Know-How Exchange : Other

Michael's given you great advise. I'd like to add that your content shouldn't be about "your wins" - it should be about "your clients' wins".

The previous commenters are right. You don't just need more content, you need a content strategy. One that starts not with your wins, your product benefits and your thought leadership, but rather with the needs, questions, and concerns of your target audience.

To get started you might want to check out the Content Strategy Alliance https://contentstrategyalliance.com/ and download their Tools & Templates handbook.

I don't know very much about your situation, and so I'm shooting in the dark. But apparently you sell quite a bit through channels. And so we might compare two kinds of success stories: successes that end-users have had related to your products and services, and successes that your resellers have had by focusing on your product and selling your product.

Both are important, but I would be willing to bet you will get more bang for your buck from the second than from the first. Again, I know very little about your situation. I might be totally wrong. But I would begin by speaking with your best resellers and most successful salespeople, and try to encourage other resellers to duplicate their methods andd focus and success. And then, after you make lots and lots of money, you can come back here to this forum, and hire a professional to write endd-user related content.

In a sense, you work for your resellers. How can you help them? How can you encourage them? What do they need in order to be successful? What kind of content have they found helpful? Regarding end-user related content, which some are apparently asking for, can they point you to an example of such content provided by another of their vendors?

Thanks for all of these comments.

Yes, I'm definitely looking to devise a content strategy, and determine what resources I need to do that.

I think the goals are:

- to provide our sales channel with sales tools / content so that they can sell our solutions... that might end up being on a web page or print. I need pieces for various stages of a sales process, from "have you thought of..." to "let's see how that works and what the ROI wold be...". I see "traditional" brochure type pieces here, maybe FAQs, and case studies. Goals here are to help sales explain, help them close deals, and (frankly) get them off my back for a bit :-)

- then I need to develop a thought leadership strategy. We have some technologies, think about some things in ways that are truly innovative and go beyond our traditional customer base. I feel we need to be showing that expertise. So, I'm thinking white papers, presentations / speaking opps, video content, opinion pieces in trade pubs, blog. Goals here are to reach beyond core market into other spaces. And give an extra layer of depth to what we do as a differentiator versus our comp.

- finally, I think we need to have a more robust presence in our base markets - get more column inches in magazines; so here I think there is room for project stories, case studies, opinion pieces. Goal here is to maintain our brand presence in our core market space.

Delivery is not a problem, I have people and systems that can distribute; I have decent, maintained, social media channels, a robust and easily managed website, a robust marketing automation system and contacts within the media within the industry. We even have a lot of advocates who would love to share our content if we could give it to them. All of these ready to distribute content. But I need to feed those channels and that's where my problem lies. So much to talk about.

It's content creation and strategy that's the challenge. How do I set up a structure and a strategy that's able to define the content needed and create it?

Certainly thinking along the same lines as Peter in that I doubt that outsourced people could get to grips with all this, and maybe I need to add headcount.

"How do I plan content creation, manage content creation, sell this as a need to the execs?"
How do you sell any project? First, show the need (demonstrate that there is a problem). Then, show the benefits of your solution to the problem... If this is to the CEO- A better, stronger company; If to a Marketing head, quantify the increased sales from your content program.

If you can't show benefits that are meaningful to some gatekeeper, you don't generally get to do that project.

Your stated goals are going to be difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. How will you demonstrate to management that the resources devoted to a content marketing initiative are worth the cost(s)? Are they going to have to "trust" you forever?

Separate issue: Before you add permanent headcount, why not try an outside consultant to pilot test a small portion of the effort? I assure you there are qualified freelancers who know, or who can quickly learn, your business well enough to do this job. (Let me know if you need a referral.)

mgoodman, how do you quantify content? Website referrals? Downloads? Contact forms filled in?

Maybe we're digressing, but very interested to hear thoughts on that too.

We're trying to build a comprehensive CRM where every touch point we can log is logged, so at least we'll be able to tell which efforts the eventual buyer experienced on his / her journey (our sales cycles are long - 18 months - 3 yrs typically, so we often find it tough to relate a specific marketing action to an eventual sale).

in terms of outside consultants, I've looked around a little, but I'm drawing a blank. We have quite complex solutions and markets, and so I think one of the pre-requisites to external support is location - get them in here, talking to people, seeing what we manufacture and how. That's why I'm a little more hesitant, and leaning towards adding headcount that can be here and experience the whole thing.

Very open to a referral though.

I think Mgoodman was talking about how you quantify a value of the things you want to add. Execs want to know how it benefits bottom line, but you can show added downloads or web hits. That is a disconnect that is hard to bridge )(not just for you - happens for all marketing departments).

A PR firm can be helpful in getting you into trade mags, getting speakers slots and the like. Internal folks at your company are the speakers or provide the content, but the PR firm handles the logistics/have the contacts.

Simple answer: The value of content marketing lies in the impact it has that leads to a sale/new customer, times the lifetime value of that new customer.

So if a new customer generates lifetime profits of, say, $15,000 (present value), and the cost of landing that [average] new customer is $10,000, and it results from $5,000 in sales rep time, plus 5 touches with content, then you can afford to spend up to $1,000 (average) on each touch piece.

Of course, with a long sales-cycle and multiple prospects in the funnel, it will take quite a while for you to be able to correlate any individual piece of content with closing a sale. So this metric deals mostly with the overall effectiveness of a content marketing strategy.

Initially, you'll need to just measure downloads/views, but over time you'll begin to get an idea of engagement and conversions.