The cure for your B2B content marketing ailments? One big idea.

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Rachael Evans

My Man Bites Dog profile makes the following claim: “Rachael has a gift for diagnosing marketing challenges”. So, I thought I’d crack open the prescription pad and attempt to cure your B2B marketing ailments.

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The diagnosis

Do you exhibit any of the following symptoms?

Feeling disjointed? Are you experiencing a lack of cohesion between marketing, PR and sales teams? Is your content development fragmented, resulting in lots of different outputs? This can leave your content lacking purpose and results in mixed messages for your audience. Just imagine the impact it's having on the perception of your brand.

Need to bring your pressure down? Are you asked to produce higher quantities of content but have little to say? Is strategy being forgotten in the race to create assets? Three-quarters of CMOs feel under great pressure to produce large volumes of content, forcing senior marketers to operate at a more reactive and tactical level.

Lacking energy? Do you feel like your sales and marketing fizzles out after the big bang launch? Does your team move on and forget to nurture prospects all the way to a sale? Good campaigns should have longevity - fuelling a 6 month editorial calendar at the very least.

 

The Cure

A big, stretchy idea can be the elixir to cure most B2B content marketing ailments. The benefit? You plan once at the beginning of a campaign, set the direction and go. With some initial effort, the programme almost runs itself.

This idea (or overarching message) ties your content together into one cohesive theme, providing the inspiration for multiple content assets that can be repurposed across all of your channels.

To feel the real health benefits, it should be taken as follows:

A dose of hero content – Hero content is the master asset which sets content, messaging and visual style (e.g. reports and microsites) – this is likely to be the document that is approved by senior internal stakeholders and the centerpiece that launches your big idea.

An injection of hub content – Hub content is regular content that drip feeds your idea to potential clients and drives interest after an initial launch (e.g. sector blogs, byline articles, infographics).

And practice good hygiene – Hygiene content is the basic but essential materials that sell your product or services (e.g. case studies and technical information).

Ready for your medicine? Collect your prescription by downloading our guide to planning ideas-led campaigns.

 

The likely side-effects

After a course of this magic pill, marketers are likely to experience the following positive side-effects:

Focus –  Your marketing campaigns will run like a well-oiled machine, promoting one coherent message across all of your content and channels. You’ll find you are able to do more with less (budget, resource and time).

Longevity – Your idea will provide the inspiration for ongoing, repurposed content and campaigns will have a longer shelf life.  

Impact – Big ideas help sales, PR and marketing teams create related content, moving prospects more effectively from awareness to sale. Each piece of content has a clear message and purpose that builds on the last, ultimately delivering better ROI.

 

Rachael has been practicing marketing for over a decade, should you require a consultation, she can be contacted at [email protected].

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