You’ve all heard of content marketing. You’ve all tried to produce content for your company, but the idea has run its course, and you’ve even assigned an in-house person to the task! And yet, within a few months, you abandoned the idea on the grounds that nobody was reading your content, that it was too specific, too boring?
Is your business really boring? Yes, you may sell tractor wheels, jackhammers or mortars… but so what? Granted, we don’t all work in tourism, travel, fashion, sport and so on, but these companies will have very little trouble producing content, since their editorial calendar is punctuated by the various holidays and sales throughout the year. In B2B, it’s more tricky, but not impossible – far from it, you just have to use your creativity.
Theoretically, and I hope you are, you’re supposed to be passionate about your business, your products, your brand or your services. You have experience in your sector that interests your personas. The content can be an infographic, a white paper, a video, a blog post – give yourself permission to express yourself, and your customers will thank you.
In theory it’s simple, but let’s put it into practice. Let’s take a company that sells mortar. How can we produce interesting content for a product that, on the face of it, isn’t!
Define precise objectives
The 1st question to ask is: why do you want to create content? For what purpose?
- Increase monthly traffic to my site?
- Generate more leads?
- Develop my reputation and establish my expertise?
With well-defined objectives from the outset, your content strategy will be more effective, and you’ll be better able to measure your actions and draw conclusions about your objectives.
Define your personas
Producing content is a good thing, but who will it be aimed at? You need to base your strategy on a thorough understanding of your personas. So, if you have customers, you potentially have people who could be interested in your content.
For companies selling mortar, please contact :
- A craftsman in the building and civil engineering sector, a mason, for example
- A do-it-yourself consumer who wants to know more about your products
- And the store manager (your distributor) who needs to learn about your products to be able to sell them to customers.
Defining the customer journey for personas
It’s essential to understand the customer journey your personas may take. By knowing this market, you’ll be able to address it at just the right moment in the reflection phase:
Awareness phase: Sylvestre has just realized that he needs to grout his tiles again, but he doesn’t know how. So he needs a tutorial on how to do it.
Consideration phase: Once Sylvester has done his research, he has identified his problem and is now considering several alternatives, including your mortar.
Decision phase: The decision is made and we hope Sylvestre will choose your product.
Defining research trends
It’s a good idea to do a little semantic research before producing your content. This way, you can base your writing on trends related to your personas’ keywords. This way, you’ll get traffic that comes naturally from search engines.
What type of content can I produce?
There’s a lot to choose from. To choose among all the content solutions, we recommend that you ask yourself 3 questions:
What is your editorial line? What type of content do you already have? What content can I produce? Video, blog post, guide, infographic, tutorial, contest, white paper, interview, etc.
Editorial calendar
One of the most essential tools for developing a content strategy is the editorial calendar. It will enable you to keep an eye on everything you need to produce in terms of content: theme, title, author, keyword, target persona, distribution platform, format, etc.
Content distribution
Once you have an idea of the content you want to produce, you need to determine on which platforms you want to distribute it. You’ll need to assess which platforms your target audience is on. These may be paid media or your own media.
Example:
Paid media :
- Adwords
- Display
- Youtube
Your own media :
- Website
- Blog
- Your social pages
- Your newsletters
KPIs
There are a number of performance indicators we can monitor. By measuring your performance, you should be able to see whether you’re achieving your objectives.
Examples of KPIs to track:
- Number of monthly visits per article
- The number of visits from social networks
- The number of visits from search engines
- The number of leads
- The sharing rate
Here we go again
Don’t stay with your prejudices. A company with customers will always have an audience, even a niche audience. You have employees who are passionate about your products or services, who can create quality content that will meet the expectations of your target audience. And if they don’t write the content themselves, they can be an excellent source of inspiration for external partners, such as B2B content creators, to produce it. Don’t hesitate to contact us, if you’d like us to support you in your editorial production strategy via our French affiliate platform. And if you’re wondering what affiliation is, we invite you to follow the link!
