According to Microfocus, in April 2017 there were 3.8 billion internet users. This has contributed to a massive increase in content, with reportedly 3 million posts being uploaded to Facebook and 4,146,600 videos viewed on YouTube every minute. With so much user-generated and corporate material out there, how can you make sure you are improving content marketing for your brand?

Know your audience

It sounds obvious, but there are still too many B2B companies churning out content with no real idea who their target audience is. Wildfire was recently approached by a company whose marketing director had a rather vague description of their target audience, ‘we think it’s young, tech-savvy professionals who are open to risk-taking. But they might be a bit older because they need to have some disposable income’. Despite it being widely reported that men are more tech-savvy than women, research conducted by Wildfire highlighted that the 20–30 year old age group the client was looking to reach in London is reported to be 60% women. When this was pointed out to the prospective client, they appeared surprised.

Understand the engagement cycle

Content should be geared towards engaging people at every stage of the buying cycle. This means grabbing the attention of people that may have never heard about your company or technology, as well as delivering that final persuasive argument for a prospect to convert. Pitching material that goes into the detail of your solution to someone who isn’t even familiar with your sector or product / solution set would be like asking a first date to marry you… probably a bit much! While content is largely geared towards convincing and converting, you need to be realistic about the stage your audience is at. Treat it like colouring your hair… stick with changing one shade (stage) at a time to have a better chance of achieving the end result you are hoping for!

Think of content like The Circular Economy

Take, make and dispose. It seems to be the modern way of the world from consumer goods to content. When it comes to content, use, reuse, recycle, upcycle, use again and even reuse after that if you can! A well-written, well-targeted whitepaper or research piece can be repurposed for articles, opinion pieces, releases, blogs, social media posts, direct marketing, paid promotion and even training and internal comms. The quality — not the content — is king and when it comes to originating brand new material.

Contact me for some examples of hardworking content campaigns and the results and cost-savings that can be achieved by repurposing material.

Photo cred: https://unsplash.com/photos/IThpmszqH7Y