This past July the CMO Council released a study indicating only 2% of marketers believe their content strategy is highly effective. For the last several years more and more marketing departments have been focused on developing their content marketing. Yet at this point only 2% of the marketers feel their strategy is effective.
Can I ask? Are you in the 2% or are you in the other 98%?
If you’re in the top 2%, congratulations. Your strategy is working. I believe you are bringing in new prospects and you are converting a high number to hot leads through your marketing efforts.
If you’re in the other 98%, you still have some work to do.
Where Do You Start?
The best place is to go back to the beginning. Look at your entire marketing efforts.
Do you have a marketing plan in place or do you add pieces to your marketing as you need them? (If you don’t have a plan, create one. Your marketing efforts will never generate the results you want until you have a plan in place outlining what you will do on a consistent basis?
If you have a marketing plan, what does it consist of? Do you have white papers, case studies, emails, blog posts, articles and videos that help prospects know more about your company and the products or services you offer?
If you don’t have white papers, case studies, emails, blog posts, articles and videos, which ones do you have? What are you missing? Which do you need to create to generate more prospects?
All of your prospects are not at the same point in your marketing funnel. Some may be brand new, others may be in the middle, and others may be on the verge of buying. Do you have different white papers, case studies, emails, blog posts, articles and videos for prospects at each of these points?
These are all questions to answer as you put together a marketing strategy which will have the greatest impact for your company.
If there are only a few people in your marketing department, you may want to take an afternoon and come up with a plan to address each of these.
If your marketing department is larger, you may want to have an offsite meeting for a day or two to brainstorm this.
Once you have decided on all the pieces of your marketing, it’s best also to develop a plan for the next year. In that plan, indicate what you will send prospects and when. The objective here is to use your marketing pieces to move a brand new prospect to a lead, then to a great lead and finally to a new customer.
