More and more marketers are being lured by the value offered by Marketing Automation Platforms. No Manual Processes! Traffic! Leads! Conversions! We here at ADTACK are a certified HubSpot partner and speak highly of it as a deeply powerful tool.
But once marketing technology of any kind is in place, many companies struggle to realize the return on their investment. Is it the platform’s fault? Or could it be ours as marketers?
When marketing automation fails, it’s easy to throw blame at the technology. The sales people are pretty convinced of its value. But like most things in life – we get out of marketing technologies what we put into them. If we aren’t feeding our marketing automation platform a healthy diet of great content, it doesn’t stand a chance.
Technology is Not Enough
Marketing automation platforms exist to help companies provide relevant content to the right people at the best time. But if we are really honest, marketing automation platforms exist to drive growth – to improve conversions and increase sales. That happens when we deliver informative, useful content to the right prospects at the right time. And that can’t just happen once.
HubSpot writes that companies that post 11 blogs a month get more than 4x the traffic of those posting 5 times a month. That means quadruple the traffic for twice the content. That is significant exponential value. Volume matters.
But why? A lot of things influence why MORE content makes marketing automation more effective.
A Crowded Marketplace: When we speak (or write) to our audience too infrequently, they can easily miss, forget, or ignore our content because we’re far from the only voice. You are never the only company talking to your potential customers. That means that we need to keep a consistent (but not obnoxious) flow of content in front of our prospects to keep from being forgotten.
Unique Snowflakes: Your prospects and customers are not all the same. Because they have different needs and goals, not all the content that you create is going to be relevant for all of them. When you increase the volume of your content, you can better address the specific needs of different customer segments. Each industry vertical you target and product benefit you provide is an opportunity for a new piece of content. And just because you’ve discussed something before doesn’t mean it isn’t worth revisiting. Whenever your short on ideas, take a look at your own topic keywords to see which topics are low on content. Give the lowest few topics some love.
Multi-Channel: One of the benefits of marketing automation is the ability to publish content across a number of channels in a single click. But just like your prospects, your channels aren’t all built the same. Different media require a different cadence, an alternative frequency of posting. Your customers may hate you for emailing seven times in one day, but no one would be surprised if you tweeted that often.
Then What?
Once you understand exactly how much content you need to feed your content marketing engine, the next step is harder: execution. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 57% of companies attribute their failures in content marketing to not having enough time.
So what should a marketer do? First, develop a content marketing strategy that addresses your company’s goals for the coming quarter or year. Then develop a plan to execute that content. Need help with either? Give us a call.
