Content marketing works. If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ve probably seen what it does for other brands. So taking your company’s marketing in that direction certainly makes sense. However, you can’t simply start a content marketing campaign without the okay from above. You have to convince your management team that content marketing is the best choice. After all, they hold the purse strings, and their buy-in means a lot.
So, how do you sell the idea of content marketing? We’ve put together all of the information you need to make your case.
Understand Management to Create a Better Pitch
Before you do anything else, consider things from the perspective of the management team. What do they care about and what are their concerns? What are the benefits of content marketing that will really stand out to them? Will they be more impressed with the savings over traditional, paid advertising? Is the idea of attracting millennials and members of gen-z most appealing to them? Of course, you will rarely go wrong focusing on higher revenue, and lower costs.
Sell Management on The Proven Performance of Content Marketing
Content marketing is no longer some new, unproven idea. It’s something that is being used actively by brands all over the world. In fact, think of any of the top 100 brands in the world – they’re most likely using content marketing in some form or another.
Of course, this is not just a matter of ‘everybody’s doing it’. Content marketing is popular because it works. Sell your management team on the fact that content marketing earns more leads than paid ads. Don’t be afraid to back this fact up with a few reasons why. As people do more research before making purchasing decisions, they seek out accurate and reliable information. Brands that are there with the right content to answer those questions are going to make the best impression.
Know The Risks And Get Ahead of Them
There are certainly ways to get content marketing wrong. For example, you could:
- Choose the wrong social media platforms.
- Misjudge the interests and concerns of your target audience.
- Fail to spend enough time editing and proofreading your content.
- Drop the ball on content promotion.
- Fail to leave enough resources for content engagement.
Fortunately, most of these things can be avoided if you create a decent content marketing strategy. Further, any mistakes or stumbling blocks can absolutely be mitigated. Remember that you can start very slowly with content marketing. It’s as simple as publishing a few blog posts, perhaps an email newsletter, or just focusing on creating useful posts for a single social media platform.
We spoke with Terrance Arthur, a lead content writer at BestEssay.Education about getting started with content management. According to him, “all of these are things that can be done without hiring new staff, or taking up a significant amount of resources. Get started with a small project, set metrics, and get some success under your belt. This way, you have something small, yet provable to share with the management.”
Find Some Relevant Examples
You won’t convince management about content marketing if your examples are ‘fun’ companies such as fast food restaurants, travel brands, energy drinks, or sports franchises. At least you won’t if your business is in a more serious niche. After all, who’s going to follow a blog for a company that produces drinking glasses, or industrial solvents?
First, there aresome absolutely great examples of B2B companies and other companies in ” boring” industries that are succeeding with content marketing. Here’s something else to bring up with management. If nobody else in your space is using content marketing, there are definite advantages of being the first team in the field.
7 Powerful Formats Of Interactive Content To Try Out
Finally, remember that content marketing efforts can be focused on providing helpful, relevant information. Not all successful content marketing strategies are built around colorful images on Instagram, or hilarious exchanges on Twitter. Brands that can get in front of their customers with the answers they need are most likely to succeed at this. No matter the industry, this is best done with compelling content with lots of great visuals. Remember that flip books, brochures, and infographics are great tools for content marketing in any industry, not just the exciting ones.
Of course, if you can find an industry-relevant example of great content marketing, you should absolutely use that to make your case. In fact, gather up some example posts, and collect some competitive, analytics data. Let your management team see the positive results that are being earned by companies in your space.
Build a Pitch That is Visually Compelling And Analytical
The more buy-in you can get, the better. One of the challenges you’ll face is that management often consists of marketing department heads, finance folks, sales managers, etc. Each is going to be motivated by different things. Your best way forward is to prepare a visually appealing presentation package to go along with your pitch. Fortunately, there are several tools to help you with both the visual and written parts of your pitch. Try Canva, TrustmyPaper, PowerPoint, GrabMyEssay, SlideShare, and Studicus.
Be Prepared to Measure Your Results
You should be able to convince management to let you launch a pilot content marketing campaign. Once that happens, you’ll want to find a way to prove your success. If the folks holding the purse strings have any influence on this, you’ll want to quantify your results. You’ll need to be able to articulate what you will measure to determine success, and how you are going to collect those measurements. Here are some of the best KPIs to track in a content marketing initiative.
- Ratio of traffic and leads
- Before and after page views
- Location of traffic to measure localized content marketing efforts
- Traffic source to determine the influence of content on traffic
- Subscriptions
- Time on page and bounce rate
- Social media engagement rates
Fortunately, these are all metrics that can be tracked using Google Analytics, Hotjar, Capsulink custom URL shortener and the analytics offered on other social media platforms. If possible, get before and after data so that you can present a clear picture to your management team.
Final Thoughts
Any brand can increase traffic, engagement, and conversions with content marketing. All of these are things that should be appealing to your management team. Use the tips above to sell the benefits of this proven marketing technique.
