According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), nearly a quarter (24 percent) of B2B enterprise marketers cite the “lack of buy-in/vision from [internal] higher-ups” as a major challenge. Otherwise, you’ll end up doubling back on work that’s already done. Cohesive messaging Make a concerted effort to ensure your brand voice is consistent across all types of content, regardless of its point of origin. Enterprise brands are rapidly coming to expect proof that marketing efforts are driving ROI, which means marketers must be economical about their approaches to creation. Another key component of content efficiency is building a strategy for distribution. Being able to efficiently disseminate this content means you’ll have an easier time reaching an audience and driving ROI Craft a Strategy That Involves the Whole Enterprise Your team may be agile, creative, or capable of heavy lifting already, but as a best practice, your team members should not be creating content on their own. Build a Foundation in Analytics Your game plan is only as good as its governance. But execution is everything, and to do it effectively, you’ll need a governance plan in place to ensure the goals of your content strategy are fulfilled. Are readers subscribing to your newsletter? You’ll end up with a plan that not only sets your organization up to grow later, but ensures your efforts are cost-effective, cohesive, and supportive of the larger brand goals.
There’s a major difference between creating content and embracing a full content marketing strategy. Let’s say you’re the VP of marketing at a division of a major financial institution, and you recognize the power of content. You’ve already got many of the biggest pieces of a content strategy in place: you’re regularly publishing on your blog, you’ve got a few active social media accounts, and you send an email newsletter once a week. Much of that content is helping grab the attention of some of your target readers.
But for a complex organization with multiple divisions across the world, that’s not doing much to unite your marketing under a common message and story.
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), nearly a quarter (24 percent) of B2B enterprise marketers cite the “lack of buy-in/vision from [internal] higher-ups” as a major challenge. This makes sense: the stakes are high with this sort of approach. Even if you’ve been doing light content creation for months, your execs will still be inclined to scrutinize your decision to formalize a company-wide approach. They will want to know your reasons why, your goals, your game plan, and some kind of evidence that this time and resource-intensive approach will pay off.
You know you have to convince leadership, but there’s another, bigger issue to contend with. Recently, you were doing research to paint a clear picture of your audience for your senior team, and you stumbled across a graph:
It dawned on you that while you’re sinking time into convincing your higher-ups that content is worth your entire company’s time, you’re losing time. The 80-million-strong-in-the-US-alone Millennial audience you’re hoping to connect with is already writing you off, in favor of other, faster banks with more personalized (and higher quality) online banking experiences than most enterprise institutions have developed. Your website doesn’t even have built-in chat. Your banking app is clunky. No wonder they’re disinterested.
So not only do you need buy-in from higher-ups, you need it immediately—you don’t have time to lose. And without the backing of your entire company, you simply don’t have enough manpower to speak on behalf of your entire enterprise. You need everyone’s support: social presence from all of your employees, internal contributors, LinkedIn shares, new marketing technologies. Your team may be in charge of executing on the brand storytelling venture as a whole, but strategy development is a top-down process that requires the involvement of brand leadership. From there, your team has to work with other departments to create a comprehensive approach that takes advantage of the various expertises housed within the enterprise.
What’s your next move?
Now’s the time to act. To get buy-in as fast as possible, you’ll need to follow an efficient process. Otherwise, you’ll end up doubling back on work that’s already done. Here’s where to start.
Sketch the Bones
Even before you undertake the task of identifying your audience and choosing the types of content to create, you’ll need to draft a skeletal outline of your content strategy—one that details voice, tone, guidelines, narrative, and, most importantly, goals. As Deloitte pointed out, everything that falls under the content umbrella should navigate according to two essential goals:
1. Cohesive messaging
Make a concerted…
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