"How to get some short-term wins as a content marketer"
By:
Todd Clouser
Content marketing isn't typically synonymous with a short-term fix to GTM problems.
"Content marketing is a long term play," right?
Maybe, but one of the ways we can help with short-term problems as content marketers in a world where acquisition is harder than ever is with customer retention.
Customer Success is constantly putting out fires with customers. If a specific problem comes up enough times, maybe they reach out to the content team to create a blog or webinar to help answer these questions.
But the problem with one off content is that it doesn't address the nuance of each customer's problem well enough.
That's where we can help our counterparts on the success team, while simultaneously building out our top of funnel audience with something I call a
Customer Problem Show.
A customer problem show is episodic content meant to help customers with everyday problems that are likely problems of your broader ICP.
The beauty of this type of content is that it's episodic, so it allows you to address varying degrees of nuance each week that are applicable to different members of your audience.
Here's an example of how I'm addressing customer problems at AudiencePlus:
AudiencePlus helps content teams determine what content is working and where content teams should deploy more (and less) resources.
But one issue that every content marketer has (including our own customers) is how to best distribute content to get more eyeballs on it.
The old school way of doing this would be to create and article, or ebook, or webinar on "How to distribute content," but the problem with that is it will vary based on every team.
- Is it a podcast, a newsletter, a video series, or something else?
- Do they have members of the team that have an engaged audience on social?
- Are those audiences following them for the same things the company helps solve?
These are all levels of nuance that can't be covered in a single asset for everyone in the audience.
So we're creating a show called "Back to the Drawing Board" where an expert on content distribution, Justin Simon, will pick a new content asset from a new company each week and build them a distribution plan unique to their scenario.
Each episode he will find a new asset from a new company and build out their plan.
You can see how this would be more helpful than a one-off webinar or blog because we're:
- addressing the nuance of different team dynamics
- building a library that our CS team can use to help customers
- building an ABM motion to share with these specific companies
- all while building our top of funnel audience
So if you're trying to figure out how you can deliver some short-term wins while still creating content for the 95% of your audience that isn't in market, consider creating a
customer problem show.