Adopting a content marketing model can be a daunting undertaking. What are the most important activities in the first year, how do you measure success?
Think of your first year of adopting a content marketing model as building a factory. It takes an up-front investment to build the foundation and infrastructure, but you are essentially creating an annuity that will pay off over time.
What goes into this content marketing factory foundation? There are four key elements:
1. Audience personas
2. Brand positioning and messaging
3. Content marketing plan
4. Website and supporting technology
In this episode I'll walk through each of these steps, explaining their importance and introducing various actions to take within each step. This is a great overview to help you understand the big picture of year one, one that could be shared with team members to help them understand what year one is all about. If you'd like a more in-depth dive into this foundational year, see the additional resources below.
It is critically important that your leadership team understands the nature of this foundational year. If they are expecting the leads to magically start flowing into your website, they will be discouraged and may even pull the plug on the whole thing. Depending upon what shape your foundation is in, you may find yourself needing a full year to complete these steps. For others with fewer gaps, time to results is much faster.
Resources
- Book: Content Marketing, Engineered
- Webinar: Getting Started with Content Marketing, Year One
- Ebook: Getting Started with Content Marketing, Year One
- Wendy on LinkedIn
Wendy Covey
Wendy Covey is a CEO, a technical marketing leader, author of Content Marketing, Engineered, one of The Wall Street Journal’s 10 Most Innovative Entrepreneurs in America, and she holds a Texas fishing record. She resides in a small Hill Country town southwest of Austin, Texas, where she enjoys outdoor adventures with her family.
About TREW Marketing
TREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving B2B companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in the design, embedded, measurement and automation, and software industries, TREW Marketing provides branding, marketing strategy, content development, and digital marketing services to help customers efficiently and effectively achieve business goals.