By Paul Brunato and Bob Finlayson

1.  Review your business objectives and brand messages

2.  Identify and segment your audiences

3.  Identify the topics your audience cares about

4.  Find the fit and run with it

5.  Customize your relevant brand messages for insertion into resonant topics

6.  Maintain and track digital audience panels

7.  Leverage “white space” opportunities

As marketers and communicators, we know the media and influencer landscape has radically shifted over the past decade. And we understand that traditional PR, advertising and marketing strategies are no longer as effective as they once were. Particularly for B2B companies.

So what should B2B companies do to stand out, to beat entrenched competitors, and to create perceptions of category leadership? 

Many forward-thinking brands, large and small, are working to engage directly with their customers and other target audiences and stakeholders through social media, email newsletters, blogs and other owned and shared media channels.

To do this, marketers are creating and publishing enormous amounts of content in the hope their audiences will find it compelling, driving increased engagement with the brand. 

But is this strategy working? Only you can answer that question. As in any competitive marketplace, some are winning, and some are losing. And competition for your stakeholders’ attention is fierce.

To outshine the competition, your content needs to be compelling and engaging – not for everyone, but for your specific target audience.

Here are 7 steps to ensure your content fully engages your audience:

Step 1: Review your business objectives and brand messages.

A successful content strategy first requires a deep understanding of your company’s business goals and your existing positioning and messaging platform. Whenever possible, the content you publish should reflect and reinforce your brand messages which, in turn, should further your business objectives.

Step 2: Identify and segment your audiences.

List out the various stakeholder groups you need to engage and influence. Groups ranging from prospective and current employees and customers, to public officials, investors, suppliers and partners. Everyone who believes they have – or should have – a stake in how you run your business, the products or services you provide, and how you interact with your local communities. Your current campaign may target just one, or a subset of these audiences, but it is important to understand all of your audiences and assume they will come in contact with your messaging, regardless of the specific intended audience.

Step 3: Identify the topics your audience cares about.

What do your stakeholders care about? What content do they consume for professional development and in their leisure time? What topics are they inspired to comment on and share with their colleagues, friends and even family? To truly engage your audience, you need to be able to answer these questions. Of course, many – if not most – of these topics may not be relevant to your business. However, some will be directly relevant, and others will overlap. When you identify the overlap, you’ve stuck gold.

Developing such a deep understanding of your audience’s content consumption habits and online activities may seem like an overwhelming challenge but, over the past few years, a suite of sophisticated digital tools has become readily available, offering deep visibility into every aspect of online behavior. When used skillfully and coupled with discerning, human analysis, these tools can provide highly nuanced insight into your customers' and prospects’ interests, concerns, challenges, and passions.

Step 4: Find the fit and run with it.

Once you’ve identified the most compelling topics that drive engagement among your audience, you are ready to “find the fit,” that is, or identify and focus on the subset of topics where your brand messages are directly relevant to the discussion. These topics provide immediate opportunities to engage your audience with compelling content. Maintain a running list of these topics, updating them frequently, based upon the dynamics of your industry. This list forms the basis of a strategic ‘roadmap’ of the topics, messages and channels that will expand awareness of – and drive interest in – your brand, products and services.

Step 5: Customize your relevant brand messages for insertion into resonant topics.

Having identified the topics that are resonating and driving engagement with your audience, really think about how your brand messaging and business objectives are aligned with these topics. Don’t just rush to create content around that topic. If the topic is not truly relevant to your brand, your content will not help further your business objectives and, worse yet, will come across as inauthentic.

Equally important, don’t be too fast to dismiss topics that aren’t directly related to your brand at first glance. There often are opportunities to approach the topic from your brand’s unique perspective, which will interest your audience.

Be sure to customize your content for the specific channels where the topics are driving your audience’s engagement.

Step 6: Maintain and track digital audience panels.

Identifying the most effective topics for your audience – and creating compelling, targeted content – is not a “one and done” proposition. It takes time to build a position of thought leadership with an engaged audience. And, particularly with the influencers within that audience.

Step 3, “Identify the topics your audience cares about,” involves leveraging digital tools to track audience engagement behavior with various topics and content types. By narrowing down your focus on a subset of representative audience members, you can create a “digital audience panel,” serving as a focus group for ongoing monitoring.

Analysis of the trending topics, discussions and engagement of your audience panel provides insight into the issues and topics where your company can join the conversation – in real time – with appropriate content that will resonate with and engage your audience, while establishing a position of thought leadership.

Step 7: Leverage “white space” opportunities.

During your audience tracking exercises, you’ll begin to uncover unique topics that have limited volume, but are closely aligned with your business objectives, and should be of interest to your target audience. These topics represent “white space,” or opportunities to “own” the conversation through carefully crafted thought leadership campaigns. Content ideas can be tested through your audience panel, validating campaign concepts before committing substantial time and resources to them.

Conclusions

Marketers and communicators are creating and publishing enormous amounts of content in the hope of creating increased engagement with their brands.

But to stand out from the competition, your content needs to be compelling, driving engagement for your specific target audience.

Readily available digital tools can identify the topics that resonate with your audience, providing the data to help you create smarter, more effective content for marketing and sales campaigns. Properly executed, these campaigns maximize the appeal and resonance of your story with your customers, stakeholders and other target audiences.

Need help implementing a data-driven thought leadership program for your organization? Contact us directly: