If your organization’s marketing department isn’t meeting expectations regarding content production, you aren’t alone. Of the B2B marketing leaders surveyed in 2015 by the CMO Council, et al., only 12 percent described their content marketing strategy as a “high-performance engine.” What’s keeping these companies from operating more effectively to drive lead development? According to a survey analysis by eMarketer, the primary challenges are content-related.
The principal problem for most of these B2B marketing departments is the absence of an overarching content strategy, which includes developing relevant content for a specific target audience. If your brand is struggling to deploy a superior content marketing strategy then perhaps the missing link is a content production team comprised of expert copy writers.
Look at your own marketing department to see where gaps in this type of expertise may exist. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you staffed with enough writers to generate content with the regularity required to increase visibility and generate leads?
- Do your writers have the ability to craft content in a tone and style that will connect with the organization’s target demographic?
- Do your writers have access to subject matter experts with experience beyond the company’s specific products or services?
- Does your marketing team have difficulty constructing a clear long-term content marketing strategy?
- Is your team uncertain about which types of content garner attention and increase engagement?
Unlike your marketing department, which must divert resources to numerous marketing platforms, a dedicated content production team can focus solely on generating compelling blog posts, e-books, white papers, sales assets, case studies and more. This frees your marketing department for other tasks without having to worry about developing great writing skills themselves, while simultaneously providing your organization with a clear strategy and steady flow of content.
Content producers are also experienced in writing not just about a specific product or service, but taking an industry perspective. This means that your content marketers will be able to write like subject matter experts about your offerings—not just as sales assets, but how they relate to your organization’s position as a thought leader in the industry. This will enable your content to reach, and appeal to, the key demographics you are trying to target.
A dedicated content marketing team can also help you develop a long-term strategy for success as your organization grows. It can leverage different types of content (blogs, press releases, cases studies, sales assets, etc.), identify which platforms are the best vehicles for each content type, ramp up production to highlight key events and leverage the optimal channels for consumer engagement.
Today’s marketers know that content is crucial for driving sales. A 2015 study by Ascend2 found that 43 percent of the marketing professionals surveyed cited content marketing as an effective strategy for lead generation. An equal percentage of respondents also admitted it was one of the most difficult strategies to deploy.
Whether you choose to hire in-house writers or outsource content production to with a third-party content marketing vendor, a team of dedicated content writers will help to bring clarity to your content strategy. To learn more about what a dedicated team of experienced content marketers can do to help your business grow, click here.
