TABLE OF CONTENTS It s Time to Cut the Content Waste 4 Identify Your Theme 7 Build Your Pillar 9 Distribute the Content 16 Optimize and Repeat 21 Appendix: Multi-Channel Content Distribution Examples 23 2 3
IT S TIME TO CUT THE CONTENT WASTE If you want to drive traffic, leads, and revenue for your business, you need to distribute content consistently across an ever-expanding list of digital marketing channels. Most companies have fully embraced this Content is King idea. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of marketers will create and distribute more content this year than ever before. But many are sacrificing quality for quantity. Their content cadence isn t guided by strategic themes, customer needs, or business initiatives. It s guided by a need to feed their Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, marketing automation systems, blogs, websites, and other channels on a daily basis. As a result only 37% of marketers think all of this content they create is actually effective. In fact, as much as 70% of B2B content goes unused, according to SiriusDecisions. That s a lot of waste. Content is the atomic particle of all marketing - Rebecca Lieb The key to cutting the waste is to streamline your content distribution in a way that amplifies your company s overarching themes throughout every marketing channel, at every buying stage, in a consistent, relevant way. The content pillar approach empowers marketers to do just that. A content pillar is one meaty asset - like an ebook or whitepaper - that tackles a single strategic theme or buyer need. This large asset is then repurposed into many derivative assets that guide how your theme is distributed across all of your channels. The content pillar approach is your blueprint for distributing a high quantity of high-quality content, driving engagement and action among your target audience. This template is your step-by-step guide to multi-channel distribution. We ll walk through how to streamline your marketing channels and distribute the right content at every stage of the buying cycle with content pillars. Ready to eliminate redundancies and distribute effective content with fewer resources? Let s plan your content pillar. 4 5
Content Pillar: IDENTIFY YOUR THEME Before you begin developing your content pillar, you must first identify what theme it will address. This theme should reflect a major organizational initiative or key customer pain point. To surface these themes, gather stakeholders from across your company. List your stakeholders here: Marketing stakeholder Sales stakeholder Customer service stakeholder Product stakeholder Others 6 7
We call this group of stake holders the content board. During your content board meeting, compile your customer pain points, strategic initiatives, and product differentiators (i.e., what sets you apart from your competitors) then group them into overarching themes. BUILD YOUR PILLAR Serve Content at Every Stage Customer Pain Points: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Major Strategic Initiatives: Once you have a list of potential themes, go around the room and ask your stakeholders to vote on the three themes they d like to see addressed with content, and in what order. List them here. Quarterly Themes: 1. 2. 3. Now, you have your themes. These will not only guide your content production, but will ensure your distribution is streamlined across roles. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Product Differentiators: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Great marketers know that developing content for every stage of the buying cycle - from awareness to post-sale - is crucial. A content pillar is your blueprint for doing just that. Each content pillar should contain three major assets that serve the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. The Appetizer: A fun, engaging asset, like a SlideShare or an infographic that serves the top of the funnel. The goal here is to engage a lot of prospects, and drive them toward a related, gated content asset. This type of content is often optimized by channels like your blog and website, social channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and video channels like YouTube and Vimeo, or even used to facilitate conversations with influencers and media outlets. The Entree: Your major content pillar asset. The entree piece could be an ebook, a whitepaper, or a workbook (like the one you re reading now). Marketers should distribute this content through email or marketing automation, and support it with paid email and online or social advertising. The Dessert: A product-centric asset, like a PDF, video and or demo, that reveals how your product serves the theme in question. This content can be distributed through your marketing automation as part of your nurturing efforts, hosted on video channels or supported by webinar platforms (ReadyTalk, ON24, etc.), and distributed to the sales team to accelerate the deal cycle. The appetizer drives to the entree asset. And the entree asset directs readers toward the product-centric dessert asset. These three assets are the cornerstone of the content pillar approach. From them, you ll derive multiple derivative assets like blog posts, social media posts, media placements, paid ads, videos, and more. 8 9
Formulas for Identifying Your Assets To flesh out what these assets will look like, start from the bottom up. Think about your product strengths around your chosen theme. The Dessert: The goal of the dessert asset is to help users understand how your product supports the specific need or theme addressed in the content pillar. Pillar theme Related buyer pain point Biggest product strength/solution for pain point Select the best format in which to communicate these strengths. Video Product Spec PDF Webinar Other: To identify your dessert asset, combine your product s biggest strength around your chosen theme with the format that makes the most sense for delivering that strength s message. List the final asset below. The Dessert: A [selected format] featuring how [your product] solves [pain point] with [product strengths/solution] Now that you have your dessert asset, it s time to identify your entree. The Entree The entree is the central, gated lead engine of the content pillar approach. It gives readers who download it actionable guidance for tackling the challenges related to your selected theme. The key to making this content asset valuable to readers is ensuring it helps them solve a pain point or problem. Below, we explore some tactics to identify the best entree for your theme. Theme Major pain point to address List best practices, tactics, or tips you ll highlight in the asset: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Select the best format for solving the problem at hand. Workbook ebook Other: Whitepaper Template You have your pain point, solution, and format for your entree. Now tie them together. The Entree: A on how to solve by 10 11
The Appetizer The goal of the appetizer asset is to cast a wide net over several distribution points, attracting as many potential buyers to the entree as possible. The appetizer shouldn t dive too deeply into your theme; think of it as a teaser that drives your audience s appetite for more. Focus on a broad topics that speaks to your theme at a high level. Here s your formula for identifying your appetizer asset. Theme Major insight: Broad topics related to your theme: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. List Your Derivative Content Assets and Identify Your Channels With your pillar assets identified, creating content to fill your marketing channels is a lot easier than starting from scratch. Here s an example of how a content pillar can become many derivative assets to feed all of your marketing channels at each stage of the buying cycle. Create your own based on this model using the template below. Example: Select a format that will communicate your topic in a way that will resonate with your audience. Infographic Video SlideShare GIF Interactive Asset Other: Appetizer: A that covers revealing Together, the appetizer, entree, and dessert assets are the cornerstone of your content pillar launch. But to feed all of your marketing channels, you need to break these pieces out into derivative content pieces like blog posts, social posts, email blasts, paid ads, etc. 12 13
Create Your Own Your derivative assets can be repurposed from your appetizer, entree, and dessert content pieces. Dessert: Asset (e.g. blog post) Number (e.g. 6) Channel (e.g. blog) A substantial entree ebook, for example, can easily break into 20-30 social posts, 4-6 blog posts, 2-3 emails, a webinar, a SlideShare, an infographic, and several product-centric assets. Identify your derivative assets below by outlining the content type, number of assets, and corresponding marketing channel. Appetizer: Asset (e.g. blog post) Number (e.g. 6) Channel (e.g. blog) Isn t repurposing fun? Now you have content to feed all of your marketing channels for many weeks after your launch. But for all of this content to make an impact, it needs to be delivered in the right place, at the right time, to the right people. In the next section, we ll explore tactics for planning the distribution of this content. Entree: Asset (e.g. blog post) Number (e.g. 6) Channel (e.g. blog) 14 15
DISTRIBUTE YOUR CONTENT Assign Roles Each distribution channel should have an owner. Identify them here: Social: Marketing Email(s): Sales Email(s): Webinar: Blog: Website/Landing Pages: PR: SlideShare: Video/YouTube: Identify User Flow Not only does a pillar secure a steady stream of content, it fuels all of your marketing channels throughout your buyer s journey - from awareness to purchase. Each asset and distribution channel drives readers to another asset and distribution channel that pulls them further down the funnel, and closer to your product s solution. Let s break down your pillar distribution across channels and buying stages, starting with the appetizer, entree, and dessert assets. Appetizer assets are usually delivered through top-of-funnel channels like social media and blogs. The call to action drives to the entree, encouraging interested readers to take action. Entree assets are delivered both at the top of the funnel, on the blog and through social, and at the middle of the funnel, through emails targeted to relevant segments within your database. The call to action in the entree asset drives readers to the dessert piece. Other: Channel Name Dessert assets are distributed at the bottom of the funnel, usually by a sales representative. Through their online activity and interactions with your company, these potential buyers have shown they re hungry for a more product-centric asset related to solving the problem addressed by your content pillar. Use the grid on the next page to help identify where your other derivative assets fall in the user flow - from awareness through sales enablement. 16 17
Awareness Stage Content Type Channels Infographic / newline Graphic Blog Post Video Advertisement Press Release Drupal, etc.) SlideShare LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Social Media Management (Hootsuite, Spreadfast, etc.) Google Bing YouTube Vimeo Vidyard Press Release Syndication With this structure in mind, create an outline of your content pillar assets and how the buyer will move through them. List all of your assets, including blog posts, SlideShares, infographics, etc., and their corresponding calls to action (CTAs) and buying stages. NOTE: All assets that drive to appetizer and entree pieces should be promoted via social media. Asset CTA Buying Stage Lead Generation ebook Whitepaper Workbooks Templates Third-Party Research Webinar Website SlideShare Social Media Management Marketing Automation (Marketo, Pardot, Oracle Eloqua) Webinar Platform (ReadyTalk, ON24, etc.) Nurture Sales Enablement Blog Post Email Case Study Testimonials Video Demo Analyst Report Spec Sheets ROI Calculator RFP Template Pricing Guides Competitive Differentiator Guides Messaging Website/Blog Marketing Automation YouTube Vidyard Vimeo Website Marketing Automation CRM Internal Content Repository 18 19
Now, map these CTAs visually. OPTIMIZE AND REPEAT Appetizer Entree Tracking the performance of your pillar, and iterating accordingly, is crucial to prolonged content success. While you can pull top-of-funnel metrics relatively soon after launch, conversion metrics like MQLs and pipeline dollars might not be apparent until several months after. The first step to optimization is measuring your success. Identify what metrics to pull and when to pull them. Here s an example of what metrics to track post-launch. This timeline will change depending on the typical length of your sales cycle: 30 days post - launch: 60 days post - launch: 120 days post - launch: Dessert Traffic Generated: Social Impressions (retweets, likes, clicks, etc.): Leads Generated: Marketing Qualified Leads: Leads Converted to Sales Accepted Leads/ Opportunities: Sales Accepted Leads/ Opportunities Converted to Closed Deals: Circulate this pillar visual across your team, so everyone understands the purpose of each asset and the appropriate delivery messaging. With these metrics in mind, consider what worked and what didn t. Which pillar assets were most successful? Why? Hold a post-mortem meeting with your team to discuss these findings. Consider things like email segmentation, messaging, delivery methods, PR, social engagement, internal communication and collaboration, etc. 20 21
What Worked What Didn t Work From these learnings, identify action items for future pillar launches. List Action Items Here Using historical data to optimize your content is the best way to ensure that it meets the needs of your organization, and that it doesn t go to waste. Feeding marketing channels with the right content is much easier with the content pillar approach. But keeping track of the steps above in multiple documents, spreadsheets, or email will wreak havoc on your workflow. To see how Kapost helps calm the chaos, and allows you to plan, build, and distribute your pillar assets, check out this short video. 22 23
THE MULTI-CHANNEL CONTENT DISTRIBUTION EXAMPLES REAL - WORLD CONTENT PILLAR MODELS The Multi-Channel Distribution Guide reveals how to streamline your distribution efforts by using a content pillar approach. But not all pillars look the same. Here are two real world content pillar examples from the marketing teams at Brady Corporation and Kapost. 24 25
THE MULTI-CHANNEL CONTENT DISTRIBUTION EXAMPLES 26 27