By Win Salyards, Marketing Coordinator at Heinz Marketing
Within the Predictable Pipeline framework, we think about Messaging and Content in the Buyer’s Journey with respect to what Key Target Personas need, what they are challenged by, and how they make decisions. You’ve built a comprehensive buying committee profile, buyer personas and their pain points, and you understand your buyer’s journey. It’s time to build a content strategy. But before you do, here are 5 things you should consider.
How is your target account’s selling/buying cycle’s structured?
This may seem obvious, but you need to understand where in the year are your customers and leads making the most important purchasing decisions. It can change depending on the industry! Don’t be caught unawares starting up a midfunnel campaign when your target accounts don’t make middle funnel moves for another quarter.
Where is there key crossover in content between personas?
When you’re on a tight budget you may not be able to create specific content for each of your target personas. Find where your personas have the most crossover between them and focus your content creation efforts in those areas. This will help get you higher ROI.
What places are your target personas consuming most of their info?
Where are your targets engaging the most?—with peers? Content? Industry info? You need to know where to invest your ad spend or content energy when you start developing your strategy. You need to build your content strategy with the precision of a scalpel, not the force of a shotgun.
Is there a topic relevant to multiple personas on the buying committee that could be developed into a “Parent Content Piece”?
Okay, this can be somewhat of a longer-term thing or something to jump start a content strategy. If you can develop a piece of valuable content that has a high level of depth and has a long shelf life with applications throughout your target buying committee and the buyer’s journey, then that piece can become a parent piece for smaller content initiatives down the line. It’s a higher investment upfront but the ROI at the end makes it worth it.
Test and retest: what are your metrics?
Your content strategy, gain, should be like a scalpel, it needs to be precise. It won’t be perfect to start with so to hone it down over time you need to understand your metrics of success, and how you can test and then retest your content. Your content strategy isn’t a static thing, it needs to be able to pivot rapidly with an eye towards precision. Make sure you’re choosing the right metrics for your content goals and that you have a good way of measuring them.
If you are keeping these 5 things in mind as you and your team move forward building your content strategy, it will be much more accurate and flexible, fitting cleanly into your overall marketing and sales strategy– helping you build a more profitable, predictable pipeline.
