Read Full Article

Content marketing is being used by different marketers and industries for different purposes...world over; and has already occupied driving seat of today's marketing vehicle. It tops the 2017 CMO agenda, with PQ Media forecasting it to be a $300-plus billion industry by 2019.

An another research quotes as 'effective B2B marketers spent 39% of their marketing budget only on content marketing', ...no doubt content marketing is already the top trend of digital marketing, today; whereas a joint study of KPMG in India and google says, as many as 68% of indian SMBs are completely offline, with only 2% actively selling online.

What matters most for successful content marketing implementation is creative content strategy, secured and performing IT system with full domain control and organisational culture of digital adoptability.

Following 7 strategies will for sure help while building a content marketing mechanism successfully –

1.    Choosing Knowledgable marketing Partner

First and foremost, while deciding to go online for marketing and sales in turn, 'choosing the right marketing partner' is the most important thing to decide on. You just don't want a premitive online presence, right?

Actually, it is very essential that your online system ('website' will be the 'understated' word here, I think..) must bring out unique value, must be integrated with all the digital marketing tools and must be securely programmed while making it extremely easier to upgrade information, offers, etc. for you...of course YOU having full control over every inch of webpage space that you might also want to sell to an affiliate, isn't it.

All, this accounts for a professionally coded IT system and also a major understanding of marketing function. You can check with the agency not only for the IT/CRM systems they have worked with but also must inquire about marketing case studies/qualification/approach of their people.

2.    Think twice before going for Open Source CMSs

• Open source systems are built to satisfy everybody’s needs, and so have a fairly large code-base with a lot of functionality that might not be specific to you but might make wonders for someone and vice versa. In all the situations, this means overloaded code which results in a performance deficit over time.
• Open source CMS are built by 1000s of developer world-wide, everyone having own style of coding, which often gives rise to conflicts in plugins, which are backbone of such systems.
• With an open source application, the initial cost is lower but upgrades, bugs in existing code, plugin conflicts, breaks in the system, customization etc. etc. all require skilled developers to fix and maintain, of course at a cost. (and believe me..none of these have actually participated in building this system architecture..isn't this enough to explain unreliability of such systems for long term use..) Whereas a custom CMS may cost more upfront but will also help you keep your running costs low till you decide to upgrade your own designed feature set again.
• Also, security is always a major concern with all the clients generally. Sites built with open source are easier to break into because a hacker knows where to look for security holes since he already has full code available with him.

3.    Documenting Content Marketing Strategy

Digital disruption has fragmented customer journey into multiple non-sequential touch points. To reach customers, we require a change in focus from a campaign to a consistent contact.
The Content Marketing Strategy must consider Buyer personas and their content needs and preferences, Alignment with organizational marketing goals, Digital marketing KPIs and metrics, Marketing organization structure, Knowledge of other organizational processes, competitor data and customer insights, Industry and business dynamics of this chosen business, Action steps to put strategy into action and forecasting of budget required.

Documenting a long term content marketing strategy is the key to success in content marketing.

4.    Defining Audience Persona

Creating a buyer persona will give you information about what buyers seek during their buying journey and helps map the customer touchpoints and preferred communication channels. Think and write down probable demographic facts like age, gender, education, income, and any other which you know properly describes your customer. You can even attach an imaginary photo (may be any random matching image in google) and handover this information on a paper print to your content writer. Trust me; a professional content marketer will be able to exactly write what your customer is searching for!

5.    Remember Content is not ‘King’ but ‘Kingdom’

20 years back Bill Gates coined the term “Content is King” and it has become a readily cooked tagline for many content marketers even today. Content Strategy is most important part of content marketing. It's about creating content that people will want to consume.

Very often content strategy goes well beyond marketing and can help businesses manage every piece of content they have. Both curated and original content can help connect various communities that will help grow business.  Lee Odden has thus rightly revised the phrase as “Content isn’t King, it’s the Kingdom”...now.

6.    Understanding Analytics

It is said that 'If you can't measure, you can't improve'. As marketing has evolved to digital marketing, you must understand how to measure performance with new metrics. Analytics can help you take decisions only if you have data collected, based on understanding of relevant metrics.

Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operations research to quantify performance.

Total/Unique visits, Channel-Specific Traffic, Bounce Rate, Conversion Rate, Lead to Close Ratio, Cost Per Lead, Projected ROI, Click Through Rate are the terms just to start you with.

7.    Perseverance and Commitment

Last but most important to understand even before you start your efforts or even plan to invest into content marketing, Content Marketing is neither a single campaign, nor a short term game. Content Marketing is a long term organisational policy, which must be driven strategically by marketing department.

 

So, just on a closing note to this artical, when according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast, there will be two billion networked devices in 2021 in India, up from 1.4 billion in 2016, every business owner is bound to transform marketing practice to survive this digital wave and must think over and above owning a website.

Of course, its also an opportunity of very high responsibility towards business consultants and marketing agencies to adopt new age digital tools and to help businesses achieve their top line targets to not only survive but compete.

References:

Donnelly, C., Simmons, G., Armstrong, G., & Fearne, A. (2015). Digital loyalty card “big data” and small business marketing: Formal versus informal or complementary? International Small Business Journal, 33(4), 422–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/0266242613502691

Moon, J., & Wagner, U. D. O. (2014). Digital Revolution , Marketing , and East Asia Economies. Global Economic Review, 43(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2014.884044

Mogos, R. I. (2015). Digital marketing for identifying customers’ preferences – A solution for SMEs in obtaining competitive advantages. International Journal of Economic Practices and Theories, 5(3), 240–247.

http://www.cmo.com/interviews/articles/2017/2/22/a-conversation-with-joe-pulizzi-putting-content-marketing-success-in-context.html#gs.Sjl9t54

http://www.forbesindia.com/blog/business-strategy/digital-trends-in-2017/

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi0hrHzxqTWAhXEr48KHXkGANYQFggzMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.kpmg.com%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Fkpmg%2Fin%2Fpdf%2F2017%2F01%2FImpact-of-internet-and-digitisation.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHYk-mzKZEOurEV4nS9TYKRPMyXhg

www.techmagnate.com/blog/content-marketing-stats-2017-a-guide-for-every-step/

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/56254240.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_marketing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytics

Posted by Mr. Sachin Mutha on Oct 27, 2022
Attachment(s):