Creating a Rock Solid Content Marketing Plan

By Peter Hrabinsky, Vice President of Marketing at Revenue Automation Inc.

As every professional marketer already knows, the complexities of marketing today are making revenue automation more difficult. The challenge is that we are being held accountable for generating more leads, conversions, and revenue with less time, budget and resources than ever before. I love a challenge, and for me being efficient means taking the time to focus on something that will contribute to the overall success of my marketing plan. My focus in 2012 is on creating a rock solid content marketing plan.

A rock solid content marketing plan will fuel everything else I am doing within my executable marketing initiatives throughout the year. I hate to say it, but content is king – however, simply creating content is not the answer. The sad reality is marketers often create content for the sake of creating content. This is a big mistake! One must take a deep breath, step back, and create a content marketing plan that works.

If anyone says content marketing is easy – I promise you they are lying. One must map the content to their customer’s stage in the buying cycle. This is a process that takes time and you will need to sit down with your sales team and ask them what content really makes sense for their customers when and at what point they should read it in the buying cycle.

My approach is to create a bullet-proof content marketing plan that makes my marketing initiatives better and more targeted. In this process I will be realistic about what needs to be done and realize nothing is perfect.  The basic mapped structure of a targeted content marketing plan will help me in all areas of marketing. This, in turn, will make our digital agency better by providing our customers the right content at the right time.

For those of you interested in learning more about content marketing, I suggest contacting Reg Nordman at Rocket Builders and ask him about their Content Marketing Mastery Training. I attended their content marketing series in 2011 and the course provided me a real-world roadmap on how to enable our company’s content marketing planning and execution processes.

Before I leave you, here are some things to keep in mind when pulling together your content marketing strategy:

•  Why should you create a content marketing strategy?
•  What is the expected result? (What can you measure to say it worked?)
•  Who is your target audience?
•  What is your sales process?
•  What content do you have that you could repurpose?
•  Can you map your content against the buying stages versus your sales process and evaluate what information you need to move along the process?
•  List what content you need to create.
•  Find the resources needed to create and organize the content.
•  How will you promote the content?

If you would ever like to discuss content marketing in greater detail, let me know. I would love to hear how things are being approached in different industries.

Happy Content Marketing!

Demand Metric member Peter Hrabinsky is Vice President of Marketing at Revenue Automation Inc. and specializes in marketing automation, social media, marketing strategies and advanced marketing solutions focused on converting engagement into customer acquisition.  Contact Peter via email at:  peter@revenueautomation.com.