How to scale content marketing for global engagement

The content marketing shift has impacted marketers around the world. To be successful, global brands with diverse audiences must dramatically increase their investment in content, as well as in the strategic promotion of that content in order to scale their stories for global engagement.

At its core, content marketing involves a fair exchange of value your content in exchange for a customer or prospects time and attention. Think about what your customer values before producing a single word, white paper, video or infographic. If a customer gives you five minutes, make it time well spent especially if you want them to give you five minutes more.

Content marketing, the fuel that powers the entire marketing strategy, should focus on the most important part of your business: your customers. It is composed of strategies and techniques designed to serve customer goals above the business goals, and is applied across the entire life of the customer relationship.

If your content helps your customers become smarter and better informed about key issues around their areas of interest, you are on the right track. If it is intended to lure, persuade,or compel a direct purchase, it could still have marketing value and purpose, but is not content marketing.

The new 60:40 rule: While 70 percent of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago, too often the content is irrelevant and outdated by the time it is released. The new 60:40 content marketing rule (60 percent creation: 40 percent promotion) puts a much-needed emphasis on effectively promoting the content once it is created.

The scaling challenge: The majority of B2B marketers struggling to scale content cite lack of time as the culprit, which is understandable, given the myriad ways that content must scale:

• Products
• Channels
• Geographies
• Business units and teams
• Audience types

The new, more diverse marketing department structure means the CMOs hands-on role in all aspects of a companys marketing is dispersed across specialists, vendors, platforms and internal systems. Creating continuity across initiatives while being an effective customer partner can overwhelm even seasoned CMOs. Exacerbating the challenge is the flood of data coming from each channel, rendering too many marketers immobilized.

The three best practices for a content marketing program to succeed as it grows are people, process, and platforms.

People. A successful content marketing team requires dedicated content creators with deep industry expertise and a legitimate passion for your customers. Look outside of the sales and marketing organization for inspired content producers and subject matter experts.

Processes. You will not succeed without a content calendar that maps to your business objectives, your customers expectations and the social webs tempo. Repurpose content intelligently and consider drafting processes, designer input, approvals and the cadence of your industry when creating the calendar.

Document your brand story and company promise, and implement a process to make it trainable. Build a channel plan, addressing what channels are in place and which channels need to be developed.

Platforms. The go-to solutions for scalability in marketing have long-been automation and tools. Automation can boost and accelerate content marketing scalability, but its not the only tool needed. Some of my favorite tools are Trello, Analytics (Google, Webtrends, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Marketo and Excel.

THE PROOF
The Microsoft in Health program covers 74 markets and needed to scale its content for global reach to create a deeper connection with the international healthcare community. Microsoft in Health teamed with my agency, Metia, to build an engaging and effective program that scales globally and delivers information about key issues in as close to real time as possible.

The program included using a number of platforms and country-specific channels, for example, creating an Asia-Pacific digital pilot program and producing manga style cartoon content for a targeted Japanese health care audience.

Closely managing social channels engages multiple groups and promotes the Microsoft in Health program. Content is based on a calendar addressing the four divisions of Microsoft in Health: Mobility in Health; Health Productivity and Collaboration; Health Analytics; and CityNext.

This focus on customers has helped the Microsoft in Health program become one of the largest health marketing engines around. Over the last year, the results have included: 442 percent growth in social audience; social reach has grown to over 10m people per month; 15 percent of web traffic is driven by social, up from 1.25 percent.

While this is just one example, the joy of content marketing is that a company of any size can scale its content marketing efforts in line with their customers. By following the guidelines of focusing on what your customers care about, following the 60:40 ratio of production to promotion, and people, process and platforms, you will be able to connect with your customers in every corner of the globe.