Getting Your Leadership Team Onboard With Your Content Strategy
As a savvy marketing manager, you know that strong content marketing strategies have never been more important than they are right now. It’s ultra-competitive out there, and brands that do not utilize strong content management strategies are doomed to be trampled by their competitors that do. Maybe that’s why 82% of marketers now place strong and engaging online content at the center of their marketing strategies.
Not Your Grandfather’s Marketing
This is why one of the biggest tasks facing today’s marketing managers is creating 21st-century content management strategies that work. Traditional, hit-the-pavement marketing methods just don’t cut it anymore. Today, digital marketing with great content is the most effective way for a company to meet its business goals and stay ahead of the competition.
Strong content marketing is a powerful way to build brand awareness, lead nurturing, and meaningful customer relationships. However, convincing leadership and stakeholders of this fact can feel like swimming upstream. Getting old-school leadership on board with new-fangled marketing ideas could be like wrangling cats, especially when those ideas impact a company’s bottom line.
Reasons Why Leadership Are Hesitant to Get On-board
There are several reasons why leadership often can’t see the benefits of a strong content marketing plan. Content marketing is a fairly new strategy compared to more traditional marketing methods and senior level management is less likely to fully understand it and the techniques involved.
Adding to a marketing manager’s conundrum is the fact that unlike advertising campaigns and other types of traditional marketing, seeing the positive results of a content marketing campaign could take months, if not years. Because of this time lag, the ROI of content marketing can be difficult to measure and prove. Your job will be to convince the C-suiters your plans are rock solid and their patience will pay off in time.
Tips For Getting Leadership to Buy-in To Your Content Strategy
The marketing manager’s mantra of “content is king” means nothing to the C-suiters. To them, revenue rules, so it’s up to you to convince them that your content strategies can deliver maximum ROI. Getting everyone on-board will be challenging, but the extra legwork will be worth it. Here are a few strategies that just might work when pitching your content marketing ideas to management:
Communicate How Content Benefits Stakeholders
Seeing things from shareholders’ perspective could help you gain buy-in for your content strategies. Having a clear idea of individual shareholder objectives will help you better explain how your content plans fit in with those overall goals. You can then highlight how a solid content strategy can affect broader company goals. Money talks, and showing stakeholders the substantial impact your content plan can have on the company’s bottom line might be all you need to say.
Show Winning Examples
Do your own independent research to conduct a competitive analysis of the content marketing strategies of your top three competitors. Analyze what they are doing well and learn how they present their content across all channels. Take a close look at their website’s messaging and positioning. Subscribe to their newsletters and mailing lists to better analyze their email strategy. See how they communicate with their audience through their social profiles. Showing examples of the successful content strategies of other companies will help sell your vision.
Highlight How Far Your Content Reaches
One of the best ways to get leadership on board with your marketing plans is to help them understand exactly what is meant by “content” and how big that term can be. Educate them on the importance of blog posts, ebooks, white papers, and case studies. Introduce them to the wide world of social media, automated emails with selling content, and lead magnets. Impressing upon management how each of these content tactics directly touches the buying public will help your cause. And then you need to assure them that while that might sound like a lot of content types, you’ve got a firm handle on all of them.
Use Data To Back Up Your Strategy
Executives love data, so use as much of it as possible to illustrate the potential of your content strategy. Share key industry statistics to show how effective content marketing achieves marketing goals at every stage of the customer journey. Research the expected increase in organic traffic that may result if you blog regularly. Show stats on how other strategies like white papers and ebooks can connect back to sales revenue. Presenting leadership with solid data on how content can contribute to company growth (and profits) will all but guarantee their interest.
Believe in Your Plan
With a solid strategy, a bit of salesmanship, and a little patience, you’ll be able to gain leadership’s trust in your content marketing plans. The main keys are to do your research, make a strong pitch, and mostly, believe in what you are proposing. You can’t get leadership to invest in your content strategy if you’re not fully invested in it yourself.
Once you get approval, you’ll need to deliver on your promise of strong, effective content. Why not partner with a team of content experts to help you achieve your new marketing goals? The full-service team at Comma Copywriters has proven experience in writing strong marketing content that has people coming back for more. Schedule your free consultation today to learn more.