What the heck does marketing do anyway? (Part 2)

What the heck does marketing do anyway?

Brief recap

In the first part of this blog, I discussed what marketing does and gave an overview of product and growth marketing. In part 2, I’m going to take a look at content creation and building credibility.

Creating content that will engage your audience

To drive successful sales and marketing campaigns, you need to create engaging, relevant content specifically for your intended audience and for each of the different stages of their decision-making process (bear in mind that content can include anything from blog posts, and eBooks, to getting started guides, etc. and can be presented in multiple formats such as videos, infographics, and so on).

Each piece of content is typically aimed at a specific persona, reflecting their pains and concerns at that point in time. If you want to run a campaign to convince prospects at the top of the funnel to try your product, your content might focus on reasons they should do this on a trial basis, targeting those people who are affected by the issue you can help them solve.

Those in the middle of the funnel might need a how-to guide to help implement a project that serves as proof of concept, and those at the bottom of the funnel (the point at which they are making a buying decision) are more likely to need proof points such as Return on Investment (ROI) numbers and customer testimonials.

When deciding what content you need to create, it’s important to understand what your target audience is trying to achieve, their requirements, and any additional questions they are likely to need to answer to gain internal support. These questions aren’t necessarily purely technological: they might include case studies, ROI information, etc.

While thinking about content, it’s important to address foreseeable hurdles customers may face at each point in their journey before they run into them. Being proactive will help make your customers’ lives easier, accelerate their evaluation process, and get them to the finish line with your product before your competition.

Finally, it’s worth benchmarking by comparing the audience engagement of your content vs. your competition (done right, you’ll get more engagement, which, in turn, should lead to more sales).

How to build content at scale

A common issue when scaling marketing is the time and effort required to create content in its various guises (blog posts, LinkedIn articles, explainer videos, etc.). The other is to keep it on message. To a large extent, these issues can be resolved by sticking to your key messaging (see my blog post on ‘Why have a Key Messaging Document?’).

By using a Key Messaging Document, you’re not reinventing the wheel each time you create content, and you keep your messaging consistent (remember that customers only remember your message after hearing it several times). Whenever you create content, look at how you can re-purpose it in other ways (for example, can a blog post be turned into an explainer video or infographic?).

It is often useful to create sales playbooks, which might include example scripts, presentations, and other content that sales can use to follow up once a prospect becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (see my blog post ‘How to align sales and marketing’).

Building credibility

Your content needs to be credible. Credibility affects whether customers trust you and your product and, therefore, whether they feel comfortable buying from you.

Building credibility is best done using reference customers, the press, industry analysts, and informative blog posts, rather than advertising. Unless you can afford to invest millions on this, advertising generates awareness, not credibility.

When trying to drum up attention from the press, remember their job is to create content that is newsworthy and relevant to their target audience, it’s not to advertise your product.

Key things to remember are:

1)    Make your story topical – think of angles that reflect current events in your space.

2)    Make the story about the success of your customers using your product, not about your product.

3) Become known as an expert journalists can turn to for industry information and quotes. It is helpful for journalists to have someone they can turn to who they know will give them interesting insights, fast turnarounds and great soundbites to help them make their deadlines.

4) Try to create multiple bites at the apple. If you have a new customer, give selected journalists access to a case study (with an embargo date) before you publish it yourself (to keep it newsworthy) and, later, work with them to do the same with ROI figures from the customer.

5)    Allow journalists to interview your happiest customers. This can sometimes be the hardest thing to achieve, as customers may feel they are giving away a competitive advantage by disclosing who they work with.

6)    Use a PR expert to help manage and guide the process. They can help drum up enthusiasm, as they have an existing relationship with many journalists, and can also help you avoid some of the pitfalls (see Michelle Brown’s blog post ‘14 Things to Avoid Doing When Contacting the Media’).

Some final thoughts

In this blog, I’ve scratched the surface of makes an effective marketing team. I plan to dive deeper into these topics, but I wanted to start with a high-level view of what marketing does and why.

I wanted to conclude with a quick note on marketing ROI. My feeling is that the ROI should be around 5x the investment into marketing, however this is heavily dependent on:

a)     The industry you are in.

b)    Where you are in your lifecycle (companies generally need to invest more heavily in marketing to gain market share early on to accelerate adoption).

c)     Whether you are trying to maximize growth or maximize profitability.

If you’re looking for further advice or help with any of these topics (and more), feel free to book a free advisory discussion.