Why should I write content, says the salesman, it’s the marketing team’s job, not mine!
A lot of companies mistakenly think of content marketing as an advertising strategy that should be created only by the marketing team. While this department might play a big role in terms of overall campaign strategy, the truth is that taking an organizational approach to content marketing with other departments gives you more opportunities to connect with your target customers.
In this article I’ll share with you why content creation should be part of your organisation’s culture. You may be surprised to learn how important the benefits of content nurturing can be.
Everyone should know how content fits in the Buyer Journey
Everybody need to understand why you’re asking them to participate in the content creation process. You need to teach everyone that the better your content is, the better prospects feel about your business and the faster they move through the cycles related to their new buyer journey.
Create a Content Marketing Strategy
You’ll need to define :
- What content you need
- What type of format content should be in (video, e-book, infographic, etc...)
- Where in the prospect’s journey the content needs to be applied
- How content impacts other areas of marketing and sales.
Your website is going to use content, so you have to plan where the new content is going to be on your website and how it will influence your customers. Your sales team is also going to need content. So your content needs to be designed specifically to help your prospects get smart and start trusting you.
Improve expert insights and knowledge
The idea behind content marketing is to answer the questions your customers have and help them solve their problems.
Who in your organisation is most likely to have in-depth understanding and knowledge of your industry? Well, it’s not always going to be the marketing department.
That’s why, front line staff such as customer service representatives and sales agents will be most likely to talk about problems and challenges with actual customers. On the other hand, those working in research and development might know more about the future of the industry, what customers can expect and how they are preparing for change.
Employees working in the operations side of the business often have the sharpest understanding of the job. They should therefore be looked as experts.
More Content = More Leads
This is an obvious benefit of getting all employees involved in creating content for your company. More people producing content = more content = more SEO & promotional opportunities = greater traffic to your website = more opportunities to convert them into customers = more customers.
Use Data to Measure Your Content Effort
Data analysis is going to be important in this effort. People participating would like to know how their content is performing, and you’d like to reward people who create high-performing content. In order to track the performance of your content, you’ll have to track views, shares, comments, downloads, conversion rates or other metrics of your choice. However, for the first time in company history, all employees might be able to see how they directly impacted prospects to become new customers. Isn’t that neat?
What are the benefits of a company-wide content strategy?
Increase Employee Knowledge
Asking employees to research a particular piece of content that clearly explains that topic to your customers will therefore benefit the employee.
Creating content is an excellent way for staff members to see things from your customers’ perspective and to think about your industry. They’ll keep up to date with industry trends and the impact these have on customer needs.
A better way to train your employees
Breaking topics down into clear, digestible content helps employees be better trainers, while simultaneously producing content that can be used for employee training!
A lead to innovation
Creating content is all about helping customers to understand your industry, overcome challenges and make decisions. If a particular problem is highlighted that you can’t answer or has no adequate solution your company could maybe take the lead on.
Increase engagement and loyalty with your brand
Giving your employees an active role as brand storytellers demonstrates that you trust and value them. Employees who act as brand storytellers will feel more invested in your company.
To conclude, the main idea that you should remember is that content is critical to nurture prospects. So, all of these content strategy questions need to be thought through and applied to your content creation efforts.
