GUIDE
CONTENT MARKETING 101
How to make it work for your business from
strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE
1. WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING
AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
INTRODUCTION
To understand the enormous potential of content marketing for your business, just consider
how customers have changed.
Modern buyers have become experts at
filtering out the constant racket of sales
promotions and advertising, making it
harder than ever to achieve cut through
with your messages. Today, bombarding
audiences with marketing is more likely to
cause aversion and apathy than demand
generation.
HARD TO SWALLOW
Your customers and prospects have never been
more resistant to traditional marketing, or fussier
about the content they’ll consume:
• 44% of direct mail is never opened
• 86% of viewers skip TV adverts
Meanwhile, the traditional sales funnel
• 200 million numbers on ‘Do Not Call’ Lists
isn’t really a funnel anymore; the buying
process is no longer linear. Your customers
Statistics from HubSpot.
now proactively search out the information
they need through channels they choose.
They incorporate insights from a variety
of sources before making a purchase - and are extremely selective about the content they’ll
consume.
To solve these challenges, content marketing turns traditional marketing on its head. Instead
of trying to break into audience conversations with sales messages, we join their conversation - empowering prospects and customers with information that helps solve their current
challenges.
CONTENT MARKETING:
AN ANCIENT ART?
Today’s explosion of content marketing into a
£1 billion UK industry can be traced all the way
back to the 19th Century:
• 1895: John Deere publishes The Furrow – a
guide to successful farming that also promoted
the brand’s agricultural machinery.
Where advertising bombards its audience
with sales messages, content marketing
mixes audience needs with supplier solutions to create valuable information that
draws customers to your brand.
The advantages of an audience that’s
actively engaging with you, rather than
passively listening to your messages, are
enormous – creating a stronger pipeline of
better quality, better qualified leads.
• 1900: Michelin exploited the link between
tyres and travel to create an annual guide to the
best hotels and restaurants that’s now synonymous with quality.
• 1930s: Procter & Gamble sponsored radio
plays that targeted their core audience of house
wives – giving rise to the term “soap opera”.
Content Marketing 101: How to make it work for your business from strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE
2. UNDERSTAND YOUR BUYERS
Content marketing doesn’t mean simply churning out more branded content. It’s a process
and a strategy, beginning with understanding your audience, developing a catalogue of content that’s relevant to them, delivering it in a form that it is appropriate and easy to digest,
and then making it easy to find.
Implementing an effective content strategy always begins with mapping the buyer journey.
Buyers will engage with different types and formats of content at different stages. By understanding this journey, you can tailor content accordingly to help prospects progress towards
a purchase – delivering relevant, high-value content at precisely the right moment to deepen
engagement and generate stronger leads.
Typically this journey begins with loosening the status quo – helping the prospect to identify
a business need, problem or potential improvement that must be addressed.
Content Marketing 101: How to make it work for your business from strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE
3. DO CONTENT THE RIGHT WAY
When developing content, it’s essential to start from a journalistic perspective and ask:
What’s the story? Why should my audience care? How can I communicate it in the most
engaging way? This simple, journalistic mind-set can have a huge impact; making content
far more fresh, relevant and interesting - driving your prospects and customers to take immediate action.
At the outset, you need to create content that understands who prospects are, what they
need, their position in the buyer journey and how they found your business to begin with.
We recommend developing buyer
personas based on varying customer
challenges, behaviours and influences
to truly understand the people you’re
SAY WHAT?
targeting. With such a strong audience
focus, you’ll find it a lot more difficult
Just because you want to say it, doesn’t mean
to overload prospects with worthless
your audience wants to hear it:
information.
Next, think about the format that will
be most accessible and appropriate.
Are you targeting busy CEOs that
prefer bite-size videos and blogs, or
single-remit employees that need a detailed whitepaper on one challenge?
• Avoid bombarding prospects with sales
messages.
• Base content on your prospect’s needs,
not yours.
• Tell your audience something they don’t
already know.
• Don’t crush your prospects under a landslide
of automated engagement.
And remember: even the best content
is worthless if no one finds it – content
• If there’s market resistance to your brand,
must be delivered in the most effective
consider loosening the status quo with
way. An infographic shared via social
unbranded content.
media might be perfect to loosen the
status quo, but an in-depth report for
download on your website would better help customers explore possible solutions in detail.
Once you have a high-quality content pipeline flowing, timing is everything. Combine your
content with marketing automation to ensure relevant messages are put under a prospect’s
nose at just the right moment. But beware, marketing automation should support a personalised and strategic approach, not just spam more content to more people, more often.
From the ability to automatically trigger emails or social posts, to tailoring content on your
website for a specific viewer, these tools must be used with care.
Content Marketing 101: How to make it work for your business from strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE
4. ACQUIRE PROSPECTS
With a steady stream of high-quality content, your business will benefit from inbound
marketing that regularly adds fresh, self-selected contacts to your nurture database. But
when should you ask prospects to reveal their identity?
It’s essential to capture prospect information at the right moment. For instance, forcing
visitors to register on their first trip to your website will simply cause many people to steer
clear. Similarly, there’s little point gating content that won’t entice prospects to enter their
details: a new, detailed research report may be worth 30 seconds of their time, but is a short
blog or infographic?
Your specific acquisition strategy should align to your business goals, the prospects you’re
targeting and the content on offer. Many organisations will want to take customers on a
journey to capture strong sales leads, but prospect acquisition can be as quick as one click.
For instance, if your business is focused on tightly defined targets that will be seeking
specific content, a high-value “honeypot” of gated content may be the best approach.
If content is custom-made for a specific segment, either they want it or they don’t.
Content Marketing 101: How to make it work for your business from strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE
5. FOLLOW BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES
When it comes to executing on your content marketing strategy the right way, there are
some simple steps to follow:
• Get buy-in: With many different stakeholders in your organisation influencing marketing
decisions, it’s essential to ensure that you all start on the same page. A co-ordinated,
long-term vision and good internal communications are crucial to building and
maintaining a successful content marketing strategy.
• Put the customer at the centre of your strategy: Develop personas and map out the
buyer journey to understand the needs
of your prospects and how they
want to consume content. By
understanding your buyers, you can
MAXIMISE RESULTS:
provide relevant, high-value content
which further deepens engagement
A smart approach to content can let you achieve
and generates better qualified leads.
• Make content relevant: Align content
to your audience and their stage in
the buyer journey. Engage customers
on their own terms with valuable
information that can solve their
current challenges, and make it
accessible across the right formats
and devices.
more with a minimal investment of time or
budget:
• Switch formats or channels
• Refocus content for a new audience
• Combine existing pieces to create something
entirely new
• Make content easy to discover and
share: Optimise your content for
search engines and social media to
make sure your brand is front and
centre when customers go looking for information.
Ideally, content should be so engaging that people want to share it with others, so make it
easy to do so.
• Make the most of what you have: Reusing or repurposing existing content for new
audiences, or different moments in the buyer journey, can be a fantastic way to stretch
your budget and give your results a boost at a minimal cost.
• Measure results and refine your strategy: Set clear, measureable KPIs at every stage and
ensure you are ready to track click-throughs and other crucial metrics as buyers engage
with your content. Your strategy should never be set in stone: be ready to adapt your
approach as you see what works and what doesn’t.
Content Marketing 101: How to make it work for your business from strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE
6. LEARN MORE
There’s an old saying that “if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. It’s
time to stop bludgeoning prospects with the hammer of traditional marketing and pick up
the brand new toolset of content marketing. It’s time to show customers that you can see
the world through their eyes, understand the challenges they face and have the solution to
their problems.
With the right content, planned and delivered using the right strategy and methods, you’ll
be able to generate better quality, self-selected leads and send sales conversions
skyrocketing.
If you’re ready to learn more about how to implement a successful content marketing
strategy, visit the First Base website or drop us a line at hello@hitfirstbase.com.
Content Marketing 101: How to make it work for your business from strategy to execution
FIRSTBASE