Neha Gianchand is a passionate B2B marketing leader. Senior vice president and head of marketing at Straive.
getty
Emerging competition has pushed marketing to look beyond the obvious and paved the way to learn afresh and experiment with things. When there are no new set standards, formulas or tactics waiting to be discovered, previously taught basics should be in place. Time is a great sifter—we can experience what didn’t work while conserving what has succeeded. We call the record of those successes and failures history.
By learning from the failures and successes, enterprises have transformed themselves to resonate better with their intended or target audiences. Here, the content engine plays a pivotal role in designing a successful marketing campaign and acts as a catalyst to fuel marketing growth.
Know That Content Sits At The Core Of Marketing Communications
Your enterprise's content marketing strategy should provide a sense of authenticity and credibility to your target audience. Developing a content strategy is a multistep process that involves planning, research and implementation.
• Planning: Devising a content plan that aligns with your marketing objective and campaigns.
• Research: Understanding what is happening in the market, with competitors and in the industry.
• Implementation: Identifying the right audience and executing it across various channels is another piece of the puzzle.
It's tough to pin down what would have worked, but how you develop a robust content marketing strategy depends on the size of the team. More accurately, it depends on your marketing budget and your defined marketing objectives.
Well-thought-out content marketing strategies can help generate leads, convert them and turn your prospects into customers or clients.
Let Thought Leadership Steer What You're Driving
Thought leadership content should be an integral part of your content marketing strategy. It involves expertise and an understanding of industry best practices. Being a thought leader means being the expert that brings a fresh, insightful perspective, anticipates emerging trends or highlights industry dynamics. Often, a thought leader's view is at odds with traditional wisdom—and may even be controversial. But a successful thought leader can turn that insight into a thought-provoking practice for tomorrow.
Just having great insights or ideas is not enough; you need to translate the insights widely and make sure they're visible to ensure they're beneficial.
And here, many potential thought leaders or influencers stumble. They have the expertise and the insight; however, the content strategy should align with the overall strategy to make your content visible across various stakeholders. Every content marketing campaign should spin out from your content strategy.
Move Cohesively To Achieve Business Goals
A marketing campaign is typically a one-time series of efforts and actions aligned to a singular objective. On the other hand, you can launch a content marketing campaign over the span of months depending on its size, intended audience and scope.
Content should be aligned with more extensive campaign strategies and support them to attain their desired objectives. Therefore, the content marketing campaign that no one sees should involve developing a best practices guide, e-books, white papers, case studies, webinars and video series. Think of content marketing as sharing invisible expertise.
Effective content marketing programs emphasize developing, distributing and amplifying content using a multichannel strategy—including digital and offline channels—and driving awareness and engagement to achieve business objectives.
Leverage Email Marketing
Email marketing can be tricky, as many people are already fed up by the tons of messages that clog their inboxes. However, you can structure your email marketing campaign smartly, deliver exciting and engaging content, and still win new customers.
Keep your audience engaged by sending newsletters, creative mail and infographics that contain important information and ask prospects to land on your website. Still, once they do, its content should make them want to browse the website and explore further.
Speak In Industry-Appropriate Language To Resonate
Competent content marketing strategies resonate with the customers or intended audiences when communication is aligned with the industry's trends. The content, brand communications and narrative should be aligned with industry best practices, language and terminology.
Industry-centric content is most appropriate, as competitors, analysts and industry experts are all speaking in a common language that is well received within the industry. Thus, such narratives should be an integral part of your content strategy.
I believe analyst relations (AR) will keep evolving in the next few years. It will be interesting to see the business opportunities it will provide content marketers and how the inclusion of AR in the marketing realm will continue to evolve.
Explore The Road Ahead
Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a solid relationship with your intended audience by consistently delivering high-quality and engaging content that is relevant to them.
The emergence of digital channels will continue to unlock storytelling potential across various channels, and content formats will keep evolving. However, with limited resources, short timelines and tight budgets, marketing teams needs to effectively manage content strategies and resources across channels to spread communication effectively through their campaigns.
Marketing is like managing intricate moving parts that work together toward a singular business objective.
Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
