Before you go hell for leather writing blogs, memes, and opinion pieces and then sharing it everywhere possible, it’s important to think about what you’d like to achieve from it.
Why?
Because successful digital campaigns start with well organised content. You can spend lots of time creating mountains of content but that all goes to waste and leads to your exhaustion if it never gets clicked or read. Of course, you want to surround your customers with lots of content and you want it to help you make sales, convert leads and nurture prospects. But there’s so much more to consider; What about customers who’ve never heard of you? What about those who’ve bought before but have fallen off the radar? And what about those who might not be looking now, but are very likely to need you in the future? This is where your content must align to the buyer journey by helping to build brand awareness, driving potential customers to your website and encouraging existing customers to re-engage.
How?
Avoiding the copywriting exhaustion is all about the plan. The first stage is to build a matrix which pulls together all the content you already have. Next, you need to audit your content according to it’s purpose and how it helps a in the buying cycle.
For a recent project we used the Gartner B2B buyer journey to map content against the stages of a buyer journey. We created three content categories according how they would engage and be consumed by the buyer:
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Supporting information search:
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Issue led content, solution material, lots of bite-sized snackable content
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Remaining engaged
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Solution and benefit led assets, assets that ask questions and open up a conversation (on-line or F2F)
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Conversion and deal acceleration
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Content to convince, focussed on results, benefits, success stories.
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Then we graded each piece of content in terms of which assets needed updates, which assets fitted the bill and which assets should be archived.
Who?
When you know what content exists you next have the enormous task of making it stand out from the crowd to ensure your customers read, like, share and act upon it. There are 4.54 billion internet users globally and they’re browsing 1.74 billion websites every day so how do you make yours the most effective? The trick is to understand your customers persona and then tailor your content to their needs. Tailored content builds on the aspects of your message that customers will read, remember, and act on. And this is driven by three main things:
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Where the customer is in their buying cycle
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Issues that they are currently facing
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The compelling event that’s driving them to make a purchase.
And remember, these days customers are more likely to view content which demonstrates empathy, and understanding, offers advice and is relevant to their needs at that moment. When your content ticks all these boxes you will connect better with your customers and show them that you can support them by making recommendations and sharing useful or insightful information along the way. Customers will show their appreciation of helpful content through strong profitable relationships.
What?
When you know who your audience is, and what makes them tick, you can start to think about which of your amazing, feature-rich content assets will have them coming back for more. Long or short, the long and short of it is – everyone likes the storytelling approach. A story creates confidence, comfort and trust in the viewer, making them happy that they have all the information they need, they understand the background and they can rely on what comes next. Achieve reader appeal by putting their needs and interests at the heart of your content and ensuring that they’ll benefit from what you have to say. Not to forget the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” embellish your content with imagery that’s informative and attractive. Here’s where you’ll have your chance to shine by demonstrating your helpfulness, highlighting your differentiators and capturing your customers imagination.
A Well Organised Plan
Now that you’ve defined your content objectives, you know what content you have, and you’ve mapped it against your customer needs you can start to identify and fill any gaps. Don’t be afraid, this isn’t about jumping back onto the writing bandwagon it’s about re-purposing your existing content, updating materials with relevant messaging and putting everything together into a meaningful story.
Now your digital campaign can start