Friends of Intellyx Advice for Technology Marketers
Congrats! You just got a new BrainBlog from Intellyx. Or, you wheedled a generously written article from your own product expert. Or you have this excellent case study writeup ready to go. That’s a great problem to have — many companies struggle to produce any unique content. Now, what can you do to promote it? After years of dealing with content marketing strategy myself, I feel your pain.
If you talk to me about marketing programs, you’ll often hear me recommend “using every part of the buffalo” when it comes to original content –– a reference to tales of Native American tribes who could source everything they needed to survive by conserving their consumption of once-vast bison herds.
Too often I see marketers only post an article in a blog or resource center once, maybe tweet a couple times, and then they’re done. Kind of a waste of marketing utility.
Beyond simply posting the content to your blog, repeated social sharing and liking, and adding to your general email distributions which can often get overlooked, here are some suggestions you may take or leave!
- Make your next list email unique. Whether your content is included in a newsletter or sent as a dedicated feature – how is your current email system working, can you feature the article with a compelling lead-in or offer, and is it well-subscribed? Can you experiment with more topical, targeted subject lines and lead-in paragraphs this time? Are you actually ‘offering’ the content or asking specific targeted readers to get it?
- Attach to paid digital campaigns. I don’t know if you are running any AdWords or even some small ads in Adsense or Adroll – or if you have any purchased placements in trade pubs or a “knowledge center” on a well-trafficked site. Especially in larger companies, I see the people who write and procure content assets may not even ask to push it into their ongoing digital marketing campaigns. It should be a small matter to merge in one more asset, and chances are they want every asset they can get.
- Feature it or fix it. How easy is your blog, whitepaper or featured content to find? – If it’s not featured in home page content, if there’s not a clear Blog link in the header, if new content is buried under News in the Company index – and if your site doesn’t allow visual browsing like a blog or news site, you have a presentation problem. You need to bubble up what’s current to get engagement, not subtly listed in a file system or wiki.
- Assign your PR team. Are you utilizing your PR firm or comms professionals? Depending on the story’s non-promotional value, you may be able to get external placement – have your PR firm approach the most relevant publication with it for earned media or send a ‘teaser’ around to your list of relevant editors who might want the whole thing. Always make the analysts or writers and your executives and customers available for further interviews or quotes, when possible.
- Open source and syndicate. You can even go broader and make the content available with an open source CC license for syndication to other pubs thru your wire service or a press distribution list. Yes, it may have low chances of prominence, and you lose some control over it, but as long as the credited writer and sources are intact, chances are it could be a net positive for awareness.
- Tell your sales and marketing teams! If you aren’t internally promoting the content as collateral to people who interact with prospects and customers every day, you are really missing out. Don’t just depend on automated email. Insert the link into a short and sweet email your sales or biz dev rep can send personally to offer a bit of education to people who match your desired profile.
- Rewrap, repackage, reheat. You could also wrap your original content in your own “data sheet” or use our slick Intellyx PDF format, and make it a downloadable file for the resource library – maybe after it has been up for a while. You can also band together several pieces into a specific online Reference Guide or eBook, and provide some of your own executive business context around the collection.
Of course, your level of uptake in leveraging content still depends on the strength of paid channels, the robustness of your lead database and the engagement level of your social following. But it’s not all about numbers, and this is especially true in larger enterprise technology marketing, where appropriately convincing less than 10 of the ideal customers can make or break your quarter.
That’s just a few ways to make better use of killer content assets. Maybe they’re all quite obvious to you, but if even one of them reminds you to use every part of that content, I have done my job here.
Be creative. Reuse, remix, and let me know what works for you. I often appreciate leftovers better than the original meal, and so might your readers!
© 2019 Intellyx, LLC. This technology marketing content is provided for the benefit of software industry vendor peers and clients, and not the general Intellyx audience. Image source: Bison, Yellowstone National Park.
