Content Strategy

For the past two decades marketers have spent enormous time and effort perfecting specialty practices. Where once we had simple fundamentals, like the “4 Ps” of product, place, promotion and price, and a single, monolithic view of advertising, we now have a huge abundance of sub-specialties, channels, tactics and departments. In some cases they are even thought of as “professions.” The idea was that by encouraging specialization, and developing marketing best practices by refining of them, state-of-the-art marketing would advance. Results would improve. Life would get better. More people would buy.

But something happened on the way to that promised land. Reality struck, in the form of the unexpected. Marketing disintegrated. Literally.

It turns out this “disintegrated” approach to marketing comes at a high cost. It’s unworkable in today’s world, for one very important and strategic reason. It creates unconnected silos of both information and function that make it difficult if not impossible to yield the kind of results that organizations demand. The holy grails of messaging reach, frequency and consistency—not to mention relationships, digital marketing and social engagement—cannot be achieved when one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.

Organized along this silo approach, Marketing is a basketball team whose players refuse to pass the ball. Ever. Instead, everyone tries to score and take all the credit. Which is why it’s so hard to win.

In the rush to tear down the silos, marketers are quickly and urgently embracing the benefits of Content Marketing. They see the great potential of aligning marketing programs based on a single, coherent content strategy that recognizes the roles of each content asset and how it fits into the customer’s buying process. Trying to fix marketing silos by starting with the org chart is backwards. Start with the content strategy first, then proceed to the workflows needed to support it, and finally to the org chart implications. Otherwise, the failure to base change on its information sharing implications can turn silo busting into one big game of wack-a-mole.

Content is now the foundation of all the myriad marketing functions required to tackle the messy, noisy and complex world. Content is the one “through line” that drives communications consistently across all your diverse audiences and channels in a context-appropriate way. With good Content Strategy and an understanding of the essential role that information sharing plays across all marketing functions, Content Marketing can help you re-integrate the marketing silos back into a unified whole.

Go On! Get Your Story Told.

Here are the six books that in our view are “must reads” for content marketers in the B2B space. If you read nothing else, read these six. Taken together they provide a solid grounding in most of the really important challenges facing content marketers. They give an overview of best practices that every marketing generalist should know. And they connect a LOT of dots for you that frankly, might not be so easy to connect for yourself. Lastly, don’t feel overloaded. Some are brief and all are concise and very well written, making them relatively quick reads. (NOTE: if possible, we recommend reading them in the order of our list.)

1. Elements of Content Strategy,* by Erin Kissane

2. Content Strategy, by Kristina Halvorson

3. Get Content Get Customers, by Joe Pulizzi

4. Content Rules, by Ann Handley and CC Chapman

5. eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, by Ardath Albee

6. Letting Go of the Words, by Ginny Redish

Taken together these books will ground you in the fundamentals of some essential practices: understanding the basic elements of content strategy and information design; how to create a content strategy that’s practical and able to be implemented; how to support collaboration across multidisciplinary teams to create, maintain and enhance great content; how to follow the examples of others who’ve been successful using compelling content to attract buyers; how lead generation, nurturing and marketing automation can be organized along with great content to support complex B2B sales cycles; and how to write great copy that’s not only tight and persuasive but equally importantly works on the Web.

There are many other good books on content marketing, but these are the best we’ve seen in covering some fundamental ground. Do yourself a favor and check them out, along with the terrific sites and blogs of the authors and their organizations.

* Asterisk denotes Kindle Reader, Kindle App or other ebook versions available.

It’s become common for writers, bloggers, social media experts and digital consultants to advise B2B marketers to ditch their messages. Nuke ‘em. Give them the old heave-ho. While well-intentioned, this is really bad advice. Messages have really important uses other than the ill-advised spraying of interruptions from the message machine gun.

Messages are the most useful tool for deciding what you want to say and how to say it. Even the most gifted speaker benefits from going through a messaging exercise. The purpose is not to write a speech (though it sure helps if you need to do that). The purpose is to prepare yourself to have the best conversation you can with your customer or prospect. And provide tools that help you present your story, ideas and supporting evidence in the most effective way. That includes deciding how to organize your ideas and also make them memorable for you to help you deliver them.

Most people don’t have much experience with message-driven, preparation-guided conversation. I’m not talking about verbatim scripting or reading prepared speeches. It’s about being well-prepared to talk extemporaneously. Very few ever argue a case before the Supreme Court, but there are other, more common examples. Job interviews. Court testimony. Tax audits. Yes, the Big Sales Pitch too–but only if it’s a dialogue and not a monologue.

What you actually want to do is teach your messages how to talk. They need to learn how to carry on a conversation. They must not be static or anti-social. They can’t be rigid, or bumper stickers. They must be messages that are organized around themes, premises, sub-plots, useful tangents and side trips, anecdotes, little human interest stories, parables and the like. They must be flexible and adaptable and dynamic, so they can fit into a variety of conversational settings and contexts. They must have memorable little hooks or trigger points, that help remind you when to trot out each, and why, and which “flavor” to use in which contexts.

In other words, messages as the stuff of conversations.

Once you discover a way of presenting your story in conversation that’s effective, you ought not abandon it. Messages can provide a meaningful framework that helps you repeat that conversational success.

Don’t get rid of your messages. Send them to conversation school.

[Based on a post that originally appeared in Steve Parker's Marketing Dissector blog.]