Creating a content marketing plan for 2021 is all about moving from tactics to strategy. But how? Let’s show you, how you can spearhead your way to a successful content marketing strategy in the year 2021 whether you are a B2B or B2C company.
Content is an indispensable part of any business whether you’re a B2B organization or a B2C one. Being the cornerstone of the business the content marketing budgets continue to grow and the year 2021 is no different.
According to London Research, almost a third (29%) of marketers expect a small increase to their content budget (up to 10%), a quarter expects a medium increase (between 11% and 25%), and 14% expect their budget to increase by more than a quarter. In contrast, 16% think their budget will stay the same, and only 3% think it will decrease.
Although the elevated investment in content marketing is good news, research by London Research and ContentCal suggests that content marketers still face considerable challenges in establishing the strategic importance of the discipline of their business, and therefore, the delivery promise is often is under-delivered because of the following challenges:
- The biggest problem facing content marketers is the lack of time. They are so busy creating and publishing content that they get little opportunity to think about their strategy and how that fits with the organization
- Another major roadblock is placing too much emphasis on the quality content published and not enough on strategizing the moves to market the content
- Attributing and measuring the effects of content marketing through the customer journey is another big challenge
- Lack of understanding of the value of content marketing among management and other department is yet another roadblock
Part of the solution to the above problems lies in finding out ways to buy time for in-depth analysis of the content marketing data. The business people need to choose the right metrics and link them to business objectives and ROI. The data can then be used to optimize the content created from all types of content activities. The data can also be leveraged for greater resourcing, staffing, training, budgeting & technology decisions. This makes daily workload more manageable and allows marketers to make more intelligent business decisions based on data.
Let’s have a look at the ways marketers are addressing the challenges related to content marketing in detail and how marketers are strategically planning to address those challenges in 2021:
- Reduce Your Publishing Frequency
You don’t always have to be on the content creation treadmill. Simply reducing your publishing frequency buys you time, as well as giving more people the chance to see each piece of content before it’s pushed aside by the next. Another common practice is finding and republishing 'evergreen' content – previously published material that retains its relevance. Not always you need to create new content, sometimes you can simply make the best use of the pieces of content already existing with you by repurposing them. Slowing down your publishing speed may buy you more time to research more pieces and focus on the 'marketing' part of content marketing.
Furthermore, amidst the move to the next normal, technology is the essence to relieve the pressure through more efficient scheduling and automation of posting. Marketers can focus on maintaining a bank of evergreen material and can rely on it in the future frequently, as and when required.
Measurement and attribution are persistent challenges for marketing, and content marketing is no exception. If anything, they are particularly problematic for content, due to confusion around its role, and the value it delivers. Part of the problem lies in content marketing’s roots in lead generation.
Marketers need to understand what they want their content to do because content marketing is not just a number game of analysis of how many views you got.
Concentrating your content strategy just for lead generation signifies that you're confined to a lower funnel activity. This leads many managers (and some marketers) to focus on metrics like leads or conversions. However, for many businesses, content is also driving awareness and building the brand. A crucial step on the road to content marketing maturity is understanding content's role in your business, and then establishing appropriate metrics.
Also, when it comes to measuring & optimization your content strategy, you must realize that there is no single metric that will be the best fit for all organizations. For some who accomplish their sales strategy through third parties, the measurement may be anecdotal while for others the number of leads acquired or conversations stroked or the inquiries submitted on the website may be important. When it comes to content conversion goals, again several organizations may define their conversion metrics differently.
All marketing departments are subject to the attitude of the management of the organization. Most often, this is one of benign neglect. They’re interested in the results marketing delivers, but not the ways those results are achieved. In all organizations, however, marketers have to make their case to the management team for the budget. This means switching from the metrics of their department – views, shares, engagements – to those of management – leads, sales, ROI.
This is made more challenging by the lack of time to dig into analytics, the same lack of time that prevents content marketers from being more strategic in their thinking.
Strategizing content marketing aligns it more with organizational goals, which involves inviting interdepartmental-cooperation in content creation accommodates individualistic as well as organizational needs and creates a win-win situation for the brands, employees, audience as well as stakeholders alike.