Firstly, a big thank you to Clevertouch for inviting me to last week’s breakfast briefing: “Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2015 and beyond….” While I gave the bacon sarnies a miss (veggie!) I did walk away from the Brewery on Chiswell Street with some food for thought which I’ll explain below.
Are you a content marketing machine? 
As Adam Sharp finished his breakfast presentation “Moneyball Marketing and Revenue Performance” I realised that like a lot of marketers, I’m in danger of not being on top of my marketing technology infrastructure because I am at times rather consumed by content marketing.
I do love content marketing. Proper thought leadership based content is the way forward in marketing, and no matter how small your organisation is, you should have a content marketing plan.
But it’s easy to become wholly consumed by content marketing, especially if you’re under resourced. Given the hype surrounding it, many marketers feel as though they should be dedicating a large part of their day to producing and distributing engaging content. Take a look at this article from Erin Nelson on the @exploreB2B site that I read this week, which says that “B2B content marketers are most challenged with producing enough content, as opposed to early findings in which the greatest challenge was to produce engaging content.”
Are we becoming so consumed by content marketing that we’re putting quantity before quality, and are we somehow forgetting our marketing technology infrastructures, so carefully put in place?
The Solution
I’m not saying it’s easy – content is the fuel that makes your marketing machine run. But you have to strike a balance and you have to constantly consider whether you have put the right tools in place and whether or not you’re using the right methodology to drive your efforts.
I think it’s worth asking yourself these sorts of questions periodically:
- How are you distributing your content? Is it trackable? I can’t imagine putting the time and effort in to writing a good piece and then not even being able to get some pretty in-depth stats off of it.
- Is it time to consider using a marketing automation system? If you have one, are you getting as much as you should be out of it? If prospect “X” downloaded all of your white papers, would you get an alert?
- How many marketing channels are you using to distribute content? Are there ones that are much more effective than others? Perhaps you should consider streamlining your channels, which may reduce the need for the devastating amount of content you might feel you need. Once again, one of Erin Nelson’s facts about B2B Marketers rings true. She says: “LinkedIn, surpassing Twitter, is now the social media channel of choice among B2B marketers for content distribution. “
I left the breakfast with a lot of motivation to improve my marketing tech infrastructure which is about what I expected to get out of the event. What I didn’t expect to learn is that perhaps I should give myself a bit of a break on the content marketing front and to remember that I am a mere marketer, not a publishing house!
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