In many business sectors, marketing to people who are important to your business is all about teaching them and helping them to keep up with rapid change.
You're often dealing with a community of eager learners. Business content, to be useful, must be informative, not promotional. You receive the marketing benefit by just putting out great content that people consume.
The specific topics of that content of course vary by company and market sector. So, when planning content development, get inside your audience's head. Ask question such as...
- What do people not know that they should know because knowing would help them?
- What can your company teach people that will be of use to them but will also help enhance your brand's reputation?
- What's interesting about your brand, product, service, people, or technology that sets it apart from those of competitors?
- What is your company's expertise that you can share to help those with whom you must connect in order to create interest, preference, and demand?
Those are key criteria for determining worthy content topics. From there, available resources, imagination, and creativity should be applied to specific business challenges your company faces.
What actions are appropriate is a function of a company's particular competitive situation: Are you top dog in your category or a feisty newcomer attempting to grow awareness and credibility? Is your category fun or super serious? Can you make it fun? What are your competitors doing? What information is missing? Can you survey your community and learn what they want to know? Do you already know what they want to know?
Unfortunately, there's no easy, one-regimen-fits-all solution.
Content development has many facets. Two that are often ignored are content strategy and the reuse of content.
Strategy First, Then Tactics!
Strategy comes into play because just any content isn't necessarily good content. If there's not a clear communications strategy incorporating competitive differentiation, get that fixed and then come back to content development planning.
Does your brand own a place in the mind of the market? Al Reis and Jack Trout termed the concept years ago as "positioning": How does the market define you? Is it what you'd like it to be? How do you go about changing that perception? What would the desired position be?
Remember, you can only stand for one thing, not many. Creating strategy isn't rocket science. Following competitors isn't a great idea either. Read Trout's Differentiate or Die for excellent guidance on strategy development.
When developing content ideas, ask whether the subject suits how the brand is or wants to be known and what the target community needs or wants to learn about. If you don't know the answers, or the content idea doesn't pass both those tests, you're likely in danger of wasting serious time and money.
As a marketer, you're not necessarily in the pure education business. But taking an educational rather than promotional tack can certainly help your brand stand out, especially if your competitors aren't delivering valuable info. People aren't looking for more ads. They're hungry for knowledge they can use in their work or personal lives.