Content marketing: Get buy in from SMEs, sales and creative teams
You know that content marketing can drive search traffic to your website, demonstrate expertise and pull double duty as collateral for your sales team. But how can you get buy-in on content projects from across your organization? Content marketing projects depend upon a cross-functional team comprised of subject matter experts, sales professionals, and creatives. And those are just the people needed to produce the content. The marketing team still needs to run with the final product, and repurpose it across platforms.
In many professional services organizations, the subject matter experts are also the sales team. This can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that creatives may have a one-stop shop for raw content. The curse is that this one person has to wear two incredibly heavy hats, and doesn't necessarily have the time to produce the volume of content that the creative team could artfully use.
So how do you build consensus for content marketing projects when roles are filled by the same (and justifiably busy) person?
- Prepare a simple but meaningful project scope. Go to management and make sure that this service line needs attention. With management's buy-in, prepare a VERY simple scope to present the content plan clearly and concisely.
- Commit to repurposing. Establish early on how you will use this content. Specifically identify all of the tactics you will use to show your project team how their initial effort will pay dividends.
- Make the content readily available for sales. Work collaboratively with the sales team to make sure that they have the content tools they need to be successful. If they aren't getting what they need, they will tell you.
The ability to deliver the content to the creative team in a timely manner will help to fully engage them in the project. Instead of being tasked with specific deliverables under tight timeframes, a creative team with a bit of lead time can propose fresh and innovative ways to deliver content.
Questions about how your marketing team can get buy-in for content projects? Send me a note.