In 2016 you probably started small with your content efforts and realized initial benefits like a spike in sales or increased traffic from the right people. The question now is:
- How do you get the same benefits all the time?
- How do you scale your approach?
- How do you make the most of your content investment to ensure a measurable return?
Consistently successful content marketers know that the answer to all of these questions is the same – mature your content practice.
Here are four steps to that kind of content maturity:
Pilot
Do you see sustainable results such as sales leads or an increase in sales?
Now, think about ways to lead others on your team to produce a similar content effort with a new approach.
This is also the stage where marketers typically measure engagement and loyalty rates of their target audience.
Scalability
Replicating your content strategy is essential to produce sustained results and during this stage, below are the questions you should be asking yourself:
- Have you developed a broader vision for your content that communicates correctly to enhance the customer experience?
- Does your budget planning account for that vision and include an increase based on your previous successes?
- Are you consistently applying lessons you learned during the piloting phase to effective support your organization with content?
Sustainability
Now that you’ve solidified your practice into a sustainable content strategy, focus on streamlining and automating the process.
Further develop and solidify your brand voice according to updated standards of quality and create an evaluation system for future content audits.
Your updated content guidelines will help your organic approach become more efficient to repeat, and your evaluation system is comprised of larger goals attached to detailed indicators to assist you in measuring the success of each campaign.
Thrive and Innovate
Once your foundation is set and sustainable, you can then test new layouts, specialized campaigns, and more personalized approaches.
During this phase, you will evaluate your results and lead your team to develop the agility to respond to any problems or new opportunities within your content system.
Below are the questions you should be asking yourself:
- Is your current strategy running smoothly enough that you feel comfortable testing new ones?
- Have you created a strong enough content foundation and process for your team to encourage agility and promote innovation?
- Can your team respond to unplanned problems such as customer concerns and other content related opportunities in a timely manner?
- Does your content strategy show a consistent progression toward your goals with a marked return?
As you put the finishing touches on your 2017 content marketing strategy, consider whether you have a plan that guarantees sustained innovation.
Byron White, CEO of WriterAccess and Chair of the 2017 Content Marketing Conference will teach you how to get the most out of your content investments in a day-long Content Strategy Masterclass.
Taking you through the 6 steps required for content marketing success and how to redefine your performance goals.