Lean Content Marketing: Extend the Value of Your Content
The term “content marketing” is tossed around a lot these days, but what does it really mean?
Content marketing embodies a strategic approach that aims to create and distribute relevant, valuable content to attract and nurture a target audience. The content should be engaging, consistent, and ultimately drive lead and customer action.
I want to highlight one of the adjectives used to describe successful content marketing: valuable. If the content you’re making doesn’t provide value to those you are trying to attract, then you’re wasting your time and money. People get bombarded with marketing messages from the time they wake up until their head hits the pillow. If you want to get their attention, you have to give them something of value.
You can’t pull valuable and relevant content out of thin air. It takes time, energy, and money to create something worthwhile. In order to be efficient, you need to start thinking “lean.” It’s difficult to keep up with a consistent flow of content, but if you’re smart about it and incorporating lean thinking, you can make each piece of content work harder for you and take on various formats and situations.
[We’ve created tools and resources that will help you craft the perfect content strategy for your business. Find them here.]
The origins of “Lean Thinking.”
The philosophy of “lean thinking” originated on the manufacturing floor of Toyota. The Japanese auto manufacturer wanted to create a system of visual cues, decision-making practices, and guiding principles to optimize their business. This practice brought Toyota from bankruptcy in the early 1950s to the dominant automaker we know today.
Leading principles in lean thinking include identifying value, eliminating waste, mapping out the value stream, and building in quality to increase productivity and support sustainable growth. Adopting this type of thinking avoids wasting time and money on efforts that could turn out to be useless and encourages a more flexible approach.
Sounds great, right? But, how can we use lean thinking principles with content marketing?
Develop a lean content strategy.
At Think Better, we regularly incorporate lean content into our marketing plans, both for clients and for our own business. Essentially, we build high-quality, targeted content that can be repurposed into many formats, many times. It’s efficient, cost-effective, and appealing to leads and customers.
[For more tips on crafting a content strategy, read this article.]
Here’s how we do it:
STEP ONE: FOCUS ON A PROBLEM YOU CAN SOLVE.
It’s important to know who you are talking to, what you’d like to say, and the outcome you’re looking for. Start off by asking yourself a few questions:
Who is your target audience?
What problem does your audience have that is worth it for your business to address?
Do you have a unique opinion, skill, or resource that could provide your target value?
What’s your overall objective with this campaign?
Example: Hypothetical company, ConnectivityUs, sells a software platform that helps teams collaborate remotely. They’ve identified the marketing persona they want to focus on. They want to give business leaders value by educating them on different tactics they can use to help teams stay connected while working with colleagues in different time zones and cultures. After working with hundreds of remote workers over the years, ConnectivityUs is in a unique position to offer some time-tested advice. With this content, they hope to attract new leads who are interested in a product demo.
STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR ORIGIN CONTENT PIECE.
Now that you know what you want to talk about and to whom, you need to decide what type of content to start with. Remember, you’ll be recycling and repurposing this content into many forms. Do you have have any upcoming events or campaigns that would respond best to a specific type of content? Or is there a format of content that your team is best at creating? This piece of “origin” content is the starting point, and as long as you’re thinking strategically about how you can re-create this content, there’s no wrong answer.
Example: ConnectivityUs knew that an effective form of engaging content for their target audience was a live training or webinar. This format also allows them to demonstrate their remote collaboration expertise. They created a presentation, chose a host, and advertised their training through partnerships, emails, organic social media, and LinkedIn advertising.
STEP 3: MEASURE. REUSE. REPEAT.
Did your piece of content accomplish your original objective? What went well and what could be improved? There’s always something to learn from how your audience reacts to your efforts. If there was a part of your content that didn’t go over well, that’s okay. You can remove it or re-work it as you go. The important part is that you don’t have to start from scratch. You can still get value out of what you have already created.
Now it’s time to re-think your content and recycle it into a new form to reach an even wider audience. Your blog post can morph into a guide, a video, an email series, or a presentation. An ebook can be transformed into an infographic, a webinar, several blog posts, or a social media campaign. The possibilities are endless.
Example: ConnectivityUs deemed their webinar a success since they had engaged attendees and received several demo requests directly from the presentation. During the webinar, they received several questions about using their platform to help connect creative teams, so they plan on incorporating more of this specific advice in future iterations of their content. They recorded their live webinar and sent the recording, along with a thank you and an invitation to do a demo, to all registrants of the webinar, whether they attended or not.
ConnectivityUs also created a landing page for the recording that is accessible through a form to capture new leads. They sent an email out non-registrants, inviting them to watch the recording, and repurposed slides from the presentation to post on social media. They also wrote a blog post summarizing the webinar and were able to point to the recording and blog post when they talked to prospective clients. ConnectivityUs was able to use the blog post, along with several others, to create a guide. Now, their one-time webinar lives on indefinitely, providing them relevant content in diverse formats to share with their audience.
[For tips on how to future proof your content, check out this article.]
The best type of content keeps on giving.
While content marketing is proven to work, it takes a lot of effort to create something valuable. Get the most out of your efforts by applying lean thinking. A lean content strategy will get more juice out of every drop of content, attracting leads with various formats and giving them content that’s packed with value. Test your ideas constantly, remove ideas that fail to produce favorable results, and amplify those that do.
If you need help developing or executing a lead content strategy, we’re happy to help. Schedule a meeting with us and we’ll create a plan that will work for your business. Book a consultation now.
