Brandon asks, “How to get executive buy-in for your content strategy?”
This is a great question that requires TWO sales – one to the executive for why they should embark on content marketing as a strategy, and the second about what the company should be producing in terms of content. Both are important.
To answer “why content marketing”, sell the four core motivations of every business executive:
- Make money
- Save money
- Save time
- Prove value
To answer “what content should we produce”, sell audience-centric content reasons:
- Measure sharing
- Measure search value
- Show that on average, audience-centric content creates more value
Watch the video for the full explanation and details, plus how to produce these measurements:
Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here.
Listen to the audio here:
Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may be filled with errors and is not a substitute for watching the video.
In today’s you ask I answer Brandon asks, How do I get executive by him for your content strategy. Okay. So there’s two types of buying that you need to get for executive content strategy, the why and the What the Why is relatively straightforward
executives stakeholders board members pretty much anybody who’s going to make an approving decision cares about four things. So it’s understand their motivations, because they are your first audience their motivations are generally one of the following four make money, save money, save time or prove value
if the content strategy, you’re presenting does not reinforced does not sell one of these things you’re probably not going to get by him. Conversely, if you sell in multiple benefits like this is going to make you money and it’s going to help you prove your value to the organization you’re probably going to get by and very, very quickly. So the more of those core motivations for your executive audience that you can sell in the faster your content strategy or will get executive by or any strategy for that matters not just content strategy help somebody make money help somebody saved money help somebody saved time or reduce opportunity cost losses and prove the value of that person within the organization. The second content sale. You have to make which is much more difficult sale
is selling audience centric content selling content that is going to benefit the audience and not necessarily the the company we brain trust in sets we say, you just have to use a five one will five pieces of content that are helpful to the audience for every one piece of content that’s helpful to you to your company and the reason for that is that people need this. I need to understand the value that you’re providing before they’re willing to do business with you. So
in order to do that you have to measure two things you have to measure sharing, which is essentially free marketing and you have to measure search value which is how many people think your content is so valuable that they’re willing to link to it from an outside source and if you run the analytics. I was doing this yesterday for another client on average audience centric content, content that is focused on the audience and their needs, rather than your needs as the marketer
tends to perform not only better in terms of sharing and search it would significantly better substantially better and that in turn drives traffic which in turn to drive conversions on your website,
any kind of action that someone could take that would be value or use. So that’s the second sales, a little bit of a harder sell for a lot of executives help them understand you need to make content that the audience actually wants in order for you to then earn the right to sell to them. But that’s how you get executive by in for your content strategy you sell what the audience wants first which is more results and then you sell to what your customers want
to that executive in order for them to get in order for them to buy in to
the way that you want to market in the modern era. Now, what happens if you don’t get executive by in
you
couldn’t end up not doing the content strategy at all which is actually not be at the worst outcome. The worst outcome would be a highly marketing centric or company centric content strategy which is all just by now by now by now that it’s actually going to create reputational damage at best. People will ignore you at worse that they will
they will repeatedly savages and it will diminish your reputation outside of
outside of the just the marketing sphere will diminish your reputation among your existing customer base. So as you embark on a new strategy. Keep an eye on two things keep an eye on brand organic search people searching for your company by name because if you’re doing a great job of providing value more people should be searching for you by name and keep an careful I am both new users and returning users on your website because new users indicates you’re reaching new audiences, but returning users tells you whether your existing audience is satisfied by what you’re publishing. And if the answer there is 100% new users, then the something in your content strategy that is not helpful to the people who already like you
and that will help you tune your content strategy and so you can continue to make that sale to your executives and continue to make content for that benefits your audience. Keep an eye on those metrics. Great question. Brandon and it’s a one that a lot of people need some good answers to. So as always please subscribe to the YouTube channel, the newsletter all the things and I’ll talk to you next time. Take care.
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