To start our series on common mistakes companies make in their content marketing, let’s begin with a big one: not being strategic.

This is the reason top stakeholders lose patience with content marketing efforts. It’s the reason most efforts fail to show any results within a year. It’s the reason they aren’t sustainable. It never had a purpose to begin with.

“We should have a blog!” is a terrible reason to start a blog. “We need a way to educate our community on the differences between our product and our competitors” is a great reason to start a blog.

When we talk about content being strategic, it should do one of two things:

• Move someone from one ARC to another
• Keep someone in an ARC

 

Moving from ARC to ARC

For example, if you are trying to move someone from the Uninterested circle to the Window Shopper circle, your content should help in that process. It should give them a reason to need your product, a reason to sign up to hear more, or a reason to start paying attention.

Similarly, if you are trying to move someone from the Experiencer circle to the Repeat Buyer circle, your content needs to compel them to consider other products you have. It might introduce them to other concepts and ideas that will convince them to look at the rest of your catalogue.

 

Keeping someone in an ARC

Other times, content’s strategic role is to keep someone in the circle they are in and not let them fall out. Salespeople will call this keeping a lead ‘warm’. If you meet someone who is interested in your service but isn’t ready to commit yet, you want a way to stay in close contact with that person without coming on too strong. If you just leave them alone for two months, you will have likely lost a lot of ground.

On the other hand, if they receive your weekly article or curated newsletter, then you will be in a much better position when you follow up with them later. You are using your content strategically to stay in their ‘frame-of-mind’ awareness.

 

Let’s look at a few examples:

In the opening story for this series, Ms. Buttons writes a long post about the glorious history of Better Buttons and other employees write articles about what they do for the company. When you look at all the ARCs, there are very few places where this type of content will move anyone. Perhaps if someone is in a Researcher circle, the post might be informative, but not likely.

Most of their content is just going to sit there and never move anyone. It’s not going to be strategic.

Contrast that with the blog of Thrillophilia, a tourism company based in Bangalore. People start searching for vacations very far in advance and they have lots of options to choose from. They may start browsing on Thrillophilia’s website, but not make any commitments. However, before they do, they sign up for the newsletter that contains deals and their blog articles.

Over the next few weeks they will get articles with titles like “20 Destinations You Cannot Afford to Miss in Your Lifetime”, “7 Reasons Why You Should Spend Your Money on Gaining Experiences Rather than Buying Things”, and “25 Thrilling Experiences Around Bangalore You Can Do On A College Budget”. These things keep Thrillophilia on Researchers’ minds and make it more likely that they will come back to the site when they are ready to purchase.

 

Being strategic is not rocket science, but it does take thought. Whatever you do, make sure it has a clear purpose and goal – or else, your content marketing is not likely to last long.