Pretty much everyone’s got a content marketing plan these days. But according to the Content Marketing Institute only 34 percent of businesses say their strategy is very effective at achieving its current goals.
Maybe you’re just starting out with your current content marketing plan. Or you’ve been using one for a while and it’s time to see where the gaps are in your curent plan.
It’s never too late to take stock and readjust. Here are five things your B2B content marketing plan might be missing:
1. Consistent blog updates. Producing high-quality content is a major hurdle to cross. It’s often said that quality should triumph over quantity, but when it comes to a content marketing plan you’re going to need both. According to HubSpot, 84 percent of bloggers claim their writing delivers strong results, while 67 percent report higher publication frequency equates to better results—even though most sites publish less than once per week (!).
Blogging is only part of it, too. It’s a long game, one that requires solid knowledge of the search terms your audience is using across desktop and mobile platforms. Consistency, and keyword research, is the key to getting indexed by search. The more you put out there, the more Google picks it up, the more people notice. It takes time, but the results are worth it.
So, if you’re like most content marketing bloggers who haven’t updated in over a week or—gulp—over a month, get back on the blogging horse. Or blogging train. Whichever vehicle, natural or man-made, you prefer.
2. A proper distribution plan. Producing high-quality, consistent content is one thing, getting it out there to the people you need to see it is another thing entirely. But you can’t just distribute or promote content, you need to amplify it. With a content amplification plan, you can use a multi-pronged approach that involves:
- Organic reach – Promoting content via social media platforms and email marketing. In other words, what you should already be doing.
- Paid social – Basically paying for ads on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Earned reach – Get influencers and fans to share your content. This could also involve promoting your content through media and press coverage.
Basically, you want to know the correct avenues where your audience can easily find your hard work. Then make sure those avenues are leveraged as much as possible.
3. Email. In a world where Slack, Signal, and Twitter exist, email is still the number one way B2B buyers prefer to be contacted—up to 80 percent of B2B buyers, actually. All that other social media chatroom stuff? It’s too personal or full of your boss’ outdated memes. But email? It’s nice, clean, professional, and gets to the point. In fact, sharing your high-quality content through email is the most effective way to generate leads according to 53 percent of B2B marketers.
There are a few ways to make email a bigger part of your content marketing plan, including segmenting your email addresses into different groups based on different demographics (such s department or job title) or by stage in the sales funnel, sending reminder emails to follow-up on established leads, or collecting a months’ worth of content in one super newsletter to blast out to all your followers.
4. Long Form In-Depth Content. One way to gain a lot of lead gen is with gated in-depth content, such as research reports, ebooks, and white papers. In-depth content is an absolutely crucial component for B2B content marketing plans as it’s the best way for companies to showcase industry expertise and provide lead education for complex products and services. They’re also the best way to create targeted lead generation campaigns, since creating highly targeted content that’s of value to your targeted audience will encourage more lead form submissions.
5. Vision. This is a bit more abstract, but in our travels, we’ve seen a lot of businesses that lack vision—and you don’t want to pay the price for a lack of vision. Maybe you think SEO is not important (read: it is), or you don’t want to pay attention to analytics (tip: you should), or you throw in the towel too soon (hang in there – content is a long game!). Or maybe you just don’t know what kind of content you want to develop or whether you want to focus on creating brand awareness or improving customer loyalty.
Whatever your goals are, make sure they’re clear, relevant, and attainable and communicate them to your in-house content creation and marketing teams so that everyone is all on the same page.
If you’re in the throes of readjusting your B2B content marketing plan, or even if you’re just starting out, let our B2B content strategists help plug in the gaps and get your content marketing plan running at full force. Contact us today.