Content marketing at the heart of your business model

The creation of content has always been a fundamental issue in the communication strategy of companies. The content generated by companies was traditionally intended to convey their value proposition, their competitive differentiators, their vision and mission, the benefits of their solutions, etc. At a time when companies are trying to catch up with the digital transformation of our society, many of them are embarking on an adventure without mastering the ins and outs.

They start by reviewing their website to get a better picture and being readable on mobile devices, making AdWords drive more traffic, creating a digital marketing team for some, asking their employees to blog and post content. But what are the results?

Many companies are not effective in Content Marketing

According to a Forrester study, 87 percent of B2B marketers have difficulty producing content that can hook their prospects. Many companies go into content marketing without a strategy, trying to produce as much content as possible in the hope that one of them will attract more interest than another. Although 9 out of 10 companies surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute in the US say they use content marketing, 40 percent of them say they are not effective in this area.

Google executives, however, were sceptical when they decided to refocus their algorithms on content semantics rather than on keywords. The SENS of the contents has become a major element of the digital transformation. At a time when everyone is talking about networks, where unstructured information is produced and exchanged, where more than 4 million searches are made on Google per minute in the world, Content Marketing begins to take on its full importance.

Among the main challenges to be overcome by companies in their digital transformation, content marketing has become one of the most important issues. However, there are some important steps to the publishing process.

Production of content which is appealing

Producing quality, engaging and recurring content is the No. 1 challenge for companies in B2B. In most cases, it is linked to lack of internal resources and internal processes. The production of Premium content is the main blocking point before the process. They are usually time-consuming to produce because they require both a strategic problematic, experts’ point of view, numerical analysis, quality editorial writing, and the creation of graphic content in line with the branding of the business.

Your business model must include a marketing strategy

According to the study by the Content Marketing Institute, 62 percent of B2B Marketing managers consider that their company does not have the organization adapted to content marketing. Although 83 percent believe they have a strategy in place for content marketing, 48 percent admit that they do not have a documented and validated strategy. The most effective companies in content marketing have a team organized in support of content marketing.

Staff should have the know-how

For 25 percent of companies, the effectiveness of their content marketing is threatened by the lack of in-house skills and tools required for implementation. Beyond technical and strategic data, the production of Premium content requires the editorial qualities of a Publisher as well as the qualities of the illustrator of a Graphic Designer.

Analyze how your content is performing

Once the content is created, 57 percent of companies have difficulty measuring the effectiveness of this content and the Return on Investment. This is mainly due to the lack of marketing automation and tracking tools that make it possible to link the sale of a solution to the various marketing tools that have allowed detecting and generating the lead initially.

Defining your content marketing strategy

All the challenge in a lead generation strategy is to define a single priority topic over a given period around which you will have to structure your content and build your multichannel communication plan.

Choose your strategic priority topic

Your content theme should be about a specific topic and common to all of your prospects. It is the cornerstone of your multichannel strategy and should be chosen based on the following:

Select a topic as close as possible to the concerns of your prospects. Remember that they are looking for solutions to their problem.
Use the terms most commonly used and sought after by your prospects. Search for the most frequently used keywords on Google in the search field. Your title may seem appropriate to your topic but not match the keywords your prospects want.
Analyze the popular topics of your competitors to make you stand out with more appealing subjects.

Telling a single story

Many companies are now compartmentalized in silos, by product ranges or types of solutions. In these cases, each entity tries to promote its solutions in the best way possible based on company contacts. The different services of a company can then find themselves in an internal competition to obtain a better part of the media plan. This results in a multiplication of messages that are not cohesive to prospects, as well as an inevitable loss of efficiency in the company’s leads generation process.

Define your business plan

Set specific goals and describe how your content strategy will help you achieve these goals. Indicate clearly which content strategy you will set up and for which target. Explain how your content will influence your target based on the selected communication channels and advance it into its tunnel conversion. Map all the contents and their “Call-to-Action” to validate their consistency with your objectives. This business plan will enable you to validate the cohesion of your strategy and to obtain more easily the adhesion of your collaborators and your hierarchy.

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