may not know), like the Hollywood insiders did? Are they killing their marketing from the inside without being aware of it?

The Purpose of Marketing

In one of his 70 books on marketing, famed marketing professor Philip Kotler explained that the “mantra of marketing was CCDVTP.” It was an acronym that suggested that the core function of marketing should be to:

C: CREATE. C: COMMUNICATE AND D: DELIVER. V: THE VALUE. T: TO THE TARGET MARKET. P: AT A PROFIT.

Now, of course, the “profit” that Kotler speaks about is the idea that marketing should ultimately drive more sales of product than it should create costs in order to facilitate those sales. This is what marketers call return on investment (ROI) of marketing.

Most of our marketing in the past 50 years has revolved around advertising, or renting space in channels to garner attention and, hopefully, change consumer behavior. But over the past decade, innovative enterprises have found a “new” way to deliver value to their target markets, by creating relevant and compelling content, gearing it toward specific audience groups, and then, over time, seeing positive behavior changes in the audience which, ultimately, are profitable to the business (this approach is called content marketing). Although the approach is relatively new to most organizations, the goals have remained the same.

In general, enterprises create and distribute non-product-related content to impact the business in three ways:

• Increase revenue (sales goal or winning customers)
• Save costs (savings goal or creating customers at a lower cost)
• Create more loyal customers (retention goal or keeping customers)

But, recently, there’s a new approach that has businesses re-evaluating the entire function of marketing.

A Fourth Model: Marketing as Profit Center

I had an opportunity to hear Robert Sperl, editorial director of Red Bull’s magazine Red Bulletin, explain the origin of Red Bull Media House. In 2005, the beverage giant was a major sponsor of Formula 1 racing. They had a simple goal for one of the races: to deliver a printed guide to exiting fans with the race results immediately following the race.

Prior to each race, the Red Bull editorial team gathered insider stories about the drivers and fun facts about the history of each race, and then assembled and printed the bulk of each magazine before the race began. To complete the magazine and add the race results, they lugged a 1-ton Heidelberg press to each track. As soon as the race was over, they quickly printed the results on the Heidelberg and distributed the magazines to attendees as they were leaving the race — an astounding feat done in almost record time.

Two years later, Red Bull decided to evolve the race publication into a men’s lifestyle magazine. It launched what became Red Bulletin in five countries, with 70% international and 30% localized content. Today, Red Bulletin magazine is published in five languages and is distributed in 10 countries. It prints and distributes over two million copies each month, including 550,000 mailed to paid subscribers.

The Red Bulletin is not measured by the number of Red Bull cans it sells, or how it persuades Red Bull customers to buy and drink more. It is measured just like a media company — Red Bull Media House enters into initiatives that are profitable on their own merit, just like The Washington Post, CNN, or the Financial Times.

Today, Red Bull Media House is one of the world’s most successful media companies. What started as a simple magazine has evolved into TV series, documentaries, world-class events, a music studio, merchandising, and they even license their content to traditional media companies like The New York Times.

While other enterprises were dabbling in media as, at best, a side project, how did Red Bull see this opportunity? Simple … Robert Sperl, and the majority of the other members of the Red Bull media staff, came from the publishing and media industry. Like George Lucas, the Red Bull content team saw the business model in front of them as a natural progression, instead of looking past it as so many marketers did before them.

Today, the Red Bull Model is being replicated in varying degrees across the business spectrum. Business-to-business (B2B) companies, business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, and even not-for-profits are starting to realize that as they focus on creating valuable and engaging content – a new model appears: marketing as a profit center.

Can we actually move marketing from the cost line of the financials to the revenue line? Can marketing actually serve multiple business models?

Our book – Killing Marketing – presents an entirely new business model for marketing, one that both leverages the disruptive forces facing marketing and advertising as it also fundamentally changes the purpose of marketing in the business. Like the Hollywood insiders falling down on Star Wars’ merchandising revenue, we believe marketers are, in most cases, blind to this new opportunity.

A few are starting to see that, to be successful, we need to kill our old marketing beliefs to discover a new model.

Cloud CRM giant Salesforce holds an event in San Francisco every year called Dreamforce. It is one of the most valuable physical events in the world, drawing in over 150,000 people and hundreds of sponsors each year.

Johnson & Johnson operates BabyCenter.com as a completely separate division of the company. BabyCenter reaches more than 45 million parents a month from every corner of the globe through its 11 owned and operated properties in nine different languages. Eight of every 10 U.S. mothers use BabyCenter.

LEGO’s The LEGO Movie was created as a for-profit initiative. On a $60 million budget, worldwide grosses of the movie totaled nearly a half-billion dollars.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, often barely noticeable to marketers or even dismissed as irregularities or luck. But in the near future, this model will be the rule, not the exception, for every innovative company on the planet.

Driving Value Outside of Products

According to SiriusDecisions, there is a 1-in-25 chance to reach a C-level executive through outbound marketing. There must be a better way.

We’re beginning to see the signs of that better way.

In 2016, both Pepsi and Mondelez announced the launch of media divisions. In both cases, the marketing leaders at these organizations talked openly about a portion of their media being self-sustaining or even profitable.

A few months later, electronics manufacturing powerhouse and Fortune 500 enterprise Arrow Electronics acquired a number of B2B media brands from UBM, one of the largest media and event companies in the world (and parent company of CMI). Not only has Arrow purchased amazingly valuable subscriber lists and editorial talent, but it also purchased standalone marketing that is profitable unto itself.

Red Bull, Johnson & Johnson, and Arrow Electronics still market their products like other organizations, including advertising and traditional public relations. But these enterprises, through their content-driven and audience-building initiatives, drive value outside the day-to-day products they sell, and are monetizing it directly. They are, in every sense of the word, “media” companies.

Of course these initiatives sell more cans, more baby formula, and more electrical components. The delivery of amazingly helpful content keeps customers longer, keeps them buying more, and even helps new customers close faster. The engagement in the content reveals deep insight about customer behavior, and leads to the development of new products and services. All that, and the marketing pays for itself, and even generates a profit for the business.

This is the future of IBM, of General Motors, of Cisco Systems … creating owned media that can not only generate more leads and opportunities, but is so good that the marketing pays for itself.

To learn more from Joe Pullizzi, check out his upcoming webinar.

But then you don’t.

To realize the potential content marketing offers, it’s critical to have a plan. It sounds simple, yet it’s a step many content marketers don’t take. Seventy percent of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy (Altimeter), and only 29 percent of leading marketers systematically reuse and repurpose content (Curata).

That’s because creating such a plan is daunting. It requires marketers to analyze where their marketing efforts have been and what they want it to achieve in the future.

If you are one of the 70 percent of marketers operating without a plan, take heart: we’ve got the information and templates you need to guide you through the planning process and produce a content plan that can generate results.

Content Marketing Plan Is More than Just Content

Why is it so hard for marketers to create a strategic plan for their content? Let’s start by taking a look at what content marketing is:

The Content Marketing Institute defines it this way:

Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Note the emphasis on strategy in this statement. Taking a strategic approach to your content plan ensures your message cuts through the clutter and reaches your target audience with the right information at the right time.

The Value of a Content Marketing Plan

More than an editorial calendar, a content marketing plan document is your road map to a successful content marketing effort. There are several benefits to having this level of planning in place before you start sharing content.

To start, a good strategy document will clearly define the key elements of your effort. It will specifically outline who you will be talking to, what you will say and how to say it, where the content will be promoted, and how you will know when you have been successful.

Having this type of plan keeps everyone involved in creating and sharing your content on the same page, ensuring you have the resources needed to manage all aspects of a successful content campaign. From writing and posting to sharing and tracking, each member of the team knows what needs to happen and when.

Moreover, you have a road map or guide that you can share with others in your organization. This ensures that your content marketing goals are in alignment with—and are fully supporting—the goals of your organization.

Sharing your plan also gets others in your organization to buy into the role that content plays in making the organization successful. This not only supports your efforts but also gives you a team of employees who are engaged and willing to share the company’s content.

Understanding the value your content strategy brings is a good first step. Now let’s look at how to create that strategy and at the templates that are available to guide the process along the way.

The Start of a Successful Content Plan

The Content Audit

You can’t tell where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. That’s why the first step in creating your content strategy plan starts with a content audit.

To start, gather all your content that is currently produced by your organization: keywords, blog, website, social media, etc. Then, using a content inventory spreadsheet, to chart how successful each of these elements has been to your content strategy. Read more about how to conduct an audit.

Now take the time to analyze the results.

To start, you’ll want to see what content was most successful and what didn’t meet your expectations. Try to get a sense for the reasons behind these outcomes.

You’ll also want to note what’s in your content “library” so you can reuse that content in your strategy document. It’s also important to note gaps in your subject areas so that you can create new content to fill that void.

The content audit will take some time and effort. But as you will see later in this post, it gives you the details needed to build your content marketing plan.

Defining the Audience for Your Content Marketing Plan

With the audit completed, you’re ready to take the next—and most critical—step in developing your content strategy. Here you’ll want to define the purpose of your content marketing plan.

Purpose is a big topic but essentially it comes down to two important elements: who are you targeting with your content, and what do you want them to do with the information you provide?

Let’s start with the audience.

Todd Wheatland, Author and Speaker, Global Strategy at King Content | @ToddWheatland

Content strategies typically fail because they haven’t really understood the audience well enough. Everything that comes afterwards is based on that starting point – make it count!

Review the information you compiled in your content audit to see who is responding to what content. As you do this, be aware that some of the business problems or trends that were an issue in the past might not be relevant to the strategy you are building today.

Also, look at your buyer personas. If they are up to date, these composites of ideal customers will help you understand the current needs and problems.

Collaborate with your sales and marketing teams. As this article notes, all too often sales and marketing act as a silos, each focused on its own effort.  But when you bring these two teams together, it can have a positive impact your content strategy.

Ask your sales team about the customers and prospects they talk to on a regular basis. What are these prospects telling your salespeople about their problems, the industry, and the role your product or service plays in making their life better? You can gather a wealth of useable information in one conversation.

Matching Content with Your Audience

With this audience defined, you then want to consider what action you want your content to inspire.

To find out, start with the information gathered in the content audit. Look at what content areas were successful, and ask yourself the following:

• What is the message of this content?
• Who are these messages targeted toward?
• Why was this piece successful?
• Are these still the right messages for the right audience?

Analyzing what content was successful with which audience gives you a start on developing your content messages.

Now let’s look at what you want the audience to do with the content you create.

For example, if you are trying to gain awareness in your marketplace, then content that is education-based will be beneficial. This type of content can shed new light on a business problem your prospects have. Then include information that shows them new ways (such as your product) to solve that problem.

If you want to gain sales or interest in your product or service, then your content will need to be more focused on specific benefits while still being educational. This type of content can encourage a new understanding of your product but should never be an all-out sales piece.

Your content can also be used to change perceptions. This level of content goes beyond an education and includes a high level of persuasion.

These are just a few ideas. To be inspired, read this in-depth look at how to connect content with your buyers.

Finally, no matter what type of content you create, be sure that your content is compelling enough to give the reader the information he or she needs to think or act in a new way.

Creating Your Editorial Calendar

Congratulations!

You’ve done your audit, defined the audience and the goals of your content strategy. If you’ve used the content audit template we have provided along the way, then you now have the information you need to develop your editorial calendar.

In short, the editorial calendar is the working document that provides everyone involved in your content effort with the information they need to produce, deliver and promote the content strategy plan.

Adele Revella, CEO of Buyer Persona Institute | @buyerpersona

When you map your buyer’s journey, make sure you first have insight into the questions your buyers ask and which answers they want to hear. Your competitors are focused only on where and how to deliver content, but buyers consistently tell us that it’s the substance of the content that matters.

At high level, your editorial calendar needs to answer the critical questions of who, what, where, when and why of your content strategy:

• Who? Who on your content team is responsible for the creation, posting and promotion of the content? In addition, this question also asks to whom are you targeting this content? Customers, prospects, the market as a whole?
• What?What is the goal of the content? What information will it include and what is the desired action you want the reader to take?

Also, what format will the content take? Is it a video, blog post, infographic, or podcast? Keep in mind that a lot of the content you create can be repurposed in another format. A blog post can easily be turned into an infographic, for example. The editorial calendar is a good place to note what can be repurposed and how.

• Where?What channels will you use to promote the content? This can include your owned channels such as your Facebook Page, blog, website, YouTube channel, email newsletters, etc. You can also include any paid promotions that further promote your content.

The editorial calendar is also a good place to keep the URLs associated with where your contented has been posted.

• When?You need to plan all the critical dates associated with creating and distributing your content. Be sure to allow enough time for the development of written or visual elements you’ll want to include with your content, including images, illustrations for infographics, and charts.
• Why? Why create this content? What outcome do you expect to receive from this effort? Charting this information ensures that your content aligns with the goals of your organization, and can also show you where you need to add additional resources or subject areas.

You’ll also want to note what results you achieved from your content marketing activity. Including details about the actual outcome helps you understand where your success has been and lets you prepare for the next content audit!

Now that you’ve got the high-level view of how to create an editorial calendar, read more about how to capture and track this information so that your team – and your strategy – stays on target.

Tracking and Reporting on Your Success

There are dozens of ways to measure the effectiveness of your content strategy. But, as Rebecca Lieb, Digital Advertising, Media & Content Analyst, Altimeter (@lieblink) notes, what matters the most is that you are providing data on the metrics that are important to your organization. She says:

It makes no difference whatsoever what MY most important content marketing metric is—the real question is: what metric, what key performance indicator is most important to your business? No two marketers’ objectives are exactly alike. What matters is aligning against business goals, not all the abstract things you can measure.

As we have noted all along, sharing your content strategy with others in your organization ensures that you get their buy-in and demonstrates how the content strategy supports other sales and marketing initiatives. It is critical to keep that spirit of collaboration alive during the reporting process.

Before engaging your content strategy, ask what metrics are important to your company and be sure you can provide the relevant data on that metric.

Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey & Founder of WordStream | @LarryKim

Use Google Analytics (User Explorer), Facebook Audience Insights, Twitter Analytics (etc.) to get a better idea of the demographics, behaviors and interests associated with your prospects and customers. Ensure that your content creation and promotion efforts are aligned with your audience data.

For example, if your organization values the consumption of content, then you will want to provide details on how many people are consuming your content, how often it is being shared, and by whom.

If leads and sales are the yardstick by which your efforts are measured, you’ll want to offer a different set of statistics. Provide your organization with data on how well content marketing is supporting lead generation and lead nurturing activities. Or, include data that shows how the content strategy is supporting sales, helping to fill the pipeline and move prospects along until they ultimately drive revenue.

Here’s an example of content marketing analytics and the type of information that can be detailed in your report.

Content marketing can be a vital resource for an organization. Be sure you have the data you need to fully demonstrate just how valuable it is. A vital part of your content marketing plan is the editorial  calendar. For a detailed editorial calendar template, look here.

Creating a podcast, however, isn’t easy. For a step-by-step on creating your own podcast, look here. The first step for creating a podcast as a content marketer, is listening to the best content marketing podcasts there are. Here’s a list of top content marketing podcasts you should listen to to improve both your content marketing skills and podcast knowledge. Two birds, one stone.

1.) Content Inc. by Joe Pulizzi

What It Is: A podcast by Content Marketing Institute founder, Joe Pulizzi. This podcast originally served as part of a “podcast-to-book” strategy in which Pulizzi was using each content marketing podcast episode as a future chapter of his book, Content Inc. This podcast is no longer actively produced, but there are 200 episodes still available on the Content Marketing Institute website. The podcast covers all things content from mixing media, to analysis of Starbucks’s content campaigns.
Listen to This For:

• A shorter podcast (each one runs no more than ten minutes in length)
• One quick tidbit of actionable information. The titles give you an idea of what you’ll learn. Feel free to scroll back through past podcasts for topics you’re interested in.

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 31 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @JoePulizzi

2.) Unthinkable by Jay Acunzo

What It Is: A podcast written by an alum of HubSpot and Google; a content marketer who’s sick of people producing bad content.
Listen to This For:

• Creative inspiration
• Awesome stories and well-written intros

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 105 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @jayacunzo

3. The Marketing Companion by Mark Schaefer

What It Is: Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster keep it fun and fresh in this podcast. Podcasts are organized by topic so you can pick and choose.
Listen to This For:

• Laughs while you learn
• Episode titles like: Love, Politics and Content Marketing or I wasn’t a desperate entrepreneur and that’s why I failed

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 42 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @markschaefer

4.) Exponent.FM

What It Is: A tech and society podcast for the intellectual marketer. This description of their most recent podcast sums it up. “Ben and James discuss the different levels of aggregation, Facebook and Russian ads, and why it’s worth defending the future.”
Listen to This For:

• Broader views on the way tech not only impacts your marketing and business, but also society
• Ideation and bringing the bigger picture home to your specific marketing activities

Number of Stars on iTunes 4.5 Stars, 145 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @exponentfm

5.) Serial

What It Is: A podcast told from the creators of This American Life. Narrates one nonfiction story over multiple episodes.
Listen to This For:

• Great storytelling
• Leisurely listening (not marketing related)

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 9460 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @serial

6.) The Pivot by Todd Wheatland

What It Is: A podcast told by marketing expert Todd Wheatland. This fireside chat format in which Todd dives into the backstories of other marketing influencers.

Listen to This For:

• Insight into successful marketers beyond their “expert hacks”.

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 10 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @ToddWheatland

7.) Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

What It Is: Interviews with authors, experts and thought leaders sharing business marketing tips, tactics and resources hosted by one of America’s leading small-business marketing experts – John Jantsch.

Listen to this For:

• Insights beyond specific tactics or campaigns
• Real questions around your career, not just your job. The importance of having a side hustle, sales as an entrepreneur, and sonic branding

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 103 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @ducttape

8.) Copyblogger

What It Is: Recently rebranded to Rainmaker FM, this podcast brings you the best tips, tactics, stories and strategies for accelerating your business. Each day delivers eye-opening advice on some vital aspect of the ever-evolving digital-marketing landscape.

Watch this For:

• Timely advice with your business in mind

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 218 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @copyblogger

9.) The Urbanist

What It Is: With an influential audience of city mayors, urban planners and architects, this is Monocle’s guide to making better cities, be it new technology, state-of-the-art subways or compact apartments.

Listen to This For:

• A great example on creating “how-to” content that isn’t boring. The urbanist combines interesting storytelling, current events, and compelling point-of-view to give its listeners top-quality how-to content on urban planning

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 228 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @Monocle24

10.) Mad Marketing

What It Is: A podcast by the “sales lion,” Marcus Sheridan covering topics from the importance of good people in marketing, finding your talents, and vulnerability, all the way to the more tactical topics like Facebook growth and artificial intelligence.

Listen to This For:

• Realm off-the-cuff advice directly from Marcus Sheridan
• To ask your own questions and hopefully have them answered on-air
• If you’re sick of the fireside-chat style podcast that’s become so popular across industries

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 69 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @TheSalesLion

11.) Online Marketing Made Easy

What It Is: Expert interviews, mini-execution plans, and intimate behind-the-scenes secrets from the host, Amy Porterfield’s biggest launches. 
Listen to This for:

• Advice on how an individual can start their own online business and grow subscribers
• Getting into the tactical nitty gritty of everything from starting an online course to growing webinar followers

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 654 Rating
Tweet the Author: @AmyPorterfiel

12.) Longform

What It Is : This podcast consists of a weekly conversation with a nonfiction writer. 
Listen to this For:

• Inspiration to perfect your non-fiction writing
• Outside-the-box thinking
• New ideas to improve your creative process

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 526 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @longformpodcast

13.) Growth Byte

What It Is: This podcast finds the best startup growth content online and summarizes it for you in 2-3 minute audio “bytes.”
Listen to This For:

• When you don’t have time to listen to a full-length podcast
• A quick understanding of what content is working for high-growth startups
• Tactics to help your own growth

Number of Stars on iTunes: N/A
Tweet the Author: @growthhackertv

14.) Marketing Over Coffee

What It Is: Marketing Over Coffee covers both classic and new marketing. Your hosts, John J. Wall and Christopher S. Penn, record the show in a local coffee shop every week and publish the show on Thursday mornings.

Listen to This For:

• Marketing and tech intersections
• Social media, SEO, email marketing and other tactics

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 137 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @johnjwall and @cspenn 

15.) Content Matters

What It Is : A talk show about all things content marketing featuring Andy Crestodina and Barry Feldman. Each 22-minute episode explores a significant tactic that makes content marketing effective.
Listen to this For:

• All things content from building your team to content creation to measurement
• Interesting and knowledgeable hosts

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 9 Ratings
Tweet the Author @crestodina  and @FeldmanCreative

16.) Digiday

What It Is: Each podcast has a guest speaker giving their opinion on a specific topic (usually a polarizing one in  the marketing space).
Listen to this For:

• Thought provoking content that you may or may not agree with
• Blunt honesty from the host

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 22 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @Digiday

17.) The Art of Paid Traffic

What It Is:  Facebook ads expert Rick Mulready reveals the best paid traffic tips, tactics, and strategies for generating leads and sales for your business. Automation and affordability are the name of the game.
Listen to this For:

• A niche topic podcast that will actually educate you on paid traffic
• If you’re tired of listening to people telling you the way to get more traffic/better content is to “do better”

Number of Stars on iTunesL 5 Stars, 291 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @rickmulready ‏

18.) The #AskGaryVee Show

What It Is: Hosted by entrepreneur, CEO, investor, vlogger, and public speaker Gary Vaynerchuk. You’ll find a mix #AskGaryVee show episodes, keynote speeches on marketing and business, segments from DAILYVEE video series, interviews and fireside chats given, as well as new and current thoughts recorded originally for this podcast.
Listen to this For:

• A great example of repurposing content effectively
• A mix of information on marketing, entrepreneurship, becoming and influencer, general tips on becoming successful

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 2412 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @garyvee

19.) Content Warfare

What It Is: Every week on the Content Warfare Podcast, Ryan Hanley interviews the Internet’s most prolific content creators to extract their secrets for winning the battle for attention online. Popular guests include: Chris Brogan, Marcus Sheridan, Mark Schaefer and Gini Dietrich. Popular topics include: content marketing, writing, podcasting, social media and audience building.
Listen to this For:

• Advice on creating content that converts
• Compelling fireside-chat style episodes with the industry experts you attend conferences to see

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 89 Ratings
Tweet the Author @RyanHanley_Com

20.) Sporkful

What It Is: As you probably guessed, not a marketing podcast. This is a podcast about food. BUT a really great podcast that you could learn a  thing or two from.
Listen to this For:

• A podcast covering a topic that most people would say requires a visual element
• To better understand how you might use a podcast even if it’s not a conventional medium for your space

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 771 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @TheSporkful

21.) The Growth Show

What It Is: HubSpot’s business podcast answers questions around how to grow a company, a movement, or an idea. Each week they sit down with someone who has achieved remarkable growth (or has tried to) and unpack just how they did it.
Listen to this For:

• Real businesses and real issues
• Talking through why something that should have worked didn’t

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 175 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @hubspot

 22.) You Must Remember This

What It Is : You Must Remember This is a storytelling podcast exploring the secret or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. It’s the brainchild and passion project of Karina Longworth, who writes, narrates, records and edits each episode. It is a heavily-researched work of creative nonfiction: navigating through conflicting reports, mythology, and institutionalized spin.
Listen to this For:

• A reminder that a deep passion for a subject can produce a very interesting result
• To experience first-hand how one person can carry a podcast from ideation to post-production

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 2379 Ratings
Tweet the Author @rememberthispod or @karinalongworth

23.) The Sophisticated Marketer

What It Is: LinkedIn podcast hosted by resident content marketing guru Jason Miller.
Listen to this For:

• Top marketing interviews from around the world
• Jason Millers “rock and roll” flare

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 34 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @JasonMillerCA

24.) General Electric’s Theater Podcasts

What It Is: The Message and LifeAfter: GE has two hit podcast series under it’s belt. Both are nonfiction, science stories meant to awaken the listener’s nerdy side in 40s and 50s style radio storytelling.
Listen to this For:

• A creative take on what podcasting could be
• More inspiration on turning you “boring” subject matter into something people actually care about

Number of Stars on iTunes: N/A
Tweet the Author: N/A unless you wanna tweet at GE?

25.) Conversion Cast

What It Is: The ConversionCast unveils the inner workings and marketing secrets of one of software startup, Leadpages. You’ll discover how this Inc 500 company with over 40,000 (and growing) paying customers rocketed into existence. Moreover, you’ll learn exactly how they find, convert, and keep their customers. 
Listen to this For:

• Metrics: Like actual metrics

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 188 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @ConversionCast

26.) StartUp

What It Is: A series by Gimlet Media on “what it’s actually like to start a business”
Listen to this For:

• Lessons on starting a business
• How to navigate common roadblocks and achieve milestones

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 5319 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @podcaststartup

27.) The Fizzle Show

What It Is :Weekly insights for small business owners who want to earn a living doing something they care about. A highly reviewed and very entertaining show focusing on modern business essentials: self employment, marketing, productivity, selling things online, motivation, audience growth and work-life balance.
Listen to this For:

• More information on how to use your creative talents to make money
• Growing a business online
• Increasing freelancing work

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 522 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @Fizzle

 28.) Seeking Wisdom

What It Is: A podcast from tech-startup, Drift about personal and professional growth hosted by David Cancel and Dave Gerhardt.
Listen to this For:

• A super-smart marketer and super-smart entrepreneur in the same podcast
• Everything you care about in terms of your career growth

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 299 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @dcancel or @davegerhardt

29.) Moneyball for Marketing

What It Is: Crimson Marketing’s CEO Glenn Gow interviews the best and the brightest marketing minds. He and his guests talk about the incredible changes happening in marketing organizations around Big Data and marketing technology. Moneyball for Marketing features marketing technology insights from the top marketers in the world.
Listen to this For:

• Great guests focused on teaching the audience

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 Stars, 114 Rankings
Tweet the author: @glenngow1 ‏

30.) Marketing Speak

What it Is: Tips, tricks, and new insights that the top players in the digital marketing world are using to grow their brands and businesses.

Listen to this for

• Top marketing experts talking about what they know the most about
• Tactical advice on a variety of topics from influencer marketing to link building

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 Stars, 18 Ratings
Tweet the author: @mktg_speak

 31.) Learn to Code with Me

What it Is: A coding podcast for beginners. We’re always talking about how, as content marketers, we should expand our skill sets. Code is one place to start.

Listen to this For:

• Beginner information on coding
• Some interesting stuff on the coding industry that doesn’t necessarily pertain to you

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 stars, 115 ratings
Tweet the author @learncodewithme

32.) Social Media Marketing Podcast

What it Is: Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner helps your business navigate the social jungle with success stories and expert interviews from leading social media marketing pros. Discover how successful businesses employ social media, learn new strategies and tactics, and gain actionable tips to improve your social media marketing. 

Listen to this For:

• Marketing insight from a social perspective
• If you think social is useless (they’ll prove you wrong)

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 Stars, 560 Ratings
Tweet the Author @Mike_Stelzner

 33.) The SaaS Content Marketing Show

What it Is: Learn how to turn your SaaS company into a real user magnet with targeted content strategies. Every two weeks this content marketing podcast brings SaaS founders, CEOs, and marketers training, insights, and tools to launch and manage a successful content marketing strategy. 

Listen to this For:

• Information specific to SaaS content marketers. This niche information makes it all the more actionable

Number of Stars on Itunes: N/A
Tweet the Author: @pawelgra7

34.) Edge of the Web

What it Is: Winner of Best Podcast from Content Marketing Institute this past year, Edge of the Web is a weekly SEO podcast discussing all things within SEO, social media, content jarketing and digital marketing. Hosts Erin Sparks, Douglas Karr, and Tom Brodbeck discuss the latest news and trends in the SEO industry as well as interviews with some of the top names in digital marketing.

Listen to this For:

• Advice and discussion directly related to the most current events in marketing
• A deep-dive into current best practices for SEO

Number of Stars on Itunes:5 Stars, 10 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @EdgeWebRadio 

Did we forget your podcast? Feel free to tweet us suggestions to add to the list @curata

Podcasting can be an important part of your editorial strategy. For more in-depth editorial calendar planning, download our editorial calendar template.

Using a methodology like a funnel as the foundation for your content strategy can clarify your direction and simplify your team’s goals. Content marketing methodologies include the buyer journey, content marketing funnel, content marketing framework, and content marketing pyramid.

While there are other common methodologies in the content marketing space, the content marketing funnel is one of the most popular. This post provides more information on what the content marketing funnel is, how to create content that maps back to its stages, and how to optimize your content for it to help you achieve your goals.

What Is the Content Marketing Funnel?

According to Single Grain, the content marketing funnel is a system that takes as many leads as possible through a step-by-step content flow. It then converts them into actual customers who pay for your products or services. The four stages of the content marketing funnel are:

• Awareness
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Delight

While most people don’t move through these phases in a linear path, having a content marketing funnel model can help your content marketing strategy. A content marketing strategy helps answer the following questions:

• What type of content should I create?
• How do I measure success for this piece of content?
• Should I repurpose this content?
• Are their holes in my content strategy?

This post walks you through all stages of the content marketing funnel and teaches you how to map your content to drive traffic, leads, and ultimately—revenue.

Awareness Stage Content

The first stage of the content marketing funnel is awareness. In this phase you want to attract and educate your audience on your topic.

To determine if the content created for this phase is succeeding, answer the following questions:

• Is it generating a high number of shares and views?
• Are the people sharing and viewing the content part of your target audience?
• Are they interested in the content and converting on it?

Marketing resources across the web suggest that creating for this stage of the content marketing funnel is best in the following formats: ads, social media posts, infographics, and videos.

While these content types work well for awareness stage content, not all audiences are the same. Look at your metrics to analyze which content performs the best at this stage. Metrics you can use to determine if your content for the awareness stage is performing are total shares, views, time on page, scroll depth, and bounce rate.

A Bird in Hand…

Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media studios explains the importance of creating value at this stage:

The most valuable audience, at least for B2B marketers, is your current prospects. So your most valuable content is something you make specifically for these people and send to them directly. 

Create a piece of content that answers top questions for your current prospects and you’ll get value from it even if no one else ever reads it. Plus, you can share it with the next prospect who asks that question.

You may have thought that visual content might be best for this category. Curata CMP analytics told us a slightly different story. Our long-form blog content performed the best for shares, views, and time on page.

From there, we determined which posts to heavily promote and optimize, which new keywords needed targeting, and how to develop content for this stage of the funnel moving forward.

You can use the following platforms to determine if your content marketing works at the awareness stage:

• Outbrain
• Curata
• Scroll Depth
• SEMRush
• Google Analytics

Evaluation Stage Content

The evaluation stage is when potential buyers determine the legitimacy of your company, develop trust, and decide if they need your product. Andrew Raso of Online Marketing Gurus describes the evaluation stage as when:

People are doing heavy research on whether or not your product or service is a good fit for them

A famous example of evaluation stage content is Nestle’s Toll House chocolate chip recipes. Nestle Toll House released recipes to the public, including their own chocolate chips as a primary ingredient. This validated Nestle Toll House as the go-to-source for all things chocolate chip-related, and also pointed consumers to their product.

Determine the success of your evaluation-stage content by answering the following questions:

• Are my contacts converting on this content?
• Is this content generating leads?
• Is this content influencing leads?

Generally, this means creating white papers, case studies, webinars, or blog posts. Curata’s content team looks at leads generated and leads influenced to determine which content performs the best.

Need More Leads

However, there’s a common mistake to be wary of when looking at metrics like these, as Anna Hrach of Convince and Convert explains:

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when measuring content is automatically assuming that correlation implies causation. We see two trend lines headed in the same direction, so we automatically assume they have a direct relationship. That unfortunately tends to lead to misguided conclusions and forced connections that aren’t always there to begin with.

Not surprisingly, white papers, templates, and guides are great for racking up leads influenced and leads generated.

To learn more about lead generation, Curata tested content type, topic, and distribution method to get a clearer idea of what was working and how to promote our content.

Other platforms you can use to determine if your content marketing work at the evaluation stage:

• Marketo
• Salesforce Pardot
• Act-On
• Bizible
• BrightFunnel

Purchase Stage Content

The next stage of the content marketing funnel involves convincing your audience that a purchase is the smartest step. The goal is to create content that results in closing business. Questions you should be answering about your content in this stage include:

• Is this content influencing revenue?
• What sort of pipeline is this content generating?
• Is this content influencing pipeline?

Typically, the best formats for this stage are reviews, questionnaires, self-assessments, product sheets, and calculators.

At Curata we use our Curata CMP software analytics to determine the efficacy of content at this stage of the content marketing funnel. (Only 30 percent of leading marketers feel they are effective at measuring content marketing’s impact on the bottom of the funnel.) We’ve also taken steps such as building out our G2 Crowd page and updating our product sheets as a result.

Another example of popular purchase-stage content is Progressive’s side-by-side insurance comparison tool. Users are able to look at quotes and compare Progressive against competitors.

If you’re looking to drive results in the purchase stage of the funnel, use these tools:

• Curata CMP
• Kapost
• Contently
• Bizible

Delight Stage Content

The last, frequently overlooked stage in the content marketing funnel is delight. This is especially important for B2B companies with a subscription-based model. This stage of the funnel has several goals.

Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi explains why this stage is important:

Marketers don’t realize that the most important part of this process is not the content.  The asset we are trying to build is the audience… so everything should revolve around building a loyal audience that will ultimately behave in a way that will help your business.

Curata recommends talking to your customer success team to help determine exactly what your KPIs are for this stage of content. Consider goals for your delight stage content such as increased product usage, renewal rates, online interactions, referrals, case studies, and user generated content.

There are a variety of content types that work well for this stage. These include product guides and educational materials, member-exclusive content, forums and chat rooms, special offers, and giveaways.

The Curata marketing team often partners with our customer success team when creating this type of content and tags it accordingly in Curata CMP. One example of a successful content piece is our CCS use-case guide.

Other examples of content that delights can include anything from a personalized email to offering “priceless surprises” to your customers, like MasterCard did.

Tools to help ensure your content will succeed at the delight stage of the funnel include:

• Salesforce
• Curata CMP

Go Beyond the Marketing Funnel

Actionable Marketing Guide Chief Content Officer Heidi Cohen advises not just creating content for the funnel. Maximize its usage by making it available at all relevant touch points.

When creating content for the purchase process, think beyond the funnel. To get the maximize value for your content investment make your content available at every touchpoint where it’s relevant. This includes post purchase, something many marketers forget.

Aligning your content strategy and editorial calendar with the content marketing funnel helps ensure your content is used to its maximum potential. You will gain a clearer idea of your strategy, increase your content’s efficacy, improve ROI, and align your content with the overall team’s marketing strategy.

For more on improving your content marketing strategy, read Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid eBook, a framework for developing and executing your content marketing strategy.

• A piece of content’s quality is determined by the creator, or
• Quality content is content with a great headline, several images, easy-to-read, actionable, and other other specific attributes.

Once upon a time, we tried to define what makes content great at WordStream, my former company. We fell into the same trap as above, trying to define quality content based on attributes. We said great content is:

• Findable
• Shareable
• Usable
• Readable
• Memorable
• Quotable
• Actionable
• Reportable

All of these are important. But even if your content has all eight of those attributes, it still is most likely to go nowhere.

The definition of quality content should be based on outcomes, not biased views of your own work. Here’s one way to think about quality content that might put things in perspective.

What is “Quality Content”?

In the based-on-a-true-story movie Moneyball, baseball team manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, finds himself in a frustrating meeting where his scouts are talking about potential free agents to add to the team lineup. The scouts evaluate players based on their athleticism, size, and speed. They also speak glowingly about one player because he’s clean cut, has a good face, and a good jaw. Beane asks his scouts an important question: “Can he hit?“

Many marketers look at content the same way the scouts were looking at the players. We’ve been trying to define content quality as a series of technical and aesthetic attributes: how our content is structured and formatted. How many times have you heard that long form is better than short form or vice versa?

Individuals, businesses, and brands are producing a ridiculously enormous amount of content every minute. But few are actually successful. If your content doesn’t succeed, does it matter if it included lots of pretty images, had perfect spelling and grammar, or used x number of words?

No.

Great baseball players come in all shapes and sizes. The same is true of quality content.
Quality content is successful content. Quality content achieves a goal. I.e., it drives traffic, Google search rankings, engagement, and/or conversions.

Performance is what matters for any content marketing strategy. Here’s how to create home run content for your marketing team.

Increase Your Chances of Picking the Right Topic

Anyone with a creative bone in their body will argue that content marketing strategy isn’t just about numbers. Creativity is art, after all.

The argument goes something along the lines of: “If content creation were just a science, then anybody could simply create quality content. Experience matters! Intuition matters! There are just certain intangibles that only creative content people can understand.”

Time to drop a truth bomb: No content marketer has a crystal ball. Nobody can look at a piece of content and predict its future any more accurately than I can.

You can’t say with 100 percent certainty, even if it is based on past experience, that a piece of content will succeed in the future. I’m always surprised when an article I worked really hard on goes nowhere and an article I didn’t spend much time on becomes a huge success.

You Can’t Find Unicorns Without Producing Lots of Donkeys

You can’t predict success. Another common misconception is that you can somehow convert increased effort or time on one piece of content into increased units of quality.

You have to produce and audition lots of ideas to find your next quality idea. Then you have to fully explore that topic once it has revealed itself. Here’s how to do that. Consider these factors when determining what content topics to invest your time in:

• Past unicorn content: What topics have performed well in the past?
• Topics your audience cares about: What’s your audience talking about on social?
• Topics you want to rank for: What keywords are you currently targeting?

Once you decide on a topic, create the content. Measure the results to determine if your content was a quality piece and react accordingly. Take the following steps to get closer to creating more unicorn content.

1. Produce and Audition Lots of Content: Content is a lot about throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. Consider past performance of similar topics in conjunction with the goals you have for this piece of content.
2. Measure User Engagement Rates: After publishing, measure engagement rates for your content. Use time and rate benchmarks to determine if it’s working.
3. Kill the Donkeys: If a piece of content isn’t performing, abandon ship. No use in continuing to promote something no one cares about.
4. Find the Unicorns and Sound the Unicorn Alert! If content is performing well, start promoting and maximizing your return—more on that later.

How do You Know if It’s Quality Content?

Everyone wants to create successful content. But what actually makes content successful?

User engagement rates.

Think about the systems that drive exposure and clicks to your content. Social media news feeds, search and social ads, and organic search listings. These systems all increasingly employ new machine learning based algorithms that reward higher engagement rates (such as click through rates and dwell time) with far greater exposure.

Perform an audit of your existing content based on engagement rates such as dwell time, conversion rates, click through rates, or traffic. (Read Curata’s comprehensive content audit guide for how to do this.) Look for the outliers—the content that does not just a little bit better, but three to five times better. Those are your unicorn content campaigns with unusually high user engagement. They are the types of content most likely to earn the approval of our algorithmic overlords.

Your Unicorn content (content with unusually high user engagement rates) tends to:

1. Rank well in Google Search
2. Convert significantly better than donkey content
3. Drives tons of organic social media engagement
4. Does fantastically well in paid search
5. Does fantastically well in paid social media ads

Again, the relationship here isn’t coincidental. It’s because the Facebook Newsfeed algorithm, Relevancy Score in Facebook Ads, Quality Score in Google AdWords, and RankBrain for Organic Search, all use machine learning algorithms. They dramatically reward content boasting high user engagement with tremendous visibility and clicks within their platform.

You Found Quality Content: Now What?

Promoting a donkey won’t turn it into a unicorn. You’ll only waste time and money. Instead, focus all your efforts on promoting your powerful and valuable unicorns. When you find your unicorns, promote them on every channel to amplify their impact by 100 times or even 1,000 times and drive even more traffic, engagement, and leads.

Once you’ve found content that fits into all these categories, it’s time to start implementing a promotion strategy. The following tactics will help you leverage maximum value from your unicorn content:

• Repurpose it into other types of content: webinar, infographic, etc.
• Schedule it for a refresh
• Pitch similar content with backlinks to other websites
• Put some paid social behind it
• Ask for influencer quotes to add in
• Make it into an eBook

Content Marketing is About Output, not Input!

Content marketing strategy is an unfair game. If you want to win you need to stop relying on your gut. Your gut is really just your opinion and, by nature, biased. To really succeed, you need to look at unbiased statistics.

Stop looking at content attributes. Start looking at data to find your truly high-quality content. Start optimizing for engagement and you’ll find huge content wins.

When you find that super rare unicorn content, capitalize on it! Leverage the heck out of it on every channel to maximize your marketing ROI. And to create your own documented content marketing strategy, download Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid: A Framework to Develop & Execute Your Content Marketing Strategy eBook.

Enter Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid, a strategic framework enabling you to execute a content campaign, assuring optimal content consumption, reuse, and reach.

This hands-on guide teaches you what the Content Marketing Pyramid is, why it works, and how you can implement it within your organization.

Why Use the Content Marketing Pyramid?

In addition to providing a documented content strategy, the Content Marketing Pyramid:

• Improves your focus with an organized strategy that establishes clear goals and priorities
• Increases your production capacity by making more efficient use of valuable resources
• Creates a predictable stream of successful content to engage your buyers and drive pipeline activity for marketing and sales

DOUG KESSLER
Co-Founder and Creative Director, Velocity Partners  @dougkessler
“What happens when you create content without strategy? Usually, nothing. Content without strategy is like playing the lottery: who knows, you might win. Probably not. Ready, Fire, Aim!”

According to the 2017 CMI/MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Benchmark report, 60 percent of those with a documented strategy rate themselves highly in terms of content marketing effectiveness. This compares with 32 percent of those who have a verbal strategy. The Content Marketing Pyramid alleviates many headaches from ineffective content marketing. But if you operate without a smart framework it leaves you susceptible to the following consequences:

Chaos

You may be dealing with departments that operate in silos, a content strategy with no documented objectives, and a lack of communication between content creators.

How the Content Marketing Pyramid Can Help: This framework documents, centralizes, and coordinates all your content marketing efforts.

A Fractured Customer Experience

Readers experience inconsistent messaging and disconnected touch points. This leads to a lack of brand loyalty and dissatisfaction.

How the Content Marketing Pyramid Can Help: The Content Marketing Pyramid lends itself to cohesive messaging and centralized information.

NEIL PATEL
Co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics @neilpatel
“When you create content without a strategy you’ll find that you have tons of articles with little to no traffic. Roughly half of your time should be spent on strategy and marketing.” neilpatel.com

Waste

Because of the chaos and lack of communication, you’re constantly reinventing the wheel. When there’s little documentation, it’s easy to recreate similar pieces of content, instead of simply reusing or repurposing existing content.

How the Content Marketing Pyramid Can Help: This framework eliminates waste by streamlining the internal development process and ensuring every piece of content performs multiple roles across a variety of formats and channels.

Even if you aren’t experiencing any of the aforementioned consequences, content marketing is only about to get more competitive—and challenging. Take these stats for example:

• 70 percent of B2B marketers expect to create more content in 2017 versus last year, and 39 percent plan to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months. [CMI/MarketingProfs]
• In 2016, 42 percent of companies had an executive in their organization who was directly responsible for an overall content marketing strategy [Curata 2016 Content Marketing Tactics and Technology Study]

Since most marketers don’t have an unlimited budget, the best way to compete is to find ways to extend the budget and resources we already have. By implementing a strategic plan, you can create more effective content, enabling you to do more with less.

Start With Overall Content Strategy

Before we get down to the granular level of a content marketing pyramid—which is used to plan and execute a single content campaign—let’s zoom out a bit. Campaigns are byproducts of a larger strategy. We recommend developing your strategy on an annual basis and updating it quarterly to readjust for any changes in the marketplace or to your business.

DHARMESH SHAH
Entrepreneur, Author, HubSpot Founder and CTO @dharmesh
“A great strategy identifies who the content is being created for, why they’ll find it useful, how it will spread and what the goals are.”

It is important to remember your strategy is not driven by content: It’s driven by what you want to achieve with your content. The most successful teams ensure their content strategy aligns with their organization’s goals, and their CMO’s and related team’s goals. Here’s a helpful framework to form your strategy:

Corporate Objectives

Start with the top-level company goals your company’s leadership team defines. These serve as the basis of your marketing organization’s strategic direction.

Examples of top-level corporate objectives include:

• Increase share of mobile market
• Break into new geographic or demographic market
• Displace a competitor
• Establish [company] as a leader in [topic]

Marketing Themes

With the corporate objectives in place, set specific marketing themes to support them. Usually there are two to four global themes set by marketing leadership, each one focusing on key concepts, messages, and areas of corporate objectives.

For instance, if a corporate objective is to increase your company’s share of the mobile market, examples of marketing themes include:

• Empowering the mobile workforce
• Innovations in mobile
• Defining the mobile value proposition for businesses

Once you’ve established the themes, you can begin creating a content strategy through Content Marketing Pyramids. The next section is a deep dive into the anatomy and importance of these pyramids.

MARCUS SHERIDAN
Professional Speaker, Author, Founder of The Sales Lion  @TheSalesLion
“When it comes to content strategy, one of the biggest keys is that everyone in the organization, and not just the marketing department, can actually understand the darn thing. Too often in this space we use “marketing speak”—and the reality is marketing speak kills buy-in. It disinterests the Sales Team. It’s uninspiring to the organization as a whole. Words matter, and in this case, they need to be words everyone can get their arms around.”

What is the Content Marketing Pyramid?

Curata defines the Content Marketing Pyramid as:

The development of content and related assets intended to reinforces common messages/themes through multiple content formats, distribution methods and promotion channels across owned, earned, and paid media.

Each pyramid relies on Core Content. This is the heaviest, most valuable asset, consisting of thought leadership, primary research, and/or secondary research. The Core Content begats corresponding Derivative Assets and Promotional Micro-Content.

These highly intentional and focused content marketing activities and interactions help you move the needle on the big goals, from awareness building to lead generation to sales enablement.

The Content Marketing Pyramid: A Structural Overview

The Content Marketing Pyramid consists of five levels of content, organized into three main parts:

Level 1: Core Content

Core content is substantive, original content that involves research and/or deep insight. Use this primary research and thought leadership to create additional assets. These can include print books, eBooks, and guides that provide an in-depth exploration of the source material.

Such assets are the source material for the remaining assets in the Pyramid and are typically gated. All remaining assets in the Pyramid should drive your audience to this core asset and capture a lead.

CHRIS BROGAN
Best Selling Author, Journalist, Marketing Consultant; CEO, Owner Media Group @chrisbrogan
“People are suddenly drowning in “content.” What people need is helpful information that grows their business or life in some way. Great content serves the buyer and gently reminds them that you’re there to help.”

Level 2, 3 and 4: Derivative Assets

Assets derived from Core Content make up the middle of the pyramid. They take chunks of information from the Core Content to create more focused and precise pieces. They are more accessible and produced in a variety of formats, such as:

• Long form blog posts, presentations, infographics and SlideShares (Level 2 and Level 3)
  This content is usually not gated. Content from these levels should engage your audience and lead them to the gated, Level 1 content.

• Blog posts and contributed content (Level 4)
  Produce Level 4 content more frequently and routinely than Level 2 and 3 content. It should become a part of the weekly, if not daily, content production process. This content provides a different kind of anchor for your content strategy. It is the “bread and butter” of your content marketing. Blog posts are most common, but don’t ignore contributed content or bylines, a.k.a. guest posting on other blogs. Contributed content is key to spreading your message beyond the parameters of your owned media properties, improving your SEO ranking via backlinks, and to drive new readers back to your Core Content to generate leads.

DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Marketing and Sales Strategist, Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker  @dmscott
“Don’t create content about your own products and services. Nobody cares about your products and services (except you). What people do care about are themselves and how you can solve their problems. People also like to be entertained and to share in something remarkable. In order to have people talk about you and your ideas, you must resist the urge to hype your products and services. Instead, create something interesting that will be talked about online. When you get people talking on the Web, people will line up to learn more and to buy what you have to offer.”

Level 5: Promotional Micro-Content

Finally, at the base of the Content Marketing Pyramid is promotional and conversational micro-content. Level 5 content helps build awareness for, increase consumption of, and facilitate conversation about all your other content. Level 5 includes social media posts and curated content. For more information on curating content, take a look at Curata’s Ultimate Guide to Content Curation.

Here’s a table further clarifying the differences and similarities between each level of the pyramid:

9 Benefits of the Content Marketing Pyramid

Not convinced yet by the Content Marketing Pyramid? Here are NINE benefits that will optimize the impact of your content marketing efforts, from awareness building to demand generation to sales enablement.

TODD WHEATLAND
Author, Speaker; Head of Strategy @ King Content  @ToddWheatland
“Creating content without a strategy is like building a house without a blueprint. The living room might be amazing, but it’s awkward when you forget to put in bathrooms.”

1. Unified Content Objectives.

One of the main purposes of the Content Marketing Pyramid is to align all content around corporate objectives and marketing themes. This framework helps share the strategy across all departments so everyone works towards the same goals and uses the same playbook for content creation.

2. Message Repetition

Marketing themes are most effective when they show the buyer a consistent message via multiple touch points. The Content Marketing Pyramid facilitates intentional repetition of key marketing messages across multiple channels.

3. Content Saturation

The most effective content marketing programs extend far beyond owned properties by distributing to earned and paid media channels. This framework allows you to repurpose existing content to fit these specific channels.

4. Format Diversity

While some people in your target audience may prefer learning by reading an in-depth blog post, others may be able to absorb content better via an interactive webinar or a podcast they can listen to on-the-go. The Pyramid encourages you to create multiple different content formats.

RAND FISHKIN
Author, Blogger, Founder of Moz and Inbound.org  @randfish
“When you have deep empathy for your audience (and their influencers), you can do a great job determining the list of tactics and channels. You’ll also have smart answers to the key question content creators must ask themselves to be successful: “Who will help amplify this? And why?”

5. Flexible Content Creation: Top to Bottom or Bottom to Top

Although the levels are the same across all Content Pyramids, which level you start from can vary depending on the specific circumstance. For example, you might begin your Pyramid with the development of a cornerstone research study (Level 1 Core Content) that you break down and repurpose into Derivative Assets and Promotional Micro-Content. Alternatively, some particularly insightful comments on a blog post or conversation on social media may inspire you to build up from the bottom of the Pyramid.

One of Curata’s most successful pyramids began as a long-form blog post and then expanded to cover all levels of the pyramid (The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics and Metrics). Of course, there are pros and cons to both the top-down and bottom-up methods:

6. On-the Fly Content Maneuvers

This framework allows you to take full advantage of unexpected content opportunities, such as newsjacking, event-related content, and jumping into spontaneous industry conversations. Such random acts can inspire entirely new Pyramids. You can also insert them into existing Pyramids.

7. Balanced Content Mix

The Content Marketing Pyramid also makes it easy to adhere to best practices for balancing all the different types of content. Using this framework, you can efficiently plan the right ratio of:

• Created vs. curated content (65 percent created and 25 percent curated, according to Curata’s study)
• High effort vs. low effort
• Owned vs. earned vs. paid media

8. Operational Efficiency

Use this framework to streamline and empower your internal operations by:

• Aligning all your content marketing activities with clear corporate objectives
• Providing both a long-term road map and a short-term operational plan for content development and distribution
• Unifying all your efforts and teams around a central content strategy and process
• Reducing lags and inefficiencies in your workflow
• Requiring the identification of clear and measurable goals and objectives
• Giving you a way to assign value to and measure the performance of each piece of content within a campaign

9. The Ultimate Reward of the Pyramid: Pipeline Impact

When you build out your content campaigns according to this framework, you create an upside down funnel that draws people in and drive them up from Level 5 to Level 1. At Level 1 you ask for their contact information for them to gain access to key pieces of Core Content. This generates new leads and new opportunities for your sales pipeline.

RYAN SKINNER
Content Marketing Blogger, Senior Analyst @ Forrester @rskin11
“Content strategy isn’t about each piece of content, but rather the sum of it. For small organizations or those with very charismatic and communicative leaders, a strategy may not even be necessary. But for larger organizations with a lot of forces pulling in different directions, a content strategy brings a higher degree of cohesion, quality, and value to the sum of the output. A great content strategy must make clear choices—this, not that. If you work for a product that’s an impulse buy, you may choose not to put too much effort into your search strategy (because no one searches for it). You will need to limit the number of formats you expect to support to a sane number. These are just examples. ‘More is more’ is not the stuff of a great strategy.”

Getting Started with the Content Marketing Pyramid

Step 1: Appoint a Leader

Pyramids require many people to be involved, but it’s crucial that a single individual is responsible for developing overall strategy. Curata’s Content Marketing Tactics and Technology study says that only 42 percent of companies have a content marketing executive who would likely be a candidate for taking on this critical role. 

Step 2: Build Support for the Pyramid Across Your Organization

Once you’ve established a lead, you can solicit support and feedback from the key departments in your organization. This could include the CMO, product marketing team, digital marketing group, social media team and overall marketing operations leadership.

Step 3: Establish Your Content Marketing Pyramid Workflow

The Content Marketing Pyramid workflow is a four-part cycle including: Strategy, Production, Distribution and Analytics. Below is a high-level overview of each step. These steps can be completed across multiple applications or through a single content marketing platform such as Curata CMP.

LEE ODDEN
Author, Speaker and Consultant; CEO, Top Rank Marketing @leeodden
“According to CMI and MarketingProfs, 68 percent of B2B marketers do not have a documented content marketing strategy. I would speculate that even fewer are using data to inform their strategy. Data about customers, the market, the company, the competition, search, social, Web analytics, best and worst performing content, SEO and CRO all offer opportunities to inform a more effective content marketing strategy. And don’t get me started about all the data and insights available through predictive marketing platforms like Everstring (a client of ours) and 6sense. Lots of people like to gamble. But when it comes to content marketing, guessing rarely leads to great things except unexpected surprises. That’s why the one thing I would use to increase our odds of content marketing greatness isn’t luck. It’s data.”

Pyramid Measurement

Operational Metrics: Introducing Pyramid Points

One of the main goals of the Content Marketing Pyramid is to optimize how you reuse and repurpose your content. Why? To maximize the pipeline impact of your content.

However, determining when and if you’ve created enough derivative content within a pyramid can be difficult. You may be wondering if there’s more you can get out of a specific eBook. To solve this problem, Curata developed the concept of ‘Pyramid Points’ to track and optimize the execution of your pyramids.

Pyramid points are a set number of points that roughly represent the effort needed to complete each content asset. Using pyramid points ensures you extract the utmost use from each pyramid, and helps you keep track of the progress or status of each pyramid. Here is how we weight each of our assets:

A typical content marketing pyramid may run for three to six months. If you start one pyramid a quarter, you may have up to four pyramids running at once. Use the pyramid points above to help you track how well you’ve repurposed a pyramid’s original content.

This helps you decide which pyramids to allocate resources towards. Here is a template and example of how to measure pyramid points and determine the overall progress of your pyramid. (This pyramid is 73 percent complete. You could invest more resources in completing this pyramid.)

Performance Metrics: Pyramids in Action

Pyramid points aid in the execution of operational metrics. The real excitement begins when you can determine how well your overall pyramid performed.

Based on a framework from The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics and Metrics, you should evaluate your pyramid across three dimensions:

• Top of the Funnel (e.g. social media, page views, retention)
• Middle of the Funnel (e.g. leads generated and touched)
• Bottom of the Funnel (e.g. sales opportunities generated and touched; revenue influenced)

Analyzing the performance of different pyramids can help answer the following types of questions:

• What impact has a pyramid made on your company’s revenue pipeline? Website traffic? Social media efforts?
• Which types of pyramids (and related content) perform well at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel?
• Why is a particular pyramid underperforming (or outperforming) other pyramids?

IAN CLEARY
Tech Blogger, Speaker, Founder of RazorSocial @IanCleary
“What is the one thing that makes for a great content strategy? Your promotion strategy. There is an ever increasing amount of content out there so without a good promotion strategy your content will not be distributed nearly as effectively. It’s not always the best piece of content that gets the best reach.”

Where to Go From Here

Content marketing is a long-term play with the potential to deliver a substantial return on your investment if you can build a smart content strategy and execute against it efficiently. Start by forming your corporate objectives and marketing themes, then take a first stab at planning and executing a Content Marketing Pyramid. We believe it can help take your content marketing practice to the next level, with a sense of confidence and ease you never thought possible.

For an even more in-depth set of instructions, be sure to download the complete 70+ page eBook on content strategy, The Content Marketing Pyramid.

This post was co-written by Curata’s former CMO, Michael Gerard.

This year, one of the other areas that stood out to me was around user-generated content and specifically, how big brands are finally figuring out how to utilize images and videos to drive engagement. As a big believer in the customer experience, it’s cool to see some of these brands jumping in:

The report also looked at interactive video, image recognition, path to purchase tracking, and much more. I highly suggest taking a look at the full deck.

Anyway, what I really wanted to see was where video stood in this year’s report following the 2015 takeaway that by 2017, online video will account for 74 percent of all online traffic. Did we do it? Are we there yet?

I’ll be honest—I couldn’t find an update in the report. But a more recent Cisco report puts it at 82 percent of all traffic by 2020, so it seems we are on our way.

For marketers, these gigantic numbers mean it’s time to step up our own efforts around video and take advantage of this channel. Let’s look at how.

Start With Product Videos

According to Wyzowl’s 2017 State of Video Marketing report, 97 percent of businesses using explainer videos say it helps users understand their business better. And 73 percent of consumers say they’ve bought a product after watching a video.

Explainer video for Curata’s content marketing software

It makes sense. With the continued evolution of technology and new acronyms like IoT (the Internet of Things) taking over our lives, it can be hard for consumers to really understand what a product does, especially if that product is software. On top of that, we often to want to see how something works versus just read about it.

What’s important to note here is product videos don’t have to be boring. And you don’t have to become the next BlendTec or Dollar Shave Club to make it interesting. Take Coleman for example. They make things like grills, coolers, campaign equipment, and of course, tents.

Tent buying isn’t something many people do often. If you’re in the market, you just want to figure out which tent best fits your needs, budget, and style. Coleman does a nice job showcasing videos of tents—particularly their pop-up tents, which are much cooler to see on video.

Whether you sell tents or software, product videos help show potential customers what your product actually does. This helps them to take the next step in the buyer journey. (Read The Secret Behind Content That Attracts, Converts, and Nurtures at Each Stage of the Sales Funnel for more.)

Take Your Webinars Further

For anyone who’s ever attended a webinar, you know how it usually goes. You receive 10+ emails leading up to the webinar, and then you never hear about it again. What a waste! Especially when you consider how much time and effort goes into organization and promotion. (Check out Content Promotion, Distribution, and You: A Marketer’s Guide.)

As a company, don’t just set it and forget it. Take your webinars a step further.

Evariant, a leading healthcare CRM solution, runs webinars on a monthly basis. Their webinars are then cut up into clips and added into YouTube playlists, turned into blog posts, and added to emails and social.

One video asset allows the company to create a unified campaign across multiple channels and gives customers another way to get information about the company.

Does your company offer webinars? Don’t let them fall to the wayside. Turn them into snackable video content marketing your audience can enjoy elsewhere.

Capitalize on Social Trends

I like to tell people I’m “Not very hip to what the kids are doing these days.” So when the whole mannequin challenge came about, I thought it was pretty pointless. But sure enough, star after star and brand after brand hopped on board, and now there are over 4.5 million YouTube results. My employer KoMarketing’s mannequin challenge also happens to be one of their top Facebook posts of all time. Who would’ve thought?

The mannequin challenge in itself was nothing groundbreaking. But like the Harlem Shake that preceded it, these social trends allow brands to show a different side of themselves. It’s an easy way to make a video that can be shared across a variety of channels.

The other thing to consider? It’s cheap! This type of video content marketing is typically made on phones and therefore doesn’t require a budget. It simply requires buy-in from key stakeholders and a few employees willing to look silly.

Give Your Email a Voice

I attend a number of conferences throughout the year and as a result, I get a lot of email. (Read The Ultimate List of Content Marketing Conferences for the top conferences to attend.) From the conference organizers, from the sponsors, from the exhibitors, and even from people I didn’t meet but who still want to “connect.” It can be overwhelming. And do you know where 99 percent of those emails go? The trash. Don’t be the trash email.

According to Syndacast, using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19 percent. Even better, eMarketer says half of the marketers who used video in email campaigns saw increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the email, and increased sharing and forwarding.

When I returned from the SMX Advanced conference in June, I was greeted by an email thanking me for attending. It featured a video from one of the company’s Senior VPs.

The video isn’t long but it stood out among the rest of the emails. I not only read the email but also watched the video.

Is your brand engaging in email marketing? Think about how you can integrate video content marketing into your efforts and better capture your audience’s attention.

Answer Questions Your Customers Are Asking

When I moved out of my parents’ house I had to learn a whole lot about life, including where to take my car to get fixed and have the oil changed. Growing up, my dad took care of the car when issues occurred. So the idea of taking it somewhere to have the oil changed was preposterous. Imagine my surprise when he told me a few months ago he had to take his RV in to get the oil changed. His explanation—an RV is different. And more importantly, he couldn’t find out how to do it on YouTube.

Like my dad, many of us turn to YouTube to learn how to do things. In 2015, according to Google, searches related to “how to” on YouTube grew at 70 percent year over year. More than 100 million hours of how-to content had been watched in North America alone. That number has only grown as people continually turn to the web, and YouTube in particular, to give them answers.

Give your customers the answers to the questions they are asking. Not sure where to find those questions? Check out tools like Answer the Public, Keywordtool.io, and Bloomberry. Each of these tools scour the web to find the most common questions around specific keyword themes. (Read Content Marketing Tools: The Ultimate List for all the tools you’ll ever need.) Identify top questions related to your business, and instead of answering in writing, make a video.

Lowes does a really nice job of video content marketing. They’ve created a series of videos to answer questions like “How To Build a Deck” or “How to Build a Christmas Tree Stand.”

These videos not only address the needs of buyers, but also help them make their home a better place. The next time someone needs a tool, gardening equipment, paint, or anything else, they’ll likely think of Lowes.

Video Content Marketing: Final Thoughts

Video isn’t new and isn’t going away. As Mary Meeker’s report showed, more brands than ever are engaging with video content marketing, and buyers are consuming it at a significant rate.

Not sure your brand is ready? The good news is you don’t have to jump in head first, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Start small and go from there. There are plenty of free tools that make video editing easy. And if you can prove success with one video, you open the door to company buy-in and increased budgets. You might even become (or create) a video star.

Once you’ve started with video, measure how well your efforts are working. Download The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics and Metrics eBook for everything you need to assess the effectiveness of all your content marketing efforts.

Content marketers are increasingly incorporating UGC campaigns as part of their content marketing strategy due to the benefits UGC provides. These include:

• increasing sales
• building customer trust
• strengthening brand/customer relationships
• increasing social followers
• expanding social reach
• boosting authenticity/credibility
• building SEO value

This post provides a brief overview of what user generated content is, and explores some of its primary advantages and challenges. It considers crucial points to keep in mind when designing a UGC campaign. Additionally, it looks at some campaigns that have been particularly successful in generating unique, traffic-driving content.

What is User Generated Content?

User generated content is essentially any content created by unpaid contributors. It can include anything from pictures, videos, and blog posts to testimonials and discussion boards. User generated content is typically created or uploaded online, where it is easily shared.

Source: Brian Solis and JESS3, Wikimedia Commons

The annual Lay’s “Do Us A Flavor” competition asks users to submit their idea for the next potato chip flavor. (If you are familiar with it, please don’t pretend you haven’t spent at least five minutes brainstorming this…)

Lay’s Do Us a Flavor finalists
Source: theimpulsivebuy via Flickr

Or recall Hootsuite’s #IWorkFromHere campaign where followers upload photos of unique places they work from.

These are only two examples of user generated content campaigns. Both have enjoyed huge results.

Why is User Generated Content Effective?

One of the unique elements of UGC is that it taps into consumer trust and relationship building. Yes, that’s right—the days of trust falls with prospective and existing customers are over!

According to a study conducted by Reevoo, “61 percent of people would be more likely to engage with an advertisement if it contained user generated content.” While a study from Bazaar found that “51 percent of Americans trust UGC more than other information on a company website.”

Source: Reevoo

Authenticity and Credibility

So, does this mean that a lo-fi, flip-phone photo uploaded by Frank Meyers of Wickliffe, KY will be more convincing than an HD shot coming straight from Toyota’s website?

Well, kind of—yes.

The above scenario may be an exaggeration. (Although, who’s to say, Frank Meyers might have an exceptional eye for auto photography.) But research consistently shows consumers are more likely to trust a peer review or word-of-mouth account over content created by a brand or organization.

As consumers, we’re jaded about traditional marketing content and messaging. We like hearing what people like ourselves have to say.

Real accounts, and real experiences = more authenticity, and more credibility.

Source: Crowdtap

Think about it this way. An organization gives up an element of control when handing over the reigns to consumers to provide content. But consumers’ voices are perceived as more objective—there’s no foolproof predictability in terms of what the consumer will say or create.

Keep this in mind as we’ll make our way back to this point. But first, let’s expand on some of the advantages of UGC.

Key Advantages of User Generated Content

Cost/resource savings

According to Curata research, content marketers consistently cite insufficient resources as their greatest content marketing challenge. UGC can save your organization time and financial resources by outsourcing content creation to users.

Content Curation

Good news: UGC falls within the content curation family. Content curation involves sourcing, annotating, and sharing the best and most relevant third-party content with your audience.

If you’re not already familiar with some of the benefits of content curation, here’s a few to get you up to speed:

• build brand awareness
• establish credibility as a thought leader
• streamline lead nurturing
• boost social media metrics
• improve SEO
• support lead generation

If you want to learn more about content curation, or want to devise a content curation strategy, download Curata’s Ultimate Guide to Content Curation eBook.

Social Media Reach and Growth

Social media platforms work great for UGC campaigns, given both are typically based on dialogue. So executing a UGC campaign on social channels such as Facebook and Twitter is an excellent strategy to strengthen brand/customer relationships.

It’s crucial for an organization to respond to user content. This facilitates more meaningful interaction and encourages other users to submit content.

These interactions are mutually beneficial for both organization and customer. Sprout Social reports that, “75 percent of people are likely to share a good experience on their own profile.”

Additionally, designing a social media-based UGC campaign increases social traffic, which results in:

• increased follower base
• extended reach
• increased brand awareness
• boosted social metrics such as likes, shares, comments, retweets
• increased web traffic/page views

SEO Perks

UGC campaigns can boost SEO value. According to Kissmetrics, “25 percent of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content.” Positive customer reviews can raise your SEO ranking. And analyzing the most frequently used words and phrases your audience uses can improve your keyword optimization research.

Audience Insights

This advantage of UGC is often overlooked. You can gain key insights by analyzing the content your audience shares. This helps you better understand your audience and what they find engaging. And when applying the principles of a data-driven content marketing strategy, these insights help generate leads and increase sales.

The first step is to conduct an audit of the content your audience generates. If it’s reviews, notice what customers are complaining about—and improve on it. Is there a discernible theme in the photos Twitter followers are uploading? Do they align with how your organization or brand wants to be perceived? User generated content is a gold mine filled with nuggets of content data.

Unique Content

Your audience will produce (often markedly) different content from your marketing team. This is a significant advantage. It offers audience members a fresh perspective and a varying point of view. It keeps content interesting and encourages users to stay engaged.

Personalization

Personalization can be another key advantage of UGC. Michael Brenner of Marketing Insider Group argues that the only way to get your target audience to notice and engage with content is to understand what resonates with them. Then you can align a UGC campaign strategy accordingly.

Personalization shouldn’t be limited to what your content is about. Consider the nuances of different channels and formats of a UGC campaign to ensure your audience is motivated to contribute. For example, an Instagram photo competition might not work as well for a B2B SaaS company as say, hosting a Twitter chat.

Dell’s IdeaStorm is an awesome example of targeting a UGC campaign to the audience. Launched in 2007, Forbes equated the original IdeaStorm to an online suggestion box.

IdeaStorm allows users to submit suggestions on how to improve existing Dell products, as well as ideas for new ones. Within its first five years, Dell received nearly 15,000 suggestions, and applied 500 of them in the form of various refinements.

IdeaStorm offers Dell’s audience a platform for providing feedback on each other’s ideas. Users can submit votes, comments, and participate in what’s called “Storm sessions.” Crucially, the company shows its audience that it’s listening by including a tally of how many ideas have been implemented. The ideas clearly aren’t just floating into the dark abyss of an automated system.

Challenges of UGC

Be conscious of these challenges when designing a UGC campaign.

Policing Content

Allowing users to submit original content almost inevitably brings an undesirable side effect: unsavory content. It is crucial to carefully monitor content and comment sections, and to deal with inappropriate content in a timely manner.

However, note that allowing and encouraging healthy discussion and debate makes for valuable, interesting content. Organizations can ensure that discussions remain productive by steering and moderating conversations.

Deleting all negative comments made about your organization will make your brand seem inauthentic. A better approach? Ensure that negative comments are responded to. Take appropriate action to remedy a situation whenever possible.

Legal Considerations

Ensure that your content marketing team has clearly communicated ownership and usage rights to users to avoid sticky legal situations. Given the relative newness of UGC, navigating copyright laws can take a bit of extra research and work. This can be time consuming, but it’s worth it if your users create awesome content.

Credibility of Sources

Remember that you don’t actually know who the contributor behind the screen is. In the case of forums or advice discussion boards, there’s no guarantee submitted information is factual or well informed. Perhaps this is more of a challenge for users and something they must keep in mind. However, if you’re running a forum plagued with false information and Internet trolling, it could reflect poorly on your brand.

Top UGC Campaign

So, who makes the cut for top UGC campaign? There are thousands to choose from. But OfficeMax’s “Elf Yourself” campaign has made it onto countless “Top UGC Campaign” lists.

The campaign has been running since 2006. Users submit photos of themselves and their friends. They’re then superimposed onto a virtual dancing elf and shared as a holiday eCard.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that an office supply company managed to engage up to half a billion people as of 2011 (and by “engage” I mean convert them into elves).

Start a User Generated Content Strategy

Think of “Elf Yourself” as a textbook example of the point of difference and creative advantage a UGC campaign can bring to a content strategy.

Discover what makes your audience excited to create content and engage with your company. It’ll help you develop an online community that strengthens the customer/brand relationship.

When planning a user generated content campaign, check out Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid: A Framework to Develop & Execute Your Content Marketing Strategy eBook. It will allow you to seamlessly align it with your overall content marketing strategy.