Six Steps to Greater Content Marketing Efficiency in a Pandemic Environment
The Coronavirus pandemic has placed greater emphasis on B2B and life science content marketing. As conventional tactics such as trade shows and events have been eliminated from the marketer’s toolkit, content-fueled lead acquisition and nurturing have assumed greater roles in revenue generation strategies.
New research is providing compelling insights into improving content marketing engagement. While companies have embraced content marketing as a core strategy, the performance of their programs leaves much to be desired. Fortunately, the research not only uncovers areas of weakness, it also identifies opportunities for substantial improvement.
As we evaluated the studies’ findings, and compared them to our own experience, we’ve identified six steps that will help you achieve greater content effectiveness:
- Recognize the content efficiency gap: A significant gap exists between the importance of content marketing and marketers’ perceptions of its effectiveness. Closing this gap by personalizing content and sharing it effectively with prospects represents an attractive revenue generation opportunity.
- Satisfy today’s more selective prospects. Prospects are deluged with content. Most of it is almost unreadable. But prospects will respond quickly when high-value, easy-to-access content solves a specific problem or issue.
- Incorporate personalization and relevancy: Personalize content in terms of industry, application, persona, or stage in the buyer’s journey. Subject matter should solve problems and explore issues, plus leverage the human experience. Recognize that each level of the customer’s organization is motivated by different topics. Use them accordingly.
- Make content accessible: As part of a gratifying customer experience, content should be easy to find on websites, landing pages, or blogs. Prominently promote content on web pages with associated applications, products, and services.
- Employ trusted, easy-to-digest formats: White papers, case studies, eBooks, infographics, and webinars have taken on even more importance as trusted content in the pandemic environment. These materials should be quick reads that are easily searched.
- Measure and evaluate performance: Track metrics that not only measure engagement but assess performance in terms of pipeline value and revenue. Increasing content engagement will pay off with higher lead generation and sales revenue.
To be successful in today’s stay-at-home environment, marketers must produce content that is highly valued and easily found by prospects. Overcoming the content efficiency gap will enable more effective demand generation and higher marketing ROI as our markets and sales recover.
Download our marketing brief, Maintaining Marketing Momentum in the Coronavirus Crisis.