Your brand is only as strong as your content
This isn’t being dramatic. Content is what connects your consumers’ needs and wants to your brand’s unique positioning. It has the power to go beyond your product to tell your brand’s story, communicate your values and personality, demonstrate your expertise and leadership and convey why your brand matters.
Telling your brand’s story across channels is even more important as consumers no longer progress on a linear path from awareness to consideration to conversion. Today’s customer journey resembles more of a paint-by-numbers canvas than anything else, with consumers hopping from one touchpoint to the next.
To stay relevant throughout the journey, you need to create unique content for each disparate touchpoint. And in today’s world, content is much more than web and email copy, social posts and TV spots. It’s also everything on your mobile app, chatbot and kiosk.
Wrapping your head around the sheer volume of channels is the first step in creating a modern content strategy.
All of the content you create for these channels not only needs to match the point in the consumer’s journey, it also needs to be personalized to their location, their preferences, their past behavior and reflect their relationship with your brand.
Take two people shopping for shoes, for example. The first person begins their search on Instagram, thumbing through shoes their favorite influencer wore, while the second begins with a simple Google keyword search. The first person might click directly from Instagram to a product page to investigate prices, while the other sorts through multiple reviews first. Getting the two consumers to the finish line requires content and a channel strategy that is tailored to them as individuals on their unique journeys.
This reality places an extraordinary burden on marketers to create more intelligent content. At the same time, they’re being challenged to do this in less time with fewer resources.
For many, the solution comes in developing not just a clear and cogent content strategy, but also strong processes that operate like a well-oiled machine.
Keeping your content engine running with maximum efficiency requires four internal components which include a modular approach, Platform-intentional content, lean teams and automation.
Each one feeds into the other to keep the engine running at maximum capacity. Together, they power content that meets consumers’ demands and importantly, generates profitability.
Make it modular
The benefits of personalisation are undeniable. Creating personalised content at scale requires a modular approach, but today’s modular content is very different than it was even five years ago.
Instead of collaging together smaller pieces of atomised content to drive personalisation, focus on the underlying story. The storyline needs to be the constant thread that runs between assets to personalise the message.
For example, say a customer clicked on a picture of a sweater on your website and you wanted to send them a promotion for that particular sweater. Instead of just plugging the photo of the sweater and their name into an email campaign, it’s critical to consider the larger story you are trying to tell about the sweater and how it relates to them.
This customer might live in a region that is having a severe cold snap. The messaging in the email campaign would focus on the extra-warm material and make suggestions for ways it can be layered. This storyline would then become the thread that connects all messaging going forward. Small elements can be tweaked as the customer’s journey evolves, but the underlying story of the sweater remains constant.
Scaling this approach requires you to create templates to satisfy the demand across channels. Creating these templates isn’t purely about volume though; it’s about creating smaller content nuggets that tell a complete story when put together. And where that story is told will influence each chapter.
The medium is greater than the message
Your modular strategy also needs to take the end channel into account. When the goal is doing more with less, it might seem logical to reuse content whenever and wherever possible. While this approach does cut down on time and production costs, it sacrifices effectiveness.
In other words, just because you produced a minute-long TV ad doesn’t mean that you should run it on your YouTube channel. While both channels can technically host videos, consumers use them in different ways and expect different content.
The secret to action-driving content that doesn’t sop up resources is being intentional about platform placements.
Instead of creating a single asset and then blasting it across channels, start with the action you want the consumer to take. For example, say you’re a sportswear company that’s trying to drive engagement on your mobile app. To motivate consumers to download and open the app, you need content that provides value and is consistent with their expectations. In this scenario, that could be a video workout series. While you could have repurposed your TV spots in the app, that wouldn’t have lived up to customers’ expectations for the app experience or motivated them to download the app.
Every placement should map into a larger strategy. Consider the customer journey and the channels at each step. Where do they go when they are beginning their research? What about for details on product features and pricing? Working backward allows your content to do twice the work, thus saving you precious time and resources.
If the thought of creating unique content for multiple channels is overwhelming you and your budget, don’t worry. It is possible to create platform-intentional content at scale without breaking the bank. But doing so will require you to throw what you know about team structure out the window.
Build lean teams
Let’s be realistic. To meet the volume of content you need without a commensurate increase in budget and to keep up with constantly evolving channels, you will need to work differently.
Over the past few years, content teams have expanded, the idea being that more people are able to produce more content. This is misguided. The more people and roles you have working on a piece of content, the more opportunities there are for things to be miscommunicated or for balls to drop during handoffs. Not to mention that more people means a higher cost.
Smaller teams that have members wearing multiple hats create fewer opportunities for miscommunication. In an age of specialisation, “generalist” is no longer a dirty word. Creative directors who are also producers will be able to pitch creative concepts and understand how to make them come to life. Designers who are also developers can define the what as well as the how. Multi-hyphenate team members can step up in a variety of places to ensure the message does not get lost.
Similarly, it’s important to seek partners who appreciate that different projects require different skills and who are willing to be flexible. Before kicking off a project, take a hard look at the kinds of skills necessary to get it done and then tailor your internal and external teams to fit that.
For example, a social video post might need a dedicated videographer, while a TV ad with a heavier post-production lift might need someone who can produce and edit.
To save even more time and money for team members juggling multiple responsibilities you can put in place automation tools to help expedite laborious processes like testing and QA. This will help accelerate the building of digital assets without sacrificing quality.
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to upskill and cross-skill your teams. Try rotating new hires through different departments to expose them to different parts of the system and encourage empathy. When hiring, keep a lookout for people who are hustlers and willing to wear multiple hats. Your teams will be more engaged as they get to flex different muscles and your business will have a backstop to keep up with different projects.
Automate and then, automate again
Fortunately for time-strapped marketers, the increased demand for content has coincided with the rise of automation technology that can take care of some of the more basic aspects of content creation.
One area that’s ripe for automation is updating or refreshing content to reflect product updates or changes in brand positioning. Say your company decides to rebrand with a new product name. Instead of having your team painstakingly go through every asset and manually change out the name every place it lives, you can set your automated tools to do it for you.
Content tracking and reporting are other areas where automation can come into play. Having a system that’s constantly quantifying content results means that you can react in real time to assets that are not performing as they should be.
Even the most complex or technically advanced projects will have basic elements that can be automated. Streamlining the basics of every project you undertake will free up time for your team to get back to honing your understanding of customers, conceptualizing and producing great content.
It’s unclear what exactly the future holds for the world of content, but if the last few years are any indication content consumption will continue to rise and channels will continue to morph and multiply.
For most marketers, it’s unlikely that this growth will coincide with an increase in resources. Continuing business as usual is too risky; to keep pace with today and the changes of tomorrow you need to have all four components of your lean content strategy engine firing with maximum efficiency.
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