Four Tips for Managing Content Marketing Programs by Deborah Carson

Content marketing is hot! An estimated 93 percent of B2B companies are using content for their marketing programs, and the most effective B2B marketers spend 39 percent of their budget on it. Additionally, 59 percent of marketers expect their organization's content budget to increase during 2015.

There's good reason for all the excitement. Content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing, yet it generates about three times as many leads for each dollar spent. No wonder 78 percent of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing.

But, even though it's less expensive than traditional marketing, content marketing isn't free. If you're dedicating a significant portion of your budget to content, you want to be sure you're getting the most out of your investment.

In other words, you want to manage your content, instead of letting the pursuit of content management overwhelm you. Here are some tips to help you stay on top of your game.

1. Create quality content

First and foremost, you need to provide information your prospects and customers want and can actually use. Don't push out content for its own sake, with little thought as to how it's perceived or whether it can be put into action by the people your company actually wants to reach. Not only will that not help your marketing efforts, it may actually turn off potential customers and drive them away from your brand.

Put yourself in your prospects' shoes. Instead of talking about product features, talk about the problems they face in their jobs or lives. Offer solutions that incorporate or allude to what your company offers without a blatant sales pitch.

2. Repurpose your content

Coming up with topics, researching and writing content is a time-consuming process. Instead of constantly developing new ideas, make sure you're getting the greatest mileage out of the content you've already created. How? First, by disseminating the same information in different formats. Divide the content of a whitepaper into several blogs. Use the underlying information to create a podcast, slideshow or videos. Call out important facts and statistics as stand-alone infographics.

Don't forget to cross-promote your content across a variety of media. Use a given piece of content as the basis for email and direct mail campaigns, post it on social media, insert it into sales kits, distribute it at trade shows, and add it to your website as a downloadable pdf document. By putting a slightly different opening or angle on a topic, you can repurpose information for widely different audiences and industries, as well.

3. Stagger the release of your content

Rather than releasing a particular piece of information across all the channels you use in one big push, stagger it. You might start with a mailing, followed by a blog. Then email and post links to the blog on social media. Have your sales force reference the blog or post when phoning prospects, thereby creating an opportunity to explore the prospect's needs and offer additional insights.

4. Make sure your content gets where it's supposed to go

Creating content is just one aspect of content marketing. The other is distribution, both through digital channels and print. Don't underestimate the importance of this key step. If you don't get your content in front of the people you're trying to reach, you've wasted hard-won marketing dollars on its development. A full service marketing production and fulfillment company can help you with much of the work associated with distributing your content and follow-up materials, to help you turn leads into sales.

So, are you managing your content or is content managing you? Want to learn more about how Iron Mountain Fulfillment Services can help with your content marketing program? Call or email us, we would be happy to speak to you.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/service-lines/marketing-production-...
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