Let Data Drive Your Content Marketing Strategy

by Fronetics | Jun 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

A data-driven content marketing strategy will increase your program’s success and help win the buy-in of executives.

What is driving your digital and content marketing strategy? If all you have in the driver’s seat are a few creative ideas, you may find yourself frustrated with the results and struggling to garner support from the C-Suite.

Different audiences respond in different ways. The question is, where are your potential new customers and what are they looking for? Data plays a critical role in uncovering those answers.

Data can guide you to:

Define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? When can you best reach them?
Select the best topics for your content. What information do they need, and what will peak their interest? What do they seek most from the content they read?
Narrow down a distribution strategy that will produce results. Which digital and social media channels will best reach your audience, grow your business, increase sales, and improve your brand’s reach? Which networks are your competitors using most?
Gauge what is working and what is not. Reportedly, 53% of digital content marketers don’t measure their success. No wonder so many content marketing programs fail. If you don’t take the time to determine what content is resonating with your target audience, how will you know what to produce in the future?
Tune into market changes. As your business evolves and customers’ needs change, data serves as your compass to remain competitive in an ever-changing marketplace.

A data-driven strategy will win over the C-suite

In addition to giving you a foundation for your strategy, data can garner the support of the C-suite, which you must have in order to fund your marketing program. A plan based simply on ideas, no matter how brilliant, will not appeal to executives who base decisions on data.

They want to see how your marketing plan provides answers to the needs of your target audience (potential customers) and what those customers are worth to the company’s growth and success. If your strategy aligns with data, they’ll be able to get behind every point.

Creating a data-driven strategy

Aligning your strategy with data takes some time and effort, but it is crucial to optimizing the performance of your content marketing program and winning C-suite support. Here are some steps to get started.

Analyze your reports, data, and interviews with stakeholders in the company about your target customer. Compile this information, and document the very specific demographic(s) you want to reach. Research the digital behaviors and patterns of this demographic.
Audit your existing content (or hire an expert to do it). Look at the substance, source, and performance of your most successful and your least successful assets. Are there changes you can make to your poor-performing content to improve it, based on learnings from your successful content and your audience research?
Plan an editorial calendar of future content based on what has been successful in the past. Sharing this information and seeking ideas from employees outside the marketing department can be a very valuable exercise.
Test the distribution channels and times that have been most successful in the past and that fit the behaviors of your target audience. Continually refine your distribution strategy based on your results.
Don’t forget to document your strategy! Marketers who put it in writing report success at significantly higher rates than those who don’t document their strategies.

By distributing the right content, at the right time, to the right audience, on the right channels, your content marketing program will reach its maximum potential.

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How to Win C-Suite Support for Content Marketing

by Fronetics | May 5, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

Speak your boss’ language with metrics, statistics, and facts that articulate content marketing’s impact on customer acquisition and sales.

Garnering C-suite support for your content marketing program can be a challenge. Your team knows that your strategy is working by evaluating a series of metrics (e.g., shares, website traffic, email click-through rates), but executives do not always understand the value of such measures. It is almost like marketers speak another language.

So, how do you articulate the value of content marketing in a way that your executives will understand and support? Think of it this way: It is like that scene in the movie Jerry Maguire, only it is your boss demanding, “Show me the money!” The C-suite wants to know the cost to the company and the dollar amount of the return for any marketing initiative you undertake. Basically, you need to quantify success in terms of customer acquisitions and new sales.

Don’t focus on the secondary results, or “soft” metrics like per-post Facebook engagement. Talk the C-suite’s language, and demonstrate how your content marketing efforts led to new customers and what those customers are worth to the company’s growth and success.

Report these six metrics to win C-suite support

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is the total average cost your company spends to acquire a new customer. Basically, what your company spends in marketing costs, divided by the number of new customers it produced.
Marketing Percentage of the CAC: This is the marketing department costs divided the costs of the sales and marketing costs to get the marketing percentage of overall cost per new customer. The figure demonstrates if more is going into the sales team or the marketing team to produce the current result, and the lower the percentage the better.
Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC: This figure estimates the total value that your company derives from each customer versus what you spend to acquire them.
Time to Payback CAC: This estimate demonstrates how many months it takes for your company to earn back the CAC it spent acquiring your new customers.
Marketing-Originated Customer Percentage: This is where you look at all of the new customers from a set time period and determine what percentage of them started with a lead generated by your marketing team.
Marketing-Influenced Customer Percentage: This figure highlights all of the new customers that marketing interacted with at the time they were still just leads.

Additional selling points for content marketing

Content marketing can make a big impact on your company in terms of spreading brand awareness, growing your audience, and helping form business relationships. Though these benefits are difficult to quantify, try using the following statistics and facts to articulate the value your program could have in a way your executives will understand.

As any business knows, it is essential to be where you customers are, and they are online. Your competitors know this, too. In fact, a recent study indicated that that 77% of companies surveyed, across industries, had plans to increase their digital marketing budgets in the coming year.
The B2B buying process has evolved, and now content is an essential tool for generating and nurturing leads. Reportedly, 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their programs, with lead generation (85%) and sales (84%) being the most important goals.
Blog content has long-term value, as what you post today may continue attracting traffic months (or years) from now. Your posts last indefinitely, outliving more traditional marketing methods, such as a print advertisement in a magazine.
Consistently publishing quality content can earn your company a reputation as a thought leader in your industry. The public will come to trust your company as a respected source of knowledge, and you’ll begin forming relationships with readers who want to know more about your products and services. People buy from companies that they trust and feel connected to.
Content marketing will get you more bang for your buck. Results are not instant, but, with time, you can actually reduce your marketing expenses while increasing your reach and growing your business.
Content marketing is a valuable business intelligence tool. By distributing content through social media platforms, you not only engage potential customers, but you get their feedback and learn more about their needs and wants.

For more on marketing metrics that will articulate success to your boss, download Fronetics Strategic Advisors’ tip sheet.

Find Content Spokespeople Outside the C-Suite

by Fronetics | Feb 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy

Identifying content spokespeople outside of executive management can improve the product and alleviate C-suite stress.

Often people think they’re the only ones who can do their job or, at the very least, that they’re the ones who have been doing it and know it best. And some C-suite executives forget the people working around them — when, in fact, those are the very employees who could help them do their jobs better.

Joe Fuld, president of political and advocacy advertising agency The Campaign Workshop in Washington, D.C., has wise words on the subject: “As a business owner, I like to think that the business has a lot to do with me, but I have realized it has just as much to do with the people who work with me.”

Months ago I asked an account manager to be on a call with me to discuss an editorial calendar with a client. She was new to the account, so I thought it would be beneficial for her to listen in. A half-hour into the call, I saw her notepad with at least 20 new ideas for articles, white papers, and blog posts. By the end of the meeting, the list had grown to 40, and they weren’t just simple ideas — they were complex, thoughtful, and fresh. This wasn’t her role, but she dove in and helped to create the strongest editorial calendar to date. The client was pleased; I was thrilled.

The same experience can be true for a management team Strategically identified content spokespeople assisting senior management could help alleviate some of the stress C-suite executives face — and add new ideas to the pot.

Senior management are often extremely busy and may not be hearing the breadth of information and news that some of the lower-level professionals are exposed to. It’s true that too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil the meal, but, if chosen strategically, employees acting as content spokespeople could make your life easier and make the product better. Their investment and loyalty could also grow immensely.

John Hall, CEO of Influence & Co, writes about the subject in the Harvard Business Review. Here are his two suggestions on how to find the right people to fill the role of content spokespeople.

Identify content spokespeople

Identify employees who are comfortable teaching and demonstrate natural leadership qualities. The account manager mentioned earlier is the perfect example: engaging, patient, knowledgeable, curious, professional, trustworthy, and tactful. Her efforts always appear to be helpful, instead of boastful or misplaced.

Assess knowledge base

Hall suggests gathering and documenting information from content spokespeople. He does this by a Q&A process and brain dump exercises. He suggests keeping this information in a central location — a knowledge bank — for future use. From the knowledge bank content can be gathered and synthesized into an article or blog.

Hall says that the risk is minimal, since the C-suite can always have final editing power, so even if a content spokesperson says something off-color, the information won’t get out to the customers.

The involvement and collaboration in this process is incredibly valuable for everyone involved. Hall claims, “By embracing the unique experiences of your employees outside the C-suite and showcasing their diversity through thought leadership content, you’re strengthening your brand’s authentic, human connection to your audience.”

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