I came across an infographic this week that provides new insight into B2B content marketing trends. The infographic pulls together some key data recently uncovered in the 2015 Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends for North America report, which was released by MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute.
In particular, these two stats strike a chord for me: The first highlights the fact that 35% of the B2B marketers surveyed have a documented content strategy. And the second, and most illuminating in my opinion, is that those who do have a documented content strategy rate their effectiveness as being nearly twice as high as those who don’t.
This doesn’t surprise me. Why? Because documentation is an important part of the C4D Content Maturity Model. We consider organizations that document various aspects of their content marketing activities — including personas, messaging and buyer’s journey models and editorial processes — to be among the most mature in terms of their ability to plan, execute and sustain high-impact content marketing initiatives.
If you’re finding that your content strategy isn’t as effective as it should be, consider these action items:
- Designate a point person to begin the process of capturing, documenting and organizing your team’s content marketing strategy elements.
- Use the documentation process as an improvement process. The very act of documenting your activities will reveal a need for consistency, clarity and methodological rigor that you may not have. Be prepared to address the needs that you uncover.
- Treat this as a process — not as an event. Today’s documented content strategy is tomorrow’s hopelessly outdated relic — unless you keep it up to date and constantly evolving as your buyers and business change. Having a documented content strategy delivers long-term benefits, but it also requires a long-term commitment to make those benefits materialize.
What you need to document will depend on your content marketing maturity, as well as the requirements of your organization. Either way though, a well-documented strategy not only makes content marketing more effective, but also easier and more efficient to implement overall.
