The business of content marketing is fundamentally based on the premise that “content is king” and rightfully so, but with multiple social media platforms to market to, you’ll need to keep posting content on a regular basis. This could be blog posts, podcasts, e-books, videos, or more to ensure you generate enough eyes. But more content may not be better or necessarily effective if a full content marketing strategy is not in place. Content volume is just one of many things you need to consider when thinking about

Nick Westergaard shares with us how he shapes his content strategy by referencing and relating to Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 poem “The Boy with the Elephant.”

I have six honest servants (They taught me everything I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

Questions: what, why, when, how, where and who

We can also use these six men to come up with our content marketing strategies. The five Ws (and the H) can go a long way, especially in simplifying the content creation process. It’s important to focus on the WHY, WHO, and WHAT to lay the groundwork for business-focused content that’s engaging with your target base.

WHY: “Start with why” is Simon Sinek’s now famous mantra that makes so much sense in today’s Why Is Your Business? Why do it?

Content marketing can help you achieve specific business goals and your WHY needs to be answered by one of them in each of your real-world scenarios.

Branding: Are you looking to establish familiarity with your brand or create/recreate your brand image within your industry or market segment?
Community Building: Is your goal to build a community around your product or service that allows for a free flow of information and feedback?
PR – Looking to tailor your content for PR promotions and events?
Market Research: Are you looking to gauge market feedback on a particular topic, analyze the data, and use it to your advantage?
Customer Service: Want to offer service-related content to engage and connect with your existing customer base?
Lead Generation: Want to create inquiry-based traffic and generate leads for new sales?

Which brings us to Who (m) or WHO, which refers to the audience you are targeting or already serving. Your content has to offer some kind of solution, it has to satisfy a need in the lives of your customers. This would mean that you need to find out the preferences of your customers and find out what is really important to them. This can be achieved by reviewing quantitative demographics and qualitative psychographics.

Ultimately, based on your business objective (the why) and figuring out your target audience (who), you are in a better position to decide WHAT form of content you need in that scenario. It’s about creating content that fits into a simple strategy: what’s best for your brand?

Kipling’s first three men, the Why, Who and What provides a simplified foundation for a strategic framework you can use to arrive at the right content that meets the needs of both your audience and your business. Now we can dive into the details with the rest of the servants – WHEN (period and frequency) – WHERE (internally or externally, which platform) and finally HOW (plan of action, how will you measure success)

It would be helpful to have an innovative mindset to ensure that your content not only grabs attention but also keeps it. It’s not just about arousing curiosity, but also drawing your customer into an action or reaction that they would like. Of course, you will have a variety of metrics to evaluate your posts: page views, video views, duration of viewing time, social shares, etc. but remember to optimize for your mission rather than metrics.

B2B content marketing mistakes

Now that we’ve covered the essentials, let’s look at some common B2B content marketing mistakes so we can steer clear of them. According to research involving more than 5,000 B2B buying participants across 12 industries, the three mistakes that undermine a company’s content marketing strategy are…

Too much “thought leadership” in the content.
Most marketers use their content strategy in B2B marketing scenarios to demonstrate their levels of expertise and “thought leadership” in their industry. While they may believe they are perceived as “experts,” CEB research shows that simply representing an “intelligent perspective” does not have a significant impact on customers’ decision-making. Rather, it’s good content that informs customers about new developments in your industry and opens up new ways of looking at your business. It should give them a compelling reason to consider a change and take urgent action.

Too much “personalization” of the content
While there is a school of thought that personalizing content to fit each stakeholder in your buying group is the way to go, this strategy has been proven to backfire, especially when multiple stakeholders have a say in the buying decision. In fact, trying to personalize content for each member often affects the likelihood of a higher quality sale, and this is because different stakeholders have different priorities and see solutions from their perspective. This leads them to opt for a “lower price” solution than would be ideal for their business. Therefore, an effective content strategy must focus on a larger vision and offer a more collective solution that points in your direction.

Content that does not allow to measure the purchase process.
Marketers use content to engage customers and encourage them to buy from them. Too often, though, when they see some engagement with their content, they assume there’s an interest and regard such engagement as a step in the right direction – “the path of purchase progress” – and as a result pass the opportunity on to the next user. sales team, but to no avail. Instead, you’ll be better off designing content that can map out the levels and timing of engagement along the path to purchase. This can be done by including the questions customers are most likely to ask at each step and then creating marketing content that answers each question along the way.

These mistakes above are quite common and it’s time we pay attention and break away from standardized content that seems to focus on “thought leadership”, “personalization” and “consumption metrics”, but may not give you the results. what are you looking for.

So, looking back at what we discovered, the ideal content marketing strategy would enlist the help of Kipling’s six service men to lay a simple yet smart foundation for developing their content, and then consciously avoid some common mistakes they make. content marketers today.

Content marketing in today’s world is not just about creating a mechanized funnel to drive business, but also about creating opportunities to add informed insights while encouraging and urging your customers to follow your revenue path with a purchase or sale. eventual.