⏳ Quick Hits

If you only have a few minutes to spare, here are 4 Key Takeaways

1. Content as a Strategic Tool: Deploy content as a strategic asset to engage your audience; its purpose is to generate leads and cultivate loyalty by providing value and insight that resonates deeply with buyers.

2. Tailor Content to Customer Journey Phases: Craft content that addresses each stage of the customer journey, ensuring it aligns with their current needs and moves them seamlessly towards the next phase, using the right channels and formats for delivery.

3. Measure Content Impact: Beyond tracking views and engagement, assess the true impact of your content by setting and evaluating metrics that reflect the value it brings to different stages of the customer journey.

4. Feedback-Driven Iteration: Use audience feedback to continuously refine your content, iterating and optimizing to enhance engagement and effectiveness, much like a constantly improving prototype in the product development cycle.

Intro

Shifting your focus from content creation to content strategy is the key to leveraging the unique benefits of content marketing. 

A well-crafted content strategy lets your company engage, inform, and influence your buyers directly, generating high-quality leads and improving customer loyalty. 

Companies who blog consistently generate 68% more leads and achieve 6x conversion rates on their landing page compared to those who don't.

When done effectively, organic content marketing will be your most cost-effective way to acquire users with a significant downstream impact on the rest of the funnel.

But how does one develop an effective content strategy? After all, it's not just producing high-quality content; it's ensuring that content is efficiently helping you achieve your business goals.

Like most prevailing wisdom, the key elements are easy to understand but exceptionally hard to execute.

You need to understand your customers and their problems deeply. You need to add unique value for your intended audience. You need to figure out how to optimize your content to fit the channel through which it'll get distributed. 

Doing all of this exceptionally well is no small feat. 

And because of the low cost of production, ensuring your content stands out in a sea of endless alternatives requires the same intellectual and analytical rigor you apply to product, sales, and marketing. 

In other words, you must systematically test, learn, and iterate on what's working.

While this post won't teach you how to write, I want to offer a data-driven approach that's helped businesses I've worked with plan, measure, and iterate on the content they create to drive impactful business outcomes.

Let's dive in.

#1: Plan

Much like how your product solves a big problem for your audience, so should your content.

For those familiar with the jobs to be done, you can apply the same framework to your content planning. By mapping out the entire "jobs to be done" for your audience, you're able to answer

• What problem is my customer trying to solve?

• What tools do they use to solve this problem today?

• Where do they find this information?

However, not every piece of content needs to solve the same problem that your product solves. Writing only about one specific problem-solution topic is massively underutilizing the impact your content can have.

Your content strategy needs to cover the entire customer buying journey, surfacing the right piece of content at each critical phase.

When advising clients, I like mapping a customer journey into these three high-level phases:

1. The Problem-Unaware Phase: Customers may not even know that this problem exists and almost certainly don't know about your solution.

2. Problem-Aware Phase: By now, prospects know the problem your product is trying to solve but aren't clear about where to start and what options are available.

3. Solution-Aware Phase: At this stage, prospects know solutions and are actively weighing their options.

Your content strategy should bring your audience to the next phase, bringing them closer to choosing your product as their solution.

Doing this effectively requires tailoring your content for each phase in terms of (1) Intent, (2) Channel, and (3) Format. 

The Problem-Unaware Phase: If someone isn't aware of a problem, does it really exist 🤣? I'd argue yes. The problem likely exists, but your customers have become so accustomed to it that they've just accepted it as a natural fact of life. 

Think of getting cavities before toothbrushes or needing to memorize directions before maps.

Note that this is not an excuse to find problems for an already-built solution...which is a problematic topic for another day.

• Intent: Your goal is to spark curiosity, gently awakening them to the existence of an issue and nudge them towards seeking more information.

• Channels: Broad-reach platforms and passive consumption channels work best for this initial phase. Think of where your target audience spends time--Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, or LinkedIn.

• Format: The content format should be easy to consume and share. You want to select a format that can make your content engaging and eye-opening without demanding too much commitment from the viewer. Consider posting an infographic on LinkedIn instead of writing a long post or short videos that tell a relatable story on TikTok instead of getting too heavy on technical details. Be cognizant of how your content gets presented and what that channel's audience expects.

The Problem-Unaware Phase: Now that prospects recognize the problem, they're looking for information on how to solve it. They're not just seeking options; they're trying to understand the landscape of solutions.

• Intent: Your objective here is to educate and guide. Your content should provide more in-depth insights about the problem and offer honest solutions, even if it means bringing their attention to potential alternatives. Make sure to avoid hard-selling audiences at this phase. First, they need a better understanding of the solution space to make a purchase. Second, a lack of authenticity is easy to snuff out, and you risk burning goodwill whenever they are finally ready to buy.

• Channels: Search engines become a primary channel as prospects actively seek information. SEO-optimized blog posts, educational videos, and webinars work well here. Email newsletters that provide deep dives into the problem and its solutions can also be effective, as they offer a direct line to engaged prospects. While your content should still be concise and engaging, you have more flexibility to go into more detail since your audience is much more committed.

• Format: Formats encouraging depth compel prospects to engage more meaningfully with your content. This deeper engagement allows for nuanced segmentation based on engagement types and levels. Longer, multi-sectioned articles reveal which topics captivate them, interactive quizzes or assessment tools pinpoint their interests, and content gated behind email submission signifies high intent to solve a problem. These signals help you identify which users to guide towards purchasing and how.

The Solution-Aware Phase: Prospects in this phase are actively seeking a solution, allowing you to educate them on how you can uniquely solve their problem

• Intent: The focus is on differentiation and persuasion. Your content should demonstrate why your solution is the best choice for their needs.

• Channels: This is where targeted, high-intent channels come into play. Retargeting campaigns and email marketing sequences tailored to specific segments of your audience can be very effective. Distribute your content where prospects are likely to conduct deeper research, such as industry forums, specialized online communities, and professional networks like LinkedIn.

• Format: The content should be detailed and specific. Product demos, customer testimonials, and detailed case studies show the effectiveness of your solution. Comparisons with other products, detailed FAQs, and live Q&A sessions can also help address any lingering doubts and move prospects closer to a decision.

In every phase, the key is to understand the customer's current state and emotional journey. Tailoring your content to not only answer their explicit questions but also to resonate with their implicit fears, aspirations, and needs can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your content strategy.

Remember, your content strategy's ultimate goal is to inform and guide prospects through their journey, making the path toward choosing your solution as clear and compelling as possible.

#2: Measure

Mapping out intents, channels, and formats for each phase of the customer journey is a crucial step, but you also need to define clear, measurable objectives for each piece of content. 

The Solution-Aware Phase - Bottom of the Funnel

Defining success for content in this phase tends to be more straightforward since it likely features a clear call-to-action (CTA).

Measure how many readers click on your CTA, signup for your newsletter, or complete your purchase flow. 

For more sophisticated analysis that goes beyond pageviews, time spent, and conversion events, use UTM parameters. 

Instead of a generic link to landingpage.com, your CTA could direct users to a URL structured like landingpage.com/?utm_source=blogs&utm_campaign=title_of_blog_post&utm_content=category. Tools like Google Analytics, along with its Segmentation, User Flow, and Behavior Reports, use these parameters to help you gain a deeper understanding of potential customers:

• Are people who read about a specific topic more likely to buy?

• Which channels lead to site visits but not conversions?

• Which formats most effectively facilitate customers to seek out more information?

The Problem Aware Phase - Middle of the Funnel

Most content strategists simply stop measuring success at this stage by the number of leads generated per post—emails, web form submissions, etc. However, there's an opportunity to delve deeper. 

I encourage teams to go one step further and actually assign the "Expected Value" of lead-generating content.

For example, if you see that 

By assigning an "Expected Value" to lead-generating content, you can obtain a more comprehensive understanding of content performance. For instance, if 10% of webform submissions result in a $10,000 purchase, each submission is worth $1,000 on average. If a blog post drives a 1% click-through rate to the web form, you can assign the expected value of each blog post to $100. 

Note: As I stated above, you can measure these conversion rates if you set up the bottom of the funnel measurement plan. Blossomer can help with that 🙃!

Comparing this against a baseline (webform submissions before you implemented your content strategy), you can determine the incremental value your content strategy contributes, enabling more accurate sales forecasts.

By benchmarking against a baseline—such as the number of webform submissions before implementing your content strategy—you can quantify the direct impact of your efforts. For instance, if recent blog posts doubled monthly webform submissions from 25 to 50, your content essentially generated an additional $2,500 in sales.

And these sort of forecasts get increasingly more predictive and reliable as you scale! 

Statistics is cool.

The Problem Unaware Phase -Top of Funnel

Top-of-funnel content has historically been the trickiest to measure due to the lack of direct conversion actions.  

How would one measure how well content "educates" someone about a problem?

Content in the Problem-Unaware phase is immensely important but often gets neglected because they're not straightforward to measure.

However, "Micro-conversion" metrics can serve as valuable proxies for gauging how this content is raising problem awareness among potential customers. Amplification Rate (shares, retweets, reposts) and Conversation Rate (comments and replies per post) can indicate content resonance and engagement. 

These metrics, readily available across social media platforms, can answer critical questions about where and how your content is being consumed and shared, who engages with the problem you're addressing, and the nature of their interest.

Even without direct conversion tracking, these indicators can still paint a picture of how your content is expanding your top-of-funnel and how efficiently your audience is progressing through the buyer journey.

They provide valuable feedback on your content strategy, allowing you to answer questions like: 

• Where is my content getting consumed (and shared)?

• Who is interested in the problem I am trying to solve?

• How do they talk about this problem?

These signals allow you to refine and iterate on your content strategy across the buyer journey. 

#3: Iterate

Consider your content strategy like the initial beta version of your product. Consider what's working and double down on the elements that show potential. 

Don't think of content as a static one-off but as an evolving entity that you can enhance and amplify.

This stage is where creativity meets strategy, enabling you to transform a single successful piece of content into a comprehensive, multi-channel campaign. 

A middle-funnel blog post can be expanded into a bottom-of-funnel webinar or a top-of-funnel Twitter thread. 

Each adaptation broadens the original concept and tailors it to meet varied objectives, resonate across different channels, and cater to distinct phases of your customer's journey. 

Constantly evaluate the effectiveness of these iterations. Which formats or topics hold more appeal on specific platforms? Should we diversify the format on the same channel or cross-promote content to amplify its reach?

Let data and direct feedback from your audience guide your strategy. Pay close attention to the content that engages, the topics that spark discussions, and the formats that drive shares. These insights help you decide what to create, how to present it, where to distribute it, and the best ways to optimize your message for maximum engagement.

💭 Parting Thoughts

Remember, content creation is both a science and an art at its core. While the act of creation may feel inherently artistic, the strategic framework surrounding it is deeply analytical. The evolution of product design from a purely aesthetic endeavor to a discipline grounded in user research and data analytics mirrors the journey of content strategy. Like the most successful products, the most effective content marries creativity with analytical precision, blending storytelling with strategic insight and intuition.

Adopting a data-driven approach to content strategy equips us to chart a clear course through the complex landscape of digital marketing. It empowers us to understand what we're creating, how we're sharing it, and why it matters to our audience. It's about finding the perfect equilibrium between engaging our audience where they are and leading them toward our desired outcomes, all while delivering tangible value each step of the way.

In today's era, where B2B content marketing is more critical than ever, embracing this cycle of planning, measuring, iterating—and constantly adapting—is not merely advantageous; it's indispensable. This approach fosters a culture of adaptability, prioritizes the value of feedback, and is committed to perpetual improvement, ensuring that in the golden age of content marketing, your content is effectively driving towards your business goals.