How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy

How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy

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If you're molded into the Content Marketing Institute for any length of time, you are no doubt familiar with the importance we place on the idea of developing a documented, strategic plan. Each year in our research, we find that a cohesive, documented strategy is one thing that separates successful vs. unsuccessful content marketers. If you are much into blogging you should know how to write more engaging social media posts.

In the 2018 B2B research, 62% of the most successful content marketers have a documented strategy vs. 16% of the least successful. As content is a king, its growing shape of business uniquely.

One thing we’ve had to repeatedly clarify is that content marketing doesn’t simply replace your broader integrated marketing strategy. Many of the “content-marketing-is-dead” articles make the false assertion that we proposed businesses stop classic advertising, PR, cold calling, and all other forms of classic marketing in lieu of content marketing.

Content marketing is and has always been, best served as an integrated infusion into a broader marketing strategy – a multiplier. Content marketing is the opportunity to make everything we do better.

For many businesses, content marketing is but a small fraction of their overall integrated marketing, perhaps helping one aspect of a broader strategy. For other companies, it may be the vast majority of what they do. Your balance is uniquely yours as part of your strategy.

But, interestingly, I’ve started to see an increasingly larger opportunity for content marketers to play a true leadership role in that broader marketing strategy. Content marketing strategy can be the foundation for a nonexistent integrated digital marketing strategy.

Let me explain.

Today’s integrated marketing strategy isn’t

In 2017, I traveled more than 185,000 miles working with enterprises to operationalize nascent (or broken) content marketing strategies. In most cases, I noticed the one thing paralyzing their content marketing strategy was the lack of clarity for the broader digital – or integrated – marketing strategy. Promote blog content on Facebook help you to boost traffic to the blog.

“Tell me about your overall marketing strategy” is one of the first discussions I want to have as part of understanding where a new content marketing approach can help the best. And, time and again, the most common answer is something along the lines of “well, see, that’s one of our big challenges.”

Now, while hardly scientific, here are some interesting observations. Of the 30 companies: 

• 96% of the companies (all but one) said they were siloed and had an increasingly difficult time aligning their enterprise digital marketing efforts across products, channels, regions, or even functional areas (brand vs. PR vs. demand generation). 

• 85% of the B2B companies and 60% of the B2C companies were “frustrated” because, while they were “doing a lot of digital,” they either didn’t have a cohesive strategy or digital was a separate effort and, ironically, often competitive with what other functional areas were working on.

• 56% (17 of the 30, mostly B2B) said their company had no current integrated digital marketing strategy where they could roll up a broader view of all the PR, paid media campaigns, social media efforts, lead nurturing, or content-focused platforms. 

Content marketing: The heart of a digital marketing strategy

One interesting opportunity I’ve seen of late is how a foundational content marketing strategy can act as a catalyst for the broader, integrated digital marketing effort. More and more, as marketing teams are reorienting themselves toward a digital transformation, we see the need for content to serve as the fuel.

In B2B, the entire lead generation strategy centers on customized content interactions that build trust over a long and complex buying journey. Paid digital media is driven by the need to stand out, and promotes differentiating thought leadership more and the buy-now call to action less. B2B marketing is becoming hyper-focused on targeting messaging into specific accounts. The PR, influencer, and analyst relations teams are laser-focused on developing earned coverage of differentiating viewpoints across myriad digital channels.

In B2C, today’s digital marketing is about the content-driven customer experience – and how to develop content that earns the ability to be organically shared. We look at how paid media, native opportunities, and branded content can help the business get beyond the fraud, the bots, and the blockers. We look to social strategies, and how programmatic, search, and influencers can return the big data to make our marketing more efficient.

Example: Tech company finds integrated digital approach

I’ve been working with a division of a 50-year-old global technology company in the midst of transforming from a large event- and sales-driven (i.e., telesales) strategy into a digital content and marketing-driven strategy. It is beginning to assemble its first integrated digital marketing strategy for the division. Yes, really.

The primary challenge is that, historically, all marketing campaigns (including the digital bits) have been managed by product marketing teams. They create brochures, PowerPoint decks, and case studies for salespeople, generally in anticipation of participation at an industry-related trade show. The events happen; badges are scanned; lunches are had; and telesales takes over, calling on these leads.

New event? New product launch? Rinse and repeat. These are one-off, siloed campaigns. And, in some cases, it even has different products competing for the same audience at the same event. You should know how to increase traffic by 284%.

The idea of a division-wide, holistic, and integrated paid strategy is alien to them. There’s never even been an integrated approach that drives visitors to a content platform, nurtures them through an engagement journey, and then aligns and integrates into the PR, event, sales, and funnel process. And this doesn’t even get to the idea of rolling all these product campaigns into a broader, integrated strategy that includes multiple products, solutions, or services.

The initial thinking was to let the product managers devise the first and second quarter 2018 campaigns, and combine them to find the synergies to integrate. But, after talking it through, the company came up with a different idea for how to develop the plan.

It decided that the integrated marketing strategy should start with a goal-driven and story-first approach. The team assigned the overall business goals of the division to outcomes reached through different content platforms.

Finally, every product manager will build every 2018 digital marketing plan around four focused purposes:

• It will build a pipeline.
• It will increase the revenue value of pipeline.
• It will increase the velocity of the existing pipeline.
• It will increase the value of existing customers.

If you found these tips helpful or you have any other tips which you think can work comment down them. If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.