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Strategy

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Get your marketing strategy right from the start to maximise success…

Who do you most want to talk to and what do you want them to believe? And how will your messaging translate into sales for your business?

Most people get well over half way into their buying journey before they speak to a potential supplier in business transactions. You therefore need to provide compelling content online to satisfy your potential customers’ research demands.

And your content strategy should also reflect your wider marketing strategy. Don’t believe anyone that hypes up content marketing as a whole new world of mystery. Online content has come to prominence because of the way Google works, and all you’re doing is optimising your marketing for search engines.

That means having a decent amount of content online so your site can be found in the first place. But it also means having content that’s relevant and authoritative.

Be relevant to your audiences…

Relevance starts with your audiences. Who exactly are the decision makers involved in your potential customers’ buying journeys? And how best can you reach them?

You should create target personas for the key roles that you’re aiming to talk to. Then you need to construct model buying journeys where you decide what to say to each audience in the early-, mid- and final stages.

What do you most want to talk about? What are your business’s points of differentiation? How do you gently nudge each type of person to the next stage and, ultimately, win the sale?

Also, you need to work out how you will reach each persona. Will they visit your website voluntarily, or do you need to employ another tactic to win their attention?

Build authority with search engines…

Authority with search engines comes from the volume of content you have and the number of so-called ‘back links’ to your website from other sites (…and, in turn, their authority). Google’s algorithms essentially judge whether you know what you’re talking about based on how much you have to say and whether other people trust it.

Plan your content and promotion…

Based on your answers to the above, you can plan what content you need for your website (including products and services, industry solutions and blogs) and what additional rich content assets you’ll need (case studies, ebooks, infographics, reports, videos, white papers, and so on).

Those rich marketing assets are great ways of getting other organisations to create back links to your website, helping you strengthen your authority.

Finally, you can then promote your content using adverts, mailings and social media. Crucially, you absolutely must target key decision makers at your prospective customers’ businesses that wouldn’t necessarily visit your website voluntarily.

Indeed, content promotion is hugely important for the same reason as any business promotion is. Each new piece of content will document a step forward for your business, so you should make sure that everyone relevant knows about it. That means content promotion activities should go hand in hand with your wider content and marketing strategies.

Talk to your audiences like people…

All of your marketing activities should target people as humans. The days of bland B2B branding and generic marketing brochures are fading to a distant memory. People expect personal communications nowadays, even at work. You have to engage with them using human psychology and provide consumer-like customer experiences.

Sure, it’s not quite the same as a consumer sale, because your audiences will probably be part of a decision-making group and your offering is less likely to provide any obvious personal win. But your language should nonetheless be personal, passionate and persuasive.

Maintain brand consistency…

You should ensure you maintain complete consistency in your marketing across all the media you use, both in what you say and also in how you say it.

Factual inconsistencies create confusion and undermine buyer confidence, so attention to detail is critically important. Yet, moreover, tonal inconsistencies also detract from the customer experience. Yes, you might expect a strategic white paper to adopt a more authoritative tone than an ebook, for example. But two comparable ebooks ought to adopt the same tone of voice.

Defining a desired tone of voice for all your content is hugely important as it gives you both a quality benchmark and also an additional point of differentiation for your brand.

Make it easy on yourself…

Up-Word can help you with anything to do with your online content strategy. You can get assistance modelling buyer personas and buying journeys; mapping existing marketing collateral to those journeys, and creating compelling new content where necessary.

Moreover, we can act as brand police, ensuring that everything you say has the same tone and is also factually correct.

Schedule a free, no-obligation call…

Have an informal chat about your objectives and find out more about how you can benefit.

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