Taking a ‘Campaign’ Approach To Content Marketing

Taking a ‘Campaign’ Approach to Content Marketing

Marketing Practitioners have a varied opinion when it comes to associating Content Marketing with Campaigns. The rationale formulated is that Content Marketing is a long term, always-on, promotion tactic that should not be time-boxed like regular Campaigns. While the long-term strategy argument certainly holds merit, we argue that associating Content Marketing efforts with Campaigns has specific practical benefits that help streamline planning, delivery and optimization of marketing investments.

Here are a few specific ways in which running Content Marketing programs as Campaigns can help Marketers achieve better results.

Obtain strategic alignment-Well-planned Campaigns ensure that marketing investments are aligned to specific business objectives and are part of a larger business strategy. Approved Campaigns have Senior Leadership buy-in which ensures that there is a collective vision, agreement and expectation around desired business outcomes. This helps avoid random initiatives that lack purpose, and direction or ones that may not be important enough to justify resource and time investments.

Help focus content development efforts – Writers can talk about specific products/offerings instead of maintaining a generalist theme. Further, content can be targeted at specific personas and buying cycle stages for enhanced impact.

Facilitate measurement-Campaigns are typically associated with specific marketing objectives such as lead generation, customer conversion, customer service improvement, retention and branding. Devising content marketing programs as campaigns help tie in marketing efforts to specific objectives and set metrics around them.

Resource planning-Campaigns have definite resource allocations, teams, working directories, permissions, calendars and many other such artefacts that are important in smooth implementation of marketing strategies. Allocating content marketing programs to Campaigns helps structure content marketing efforts

With the mainstreaming of Content Marketing as an established tactic for lead generation and not just branding, it is important to bring in the same planning rigour that goes into normal media buying, search or social media Campaigns. Running Content Marketing Programs as long-lasting Campaigns provides the workaround that these Programs can be run over long periods but at the same time benefit from the governance and process necessary to realize meaningful business benefits.