A Bottom Up Content Approach

I’ve been having an ongoing conversation with the Audience Ops team (and clients) lately about what types of content a brand should create first.

It’s really enticing to want to start with more creative mediums, “Oh, let’s do thought leadership pieces,” before you have some fundamentals in order.

What I’m in favor of is something I’ve started calling a bottom up approach (I’ll let you know if the name sticks), which basically means a brand should have the product marketing and proof it works nailed down before investing in top-of-funnel SEO blogs.

And my main point here is that if your content marketing objective is to draw attention to your brand by creating valuable content, you’d better have what you sell and why to buy it nailed down so the value you distribute can actually lead to conversions.

In other words, don’t write checks that can’t be cashed.

It’s why I love starting with CEO/founder-led brand narratives case studies:

You talk directly with the person who decided it should exist in the first place about why they built it AND with buyers about why they bought and results they’ve seen.

This week, Shiv Narayanan reinforced this idea twice:

Here, he provides an order that prioritizes core messaging:

1. Product Marketing
2. Sales Enablement
3. Customer Marketing
4. Nurture Content
5. Thought Leadership
6. SEO

And, in this issue of How To SaaS, he offers a framework that encourages companies focus on differentiation to prioritize GTM:

1. Invest in understanding market dynamics and customer pain points
2. Build a strategic narrative to educate the market on how to resolve those pain points
3. Create content to educate buyers on the strategic narrative at every stage of their journey
4. Leverage demand generation channels and campaigns to scale distribution to ideal buyers

Go follow Shiv. He’ll inspire you.

 

LinkedIn Content Marketing Goodness

My LI feed is sizzling lately with solid posts about content marketing (and also a bunch of people plagiarizing, so watch out). Here’s what resonated:

Types of Content

Lyndsay Cambridge writes “you often have to go bigger and better with your content to stand out”. Her LinkedIn post offers 4 content types that actually stand out.

SEO

How do you feel about SEO? Nicole Bump acknowledges our (sometimes frustrated) feelings and explains why a strong SEO strategy is actually an asset.

To top that off, “SEO should be the seasoning, not the steak.”—John Bonini reminded us that, ultimately, people determine content’s success…not Google.

Distribution

Are you simply “checking the box” when it comes to distribution? In another post, John Bonini challenges this approach and suggests strategizing distribution before creation, not tacking it on afterwards.

Great Content Rules Them All

Sara Stella Lattanzio’s post explains why “just creating” is no longer enough. “Have you noticed? 😮 By now, most questions related to marketing success can be answered with ‘𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁’.”

 

Funnel Stage Strategies

How do you strategize for funnel stage? Turns out there are contradictory opinions out there:

Everything Should Fit: In this SEJ article, Kristi Hines offers 5 tips to improve your content strategy and number 2 is this: “Make Sure Everything Fits Into Your Sales Funnel.”

VS.

Don’t Create for the Funnel: On the other hand, Ashley Lewin argues that creating content for funnel stage at all is a huge miss. Instead, she simplifies it to this: “Create content for your audience, not your funnel.”

My take: Ashley Lewin’s urge is more about mindset shift than demonizing the funnel. If we strategize for the funnel alone, content gets... forced. Like we’re trying to build a linear journey that isn’t linear at all. Ever.

So what she’s getting at is that we shouldn’t prioritize based on what we need someone to do but instead focus on what they would actually benefit from consuming.

I’m on board with that, but, as mentioned above, I do think your product messaging and story should be prioritized, even if they begin to iterate as you create more and more for your audience.