Content marketing suffers from the same forces as all marketing collateral creation. Efficiency, quality, the speed of delivery and accuracy. The content creator often cannot get the content into acceptable deliverables. Common complaints are that the content creator has not included key corporate messages and infused the brand identity correctly. Perhaps they are just not skilled writers. A content creator might be inside the product management or more likely, the product marketing department. Content creators are often members of the management team. Or perhaps a guest customer advocate. A strong communicator in customer support. These people are hard to find because their primary responsibility doesn’t revolve around the content generation. Most of them don’t have the time nor the necessary written skills.
Assuming the content was completed, then the corporate marketing team needs to work back/forth to get the content into an acceptable form. Many other deliverables are often required including graphics, artwork, templates, layout into Adobe® .pdf files, and more, which take additional time. Too many approvals and too many cycles even in the smallest of companies.
Current best practice for demand generation requires a steady and constant flow of high-value content. You must engage the prospect, draw them in, and constantly deliver high value to them. The short circuit to success is to find a content creation team that combines the product knowledge and customer value proposition with a deep understanding of how to best represent the brand identity (the corporate and product messages, the company positioning, and more) and an ability to write. These attributes are often not present in the same individual in the corporate marketing teams. The more participants, the slower the process, the longer the review, and the less of an advantage can be leveraged to move faster against competitive forces. They need to be arm’s length and close by. In a perfect world, the same individual!
A great content marketing team, that knows your product and your company can go from a one-hour briefing on a new product to a new draft product brief in full layout overnight. This means they understand the industry, the competition, your product features for administration and set-up, value proposition by audience, benefits, differentiation, and exactly how all of this fits into a customer environment. This knowledge empowers them. They can then turn this into the content you need, on time, on budget, and on spec. This is what is required to be successful and economically efficient in the content marketing domain.
