7 Steps to

Optimise
Your Content
Marketing
Strategy
According to the 7th Annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America
(co-produced by CMI and MarketingProfs), 91% of the top B2B marketing performers are extremely or
very committed to content marketing. On the other end of the spectrum, 87% of the least successful
organizations have no documented content marketing strategy.1

A documented plan ensures your team is aligned, on message, and creating content that will deliver
effective results. Many marketers are investing in content marketing initiatives to build out in-depth strategies
that incorporate audience personas and workflow management - all of which is housed within a robust
content calendar.

At ScribbleLive, we’re committed to providing marketers with everything they need to create better, more
effective content. That’s why we’ve pulled together a list of seven time-tested and practical steps you can
follow to put together an effective content marketing strategy at your organization. So without further delay,
here are our seven steps to optimize your content marketing strategy.

1
1. Make It Scalable
Here’s a

TIP:
Avoid “thinking small” right from the get-go. Relying on strategies and
tools that merely support content marketing programs for small team
environments and minimal content distribution will lead to unnecessary
growing pains down the road. Sadly, according to CMI and
MarketingProfs, many marketing teams still have work to do in this area. If your marketing
team has more

“
Fewer than 10% of existing content marketing than 10 staff, you
strategies are sophisticated enough to accurately produce 2 or more
scale businesses.” 3 content pieces per
month, and send
It’s inevitable that your marketing team will grow along with content over 50 social
output expectations. Spreadsheets, email, network-based or online file media posts,
sharing applications are not appropriate or scalable tools for planning, you need to use
creating, and scheduling workflows related to your content scalable tools and
marketing strategies.
processes in order
to fully optimize
your content
marketing strategy.

2. Set Realistic Expectations

While it’s great to set ambitious goals in your content marketing strategy, be sure not to set yourself up
for failure. Carefully define your team’s size and limitations to build a plan that is sustainable. Consider
this:

“
In their 2017 report, CMI and Marketing Profs note that ‘over 50%
of B2B brands have small marketing teams that produce content
for the entire organization.’” 4

Today, the spotlight is on the marketing department and there’s a clear expectation to create and distribute
a steady stream of timely, relevant, insightful marketing content. While the suggestions from Step 1 will
help marketers work more efficiently, be sure to set realistic expectations in your content marketing plan
(in terms of output and results). Your marketing team’s limitations need to be considered when developing
your content marketing strategy and communicated when you share it with other stakeholders in your
organization.

2
3. Target the Right Audience
As a marketer, it’s imperative to produce and distribute content that
resonates with your intended audience. One of the best methods to
achieve this is by targeting your content using demographic profiles
and buyer personas and ensure that this content is further customized
for each stage of the customer journey. This tactic has boosted the “Revisit your target
effectiveness of content marketing campaigns for B2B marketers, personas. Build
according to CMI and Marketing Profs: your editorial

“
strategy, content
50% of B2B content marketers attribute
marketing
targeted audience profiles to improved year
techniques
over year success.”5
and content types
In their Market Guide for Content Marketing 2015, Gartner recommends to align
that marketers target their content by personas. We’ve captured their to their content
recommendation in the tip on the right. consumption
habits and social
While in theory, sending the right content to the right audience may
seem obvious to marketers, it’s still not widely adopted due to resource
sharing
limitations, inadequate tools, a lack of understanding their audience or preferences.”
simply overlooking this aspect during the strategy phase of the content
marketing plan.

4. Define Your Voice and Mission

Maintain a consistent style and tone throughout your content by
establishing a branding guide.

“
Over 70% of B2B marketers have integrated content
marketing guidelines and best practices into
business standards.7

While you are producing content for different audiences, as well as

many different topics over time, all content should still look, feel, and
read like it’s coming from the same company. It’s easy to ensure your
brand’s colors, fonts, and logos are all defined and enforced in your
content marketing output, but many organizations (especially B2B),
struggle to define their voice. As a result, content marketing output can
seem dry, robotic, and often disjointed. Don’t let this be you!

Define your company’s voice and mission in the early strategy phase of
your content marketing plan, and impress your customers. Content will
have a consistent voice and will appear unified across all distribution
channels, giving your audience the impression that all employees are on
the same page, are passionate about what they do, and are all working
toward the common goal of serving their customers.

3
5. Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is an absolute must. This will ensure your team and any other stakeholders are
aligned and have insight into future planned content activities.

CMI and Marketing Prof’s B2B

Benchmarks report states that
62% of successful B2B marketers Editorial Social
Content Media
manage their workflow through Calendar Calendar
an editorial content calendar, and Users Users
56% of marketers also use a social 62% 56%
media calendar. 8

With one clear, unified view of all planned content activities, you can further define responsibilities, assign
roles and tasks to team members, incorporate feedback and ideas and so much more. With clearly
defined schedules, an improvement in productivity is sure to follow.

6. Stick to a Budget
Be sure to plan out the costs of your content marketing strategy (including time, resources, and
hard costs) to ensure you keep to your marketing budget.

How much? In their 2017 Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends- North
America report, CMI & Marketing Profs indicate:

“
B2B organizations dedicate 29% of total marketing budgets to the
production and distribution of content with 39% of marketers planning to
increase their content marketing spending over the next 12 months. 9

Depending on your budget, this will seem like a lot, but it might help to break your spending down into sub
categories.

4
 Who will create my content?
(Internal resources, outsource, a
What technology will I be using?
mix of both)
(think about tools to help with
managing, distributing, etc.)
Will I be increasing content
output or trying to improve
Strategy and messaging
quality this year?
development?
Ask yourself these (internal development
What type of content do I want to
questions when vs. external consultants)
produce (e.g. whitepapers,
developing your e-books, webinars, etc.)
What channels will I be using to
content marketing distribute content?
budget: What paid methods
do you plan to use?

7. Measure, Measure, Measure!

In your strategy plan, you will have listed your business objectives, marketing goals, and the metrics that will
determine the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. But which metrics should you use?

“
Data from CMI and MarketingProfs suggests that a majority of marketers
agree (and could demonstrate) that effective content marketing is
measured through increased audience engagement (75%), an increased
number of leads (72%), and additional sales (57%).10

Be sure to leverage tools that not only help with the creation, management and distribution of your marketing
content, but also give you visibility into the content that is driving these key items you want to measure.

Are you ready to take your content marketing to the next level?
ScribbleLive’s Content Marketing Platform can help you
develop and operationalize your team’s strategy.

Learn More
or

Speak to a product expert

Sources:
1, 3 ,4, 5, 7, 8, 9 - “2017 B2B Content Marketing Trends—North America”, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, Sept 23,
2016 2, 6 - “Market Guide for Content Marketing”, Gartner, September 30, 2015