How To Get Your Content Campaigns & Marketing Pipeline Started

Getting started with content marketing is fairly easy. You either do it yourself or you get expert help. Do you know what your business problem is? Are you able to quantify it? Have you created a formal content marketing strategy?

It's strategy before tactics - always. Except I know you have a pressing, urgent need. You're putting out a fire. So, a campaign (tactic) has to come first, and in creating and managing that first campaign, we learn together and start crafting the content marketing strategy.

The formula is 1) Fire first; 2) Aim; 3) Steady & Fix.

It's the pragmatic, practical way to get started. And it helps you to do a little back planning as well.

Condensed Getting Started Checklist

determine the business objective
list the goals to get there
select the appropriate campaign type
consult with Sales; get lead definition
verify website has minimum information for prospects
determine customer priorities
know the customer persona
sequence the tactics required
write & produce each tactical element
ensure content element reflects your differentiation
support your differentiation with your branding
check the content is customer-centric and helpful
run it by Sales for approval
deploy the campaign element
monitor analytics & test elements
refine elements to improve conversions
monitor ROI
consult with Sales
use and employ insights from Sales
refine campaign to improve customer quality
repeat

And that, in a nutshell, is how it's done.

Get Your Content Marketing Strategy Organized

This is how it ideally works - strategy before tactics. How are you going to deploy an effective content marketing campaign if you don't have a clue what you're attempting to accomplish and fix?

Except none of us lives and works in an ideal world.

You have to get started with a campaign. Just please, please plan to include strategic planning in the process.

I see tons of mismanaged and unplanned content marketing. You do too. Most of it's a colossal waste of time and effort. No one reads it, because it isn't relevant or about their problems.

Businesses don't profit from it because it's not planned, it's not focused. It isn't designed and sent out there to achieve goals and inspire action (unless ignoring is an action you're after).

Understand your actual business objectives, and the problems stopping you from achieving those goals. This isn't easy, which is why no one wants to do it.

Match Your Business objectives To Your Positioning & Branding

If you honestly want to attract qualified leads for Sales to close - go back to your positioning and branding. If you want to attract your ideal customer - match your positioning and branding to your messages and campaign elements.

Make sure you haven't deviated from your core positioning and ensure you're not repeating what the competition is saying.

Map Out A Plan

Once you have a plan and you've answered the tough questions - start calling around. If you're looking for an Agency that brings it all together with a no nonsense approach, call us. We've been strategizing, budgeting, designing, writing, producing and deploying marketing campaigns for over 20 years. Just check with our client base.

Call Busywriter

No offence to many content marketing firms: they just don't have the strategic background to plan and implement multiple campaigns to achieve strategic business objectives. They're more tactical oriented, they do what you say. What they're great at doing is creative, or SEO, or webpage and landing page development. They might even be writing 2-4 blog posts a week for you and following up with some social media exposure. But all that hard work might not be coordinated and focused on specific objectives. And that doesn't sound like a plan tied to a business outcome such as: improve our lead to close ratio by 25% in 18 months.