Blueprint of Marketing Campaign
Content
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CONTENTS
Introduction 5 Forming an Editorial Board 7 Planning Your Marketing Campaigns 8 Content Pillars: The Key to Efficient Content Marketing 12 Distribution: Levels of the Funnel and Key Departments 16 Structure: Organizing Your Team and Editorial Calendar 22 Let’s Review 26 Your Blueprint Starts Here: Exercises for the Modern Marketer 28
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INTRODUCTION
Over the past 15 years, content has become critical to successful marketing campaigns by driving website traffic, generating leads, and delivering revenue. While buyers used to contact vendors directly for information on their products or services, they now research their options online. In fact, buyers complete up to 70% of their journey before ever even contacting sales.1 This is an exciting shift resulting in more responsibility, budget, and influence given to marketers within their organizations. Today marketing owns the top half of the funnel, and the best way to engage buyers and pull them through that funnel is with educational, valuable content that addresses their concerns and interests. However, understanding the importance of content and executing a streamlined strategy are two very different things. While modern marketers know content is key in this buyer-controlled world, there are still huge gaps in the content process that create inefficiencies and stunt organizational productivity. This is especially true when individual departments are responsible for producing and delivering their own unique content. As distribution channels multiply, each team struggles to create enough buyer-centric content to meet the increasing demand, yet SiriusDecisions recently reported that 60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused.2 This seemingly contradictory situation (not enough content and too much unused content) reveals a broken system. Without a unified process across departments, time and resources are wasted on ineffective assets that burn up budget without delivering results. Oracle Eloqua, The Grande Guide to Sales Enablement, 2010. PDF. bit.ly/EloquaSalesEnablement SiriusDecisions. “B-to-B Content: The Revolution Is Now.” Presentation. SiriusDecisions Summit, San Diego, CA. May 9, 2013. bit.ly/ContentModel
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60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused
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So how can you, the modern marketer, create an efficient business process that facilitates content marketing and achieves your specific goals? The answer: by planning strategic marketing campaigns, establishing streamlined processes, and organizing your team to execute initiatives in a more aligned and productive way. Bridging the content gaps in your organization helps you coordinate the efforts of your teams, but also enables you to create superior customer engagements because you’re presenting a more united front to those who consume your content. This eBook will show you how to do just that. It will describe how to execute a cohesive plan aligned with your company’s goals, organize your campaigns, and coordinate content distribution across departments and stages of the funnel.
LET’S GET
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FORMING AN EDITORIAL BOARD
In many organizations, one of the biggest obstacles to a streamlined process is siloed departments developing their own mini-operations for content production. Each team—specifically social media, web, marketing operations or demand generation, sales, and customer success—is busy producing unique, but suboptimal, content instead of collaborating on mutually beneficial assets. Not only does this waste time and resources but brand messaging is inconsistent as prospects move down the funnel, resulting in a disjointed buyer experience. For example, say a potential buyer (let’s call her Sara) follows Company X on Twitter. Sara likes the clever tweets Company X shares, specifically on a particular topic that she’s struggling to understand. Curious to find out more, she visits the company website and subscribes to email updates. However, the emails Sara receives don’t mention the topics that originally captured her attention, and the tone of the message is off-putting. After a few weeks, she loses interest and unsubscribes. If the social media team responsible for Twitter and the demand generation team responsible for email marketing campaigns were aligned, promoting the same initiatives at the same time with consistent messaging, they wouldn’t have lost permission to communicate with Sara, a potential buyer of their product.
Each department needs to have a seat at the table. And we mean that literally.
How can you make sure this isn’t happening in your organization? The first step to a unified process is to gather at least one stakeholder from the departments managing content distribution at all stages of the funnel: the top (social and web), middle (marketing operations or demand generation), bottom (sales), as well as post-sale (customer success). Each department needs to have a seat at the table. And we mean that literally. These representatives will make up your Editorial Board.
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This group should gather on a quarterly basis to decide upon key themes and initiatives, map out the campaign calendar, plan the production of major content assets, and coordinate distribution efforts to be synchronized across departments. Not only will this meeting keep all internal stakeholders aware of campaign timing, but it ensures a cohesive strategy geared toward reaching company goals, generating traffic and qualified leads, and delivering revenue. Once you’ve gathered your Editorial Board, it’s time to organize the main campaigns for the year, quarter, and month.
PLANNING YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Campaign planning occurs on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Annual planning maps out the overarching themes and campaigns for the year, quarterly planning includes the Editorial Board and covers the timing, topics, and main content assets of your campaigns, and monthly planning organizes the subsidiary assets that will make up those campaigns and the details of distribution. During each of these time frames, the marketing team is looking at goals (leads, MQLs, revenue) and allocating budget to achieve those goals. This is when you, the modern marketer, with the help of the Editorial Board, start to sketch out the blueprint for your modern marketing campaign. During the planning process, focus on four main categories: themes, product updates, events, and significant content assets.
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IT STARTS WITH YOUR BUYERS
Content, like your product, must start with your buyers’ interests and needs. Unless your content addresses what they care about most, buyers will never see your organization as a valuable resource for information and viable solutions. Start by brainstorming high-level themes for the quarter. These themes should draw upon topics that speak to two points: the concerns of your buyers and the expertise of your company. We call the convergence of these two areas the content “sweet spot.” Not only are your target buyers hungry for information on these topics, but your company lives and breathes them every day.
sweet spot
CUSTOMER INTEREST AND NEEDS
UNIQUE BRAND EXPERTISE AND VALUE
If you’re struggling to find the creative kick to drum up new ideas or break out of your current ineffective messaging, go back to these basic themes. They will provide a solid foundation for your content initiatives moving forward.
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“I think of it as two layers. There are usually thought leadership-oriented campaigns and initiatives that are centered around the brand and how they want to be known. Then, there are tactical campaigns that are centered around products and services.”
– Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing
AND FEATURE UPDATES
When planning your marketing initiatives, you have to understand the major product, service, or feature releases scheduled for the quarter or year. But don’t fall into the trap of creating content about your feature’s awesome attributes. Your buyers don’t care. Instead, talk about the problem behind the solution. How will this product make someone’s life easier? What is the challenge this feature solves for your buyers? By focusing on the problem instead of the solution, you’ll better understand and articulate the topics that will get buyers really interested in what your organization has to offer.
Events such as conferences, user groups, and virtual tours are still some of the most effective lead generation strategies for marketers. When choosing the events you’re going to host, sponsor, or speak during, revisit your quarterly themes and the “problems” behind the solutions. What topics will be covered at these events, and are they aligned with your own key themes and initiatives? Map out the events you decide to attend and host based on these criteria. This will help you plan timelines for appropriate content to present and share during conferences, user groups, or virtual tours.
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PILLARS
A content pillar is a significant and comprehensive content asset that supports marketing initiatives. Examples of content pillars include eBooks, reports, and guides. (We’ll explore content pillars more deeply in the next chapter.) As you’ve already learned, it’s important to coordinate the timing and topics for your quarterly themes, product updates, and events. The same principle applies to content pillars. When considering the big content assets you’re planning to produce in a quarter or year, think about how they will complement other initiatives on your calendar. For example, if someone in your organization is presenting on a specific topic at an event, create an eBook around that same topic to distribute to attendees.
YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
When building your campaigns, look three to four quarters ahead. Start by sketching out the general timing of each theme, product update, event, and content pillar. Every quarter, revisit your plan and revise it with updated information and new initiatives. Once a campaign is 90 days from launching, sit down and flesh out the month-by-month details and schedule all content assets, big and small. Once you have these pieces mapped out on a quarterly and monthly calendar, you’ll be able to see how related campaigns can be coordinated to maximize the value and reach of internal resources. This also has implications for the allocation of your marketing budget. Instead of using budget to create unique content for every event, theme, product update, and content pillar, strategize how a single asset can cover topics that support multiple initiatives.
“The campaign should drive the content strategy and the two must be aligned to ensure a consistent message across multiple platforms.”
– Caroline Lalla, 9 Web Marketing Manager at Lenovo
CONTENT PILLARS: THE KEY TO EFFICIENT CONTENT MARKETING
Now that you know the major themes and campaigns, it’s time to plan the content assets that will support each of those initiatives, populate the editorial calendar, and fuel email marketing and social media campaigns. According to the Content Marketing Institute, producing enough content is the biggest challenge cited by B2B marketers.3 But it doesn’t have to be so hard. By investing resources in producing extensive, high-quality content assets, you’ll be able to fill all of the important marketing channels. We call these overarching assets “content pillars.” As discussed in the last chapter, a content pillar is a substantive and informative work on a specific topic or theme that can be broken into many derivative pieces of content to cover multiple channels. A content pillar can be an eBook, report, guide, long video, or any significant (meaning large and thorough) content asset. By creating one content pillar instead of many disconnected, one-off pieces, it’s easy to break that finished asset into blog posts, infographics, videos, emails, social media updates, and other formats to attract different kinds of customer segments and communities across channels.
CONTENT REUSE
The first step in planning your content pillar is figuring out how you’re going to create that larger piece of content, and how to get the most out every section.
Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends–North America, 2012. PDF. bit.ly/ContentMarketingTrends
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Let’s use an eBook as an example. Typically, your content team would conduct interviews with thought leaders to get their feedback on the topics you’re covering in the eBook. You’ll also write text that expands upon specific ideas and includes best practices and how-tos. Maybe you’ll collect data to back up those claims and create an infographic to be featured in the eBook. Whew! That’s already a lot of work, isn’t it? Well, before you dive in, let’s think about how you could turn each task into a content gold mine. When you conduct interviews with thought leaders, why not hire a videographer to capture their answers on tape? Then, use their responses to inform the text, while also creating videos around specific themes covered in the eBook. You also can write a blog post on each video you produce, which can then be shared via all your social channels. The relevant blog posts and videos can be incorporated into your marketing automation campaigns to further attract attention and build the authority of your organization. This is just one example of how a few interviews can lead to many different derivative assets, and the principle applies to every element of a content pillar. Let’s break it down in full detail.
“When we create content, we think about how many ways it can be re-purposed into different formats. This ensures that we get the most value out of one content asset.”
– Caroline Lalla, Web Marketing Manager at Lenovo
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THE CONTENT PILLAR APPROACH
A content pillar is a significant and comprehensive content asset, such as an eBook, guide, or report, that supports marketing initiatives. A single pillar can be broken into many derivative content assets to fill the editorial calendar and fuel distribution channels.
social
24 44 24
6
social
blog posts blog posts
social
12
social
2
blog posts
SlideShare SlideShare
11
6
social
YouTube videos
4
36
social emails
emails
3
infographic infographic
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4
videos
landing pages
4
blog posts
2
3
blog posts
6
eBook
1
email blast
1
social
24
social
12
emails
3
PowerPoint PowerPoint
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landing page
1
6 1
social
14
social
11 2
webinar webinar
SlideShare
1
social
18
YouTube video
11 1
video video
blog posts
1
blog post
6
social
1
blog post
landing page
12
social
6
12
social
6
social
6
social
Here’s an overview of how many assets one eBook can produce:
1 eBook =
4 Videos (of thought leader interviews) 4 YouTube Videos (uploaded videos) 4 Blog Posts (1 on each video) 24 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 24 Social Media Updates (6 per video) 4 Website Landing Pages (1 for each video) 2 Blog Posts (driving traffic to video landing pages) 12 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 24 Social Media Updates (6 per landing page) 6 Blog Posts (on eBook text) 36 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 3 Emails for Nurture/Targeted Email Campaigns (incorporating select posts) 1 PowerPoint (on themes and topics from eBook) 1 Webinar (on themes and topics from eBook) 2 Blog Posts (promoting webinar and using text from eBook) 12 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 3 Emails (invitation, reminder, and follow up emails) 14 Social Media Updates (promoting webinar registration) 1 Video (from recorded webinar) 1 YouTube Video 6 Social Media Updates (promoting video) 1 Blog Post (with embedded video) 6 Social Media Updates 1 Video Landing Page 6 Social Media Updates (promoting video on website) 1 SlideShare Presentation (uploaded presentation) 1 Blog Post (with embedded SlideShare) 6 Social Media Updates (promoting blog post) 6 Social Media Updates (promoting SlideShare) 1 Infographic (on data collected for eBook) 6 Social Media Updates (promoting infographic) 2 Blog Posts (with embedded infographic) 12 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 1 SlideShare Presentation (uploaded infographic) 6 Social Media Updates (driving traffic to SlideShare channel) 1 Landing Page (gating eBook download) 18 Social Media Updates (driving traffic to eBook landing page) 1 Email Blast (promoting eBook download) 3 Emails for Nurture/Targeted Email Campaigns (promoting eBook download)
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And that’s only owned media! Any of the videos, blog posts, infographics, presentations, webinars, and also the eBook can be promoted through partner channels and paid media or pitched for syndication. This approach also affects planning and scheduling on an annual, quarterly, and monthly scale. For example, one pillar asset can produce at least eighteen blog posts. If you post five days a week, that will fill your editorial calendar for a full month. With that in mind, if you create a content pillar every month, your blog calendar will be set for the entire year.
DISTRIBUTION: LEVELS OF THE FUNNEL AND KEY DEPARTMENTS
You now know just how many assets a single content pillar can produce, and when planned effectively, reusing content can support content production across the organization. In fact, during distribution all of that careful planning, scheduling, and organizing finally pays off for the marketing department and each department represented in the Editorial Board. The result: the execution of a cohesive marketing message and strategy across all stages of the funnel. Between the formation of an Editorial Board and the content pillar approach, the broken pieces of those previously siloed operations fuse into a unified process. This single system ensures consistency, efficiency, and organization across all departments. Instead of each department spending time creating unique content, they can spend their time strategizing how to reach and engage buyers with these content assets and more effectively move buyers down the funnel toward purchase.
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Between the formation of an Editorial Board and the content pillar approach, the broken pieces of those previously siloed operations fuse into a uniļ¬ed process.
WEB AND SOCIAL TEAMS
At the top of the funnel, the main goals for content are to drive traffic to your website and convert visitors into leads. Here, bitesize pieces of content entertain and inform your target buyers. These smaller content assets are non-intrusive and effective ways to start building a relationship and earn permission to continue communicating. Content pillars and their main derivative assets produce lots of top-of-funnel content for the social and web teams. For example, when we broke down the content pillar in the last chapter, it resulted in over 200 social media updates! Instead of the social media and web teams struggling to come up with new and consumable content to publish across the organization’s social channels, blog, and website, providing them with both large and derivative assets will give them significant content they can break down and repurpose to fuel those top-offunnel channels. Examples of top-of-funnel content include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and other social channels, as well as blog posts and articles, infographics, presentations, and videos.
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“We take the corporate marketing strategies...and we match those up with what we know works on our social networks.”
– Jennifer Lashua, Global Social Media Strategist at Intel
MARKETING OPERATIONS AND DEMAND GENERATION TEAMS
At this point, buyers at the middle of the funnel have already provided their contact information by signing up for a webinar, downloading an eBook, attending an event, or through other interactions with your organization and content. They’ve already entered your database. At this stage of the funnel, the demand generation or marketing operations team is responsible for executing email marketing campaigns or working within marketing automation software to deliver targeted content. They’re also responsible for tracking a buyer’s progress down the funnel. Email marketing campaigns can’t run without content, and assets from the content pillar can be used in a variety of ways. Blog posts and videos can be incorporated into ongoing nurture campaigns or email marketing tracks. Also, full email campaigns should be built around the publication of a content asset, especially when the content is targeted toward specific personas in your database. When content and email marketing are working in sync, the results speak for themselves. In 2012 DocuSign implemented a total of 36 automated nurture programs to deliver targeted content to their prospects. You know what else happened that year? Their pipeline doubled, revenue jumped, and they reached 127% of their targets at the first half of the year.
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Middle-of-the-funnel content includes the text in the actual email that is sent, the blog posts and articles linked to within it, as well as full email campaigns around pillar content assets, such as an eBook.
SALES TEAM
The goal at the bottom of the funnel is pretty straightforward: close deals. Once a lead has indicated they’re ready to speak with sales about your organization’s solution (whether by saying they want to talk to sales or through their Digital Body Language, or a person’s behavioral patterns), they move from the middle to the bottom of the funnel. Effectively using content at the bottom of the funnel is dependent on sound communication with the sales team about what content is being produced, the themes of that content and whom it targets, and suggestions for how to use it successfully. When delivered correctly, the content at the bottom of the funnel helps sales be seen as thought leaders and knowledgeable resources, which has been proven to be the most effective sales tactic. And it works! Corporate Executive Board (CEB) surveyed more than 6,000 sales reps for their bestselling book, The Challenger Sale,4 written by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. What did they find? The sales rep who pushed buyers to think differently, educated buyers with new insights, and tailored conversations to their needs consistently outperformed the others. Content is key to becoming a Challenger. Through the content pillar approach, the sales team is empowered to share relevant and informative content with buyers, provide them with new and challenging insights, and ultimately show them why your organization’s solution is the right one.
Dixon, Matthew, and Brent Adamson. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. New York: Portfolio/ Penguin, 2011. bit.ly/ChallengerSaleBook
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“The best companies don’t win through the quality of the products they sell, but through the quality of the insight they deliver as part of the sale itself.”
– Jill Rowley, Oracle Eloqua
At this stage, the best content can be both educational and product-centric. Content such as eBooks or guides can push buyers to think differently about their strategies and processes, while more product-centric pieces provide the buyer with exactly what they need to know about your product, how it can help them and their organization, how it’s helped other organizations in their industry, and what the unique value proposition is relative to your competitors. These assets include case studies, testimonials, pricing sheets, product overviews, and competitive reviews.
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER SUCCESS TEAM
Once the opportunity has closed, congrats! That’s a great win for the organization and a step toward meeting your revenue goals. But those content assets aren’t done working their magic yet. Post-sale, content is as important as ever. You still need to demonstrate value to your customers and ensure they’re successfully using your product to its full potential within their organization. Whereas focusing on buyer-centric content at the top of the funnel is becoming more common, many organizations revert to bombarding customers with product-centric and upsell content once the deal is done. But the same top-of-funnel principles still apply below the funnel. Instead of pushing information on that awesome new feature, provide customers with content that will
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help them thrive. Because content pillars are educational and informative, they (and their derivative assets) are a great way for account management and customer success teams to stay in touch with customers and keep relationships from going cold. Also, the same content that “challenges” buyers at the bottom of the funnel can help customers be even more successful, especially with the help of your product or service. And successful customers are almost always happy customers. These happy customers are very important for your marketing, too, as they will be more likely to provide you with case studies and testimonials to add into your campaign and asset mix. When thinking about content strategy, remember the journey from thought leadership all the way to advocacy, which is integral to maximizing the value of your production efforts.
NOW WHAT?
By reusing and repurposing a single content pillar, each department represented by the Editorial Board can meet the content demands of important distribution channels more easily and efficiently. And because each department will save time on production, it can be used to analyze and test which formats and topics work best at different stages of the funnel, ultimately improving future campaigns.
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STRUCTURE: ORGANIZING YOUR TEAM AND EDITORIAL CALENDAR
AN IMPORTANT ROLE
With so many teams and departments necessary for the successful execution of your content marketing strategy, you need someone to step in as the manager of these communications and conversations. Look internally or hire a Managing Editor or Content Operation Manager to fill this role and organize the communications and process. Experienced journalists and editors make fantastic Managing Editors because they work under timelines and deadlines, understand the power of a good headline and call to action, know how to communicate (internally and externally), and can get to the heart of a compelling story. This person also needs to be able to manage content workflow, keep responsible stakeholders updated, and manage content campaign timelines. By having someone who owns this role, you’ll be able to turn your content strategy into an efficient and scalable process. It’s worth the investment simply because editorially trained professionals understand how to lead your organization through the changing marketing landscape where buyer preferences dictate the engagement process. With a “writer’s
Experienced journalists and editors make fantastic Managing Editors
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mind” on your marketing team, the content perspective is less about your product and more about the value, a balance than can be hard to strike with a team of marketing-minded individuals.
THE EDITORIAL CALENDAR
The calendar is the manifestation of all the components covered in this eBook. It brings together individual themes, events, product releases, content pillars, derivative assets, and content for all stages of the funnel into one organized, cohesive marketing strategy. The editorial calendar is, truly, the ultimate blueprint for your marketing campaigns. It helps you to map the moving pieces required for execution and keep all of those stakeholders we discussed earlier updated on their responsibilities and timelines. The editorial calendar organizes the larger themes behind all marketing initiatives, maps out the timing of specific campaigns, keeps the production and publication of all content assets on track, and sets the distribution schedule. It’s the guide for how all the pieces of a modern marketing campaign function as a whole.
The editorial calendar is, truly, the ultimate blueprint for your marketing campaigns.
Not only does the editorial calendar help organize all these intertwined efforts, but it serves as a central place where each Editorial Board member, project manager, and contributor can access the information necessary to stay on task and on deadline, or can plan ahead for upcoming initiatives and the publication of new content. The editorial calendar should extend beyond the publish or due date. Create a checklist of tasks for each item, so anyone can see where a project is in production on any day or week. Are you an Eloqua 10 user? Download the Kapost Calendar App to see all of your Eloqua campaigns and emails organized by month and quarter. bit.ly/KapostApp
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BUILDING A UNIFIED CONTENT PROCESS
Follow these four steps to establish an efficient process that supports the content needs of each department.
02
ORGANIZE
Agreed upon ideas are organized into strategic campaigns based on themes, product updates, and events. The Managing Editor plans major content assets called content pillars to support one or multiple campaigns across departments.
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ALIGN
The Editorial Board gathers to discuss the big themes and initiatives for upcoming quarters, and all representatives share the content needs and ideas from their departments.
Q1
THEME
Q2
EVENT
Q3
FEATURE RELEASE
Q4
THEME
CONTENT PILLAR
FEATURE RELEASE
THEME
EVENT
PRODUCT UPDATE
EVENT
CONTENT PILLAR
CONTENT PILLAR
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CALENDAR
EDITORIAL CALENDAR
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DISTRIBUTE
Once published, each department pushes these content assets through distribution channels reaching buyers at the top, middle, bottom, and post-sale stage of the funnel.
Each department maps how it will reuse content pillars by breaking them into multiple derivative assets, filling the editorial calendar and meeting their content needs.
LET’S REVIEW
Way to go, you modern marketer! Before you leap into planning your own modern marketing campaign, let’s review the key takeaways from the eBook: Form an Editorial Board made up of key stakeholders from each department responsible for content distribution at the top, middle, bottom, and below the funnel. Identify your content sweet spot that speaks to your buyers’ interests and your brand’s expertise. Map out big themes, events, and product releases on your organization’s calendar. From there, look for overlapping topics and plan relevant content pillars to support them. Focus on a single content pillar, then break it into many derivative assets to populate your editorial calendar and fill the content needs of each department, instead of having those departments create their own unique content. Hire a Managing Editor or Content Operation Manager to own communications across departments and keep all the moving pieces in order. Organize all initiatives, from high-level themes through tweets, in a content and campaign calendar. This will provide cross-department visibility and keep key stakeholders updated.
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READY TO START
Now that you know how to create and organize a modern marketing campaign, design your own blueprint using the following worksheets that we’ve developed to make your efforts a success.
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YOUR BLUEPRINT STARTS HERE: EXERCISES FOR THE MODERN MARKETER
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Who will be on your Editorial Board? Department or Business Unit
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
Name/Title
When (how often) will the Editorial Board meet?
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MANAGING EDITOR
What are the key attributes you need in a Managing Editor or Content Operations Manager? We’ll get you started with some ideas: deadline-driven, creative, skilled in communication, knowledgeable of your product or service, accomplished writer and editor...
What will be the key responsibilities for this role within your organization?
Who will be your Managing Editor or Content Operations Manager, or do you need to hire one?
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CONTENT SWEET SPOT
List the main concerns of your customers: List your brand’s main points of value and expertise:
Find the sweet spot. List the topics around which your customers’ interests and your expertise intersect:
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PRODUCT UPDATES
List the product, feature, or service updates and releases planned for the year. Write down one per line: Now, list the problem that each of these solve for your target buyers. Ask yourself: How will this make our customers’ lives better?
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
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EVENTS
List the events you’re thinking of attending, sponsoring, or participating in this year.
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
What themes or topics will be addressed at this event that also coincide with your “sweet spot” topics?
Circle the events that address your target buyers as well as your sweet spot topics.
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CONTENT PILLARS FOR YOUR MODERN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
In the exercises around your content sweet spot, main product updates, and events, what key themes and topics emerged? Write them below:
Want help organizing these assets in Eloqua 10? This should help: bit.ly/KapostApp
Circle the best candidates for in-depth content pillars. Remember, a content pillar is a significant and comprehensive content asset that supports marketing initiatives. Now, take one of these content pillar ideas and imagine you’re creating an eBook, guide, report, or another significant content asset about that topic. Populate the chart below to see how many derivative assets you can create from just a single arm of a content pillar. Use the complete Content Pillar Approach graph on page 12 for inspiration.
Content pillar
Main derivative asset
Now that you know how easy it is to break a content pillar into many pieces, map out all possible derivative assets for upcoming content pillars. This will come in handy when you start populating your editorial calendar.
ANNUAL CALENDAR
Take the main themes and content pillars that you’ve assembled in previous exercises. Begin to organize them by month and quarter in the editorial calendar below. Q1 January February March
[topic 1] [topic 2] Q2 April May June
July
Q3 August
September
Q4 October November December
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MONTHLY CALENDAR
Go back to the content pillar exercise. Now, start to map out each pillar and derivative asset on the monthly calendar. Set deadlines and publish dates on a day-to-day basis. Ideally, your calendar should also include information such as theme, content type, campaign, content type, author, etc. This daily-level calendar becomes the blueprint for your modern marketing campaign.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
[content 1]
[content 2] [content 3]
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CONTENTS
Introduction 5 Forming an Editorial Board 7 Planning Your Marketing Campaigns 8 Content Pillars: The Key to Efficient Content Marketing 12 Distribution: Levels of the Funnel and Key Departments 16 Structure: Organizing Your Team and Editorial Calendar 22 Let’s Review 26 Your Blueprint Starts Here: Exercises for the Modern Marketer 28
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INTRODUCTION
Over the past 15 years, content has become critical to successful marketing campaigns by driving website traffic, generating leads, and delivering revenue. While buyers used to contact vendors directly for information on their products or services, they now research their options online. In fact, buyers complete up to 70% of their journey before ever even contacting sales.1 This is an exciting shift resulting in more responsibility, budget, and influence given to marketers within their organizations. Today marketing owns the top half of the funnel, and the best way to engage buyers and pull them through that funnel is with educational, valuable content that addresses their concerns and interests. However, understanding the importance of content and executing a streamlined strategy are two very different things. While modern marketers know content is key in this buyer-controlled world, there are still huge gaps in the content process that create inefficiencies and stunt organizational productivity. This is especially true when individual departments are responsible for producing and delivering their own unique content. As distribution channels multiply, each team struggles to create enough buyer-centric content to meet the increasing demand, yet SiriusDecisions recently reported that 60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused.2 This seemingly contradictory situation (not enough content and too much unused content) reveals a broken system. Without a unified process across departments, time and resources are wasted on ineffective assets that burn up budget without delivering results. Oracle Eloqua, The Grande Guide to Sales Enablement, 2010. PDF. bit.ly/EloquaSalesEnablement SiriusDecisions. “B-to-B Content: The Revolution Is Now.” Presentation. SiriusDecisions Summit, San Diego, CA. May 9, 2013. bit.ly/ContentModel
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60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused
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So how can you, the modern marketer, create an efficient business process that facilitates content marketing and achieves your specific goals? The answer: by planning strategic marketing campaigns, establishing streamlined processes, and organizing your team to execute initiatives in a more aligned and productive way. Bridging the content gaps in your organization helps you coordinate the efforts of your teams, but also enables you to create superior customer engagements because you’re presenting a more united front to those who consume your content. This eBook will show you how to do just that. It will describe how to execute a cohesive plan aligned with your company’s goals, organize your campaigns, and coordinate content distribution across departments and stages of the funnel.
LET’S GET
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FORMING AN EDITORIAL BOARD
In many organizations, one of the biggest obstacles to a streamlined process is siloed departments developing their own mini-operations for content production. Each team—specifically social media, web, marketing operations or demand generation, sales, and customer success—is busy producing unique, but suboptimal, content instead of collaborating on mutually beneficial assets. Not only does this waste time and resources but brand messaging is inconsistent as prospects move down the funnel, resulting in a disjointed buyer experience. For example, say a potential buyer (let’s call her Sara) follows Company X on Twitter. Sara likes the clever tweets Company X shares, specifically on a particular topic that she’s struggling to understand. Curious to find out more, she visits the company website and subscribes to email updates. However, the emails Sara receives don’t mention the topics that originally captured her attention, and the tone of the message is off-putting. After a few weeks, she loses interest and unsubscribes. If the social media team responsible for Twitter and the demand generation team responsible for email marketing campaigns were aligned, promoting the same initiatives at the same time with consistent messaging, they wouldn’t have lost permission to communicate with Sara, a potential buyer of their product.
Each department needs to have a seat at the table. And we mean that literally.
How can you make sure this isn’t happening in your organization? The first step to a unified process is to gather at least one stakeholder from the departments managing content distribution at all stages of the funnel: the top (social and web), middle (marketing operations or demand generation), bottom (sales), as well as post-sale (customer success). Each department needs to have a seat at the table. And we mean that literally. These representatives will make up your Editorial Board.
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This group should gather on a quarterly basis to decide upon key themes and initiatives, map out the campaign calendar, plan the production of major content assets, and coordinate distribution efforts to be synchronized across departments. Not only will this meeting keep all internal stakeholders aware of campaign timing, but it ensures a cohesive strategy geared toward reaching company goals, generating traffic and qualified leads, and delivering revenue. Once you’ve gathered your Editorial Board, it’s time to organize the main campaigns for the year, quarter, and month.
PLANNING YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Campaign planning occurs on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Annual planning maps out the overarching themes and campaigns for the year, quarterly planning includes the Editorial Board and covers the timing, topics, and main content assets of your campaigns, and monthly planning organizes the subsidiary assets that will make up those campaigns and the details of distribution. During each of these time frames, the marketing team is looking at goals (leads, MQLs, revenue) and allocating budget to achieve those goals. This is when you, the modern marketer, with the help of the Editorial Board, start to sketch out the blueprint for your modern marketing campaign. During the planning process, focus on four main categories: themes, product updates, events, and significant content assets.
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IT STARTS WITH YOUR BUYERS
Content, like your product, must start with your buyers’ interests and needs. Unless your content addresses what they care about most, buyers will never see your organization as a valuable resource for information and viable solutions. Start by brainstorming high-level themes for the quarter. These themes should draw upon topics that speak to two points: the concerns of your buyers and the expertise of your company. We call the convergence of these two areas the content “sweet spot.” Not only are your target buyers hungry for information on these topics, but your company lives and breathes them every day.
sweet spot
CUSTOMER INTEREST AND NEEDS
UNIQUE BRAND EXPERTISE AND VALUE
If you’re struggling to find the creative kick to drum up new ideas or break out of your current ineffective messaging, go back to these basic themes. They will provide a solid foundation for your content initiatives moving forward.
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“I think of it as two layers. There are usually thought leadership-oriented campaigns and initiatives that are centered around the brand and how they want to be known. Then, there are tactical campaigns that are centered around products and services.”
– Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing
AND FEATURE UPDATES
When planning your marketing initiatives, you have to understand the major product, service, or feature releases scheduled for the quarter or year. But don’t fall into the trap of creating content about your feature’s awesome attributes. Your buyers don’t care. Instead, talk about the problem behind the solution. How will this product make someone’s life easier? What is the challenge this feature solves for your buyers? By focusing on the problem instead of the solution, you’ll better understand and articulate the topics that will get buyers really interested in what your organization has to offer.
Events such as conferences, user groups, and virtual tours are still some of the most effective lead generation strategies for marketers. When choosing the events you’re going to host, sponsor, or speak during, revisit your quarterly themes and the “problems” behind the solutions. What topics will be covered at these events, and are they aligned with your own key themes and initiatives? Map out the events you decide to attend and host based on these criteria. This will help you plan timelines for appropriate content to present and share during conferences, user groups, or virtual tours.
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PILLARS
A content pillar is a significant and comprehensive content asset that supports marketing initiatives. Examples of content pillars include eBooks, reports, and guides. (We’ll explore content pillars more deeply in the next chapter.) As you’ve already learned, it’s important to coordinate the timing and topics for your quarterly themes, product updates, and events. The same principle applies to content pillars. When considering the big content assets you’re planning to produce in a quarter or year, think about how they will complement other initiatives on your calendar. For example, if someone in your organization is presenting on a specific topic at an event, create an eBook around that same topic to distribute to attendees.
YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
When building your campaigns, look three to four quarters ahead. Start by sketching out the general timing of each theme, product update, event, and content pillar. Every quarter, revisit your plan and revise it with updated information and new initiatives. Once a campaign is 90 days from launching, sit down and flesh out the month-by-month details and schedule all content assets, big and small. Once you have these pieces mapped out on a quarterly and monthly calendar, you’ll be able to see how related campaigns can be coordinated to maximize the value and reach of internal resources. This also has implications for the allocation of your marketing budget. Instead of using budget to create unique content for every event, theme, product update, and content pillar, strategize how a single asset can cover topics that support multiple initiatives.
“The campaign should drive the content strategy and the two must be aligned to ensure a consistent message across multiple platforms.”
– Caroline Lalla, 9 Web Marketing Manager at Lenovo
CONTENT PILLARS: THE KEY TO EFFICIENT CONTENT MARKETING
Now that you know the major themes and campaigns, it’s time to plan the content assets that will support each of those initiatives, populate the editorial calendar, and fuel email marketing and social media campaigns. According to the Content Marketing Institute, producing enough content is the biggest challenge cited by B2B marketers.3 But it doesn’t have to be so hard. By investing resources in producing extensive, high-quality content assets, you’ll be able to fill all of the important marketing channels. We call these overarching assets “content pillars.” As discussed in the last chapter, a content pillar is a substantive and informative work on a specific topic or theme that can be broken into many derivative pieces of content to cover multiple channels. A content pillar can be an eBook, report, guide, long video, or any significant (meaning large and thorough) content asset. By creating one content pillar instead of many disconnected, one-off pieces, it’s easy to break that finished asset into blog posts, infographics, videos, emails, social media updates, and other formats to attract different kinds of customer segments and communities across channels.
CONTENT REUSE
The first step in planning your content pillar is figuring out how you’re going to create that larger piece of content, and how to get the most out every section.
Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends–North America, 2012. PDF. bit.ly/ContentMarketingTrends
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3
Let’s use an eBook as an example. Typically, your content team would conduct interviews with thought leaders to get their feedback on the topics you’re covering in the eBook. You’ll also write text that expands upon specific ideas and includes best practices and how-tos. Maybe you’ll collect data to back up those claims and create an infographic to be featured in the eBook. Whew! That’s already a lot of work, isn’t it? Well, before you dive in, let’s think about how you could turn each task into a content gold mine. When you conduct interviews with thought leaders, why not hire a videographer to capture their answers on tape? Then, use their responses to inform the text, while also creating videos around specific themes covered in the eBook. You also can write a blog post on each video you produce, which can then be shared via all your social channels. The relevant blog posts and videos can be incorporated into your marketing automation campaigns to further attract attention and build the authority of your organization. This is just one example of how a few interviews can lead to many different derivative assets, and the principle applies to every element of a content pillar. Let’s break it down in full detail.
“When we create content, we think about how many ways it can be re-purposed into different formats. This ensures that we get the most value out of one content asset.”
– Caroline Lalla, Web Marketing Manager at Lenovo
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THE CONTENT PILLAR APPROACH
A content pillar is a significant and comprehensive content asset, such as an eBook, guide, or report, that supports marketing initiatives. A single pillar can be broken into many derivative content assets to fill the editorial calendar and fuel distribution channels.
social
24 44 24
6
social
blog posts blog posts
social
12
social
2
blog posts
SlideShare SlideShare
11
6
social
YouTube videos
4
36
social emails
emails
3
infographic infographic
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4
videos
landing pages
4
blog posts
2
3
blog posts
6
eBook
1
email blast
1
social
24
social
12
emails
3
PowerPoint PowerPoint
11
landing page
1
6 1
social
14
social
11 2
webinar webinar
SlideShare
1
social
18
YouTube video
11 1
video video
blog posts
1
blog post
6
social
1
blog post
landing page
12
social
6
12
social
6
social
6
social
Here’s an overview of how many assets one eBook can produce:
1 eBook =
4 Videos (of thought leader interviews) 4 YouTube Videos (uploaded videos) 4 Blog Posts (1 on each video) 24 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 24 Social Media Updates (6 per video) 4 Website Landing Pages (1 for each video) 2 Blog Posts (driving traffic to video landing pages) 12 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 24 Social Media Updates (6 per landing page) 6 Blog Posts (on eBook text) 36 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 3 Emails for Nurture/Targeted Email Campaigns (incorporating select posts) 1 PowerPoint (on themes and topics from eBook) 1 Webinar (on themes and topics from eBook) 2 Blog Posts (promoting webinar and using text from eBook) 12 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 3 Emails (invitation, reminder, and follow up emails) 14 Social Media Updates (promoting webinar registration) 1 Video (from recorded webinar) 1 YouTube Video 6 Social Media Updates (promoting video) 1 Blog Post (with embedded video) 6 Social Media Updates 1 Video Landing Page 6 Social Media Updates (promoting video on website) 1 SlideShare Presentation (uploaded presentation) 1 Blog Post (with embedded SlideShare) 6 Social Media Updates (promoting blog post) 6 Social Media Updates (promoting SlideShare) 1 Infographic (on data collected for eBook) 6 Social Media Updates (promoting infographic) 2 Blog Posts (with embedded infographic) 12 Social Media Updates (6 per blog post) 1 SlideShare Presentation (uploaded infographic) 6 Social Media Updates (driving traffic to SlideShare channel) 1 Landing Page (gating eBook download) 18 Social Media Updates (driving traffic to eBook landing page) 1 Email Blast (promoting eBook download) 3 Emails for Nurture/Targeted Email Campaigns (promoting eBook download)
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And that’s only owned media! Any of the videos, blog posts, infographics, presentations, webinars, and also the eBook can be promoted through partner channels and paid media or pitched for syndication. This approach also affects planning and scheduling on an annual, quarterly, and monthly scale. For example, one pillar asset can produce at least eighteen blog posts. If you post five days a week, that will fill your editorial calendar for a full month. With that in mind, if you create a content pillar every month, your blog calendar will be set for the entire year.
DISTRIBUTION: LEVELS OF THE FUNNEL AND KEY DEPARTMENTS
You now know just how many assets a single content pillar can produce, and when planned effectively, reusing content can support content production across the organization. In fact, during distribution all of that careful planning, scheduling, and organizing finally pays off for the marketing department and each department represented in the Editorial Board. The result: the execution of a cohesive marketing message and strategy across all stages of the funnel. Between the formation of an Editorial Board and the content pillar approach, the broken pieces of those previously siloed operations fuse into a unified process. This single system ensures consistency, efficiency, and organization across all departments. Instead of each department spending time creating unique content, they can spend their time strategizing how to reach and engage buyers with these content assets and more effectively move buyers down the funnel toward purchase.
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Between the formation of an Editorial Board and the content pillar approach, the broken pieces of those previously siloed operations fuse into a uniļ¬ed process.
WEB AND SOCIAL TEAMS
At the top of the funnel, the main goals for content are to drive traffic to your website and convert visitors into leads. Here, bitesize pieces of content entertain and inform your target buyers. These smaller content assets are non-intrusive and effective ways to start building a relationship and earn permission to continue communicating. Content pillars and their main derivative assets produce lots of top-of-funnel content for the social and web teams. For example, when we broke down the content pillar in the last chapter, it resulted in over 200 social media updates! Instead of the social media and web teams struggling to come up with new and consumable content to publish across the organization’s social channels, blog, and website, providing them with both large and derivative assets will give them significant content they can break down and repurpose to fuel those top-offunnel channels. Examples of top-of-funnel content include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and other social channels, as well as blog posts and articles, infographics, presentations, and videos.
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“We take the corporate marketing strategies...and we match those up with what we know works on our social networks.”
– Jennifer Lashua, Global Social Media Strategist at Intel
MARKETING OPERATIONS AND DEMAND GENERATION TEAMS
At this point, buyers at the middle of the funnel have already provided their contact information by signing up for a webinar, downloading an eBook, attending an event, or through other interactions with your organization and content. They’ve already entered your database. At this stage of the funnel, the demand generation or marketing operations team is responsible for executing email marketing campaigns or working within marketing automation software to deliver targeted content. They’re also responsible for tracking a buyer’s progress down the funnel. Email marketing campaigns can’t run without content, and assets from the content pillar can be used in a variety of ways. Blog posts and videos can be incorporated into ongoing nurture campaigns or email marketing tracks. Also, full email campaigns should be built around the publication of a content asset, especially when the content is targeted toward specific personas in your database. When content and email marketing are working in sync, the results speak for themselves. In 2012 DocuSign implemented a total of 36 automated nurture programs to deliver targeted content to their prospects. You know what else happened that year? Their pipeline doubled, revenue jumped, and they reached 127% of their targets at the first half of the year.
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Middle-of-the-funnel content includes the text in the actual email that is sent, the blog posts and articles linked to within it, as well as full email campaigns around pillar content assets, such as an eBook.
SALES TEAM
The goal at the bottom of the funnel is pretty straightforward: close deals. Once a lead has indicated they’re ready to speak with sales about your organization’s solution (whether by saying they want to talk to sales or through their Digital Body Language, or a person’s behavioral patterns), they move from the middle to the bottom of the funnel. Effectively using content at the bottom of the funnel is dependent on sound communication with the sales team about what content is being produced, the themes of that content and whom it targets, and suggestions for how to use it successfully. When delivered correctly, the content at the bottom of the funnel helps sales be seen as thought leaders and knowledgeable resources, which has been proven to be the most effective sales tactic. And it works! Corporate Executive Board (CEB) surveyed more than 6,000 sales reps for their bestselling book, The Challenger Sale,4 written by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. What did they find? The sales rep who pushed buyers to think differently, educated buyers with new insights, and tailored conversations to their needs consistently outperformed the others. Content is key to becoming a Challenger. Through the content pillar approach, the sales team is empowered to share relevant and informative content with buyers, provide them with new and challenging insights, and ultimately show them why your organization’s solution is the right one.
Dixon, Matthew, and Brent Adamson. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. New York: Portfolio/ Penguin, 2011. bit.ly/ChallengerSaleBook
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4
“The best companies don’t win through the quality of the products they sell, but through the quality of the insight they deliver as part of the sale itself.”
– Jill Rowley, Oracle Eloqua
At this stage, the best content can be both educational and product-centric. Content such as eBooks or guides can push buyers to think differently about their strategies and processes, while more product-centric pieces provide the buyer with exactly what they need to know about your product, how it can help them and their organization, how it’s helped other organizations in their industry, and what the unique value proposition is relative to your competitors. These assets include case studies, testimonials, pricing sheets, product overviews, and competitive reviews.
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER SUCCESS TEAM
Once the opportunity has closed, congrats! That’s a great win for the organization and a step toward meeting your revenue goals. But those content assets aren’t done working their magic yet. Post-sale, content is as important as ever. You still need to demonstrate value to your customers and ensure they’re successfully using your product to its full potential within their organization. Whereas focusing on buyer-centric content at the top of the funnel is becoming more common, many organizations revert to bombarding customers with product-centric and upsell content once the deal is done. But the same top-of-funnel principles still apply below the funnel. Instead of pushing information on that awesome new feature, provide customers with content that will
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help them thrive. Because content pillars are educational and informative, they (and their derivative assets) are a great way for account management and customer success teams to stay in touch with customers and keep relationships from going cold. Also, the same content that “challenges” buyers at the bottom of the funnel can help customers be even more successful, especially with the help of your product or service. And successful customers are almost always happy customers. These happy customers are very important for your marketing, too, as they will be more likely to provide you with case studies and testimonials to add into your campaign and asset mix. When thinking about content strategy, remember the journey from thought leadership all the way to advocacy, which is integral to maximizing the value of your production efforts.
NOW WHAT?
By reusing and repurposing a single content pillar, each department represented by the Editorial Board can meet the content demands of important distribution channels more easily and efficiently. And because each department will save time on production, it can be used to analyze and test which formats and topics work best at different stages of the funnel, ultimately improving future campaigns.
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STRUCTURE: ORGANIZING YOUR TEAM AND EDITORIAL CALENDAR
AN IMPORTANT ROLE
With so many teams and departments necessary for the successful execution of your content marketing strategy, you need someone to step in as the manager of these communications and conversations. Look internally or hire a Managing Editor or Content Operation Manager to fill this role and organize the communications and process. Experienced journalists and editors make fantastic Managing Editors because they work under timelines and deadlines, understand the power of a good headline and call to action, know how to communicate (internally and externally), and can get to the heart of a compelling story. This person also needs to be able to manage content workflow, keep responsible stakeholders updated, and manage content campaign timelines. By having someone who owns this role, you’ll be able to turn your content strategy into an efficient and scalable process. It’s worth the investment simply because editorially trained professionals understand how to lead your organization through the changing marketing landscape where buyer preferences dictate the engagement process. With a “writer’s
Experienced journalists and editors make fantastic Managing Editors
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mind” on your marketing team, the content perspective is less about your product and more about the value, a balance than can be hard to strike with a team of marketing-minded individuals.
THE EDITORIAL CALENDAR
The calendar is the manifestation of all the components covered in this eBook. It brings together individual themes, events, product releases, content pillars, derivative assets, and content for all stages of the funnel into one organized, cohesive marketing strategy. The editorial calendar is, truly, the ultimate blueprint for your marketing campaigns. It helps you to map the moving pieces required for execution and keep all of those stakeholders we discussed earlier updated on their responsibilities and timelines. The editorial calendar organizes the larger themes behind all marketing initiatives, maps out the timing of specific campaigns, keeps the production and publication of all content assets on track, and sets the distribution schedule. It’s the guide for how all the pieces of a modern marketing campaign function as a whole.
The editorial calendar is, truly, the ultimate blueprint for your marketing campaigns.
Not only does the editorial calendar help organize all these intertwined efforts, but it serves as a central place where each Editorial Board member, project manager, and contributor can access the information necessary to stay on task and on deadline, or can plan ahead for upcoming initiatives and the publication of new content. The editorial calendar should extend beyond the publish or due date. Create a checklist of tasks for each item, so anyone can see where a project is in production on any day or week. Are you an Eloqua 10 user? Download the Kapost Calendar App to see all of your Eloqua campaigns and emails organized by month and quarter. bit.ly/KapostApp
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BUILDING A UNIFIED CONTENT PROCESS
Follow these four steps to establish an efficient process that supports the content needs of each department.
02
ORGANIZE
Agreed upon ideas are organized into strategic campaigns based on themes, product updates, and events. The Managing Editor plans major content assets called content pillars to support one or multiple campaigns across departments.
01
ALIGN
The Editorial Board gathers to discuss the big themes and initiatives for upcoming quarters, and all representatives share the content needs and ideas from their departments.
Q1
THEME
Q2
EVENT
Q3
FEATURE RELEASE
Q4
THEME
CONTENT PILLAR
FEATURE RELEASE
THEME
EVENT
PRODUCT UPDATE
EVENT
CONTENT PILLAR
CONTENT PILLAR
03
CALENDAR
EDITORIAL CALENDAR
04
DISTRIBUTE
Once published, each department pushes these content assets through distribution channels reaching buyers at the top, middle, bottom, and post-sale stage of the funnel.
Each department maps how it will reuse content pillars by breaking them into multiple derivative assets, filling the editorial calendar and meeting their content needs.
LET’S REVIEW
Way to go, you modern marketer! Before you leap into planning your own modern marketing campaign, let’s review the key takeaways from the eBook: Form an Editorial Board made up of key stakeholders from each department responsible for content distribution at the top, middle, bottom, and below the funnel. Identify your content sweet spot that speaks to your buyers’ interests and your brand’s expertise. Map out big themes, events, and product releases on your organization’s calendar. From there, look for overlapping topics and plan relevant content pillars to support them. Focus on a single content pillar, then break it into many derivative assets to populate your editorial calendar and fill the content needs of each department, instead of having those departments create their own unique content. Hire a Managing Editor or Content Operation Manager to own communications across departments and keep all the moving pieces in order. Organize all initiatives, from high-level themes through tweets, in a content and campaign calendar. This will provide cross-department visibility and keep key stakeholders updated.
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READY TO START
Now that you know how to create and organize a modern marketing campaign, design your own blueprint using the following worksheets that we’ve developed to make your efforts a success.
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YOUR BLUEPRINT STARTS HERE: EXERCISES FOR THE MODERN MARKETER
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Who will be on your Editorial Board? Department or Business Unit
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
Name/Title
When (how often) will the Editorial Board meet?
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MANAGING EDITOR
What are the key attributes you need in a Managing Editor or Content Operations Manager? We’ll get you started with some ideas: deadline-driven, creative, skilled in communication, knowledgeable of your product or service, accomplished writer and editor...
What will be the key responsibilities for this role within your organization?
Who will be your Managing Editor or Content Operations Manager, or do you need to hire one?
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CONTENT SWEET SPOT
List the main concerns of your customers: List your brand’s main points of value and expertise:
Find the sweet spot. List the topics around which your customers’ interests and your expertise intersect:
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PRODUCT UPDATES
List the product, feature, or service updates and releases planned for the year. Write down one per line: Now, list the problem that each of these solve for your target buyers. Ask yourself: How will this make our customers’ lives better?
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
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EVENTS
List the events you’re thinking of attending, sponsoring, or participating in this year.
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
What themes or topics will be addressed at this event that also coincide with your “sweet spot” topics?
Circle the events that address your target buyers as well as your sweet spot topics.
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CONTENT PILLARS FOR YOUR MODERN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
In the exercises around your content sweet spot, main product updates, and events, what key themes and topics emerged? Write them below:
Want help organizing these assets in Eloqua 10? This should help: bit.ly/KapostApp
Circle the best candidates for in-depth content pillars. Remember, a content pillar is a significant and comprehensive content asset that supports marketing initiatives. Now, take one of these content pillar ideas and imagine you’re creating an eBook, guide, report, or another significant content asset about that topic. Populate the chart below to see how many derivative assets you can create from just a single arm of a content pillar. Use the complete Content Pillar Approach graph on page 12 for inspiration.
Content pillar
Main derivative asset
Now that you know how easy it is to break a content pillar into many pieces, map out all possible derivative assets for upcoming content pillars. This will come in handy when you start populating your editorial calendar.
ANNUAL CALENDAR
Take the main themes and content pillars that you’ve assembled in previous exercises. Begin to organize them by month and quarter in the editorial calendar below. Q1 January February March
[topic 1] [topic 2] Q2 April May June
July
Q3 August
September
Q4 October November December
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MONTHLY CALENDAR
Go back to the content pillar exercise. Now, start to map out each pillar and derivative asset on the monthly calendar. Set deadlines and publish dates on a day-to-day basis. Ideally, your calendar should also include information such as theme, content type, campaign, content type, author, etc. This daily-level calendar becomes the blueprint for your modern marketing campaign.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
[content 1]
[content 2] [content 3]
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