How to Build a Content Framework for the Enterprise

4 minute read

Upland Admin

Scaling a content operation within a company can feel like a hard, steep climb—particularly for enterprise marketers.

And the fact of the matter is, you can’t do it alone.

To establish an enterprise content marketing framework, you need support from across your organization. Otherwise, your efforts will not drive the results or company-wide involvement you need to sustain and grow a content-focused, buyer-centric marketing strategy.

At Kapost, our customer success team has worked with hundreds of customers to scale their content operations. They’ve watched marketing drive 4X the leads and 3X the closed deals with content. But on the other hand, they’ve also watched content teams get dissolved into other marketing groups or cut altogether.

This team knows—from firsthand experience—why some content operations thrive where others fail.

To get insight into the problems and solutions facing enterprise marketers, we interviewed Riley Gibson, Todd Cameron, Rupal Patel, and Grace Boyle—four members of Kapost’s customer success team—and published our findings in the eBook, Content at Scale: Building a Content Marketing Framework for the Enterprise.

What we found, when it comes to scaling a content operation in the enterprise, it always comes down to 3 crucial steps to overcome organizational barriers.

1. Leave the Content Island Behind

content team lives on an island

In many enterprise companies, the content team is disconnected from the rest of marketing, sales, and services. They have no insight into the content these teams need nor the types of content that actually work across channels and buying stages. This makes it both difficult for marketers to both deliver high-quality assets that get used by the organization and get the metrics they need to prove the value of their efforts.

Content teams must leave the content island behind. Marketing must establish an integrated, collaborative process for sharing content ideas and needs, and for getting the rest of the organization excited about content.

2. Establish Visibility and Flexibility

content marketing hub

It happens all the time. A marketing plan is painstakingly mapped out for the upcoming quarter or year, but is left untouched as the quarter or year progresses. It sits in PowerPoint, rarely revisited for optimization opportunities and evaluation.

Only a few people in marketing have visibility into this document or, worse, into how content initiatives contribute to larger business objectives. Also, there’s little room to capitalize on timely and unforeseen opportunities, or to incorporate key lessons learned during the quarter or year.

Marketing teams need to create a living, breathing strategy that takes into account feedback from internal stakeholders, broader access to business goals and objectives, and the evolution of buyer persona research.

3. Create Your First Content Pillar

content pillar is a strategic messaging strategy

It’s a lot of work to ramp up to a point when you have enough consistent content to fuel all of your marketing channels. The content pillar approach is the best way to do it.

A“content pillar” is a substantive piece of content on a specific topic or theme which can be broken into many derivative assets. These smaller pieces then drive traffic back to the main asset, which people can download in exchange for their contact information. When done well, it’s a win-win: Marketing generates leads, and the buyer gets valuable and useful information.

It may seem like a lot of work to create a content pillar—and it is. But don’t start from scratch for your first pillar campaign. Instead, pull from what you already have.

The Benefits of Overcoming These Barriers

There are two huge reasons that establishing a content-focused marketing framework in the enterprise will help your company drive real return.

1. A Better Experience for Your Buyer

buyer should hear one voice

Many marketing departments are narrowly focused on channels. Siloed teams focused on either social, marketing automation, sales enablement, and internal communications, with little to no visibility into what the other is doing. Each of these channels department are responsible for creating their own content for that channel. This leads to a disjointed, inconsistent buyer experience as buyers engage with your brand across channels and buying stages.

2. Buy-In for Content Across the Organization

marketing-metrics-quote

If you don’t have buy-in from your organization, your content operation will not succeed. As you start implementing your content strategy, be sure to share metrics and key wins with the organization—particularly the internal stakeholders contributing to your content efforts and strategy. Not only will this get people in the enterprise interested and excited about content, but they’ll start to see how marketing is an important contributor to revenue.

Find out how Kapost customers have succeeded in building an enterprise content marketing frameworks. Download Content at Scale: Building a Content Marketing Framework for the Enterprise.

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