What is your story? – Content and Media Marketing Plan

 The powerful and engaging Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson was as much about Apple as it was about Jobs.  The stories, upbringing and background for Jobs determined so much about his personality and the tumultuous path Apple, and he travelled.  His incredible attention to detail and manic approach to product development, marketing and promotion are inextricably linked to the success Apple has experienced. 

Of course, it is possible to find many books about industry icons and iconic companies.  Starbucks, Xerox, McDonalds and IBM, are just a few of these.  All have engaging and complex histories.  Not always smooth roads travelled but always eventful and an innate ability to use good and bad experiences to enhance the learning process.  The stories are not always directly related to their core business. Starbucks and McDonalds are often used to gauge cost parity between countries or economic conditions across a market.

Everyone has a story. Whether you are communicating internally or external to your company, you should make a communications strategy and plan to tell your story.  Your story will be unique.  The messages, key people, the market issues and the launches of products and services are all part of your story.  Tell your story in short, regular releases.

Why have a content and media marketing plan?  If you are like most companies, your overall goal in delivering your company’s story will be to build an audience.  The often-quoted and contemporary metrics are the number of “followers” and “likes”.  I associate this with the enduring tradition for companies who think they were doing something by putting up large billboards.  A monster-sized LCD billboard I drove past recently at Sydney’s domestic airport gradually paged through four separate advertisements.  It would be hard for the executives at the relevant companies not to think they were playing their part in driving company revenues.  There is no doubt it looks fantastic, but what is the relationship to sales leads or increased business?  Can it be measured or is the benefit more innocuous?

Your overall goal should be to build an audience of customers that are engaged.  If you are a B2B product or service provider, this may be less than 100 clients.  A company in the B2C space will measure engaged audience in many multiples of this.  How audience engagement is measured will vary from company to company and between communication platforms.  However, measure you must.  It is easier today to measure engagement than ever before.

Here are some initial steps for a successful content and media marketing plan:

1. Sponsorship and support from the executive and leadership team

The executive team must be in support of the media plan.  One reason is that the leadership team should be called on to make regular contributions.  As part of this support, they need to be talking internally and externally “on message” and consistent with the company strategy. Secondly, the budget needs sponsorship and continuity. 

2. Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

A survey of companies by the North American Content Marketing Institute found that having a strategy for your content marketing plan was the best way to increase the success of any plan.  Of course, the content and media strategy should align or be a subset of the overall marketing and company strategies.   Most companies do not have a strategy but those that do get the best results.  Given the investment, you are about to make; it seems a reasonable step.

3.    Planning out the message

As part of your strategy, decide what the most effective means of distribution will be.  The three most common are email, social media and blogs. Of course, email is a “push” approach and can result in audience push-back.  Social media and blogs are more pf a “pull” approach and result in more voluntary engagement by the audience.

Within the social media space LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are the most common.  However, podcasts are the fastest rising (and a resurgent) form of communications vehicle within a media plan.  Therefore, what about considering Spotify in the mix?  Many people still have a long commute to work.  Listening to audio while keeping an eye on surroundings has a lot of benefits; especially when driving a regular car or standing in a crowded commuter bus or train.

4.    Person in Charge

In point 1 above, I specified the need for executive sponsorship.  Once this is obtained, there should be a person who is responsible for the day to day management of the content and media plan.  In a small company, this will likely be the same person. This PIC needs to drive the program, hold stakeholders accountable and keep it on track.

5.    Variety in content and creation

The Content Marketing Institute has found in a survey of its members that this is the highest value area in which to invest.  Many companies use outsourced content writers for this purpose but, equally, many companies also rely on their executive or key members to write relevant content on a rotation basis.

Also evolving is the need to vary the medium for the content — your choice of written, video, podcast or multimedia.  There is no correct answer.  However, common sense and personal experience demonstrate that mixing it up provides the best outcome and engagement.

6.    Measurements and KPIs

Measurement and KPI monitoring help you iteratively evolve your media plan.  The myriad of data that is available now needs to be filtered.  All data points are not created equal.  Decide which are important for you and then track them.  Keep your overall objective front and centre; audience engagement and sales leads.  If leads are captured, ensure the CRM is being used to record this fact.  Use this data to decide on future media plan investment.

7.    Frequency

All marketing experts will tell you to decide on your communications interval and stick to it.  The worst thing you can do is to start a media plan and then stop it or execute it intermittently.  Be predictable in this space.  The engaged customers and staff will expect it and reward you for it.

8.    Regular reviews

If you have made it this far then it's time to start again. Review your strategy and iteratively change the process.  Double down on aspects which are working and dare to discontinue aspects which are falling short of expectations.

Have some fun and drive business growth: make a strategy and tell your story.

Reference:

“B2B Content Marketing report – 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America”- Content Marketing Institute & Marketing Profs