Karoun Charkoudian, a former yoga studio owner, once was the featured speaker at a breakfast meeting I attended. And as I learned that morning, yoga and content marketing strategy – yes, even B2B content marketing strategy – have a lot in common. (Maybe that’s why Content Marketing World included a morning yoga session?)
In Karoun’s case, she started off with the classic yoga studio model, much like a lot of content marketing strategies start with white papers, case studies, and blog posts. She taught a certain number of group classes per week, but she realized her community needed more than just a static studio. So she expanded her offerings to include group classes in leased space around the city and offered more private lessons.
When it comes to content marketing strategy, we can all learn from how Karoun pivoted her offerings. She stopped trying to replicate what competitors were doing and started tailoring her studio and her classes to her target market. As content marketing professionals, we’re well-versed in personas and creating content that resonates with C-level executives, IT directors, and IT managers.
But during shutdowns, a lot of us changed our content marketing strategy to appeal to everyone. I’m talking massive amounts of work-from-home content geared toward everyone from the end user to the C-suite, with very little differentiation in the personas. We assumed everyone would have the same problems, and we ran with that.
In short: we lost our way with content marketing strategy.
Getting Flexy with B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Now, we have an opportunity to take a page from Karoun’s book. We can look at what our customers really need – and if we don’t know, we need to start talking to our sales team. They hear from customers all the time: we need better collaboration within an app, for example.
Then, we can create new personas. Our IT director and our C-suite executives have different concerns, post-pandemic.
Next, we figure out what content they’re more likely to consume. Let’s face it; screen fatigue is real, so an hour-long webinar or video may not be effective. Blog posts broken up into short paragraphs, one-page case studies, and engaging (yet short) ebooks may get more traction.
Finally, we create the content. If this is where you get stuck, this is when you contact me for a no-obligation quote. I’m ready, willing, and able to fill in the gaps your content marketing strategy and help you reach new customers and encourage existing customers in the post-pandemic world.
In the end, you’ll be able to take a deep breath and relax, knowing that your content marketing strategy is headed in the right direction.