Leaning on extra content to improve marketing quality is a common practice in play for all marketers.
Building on successful posts to add more updated, relevant content with fresh keywords and catch-phrases is a simple way to extend the life of content and grow link traffic. Sending out a long series of emails like a slow drip to drive website traffic is another. Oh, and let’s not leave out tracking all those vanity metrics that only spike when one random post goes viral.
All these approaches to marketing are still popular but are also played out when done in the same old ways.
Within a year’s time, online content has more than doubled. There are more diverse and richer resources available, offering options for eyeballs to wander off to the next shiny thing.
So stop giving people a reason to go elsewhere. Instead of offering the “snack size” version of content, go deeper. Examine ways where your brand can provide more consistent quality insights, information, and resources in one place and in one go. Also, review internal processes to find new ways to boost quality over quantity.
This shift in perspective for B2B marketers needs to be about more than just content output. Brands have to start with reshaping the overall vision of the role content plays as part of a brand’s story. Then, it can explore and experiment with ways to focus on quality over quantity in content management, marketing, sales, creative processes, analytics and more.
Rethinking What Content Can and Can’t Do
Fact: Marketing is a gamble, always. But brands can work the odds in their favor by providing reliable, high-quality content in smaller, strategic doses. When the focus is on building relationships instead of sales, the pressure to buy is taken out of the equation. The incentive for people on your email list to stay connected grows.
Most importantly, you can send content to the right people at the right point in their buyer’s journey to convert them more naturally.
This simple shift in focus for brands isn’t new, but how to execute it successfully is at a turning point. There’s simply too much content out there already to compete by making more, and content is only one piece of the marketing puzzle.
Which means building a successful marketing strategy around the philosophy of quality over quantity in a variety of areas is the logical next step.
Here are specific ways brands can rethink the quality-over-quantity angle and build a more dedicated audience and qualified leads based on genuine interest.
Review Your Calendar
Assess current blog content and editorial guidelines, then set up a fresh editorial calendar.
One of the easiest ways to always have fresh, interesting content on hand is to blog. Set up consistent publish dates weekly, choose topics of interest to your audience, and keep at it. Shoot for longer-form blog posts around topics that require more education and shorter form posts to maintain interest and engagement in industry news. Blogging also helps to consistently tie keywords to your brand as you slowly build expert status by sharing insights.
As your followers grow, your audience self-selects. Think of it like being a garage band. At some point, no one knew them at all. Yet, as their audience grew, they became more popular and got better gigs. With a higher quality, dedicated audience, it’s easier to convert and get repeat-business in the long-term, and it will be easier and faster to create content you know they like and want.
Most importantly, always shoot for evergreen content that isn’t tied to specific holidays or trends. This helps collect ample metrics from long-standing traffic builders and minimizes the content creation cycle overall.
Refresh the Qualifying Process
Evaluate the way the sales team filters leads and chooses quality ones.
Sales teams are under a lot of pressure to hit goals, but are they realistic? Should they be reset? Do they have to filter through a lot of garbage to get to the gold, and do they have the brand persona awareness to make the best call?
Using personas as a filter for qualifying leads is extremely helpful for saving time and identifying what leads are worth pursuing at all. Set the sales team up with leads that match an ideal customer profile off the bat, or co-create a process that helps you do that kind of work together. Systems that filter through to quality leads can take more time but also help zero on what will make money instead of waste it.
Kapost recently had the opportunity to add 1000 leads straight into their database but took the time to sort through who was an ideal fit. It meant ditching 800 potential leads but helped us zero in on the 200 that would want to hear or buy from us in the long run.
Reexamine Your Stats
Clarify which metrics matter most to the bottom line.
The high you get from a big number with vanity metrics can only go on for so long, especially if it’s offering up leads that go nowhere. Rather than creating content with the goal of gathering more likes and shares, focus on creative, strategic ways to get people to share contact information.
When you lead people to a form fill, you learn about the people who want to hear from you and why they do. For example, did someone show interest in an eBook and decide to share their contact information with you? Or, did a new contact read a blog post and want to sign up to receive alerts of new posts automatically?
These are the deeper, more meaningful analytics that reveal more about who is reaching out and why—and shed light on their personal preferences for future outreach.
Rejuvenate Your Marketing Automation
Make email outreach more strategic and pleasant, and create a checklist for follow up.
One of the biggest challenges with email marketing is that emails are often too frequent, bland, or off-target. However, email outreach is a necessary part of the marketing effort, so make it a quality one.
Create a personalized email that addresses points for where a specific person is on their buyer’s journey.
Employ a different checklist for new and existing prospects, and include how to handle the follow-up. Also, try to find ways to make the email process more consistent and scalable. Create a draft of emails that can be easily customized and sent automatically through a scheduling service. Look at trends and analytics on email bounce rates to determine what’s working and what can be nuanced a bit.
The key to successful email outreach is in building the relationships you really want with a customer, bit by bit, so treat it with care. They don’t have to invite you in, so demonstrate why you deserve to be there.
Revisit Your Connections
Develop relationships with key influencers to feature on a website and in blog content.
Quality content from a well-known outside source is valuable, especially when it comes to content strategy. The name recognition and insights they bring to the table make the investment worth it. Featuring a monthly column or quarterly industry insights via video or blog post can do a lot as evergreen content and serve as a jumping-off point for content to be re-purposed into other formats.
The key to marketing quality over quantity always starts with mindset. Understand the value of what your brand really offers, how it matches with client needs, and then create content that hits that sweet spot using these street-wise tactics.
