The Three Pillars Of Content Marketing Strategy

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This text is an extract from the e book “Content material Advertising and marketing Technique” by Robert Rose ©2023 and is reproduced and tailored with permission from Kogan Web page Ltd.

This text is the primary in a sequence of three (Learn: Designing The Content Marketing Strategy Measurement and Defining The Responsibilities In The Content Lifecycle) on Search Engine Journal that delve deeper into the ideas mentioned within the e book, which formally launched on September 26, 2023.

As a token of appreciation to your readership, Kogan Web page Ltd. has generously shared a 20% low cost code completely for Search Engine Journal readers. In case you’re enthusiastic about buying the e book, please use the promo code CMS20 at www.koganpage.com/content-marketing-strategy to redeem it.

Simply as we have now the 4 Ps to explain the general advertising and marketing combine, we require a brand new mannequin to explain the technique of content marketing.

The content material advertising and marketing technique begins with three core pillars: Communication, Experiences, and Operations (which bridges the opposite two).

These pillars overlap barely and thus body 5 particular classes of actions that managers within the enterprise will carry out.

Following are descriptions of the pillars and their related actions.

1. Coordinated Communication

As we established in the beginning of this e book, enterprise content material is communication.

So, the enterprise should carry out sure actions to higher coordinate the usage of content material with the intention to purchase, preserve, and develop prospects and different audiences.

A profitable enterprise communicates clearly and with a constant voice. It’s also capable of talk in artistic and uniquely related ways in which replicate the range of its folks and audiences.

To realize that delicate stability of consistency and variety, coordination is important. Because of this the primary core class of actions within the communication pillar is Goal. That is content-as-a-capability.

Many companies fall right into a lure as a result of they consider that content material advertising and marketing can merely be created as a “talent place” inside the enterprise.

They rent a couple of journalists, editors, artistic copywriters, and subject material consultants, and set them off to be “good” at creating and managing worthwhile content material.

However, as I stated within the earlier chapter, companies which might be managing profitable content marketing strategies notice that the first function of a succesful content material workforce is to not be good at creating content material.

It’s, somewhat, to allow the enterprise to be good on the operation of content material. These journalists, artistic copywriters, or subject material consultants are normally thrown right into a enterprise with solely the duty to “create nice stuff.”

There may be normally no scarcity of that demand, however they shortly grow to be swamped and don’t have the talent, energy, or infrastructure to say “no” when issues get to be an excessive amount of.

High quality begins to endure, after which doubts begin creeping in as as to if or not these are the precise folks, or whether or not profitable content material advertising and marketing is even attainable.

The Goal exercise, then, is to develop and handle a transparent set of core obligations and processes that construct and regularly assess the allocation of sources, talent units, and clear charters {that a} content material advertising and marketing workforce will want with the intention to grow to be a differentiated enterprise functionality.

A type of expertise will be the precise creation of content material – however there are assuredly others as nicely (and we’ll discover them later on this e book).

That results in the second exercise class within the Communication Pillar: The Mannequin, or content-as-coordinated-communications. The Mannequin exercise additionally overlaps into the Operations Pillar, which we’ll describe shortly.

Each enterprise that succeeds with content material advertising and marketing technique may have a well-defined and well-understood governance/working mannequin.

For instance, the enterprise we simply mentioned, with all these journalists, might find yourself with a whole division dedicated to content material advertising and marketing as a “centralized” workforce.

The Cleveland Clinic is a superb instance of this. The world-renowned hospital has created a centralized content material advertising and marketing division that could be a functioning enterprise unit.

They began with a handful of content material creators and developed into a various and multi-functional, however centralized, workforce with clear and customary working processes.

Different companies might deploy a “federated mannequin” wherein the content material workforce is accountable for creating solely a small share of content material. The truth is, their complete useful mannequin could also be dedicated to enabling the opposite departments within the enterprise to create, handle, activate, and measure high quality content material throughout a number of channels.

Their function – very like a federal authorities – is basically to supply a centralized place the place “legal guidelines” (e.g., requirements, playbooks, workflows, and many others.) are created and stored so that everybody is working in the identical means. An awesome instance of that is Anthem Blue Cross Insurance coverage (now Elevance Well being).

This firm employs 98,000 folks and consists of a number of companies, together with pharmaceutical insurance coverage, dental insurance coverage, long-term care, and incapacity.

You’ll learn extra about their journey within the subsequent chapter, however one of many keys for the content material workforce chief there was to create a proper constitution for her workforce.

They created an organizational course of the place the totally different product teams have coordinated illustration, permitting every to interface with the content material workforce.

The model content material workforce is accountable for curating, creating, packaging, and making accessible Elevance-level model tales.

2. A Portfolio Of Experiences

You’ve simply discovered {that a} coordinated communication/content material strategy is managing the amount, and high quality, of what the whole enterprise needs to say.

That leads us to the second pillar of a content material advertising and marketing technique – Experiences – all the way in which on the different finish of the spectrum. Experiences are the designed containers of content material being created for audiences.

Irrespective of how huge a enterprise is, it wants a strategic strategy to how the content material it creates will likely be utilized to energy designed platforms reminiscent of emails, web sites, useful resource facilities, print magazines, PDF recordsdata, occasions, blogs, and even social media channels.

It is a important facet of working like a media firm that has owned media properties.

For instance, when a media firm thinks of its subsequent manufacturing, it might begin as a film – however then, virtually instantly, operational and administration processes kick in to discover how that very same content material will likely be leveraged in books, tv, podcasts, interactive leisure, and many others.

The story comes first, after which the pondering for all of the totally different sorts of containers that may categorical that story in numerous methods.

Keep in mind, for media corporations, the expertise that they monetize is the product. They usually have two major methods of monetizing it.

They monetize entry to the expertise with fashions like subscriptions or promoting a restricted variety of tickets.

Or media corporations will monetize the expertise by promoting entry to the viewers consuming it by permitting sponsors to create content material that will likely be contained in it. That is the mannequin of promoting or sponsored content material.

Our owned media experiences for enterprise needs to be no totally different. All of a model’s owned media channels – the web site, weblog, useful resource heart, ecommerce catalog, print journal, and many others. – needs to be handled with the identical care and consideration as the prevailing product/service strains.

Identical to a media firm, we should always suppose “content material first” after which how we’ll create all of the totally different sorts of containers to ship that content material.

We handle all of those as a portfolio of experiences that exploit worthwhile content material for audiences. Every container ought to have strategic function, targets, and targets.

Arguing, for instance, that our web site or our weblog is much less vital than any of our services and products is basically arguing that they shouldn’t exist in any respect.

So, as with every services or products, somebody must be accountable for making certain that these experiences are up to date and that they’ve charters, targets, and particular methods which might be optimized to satisfy the wants of the shoppers (audiences) they serve.

They need to be designed and developed to satisfy new market calls for, promoted in an ordinary means, and measured towards shared enterprise targets. Additional, like all of our services and products, they need to be simply discontinued after they now not go well with our enterprise targets.

This pillar is based on the thought that there’s a workforce centered on the method of manufacturing and managing the platforms of an organization’s owned media technique in a means that’s optimum for the corporate’s enterprise targets.

The 2 exercise classes inside this pillar are Viewers and Worth.

Viewers is the place the enterprise should outline every expertise as a product. In different phrases, Viewers is content-as-product. This harkens again to the earliest days of the 4 Ps.

Identical to we might create a plan for each services or products we might carry to market, we now have to create product plans for our owned media experiences.

This implies crafting an answer that matches a market want, initiating market analysis into the viewers and understanding them nicely, and having particular, measurable targets for every content-driven expertise being launched.

This e book dives deep into the Viewers exercise.

Treating experiences this manner helps us ship their final purpose, which is Worth. Worth is content-as-insight. Assembly all the designed targets of a portfolio of experiences delivers the worth of the content material advertising and marketing technique.

This exercise is the place we combine perception and map out precisely the place, when, and the way the content material advertising and marketing technique will present it. Designing a measurement and worth strategy is a core piece of this e book.

And that will get us to the third content material advertising and marketing technique pillar, the glue that holds Coordinated Communications and Experiences collectively.

3. Strategic Operations

Take into account for a second the apply of accounting.

It is among the oldest enterprise practices on the earth, courting again to the 1400s when mathematician Luca Pacioli created the double-entry accounting system and launched the thought of ledgers, journals, and bookkeeping.

The explanations for requirements and predictable tips in accounting are simple to know.

Finance touches each a part of a enterprise. Everybody in enterprise does some type of accounting, from the way in which timesheets are accomplished to procurement requisitions, vendor relationships, product gross sales, and even the usage of uncooked supplies for services and products.

Now take into consideration content material and advertising and marketing. At present, it’s simply as pervasive as accounting – or much more so in some instances. Creating content material for enterprise communication touches each single a part of the enterprise. It’s the water wherein we swim.

But, most companies deal with the creation, administration, distribution, and measurement of content material in an advert hoc method.

Keep in mind, it’s not simply advertising and marketing that’s altering, it’s the complete enterprise technique. Thus, the CEO’s or enterprise proprietor’s relationship with advertising and marketing and content material modifications as nicely.

In a 2022 article for McKinsey Consulting, one former retail CEO stated,

“Knowledge has modified how the C-suite is interacting with advertising and marketing. Now it’s very laborious to separate firm technique from advertising and marketing technique.”

If that’s true, then it’s additionally true that it’s laborious to separate firm technique from our content material technique.

At present, advertising and marketing departments are checked out as factories – locations the place one thing profitable needs to be replicable 1,000,000 instances.

So as to obtain consistency in replicating success and grow to be a core enterprise technique, content material advertising and marketing should have a clearly articulated and replicable course of that may flex and accommodate new concepts as they emerge.

The exercise on this pillar is the Body, or content-as-standard.

If activation of partaking content material is now the center of promoting, content material operations are what make the center beat.

Getting content material advertising and marketing operations proper frees artistic folks to do artistic issues that allow the enterprise technique, and empowers the advertising and marketing groups to attain this at scale.

As we’ve established, everybody within the enterprise creates content material: the net workforce, the advertising and marketing automation/demand-gen workforce, the content material advertising and marketing workforce, companies, executives, frontline account representatives, salespeople, human sources, and even accounting, with invoices, contracts, and onboarding documentation.

The truth is, it’s in all probability simpler to rely all of the individuals who don’t create digital buyer communications as of late. We’ve established that organising communications coordination is a major pillar of a standardized strategy to content material.

Moreover, as we speak companies function in a multichannel world with, sometimes, dozens of channels (experiences) that should be populated with content material in a number of codecs.

For instance, take into account an organization that launches two to 4 new merchandise every quarter. For every new product launch, there are 10 belongings deliberate, together with brochures, product tech briefs, a thought management paper, and many others.

That won’t sound like very a lot, however every of the ten belongings must be custom-made for the 5 main service companions that may assist the advertising and marketing, and every of these service companions has promotional belongings that have to be custom-made for different content types or channel specs (social media, video, and many others.).

Lastly, all of these belongings have to be translated into 4 languages. The web result’s that 10 deliberate items of content material flip into roughly 300 digital belongings that have to be designed and produced.

Multiply that by 2 new merchandise per quarter, and you find yourself with roughly 2,400 digital belongings created yearly only for new product launches.

So, it doesn’t matter how huge the enterprise is – a repeatable set of processes have to be put in place which might be ruled by requirements, tips, playbooks, and expertise.

We name this the Body actions as a result of, very very like the body of your home, it’s what holds every little thing up. It’s content-as-a-standard.

This third pillar, Operations, is the folks, processes, and expertise that assist create a repeatable, constant course of to attach the coordinated content material creators (pillar 1) with the experiences powered by the content material they’re creating (pillar 2).

With the precise content material operational mannequin in place, you possibly can scale and measure enterprise content material.

Collectively these three pillars and the 5 building-block actions type a competency framework for the whole thing of your content material advertising and marketing technique. They’re strain factors that assist to find out how sturdy or weak your technique is.

For instance, once I work with an organization that’s battling the aim of their company weblog, I would first press on the Viewers button. I can see how sturdy we’re at a company-wide understanding of how nicely we carry out that exercise.

I can study what makes that class of exercise totally different or optimum.

That, then, helps me as a strategist perceive the place I may have to alter the exercise or strengthen any of the opposite pillars of coordinating communication, operational processes, or managing the experiences.

This framework places a conceptual construction to significant questions that have to be answered:

• What competencies and talent units are wanted for various roles of individuals, processes, and applied sciences within the enterprise in every of the pillars?
• What working fashions will likely be required, valued, acknowledged, and rewarded with regard to a functioning content material technique?
• How will we outline the inner processes of working like a media firm in order that this may be scaled and measured as an efficient enterprise operate?
• How will the framework present for measurable targets, the outcomes of which is able to present perception into the worth being created each for the audiences and the enterprise?
• How can we information the differentiating operational focus for content material advertising and marketing that may present the evolving aggressive benefit that the enterprise needs?

Chances are you’ll ponder whether there may be an overarching template, a cheat sheet, or standardized solutions to those questions. Luckily, or maybe sadly for these of you who’re on the lookout for a fast reply, there may be not.

Welcome to the artwork and science of content material advertising and marketing technique. It jogs my memory of the problem that James Culliton confronted in 1948 whereas introducing the advertising and marketing combine, and Jerome McCarthy had in 1960 introducing the 4 Ps.

Whereas the framework could also be helpful, there is no such thing as a single reply for anyone firm a few template advertising and marketing combine or use of the 4 Ps. The elements to your good mixture of content material advertising and marketing technique will likely be yours, and really totally different, certainly.

There isn’t any template. There isn’t any good recipe.

One of the vital vital issues we’ve discovered after engaged on content material advertising and marketing technique for lots of of manufacturers during the last decade is that what you set into these classes of actions is way much less vital than consciously making the choice to place one thing in there.

Simply as there is no such thing as a good advertising and marketing combine, there is no such thing as a good content material advertising and marketing technique. You’ll evolve. It’ll change. Since you and what you are promoting will change.

As statistician George Box once said, “All fashions are unsuitable, however some are helpful.”

Profitable content material advertising and marketing, both consciously or unconsciously, makes use of parts of this mannequin to bolster its operation. As I stated in the beginning: profitable, pleased content material entrepreneurs appear to have the same means of working.

It is a mannequin that we’ve seen work – it’s been examined.

The truth is, you might have realized in some unspecified time in the future throughout this chapter that the remainder of this e book is organized by protecting every of the classes of actions in our content material advertising and marketing technique mannequin.

In case you can formulate, construction, and pressure-test your actions in every field, then you’re nicely in your option to creating a fantastic content material advertising and marketing technique.

Let’s get to it.