Recurring advice that is often heard by decision makers when creating Content Marketing strategies, is to think “outside the corporate bubble”. Because today’s consumers are no longer satisfied with just knowing about the existence of a product or service, but demand from the brands and/or companies they follow, valuable content that meets their real needs and interests.
Thus, a software company specialized in human talent management must base its strategy of content marketing This is not only to highlight the benefits of its star product, but also to address the trends, issues and interests that directly or indirectly affect its performance. buyer person (such as recruitment processes, organizational culture, and optimization of working time, among others) in order to provide you with the most relevant and attractive content possible.
The problem, however, lies when brands end up sacrificing their own identity in their attempt to diversify their content strategies to continue to attract their consumers, with topics that may be of interest to them, but which do not necessarily fit in with what they themselves represent and know how to do. That’s when, for example, we see some car brands talking about recipes, coffee companies giving cleaning tips (or to continue with the previous case) to software companies recommending tourist destinations.
This is not to say that these audiences are not interested in learning about gastronomy, cleaning tricks or even vacation spots. Of course they are! The problem is that Many brands are not sure how to identify the interests of their audience and what is relevant to them.
Which is because, for the most part, the strategies of Content Marketing continue to appeal to “divination” or “smell”, rather than to data and Artificial Intelligence to know precisely what kind of content is most suitable for each type of audience, based on their needs, but without leaving aside the brands’ expertise.
Beyond thinking “out of the bubble”, What companies and decision makers need to learn when developing successful Content Marketing strategies is to identify the Content Territory of their own brandsto offer added value to their consumers, based on the topics they master and for which they are experts.
As we well remember from our school days, a Venn diagram is a visual representation composed of several overlapping circles, whose main function is to discover how various elements within the same “universe” are related.
For example, in the case of the Content Marketing, know what interests the brands and their audiences have in common.
It is there, right in that space where the ideal content is located. To recognize it, you must start by knowing in depth what you are talking about, reading, sharing and giving your audience their opinion.
At Castleberry we know that the most effective way to do this is through data and A.I. With tools like True Content®In this way, the topics, subtopics and content that the audience is consuming on the Internet are detected, in order to have clarity about their real interests.
With data tools such as True Content®, the next step is to find the Content Territory This is the “sweet spot” between the interests of the audience and the topics it dominates and for which the brand wants to be recognized as an expert and reference. It is in this territory that the brand content is relevant to the audience and will fulfill its objective for the company.
In summary, the strategies of Content Marketing must be located at the intersection between what the audience is interested in and needs, with the brand’s value proposition.
Going back to Venn Diagrams, when it comes to establishing what content to generate for a given audience, it is not enough to establish what interests the brands and their audiences share, but Another factor must be taken into account which, although not directly involved in the process of content creation, plays an important role: competition.
Know the topics, keywords and content that the best brands in the world are using to connect with their audiences, allows other companies to understand how their most successful peers are relating to their corresponding audiences, to see whether or not the content they are developing matches what their consumers are looking for, and fundamentally, to know precisely how they can differentiate their content strategies from the competition.
Tools such as True Content® help companies identify these key elements, so they can make a more complete and thorough analysis of how their competitors are communicating and what they are doing to win over their audiences. Well, to paraphrase a famous line from a Hollywood movie, brands should strive “to keep their audiences close, and their competitors even closer.”The aim is to understand not only what they are doing and why they are so successful at it, but also to find ways to overcome them.
A mistake made by most companies developing B2B content However, to think only in terms of the interests of the companies with which they want to communicate, leaving aside the analysis of the interests of the people who make them up, When it comes to defining audiences in B2B Content Marketing, organizations are as important and relevant as the people who are part of them.
That is why the next step is to identify the consumption and content publishing behavior of prospects and/or customers; understood as companies and employees in key positions (decision makers).
To achieve this, it is essential to use data and, in particular, the Artificial Intelligence Through these tools, brands can complement the information provided by their commercial force.
A sample of that is our tool True Content®, which allows to establish which are the topics and subtopics present in the official communication of the target companies, as well as what they are reading and sharing with the group of their decision makers
Only when the brands determine their Territory of Content To facilitate this process, it is necessary to know the data and use Artificial Intelligence. That is why at Castleberry Media, with the support of our True Content tool, we help brands plan their Content Marketing strategies based on the data. When it comes to creating content for B2B audiences, it requires supporting the information obtained by the commercial force with consumer data and appropriating that specific part of the brain where the brand has the greatest relevance.
