How to Proactively Lead Your Client's Content Strategy

Content marketing forms the core for most business-to-business campaigns and is an integral part of business-to-consumer markets. Developing a performing strategy for a client takes a significant investment.

In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute, the most effective business-to-business marketers invest more time.

The top 61 percent of companies with effective marketing meet with their production team on a daily or weekly basis, so keeping clients in the loop is an important part of taking the lead role in content strategy development.

While companies continue to invest in content marketing, it's been a "soft" source of leads and conversions in the past. Few companies prioritize the analytics needed to develop a data-oriented content strategy that turns soft numbers into hard facts. Agencies can offer a content strategy with defined goals and key performance indicators. According to the LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, companies with a documented content strategy are three times more likely to consider themselves very effective at content marketing, giving agencies a clear way to add value.

The importance of strategy when creating and publishing blog posts is clear, but many businesses have a hard time getting a cohesive content marketing program off the ground. Before you can lead them in the right direction, you need to understand the pain points and challenges facing your clients.

Barriers to Entry with Content Marketing

In a recent survey conducted by Scripted, team size and capacity were the biggest concern for creating content in-house at 57.5 percent. Budget was the least concern at a mere 7.5 percent. The numbers reveal that companies want better content strategy and are willing to pay for it -- you need to find ways to deliver for the client.

Foundation of Good Strategy

An effective content marketing strategystarts with a very simple concept: put it in writing. If you have an idea of what you'd like to accomplish, write it down. When you have clear goals and benchmarks to target, you can push for a more data-driven approach to content marketing. As you're fleshing out your strategy, address the three basic parts:

• What you want to accomplish.
• Who you are targeting.
• How it relates to the business.

Take that information and brainstorm lots of different ideas. Don't get stuck solely on blog posts. Though they form the foundation for content marketing, research shows that images increase the number of views by as much as 94 percent. Combine written content with visuals to tell a complete story.

Staying on Top of the Market

To keep putting out new and fresh content, you'll need to stay on top of the industry. Expand your RSS feed to include industry leaders and sett up Google Alerts to get industry-specific news. When you're up-to-date on what's happening with a client's industry, you can address their other two big pain points: topic ideation and finding the right expertise. For 25 percent of the Scripted survey respondents, these two topics were the biggest barrier to entry for content marketing. If you stay informed, you can lead your client in the right direction.

Outsourcing Effectively

Since budget is not the most important factor, you can look at alternative sources for blog posts, infographics, press releases and other types of media. Working with a company that specializes in content production lets you to focus on the analytics behind strategic decisions. Effin Amazingallowed analytics lead the way to a 35 percent increase in blog traffic for one customer. Work with our talented writers to get the blog posts you need to make your total content strategy a success. At Scripted, we team you up with expert writers who work to spec, so you get the content you need, when you need it.

Need help creating content to support your clients? Scripted

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