5 Burning Questions About Content Marketing

Why do we do it? That’s not one of the five questions, but because content marketing is becoming increasingly sophisticated there is a need to focus on delivering the most meaningful information to the most select audience obtainable. Here are the ‘five on fire’ to help you drive your content marketing in the right direction.

1. Who is your audience?
Without properly defining your target audience, a good portion of your marketing efforts will be largely ignored. The sound, tactical approach is to focus your momentum on the players that matter the most to your company. The differentiation of value your product generates should also be the one the target audience actually wants.

2. What is your unique story?
You are valuable to your target audience by solving their problems in a meaningful way. Your unique story, resonating through all your content development—from videos to white papers—tells about your company in concise, solution oriented terms. You are advocating for yourself through the problems you can solve.

3. Who is on your team and what are their roles?
Identify the best person to handle each piece of content and the right resources for creating, repurposing or refreshing existing data. Your team should have a solid understanding of the industry trends and customer pain points along with strong writing and production skills. Customize your team from these resources:

Your internal marketing team
Industry thought-leaders
Reach out to customers for case histories
Sales professionals
Engage outside services for video, writing or measurement
4. What are the best types and the right timing of content?
Develop a strategy for the type of content and when it should be published by determining the most appropriate stage of the sales funnel.

Top of the funnel—Prospects
Middle of the funnel—Qualified Prospects
Bottom of the funnel—Committed and loyal customers
For instance, based on your target audience you’d choose to put email content, informational videos and social media outreach at the top of the funnel, with white papers and case histories farther down. Also, closely align content placement with the timing of sales, advertising and promotional events.

5. How can I measure content effectiveness?
The best place to start is Google Analytics. Combine that with results from your CRM systems, such as Salesforce or Eloqua and you’ll gain comprehensive metrics on how your content is working.

Engagement metrics, such as Google Analytics can:

Provide guidance on how well your message is resonating with an audience
Indicate whether your content efforts are being accepted in social media circles
Determine whether you need to refresh, redo or repurpose to reach the right target
The bottom line: when you develop great content on a regular basis and get the word out to your target audience, you’ll gain more traffic, conversions, leads and sales.