[Webinar] How to Plan Content That Actually Aligns to Strategy

2 minute read

Upland Admin

There are few things more beautiful to a marketer that an annual strategic plan.

It’s thoughtful. It’s innovative. It’s color-coded. And you know it’s going to make a big impact on your organization. That is, if it actually comes to fruition.

For so many of us, the road to content chaos is paved with good intentions. As the year progresses, random acts of content, ad hoc requests, and competing priorities mean much of what’s produced fails to ultimately serve a higher strategic goal.

Is this content heartbreak an inevitable part of being a marketer? Becky Monk, Senior Manager of Global Marketing at SCIEX, and her colleagues decided it didn’t have to be.

Good Content, Bad Strategy

The SCIEX team didn’t have a problem creating great content. But even still, they were struggling.

While they had no problem getting content produced, they faltered when they tried to see how that work leveled up (or didn’t) to larger strategic imperatives. When they did connect content to strategy, it was after it had already been created, not before.

The result was waste. Lots of it.

Time and energy were routed toward building assets from scratch that already existed. Poorly performing campaigns were replicated without deeper consideration.

Something had to give.

Strategy First, Content Second

That’s when global marketing’s Deb Shore and Becky Monk decided it was time to fundamentally rethink the way their teams approached content planning. Instead of simply creating content, SCIEX marketers needed to get into the mindset of building strategic campaigns.

So, instead of creating first, rationalizing later, they’d need to flip the content process on its head. Moving forward, the team would be governed by a set of annual strategic initiatives. No content would be created that didn’t fall into one of them.

Though the step might seem drastic, the rationale was simple: If content didn’t align to a key initiative, it wasn’t going to drive revenue for SCIEX. Therefore, there was no reason to create it.

Plan Your Content Creation Strategy

The idea was one thing. Implementing it was another. But despite the magnitude of their undertaking, Becky and Deb were determined to see it through.

How? You’ll have to tune in to find out.

Becky Monk will be speaking live about driving strategic change on Thursday, February 28th at 10 a.m. PT/1p.m. ET.

Join us, and bring your questions!

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