Content is an essential part of any marketing strategy, and this is especially true in account based marketing. It’s one thing to have a strong salesperson who can talk anyone’s ear off about your company, but without content, you’re missing out on an invaluable–and frankly, necessary–way to grow your business.
Maybe you were never very good at writing, so you’re reluctant to start producing content beyond the bare minimum that your strategy currently requires. Maybe you’re ready to get writing, but not sure where to start given how large and intimidating content can seem.
Let’s take a look at how to best produce strong content as well as the benefits it gives your company.
Types of Content
Content encompasses a lot of “things”; ideally, you should be producing a variety of the collateral listed below:
- Blogs
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
- Website copy
- eBooks
- Webinars
- Videos
- Landing pages
- Pop-ups
- Emails
- Direct mail pieces
…You get the idea. If you have to write it, you’re producing content.
Map Content to Personas
Of course, you shouldn’t just produce content for the sake of having it–that doesn’t help anyone, and it will likely clog your clients’ feeds as well as your website (which means they will hit the dreaded “block” button on your posts).
So how do you know what kind of content to produce? We’re raving fans of the “they ask, you answer” method of creating content pioneered by Marcus Sheridan. This requires the sales and marketing teams to work in tandem with each other; when sales gets asked a question, they should send that over to marketing, who should create a content piece with the answer to the question. That way, you are directly producing content with information that customers and prospects are interested in.
Once enough content has been created, you can start mapping which pieces correlate to specific personas or stages in the sales funnel so you aren’t just producing content blindly with the hopes that someone is reading them.
When that is done, you will know when to distribute which pieces and to whom. For example, those in the “discovery” stage of the funnel will benefit from webinars and blog posts, while those in the “consideration” phase want case studies and how to documents about your services or products.
Tips for Creating Content
Account based marketing is all about personalization. According to the Harvard Business Review, people who thought that content was tailored to their specific needs were 40% more willing to buy from that company than people who didn’t.
Consider this in the context of email marketing–if an email seems generic (it doesn’t state your name or company at all, for example), chances are you’ll throw it in the virtual trash.
Other tips and best practices include:
- Staying short and sweet; include only what you need to and try to avoid “fluff”
- Similarly, using short sentences and bullet points to ease the reading experience
- Incorporating your brand personality into text; it doesn’t matter if you prefer serious over silly, but every content piece should sound like it came from your company
- Adding statistics or other facts to bolster your information
- Avoiding using industry-specific jargon (unless you are certain your audience knows it)
SEO and Content
Content and SEO fit together like apples and oranges–they’re from the same family, but they work in different ways. That said, when combined in the right way, SEO complements content, improving your optimization strategy. However, we strongly advise against the outdated practice of keyword stuffing–it’s tempting to just want to say your keyword over and over again, but it won’t actually improve your rankings (and it will annoy your customers).
In fact, strong content is an essential part of a successful SEO strategy. When writing, you want to provide valuable information for your customers and prospects instead of more white noise. Google recognizes the value of good content above all else–and with strategically placed keywords (done over a period of time across different pieces), your ranking will improve.
Final Thoughts
In the end, content should be engaging, interesting, and informative; it should also be highly personalized to the audience or accounts that you’re targeting. Because the content universe is so vast and varied, writing content allows for creativity and experimentation to see what works and what doesn’t. That said, while you should certainly take risks in your writing, you should first and foremost have a plan; organized chaos is much easier to control than good old fashioned chaos.
For more information on our content marketing services and offerings, feel free to reach out to us!
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