Everywhere you look these days’ “content marketing” is the must do of marketing. With consumers wanting to educate themselves more and more in the sales process and move away from the more traditional approach on ‘being sold too’ content is key. So how does this work for marketers who either have no resources or a very limited budget to produce content, can they compete?
How much content is enough?
Firstly, know the struggle to produce ‘enough’ content is not something you’re going through alone, in fact 64% of B2B content marketers say their biggest challenge is producing enough content. (Content Marketing Institute). Here are three tips on how to keep up on limited resources.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Start small and plan the month ahead then build up to a quarter. When you’re under resourced it can be a struggle to just keep your head above water. Putting aside time to plan your next move can be confronting to realise the sheer amount of work you must do but with a plan you can manage it in bitesize pieces. When you are keeping your head above water it’s important to realise that you NEED to take an hour to plan. The company will not implode if you do!
With that hour plan what the next month looks like. Have your buyer personas to hand and map out what content needs to go out to each persona and based on what is realistic for you to produce by the date it needs to go live. Based on that live date work backwards to map out the sign off process allowing at least two days clear from final sign off to go live date.
“Creativity is the process of repurposing something for a new purpose” – Steve Supple
With limited resources, there is the option to outsource content creation and this can be a great option with 44% of B2B companies already doing this. (Content Marketing Institute). The issue with outsourcing is suddenly there is a cost placed on that piece of content, which can be quite shocking for first time outsourcers. With some writers charging by the word, by time spent or a set fee for the work you need to work out what is most cost effective based on what you’re aiming to produce.
Lets’ say a guide costs you $1,000 (yep, I know that’s a lot of money). Have you planned how you’re getting your money’s worth out of that content? No? If you’re going to do one post across each of your social media platforms and publish it on your website and then move onto the next piece of content, was it worth it? Unlikely. This is a very common mistake marketers make and it’s costly.
Distributing content is key
How you distribute your content is 80% of the work and makes a huge difference. Firstly, you shouldn’t post it once, this should be repurposed in as many ways as possible, so what could you do with a guide? Here are a few suggestions:
Split the guide up into individual blogs covering the different areas included. This could work out at say 4-5 blogs with a few tweaks.
Reposting – with social media feeds updating so quickly not all your followers would have seen the post so try reposting it with different descriptions, hashtags and imagery. Also, schedule it on a different day at a different time, using the analytics can help you see when your audience engages the most and adjust posting accordingly.
Know what is going on around you. If something happens in the news, in your industry or you’re running an event and you have content which is related to it this would be a great time to repurpose it. By describing how your content relates or helps solve an issue this will draw attention to it – if it’s relevant who cares if you wrote it a year ago?
Give your target audience what they want
“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; you just need to share your unique perspective on why the wheel is important.” – Jon Ball
A great way to get ideas for content is to look at topics which are of interest to your target audience. If you know that your audience is interested in a specific industries’ news, then look out for industry reports or studies in that space. An industry report can be quite long and hard for people to digest without dedicating time to go through say a 20-page report. Look at how you can make that content more digestible. You could write a blog focusing on the key takeaway or an infographic to represent the data in an image.
So, there it is, three ways you can do content marketing whilst being under resourced. Make your content work for you and by sticking to a plan you will be able to map out your business’ requirements effectively to continue to grow.
Looking for a helping hand with your content? Find out how Naked Marketing can help boost your content production here.
