Guide to Strategic Content

To develop a successful content strategy framework you need to clearly define your content's target audience – your ideal customer profile and the buyer personas involved in decisions to work with you.

Buyer personas are in-depth representations of critical people who work at your ideal customer companies. They go beyond demographics and represent their challenges, fears and aspirations. What are they looking to achieve, and which other people in their world help or frustrate their decisions?

Your buyer personas should cover five key questions:

• Change Drivers: What causes buyers to invest in solutions like yours, and what is different about buyers who are satisfied with the status quo?
• Success Factors: What operational or personal results does your buyer persona expect to achieve by purchasing this solution?
• Perceived Barriers: What concerns cause your buyer to believe that your solution or company is not their best option?
• Decision Criteria: Which aspects of the competing services, solutions, or companies do your buyers perceive most critical, and what are their expectations for each?
• Buyer's Ecosystem: Who and what impact your buyers as they evaluate their options?

Develop buyer personas

In the world of manufacturing, understanding the companies that represent the biggest growth opportunity for you can be hard. Likewise, isolating the wants and needs of key influencers and technical decision-makers buried deep inside OEM organisations can be a challenge.  

Sales, marketing, and account management must all work together to build your Ideal Customer Profile and define the buyer personas you will need to reach within those organisations.

Your Marketing team should have data on where your current online visitors are located and how they found your website, plus details about their demographics and role types. They may also have data from market research such as customer satisfaction surveys.

Meanwhile, your Sales team will be highly aware of your buyer personas' questions (a rich vein of content ideas), what they want to achieve by investing in a solution like yours, and their common objections to purchasing.

You may have ideal customer nuances, which means you'll need to consider any possible adjustment for associated buyer personas. According to the Content Marketing Institute, manufacturers create four different audiences on average.

Having comprehensive buyer personas will enable you to produce more relevant and valuable content that they'll want to consume.

Map your buyer’s journey

The buyer's journey is a customer's path to purchasing a product or service. It can be split broadly into three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.

The information your buyers are searching for will vary according to where they are in the buyer's journey. Content intended to generate awareness, for instance, is different from content for the consideration and decision stages.

Awareness (What do I need?): A buyer becomes aware of a need and has expressed a potential problem or opportunity symptoms. They start gathering information to help them understand this problem or opportunity and decide whether it should be a priority. They are not ready to be sold .

Consideration (What are my options?): A buyer has defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity and starts reviewing their options, assessing which may best meet their needs and eliminating those that don't.

Decision (Why should I buy now – from you?): Having narrowed the field in the decision stage, a buyer has defined their solution, strategy, method, or approach and is ready to make a decision.

Understanding the buyer's journey lets you create content that will resonate with your buyer personas and nurture them as they move through each stage.

Determine your media

You know your audience and have created well-defined buyer personas and an ideal customer profile. You understand the buyer's journey and their needs at each stage. Now you can start thinking about what content to create across that matrix.

Blog posts

Making your site a valuable resource for your customers starts with regular blogging. Blogging helps build your reputation and authority in your field. It can help grow your audience by driving traffic to your website, building rapport, enhancing engagement, telling your story and creating sales opportunities.

A good manufacturing blog calendar presents a vibrant mix of original stories, topical analysis, and educational content that targets the needs of your buyer personas at each stage of the buyer's journey.

The evolving search landscape and the advent of generative AI are transforming how blogs are crafted and consumed, especially for top-of-the-funnel content focusing on awareness and learning.

Search engines are now prioritising relevance, context, and user intent behind the content. This shift means that blogs must be more sophisticated, addressing specific queries with in-depth, well-researched information that aligns closely with what potential customers are searching for online.

Generative AI further complicates the blogging ecosystem by enabling the rapid creation of content that can seem nuanced and expertly written. However, the challenge for manufacturers and other businesses is to stand out in a sea of AI-generated content that might need more depth or the personal touch that human-generated content offers.

Your blogs should include:

• Unique industry insights
• Commentary from subject matter experts
• Data-driven analysis that AI cannot fully replicate (yet)

The impact on educational content like 'How-to' posts is significant. Generative AI is already a better experience than search at this level for many, and we can only expect that to continue.

However, with the rise of AI tools, there is a risk of creating homogeneous content that fails to capture a business's unique value proposition. To counter this, manufacturers must leverage their expertise and experiences to create compelling, customised content that resonates with their target audience and distinguishes their brand from competitors.

In response to these changes, manufacturers might consider adapting their content strategies to include a mix of AI-assisted and human-curated posts, focusing on creating valuable, relevant content that leverages their unique industry position.

This approach ensures that the content remains authentic and engaging and reflects the brand's voice, effectively attracting and retaining the write readers.

Long-form content

Long-form content like eBooks, white papers, and guides remains a valuable asset. It provides conversion opportunities and the chance to start new conversations. And it can be repurposed for different channels, including as pillar pages for your website, to help you get found.

The depth and detail of long-form content make it especially effective for demonstrating expertise and thought leadership within your industry. These comprehensive pieces can cover complex topics that require substantial explanation or showcase data-driven insights that aren't as easily conveyed through shorter blog posts or articles. 

By digging deeper into subjects that matter to your audience, you enhance your authority and improve your site's SEO by keeping readers engaged for extended periods and encouraging backlinks.

Moreover, long-form content serves as a cornerstone for a content marketing strategy. Once created, an eBook, white paper, or detailed guide can be segmented into multiple pieces of derivative content such as blog posts, infographics, podcasts, and even video series. 

This approach maximises the reach and utility of the original content, ensuring that it appeals to different segments of your audience across various media.

The strategic use of long-form content also facilitates better targeting in marketing campaigns. By offering detailed resources in exchange for user information, businesses can gather valuable data about their audience. 

This data-driven approach helps create more effective, customised marketing efforts that resonate with potential customers at different stages of the buyer's journey.

Furthermore, integrating interactive elements within long-form content can enhance user engagement as digital platforms evolve. Interactive charts, clickable content tables, and embedded multimedia can transform a static white paper or guide into an engaging experience that captivates readers and encourages them to explore your content more thoroughly.

Case studies

While case studies are a powerful tool for building credibility by showcasing success stories, they pose unique challenges for contract manufacturers, mainly due to confidentiality agreements and the need to protect client privacy. 

Contract manufacturers often work with clients who require non-disclosure of operational details or the use of their brand in marketing materials. This restriction can make it difficult for manufacturers to share specific stories or results that directly reference their clients. 

Acknowledging these constraints, contract manufacturers need to find a balance in creating case studies that are both informative and generic enough not to disclose sensitive client information. They might focus on the techniques, processes, or broader industry issues addressed through their services without linking achievements to specific clients. 

This approach allows them to demonstrate their expertise and value while respecting their clients' confidentiality agreements.

Pillar page and topic clusters

One way to deliver search engine optimisation (SEO) success is to develop strategic content 'clusters' around a central topic. The heart of this topic is a comprehensive resource page, called a 'pillar page', that covers a topic in-depth and links to high-quality content (blogs) on supporting subtopics. This will help improve your SEO and position you as a thought leader in your industry.

By structuring your website content using pillar pages and topic clusters, you create a network of interlinked articles and blog posts that enhance the user experience and boost your site's visibility and authority on search engines. 

A pillar page is an authoritative guide on a core topic. It provides a broad overview and links to various cluster content pages that address specific aspects or questions related to the main topic. These cluster pages, in turn, link back to the pillar page, forming a cohesive, interdependent content ecosystem.

This method significantly improves site architecture by organising content more logically and grouped, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index the pages. It also increases the likelihood of multiple pages ranking for related search queries, which can lead to increased organic traffic. 

Moreover, since all related content links back to the pillar page, it boosts the authority of that page with internal links, which is a strong signal to search engines about the importance and relevancy of the content.

For businesses, the pillar page and topic clusters strategy also support the buyer's journey by providing comprehensive and navigable content that can educate, inform, and convert visitors at various stages of their decision-making process. 

For instance, someone at the awareness stage might land on a cluster page from a search query and be guided to the pillar page for more in-depth information, facilitating more profound engagement with your content and brand.

Furthermore, this SEO strategy is particularly effective in highly competitive industries where expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are crucial for ranking well on search engines. 

By thoroughly covering a topic and offering valuable resources, a business can stand out as a thought leader. This encourages external sites to link back to the pillar page as a definitive resource, thus enhancing its SEO further through high-quality backlinks.

Infographics

Infographics can represent data more compellingly than words alone. They are great for when you need to share a lot of data in a way that is clear and easy to understand. Plus, they are highly shareable.

This visual format not only enhances the accessibility of complex information but also increases engagement with your content. 

Infographics can simplify the presentation of dense statistics, trends, and comparisons, breaking information into digestible, eye-catching components that captivate viewers. 

Because they combine colourful graphics, concise text, and thematic imagery, infographics are particularly effective in catching your audience's attention on various platforms, from social media to company blogs.

The versatility of infographics also allows them to serve multiple purposes across your marketing strategy. They can be used in digital marketing campaigns to attract views and generate leads, included in presentations to clarify points or emphasise data, or embedded in newsletters to boost reader interest and information retention. 

Additionally, because infographics are often shared across social media, they can help increase your content's reach and improve brand visibility.

Infographics are also invaluable for SEO because they can generate inbound links that improve your page ranking when shared. Including relevant keywords in the infographic's title, description, and alt text can optimise it for search engines, making your content more discoverable.

Moreover, creating infographics can be a strategic move for repurposing existing content. For instance, a blog post with numerous data points can be transformed into a comprehensive infographic, providing a fresh way to reengage your audience. 

Similarly, data from internal reports or surveys can be publicised through infographics, providing a public face to your unique insights and research findings.

Videos

Videos are a highly engaging content medium and can be shared on your website and social media. They involve more investment in time and resources than written content but can track back to ROI. Examples include demos, expert interviews, education and explainer videos, case studies, and event promos.

The dynamic nature of video content allows for a more interactive and personal connection with your audience, enhancing brand recall and emotional engagement. 

Videos are particularly adept at conveying complex information in a digestible and entertaining format. This visual and auditory engagement can improve user understanding and information retention compared to text alone.

Integrating SEO strategies, such as optimising video titles, descriptions, and tags with targeted keywords, boosts visibility and can attract a more specific audience.

Videos can also be repurposed to maximise their use and extend their lifespan. For instance, a long-form video interview can be segmented into shorter clips to highlight specific topics or insights. These segments can be shared as standalone or incorporated into related content streams. 

Additionally, extracts from video content can be transformed into other media formats, such as podcasts, blogs, or infographics, further stretching the content's value and appeal.

Podcasts

There's a surging interest in B2B audio content as people seek to top up their knowledge via more digestible formats. Podcasts are also an excellent fit for audiences who don't have the time to invest in reading content every day. Your expertise could be repurposed as a series of expert interviews, round table chats or industry roundups.

This format allows hosts to build a personal connection and establish trust by discussing complex topics in a conversational tone that enhances comprehension. Featuring guest speakers, such as industry experts or influencers, enriches the content and extends reach by attracting subscribers.

Podcast content can be repurposed into blog posts, quotes, or infographics, optimising the use of resources and reinforcing your content strategy across multiple platforms. By incorporating podcasts, you can tap into the growing demand for audio content, diversify your marketing efforts, and cultivate a dedicated listener base that boosts your brand's influence.

Original research

Research-based content is highly engaging and can help enhance your authority in your field. Like case studies, research can be packaged in many ways to create multiple pieces of content, from blog posts to infographics, webinars and podcasts.

By conducting original research, you can provide fresh insights and data that address specific questions or challenges within your industry. This can set your content apart from others and position your brand as a thought leader, pioneering discussions and trends. The exclusivity of proprietary data enhances your credibility and can attract a more informed and professional audience.

The versatility of research-based content allows for extensive content repurposing. For example, the findings from a single study can be broken down into a series of blog posts, each focusing on different aspects or implications of the research. 

Infographics can visually represent data points or trends uncovered in the study, making complex information more accessible and shareable. 

Webinars can provide a platform to delve deeper into the data, discuss methodologies, and engage with the audience in real-time discussions. 

Similarly, podcast episodes can explore themes or interviews with experts involved in the research.

Research-based content also has significant SEO benefits. High-quality, original research will likely garner backlinks and social shares, improving your website's search engine rankings. It also provides substantial material for long-tail keywords to enhance your visibility for specific queries.

Additionally, featuring original research can foster partnerships and collaborations with other industry leaders, academic institutions, or media outlets, further extending the reach and impact of your findings. These collaborations can introduce your brand to new audiences and provide additional platforms for presenting your research.

Webinars and virtual events

Webinars offer a unique chance to share your ideas and expertise online. Their interactive nature keeps participants engaged and provides an opportunity to create a memorable ‘sense of occasion’ around the shared ideas. By creating an experience of thoughtfulness and professionalism, webinars have become the channel of choice for many people communicating in the digital space.

The format of webinars allows for a wide range of content delivery, from live presentations and Q&A sessions to panel discussions and workshops. This versatility makes them an excellent tool for reaching and educating your audience in real-time, no matter where they are. 

The ability to record these sessions means that the content can continue to engage viewers on-demand long after the live event has ended, serving as a valuable ongoing resource on your website or through social media channels.

Engagement features such as polls, surveys, and chat boxes enhance interaction, making participants feel part of the event and more invested in the content. This direct interaction not only boosts engagement but also provides immediate feedback and insights into the interests and preferences of your audience, which can be invaluable for tailoring future content and strategies.

Additionally, webinars can be a potent lead-generation tool. By requiring registration, you can collect valuable contact information and follow up with attendees through targeted email marketing, further nurturing leads and converting interest into actionable business opportunities.

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Producing content in various consumable formats matters because you continue to engage with a growing audience in ways they value. Think about what will best serve your buyer personas. It may be tempting to launch a podcast, but if your audience isn't consuming content this way, it won't reach them or capture their attention. It pays to think carefully here.

Shape your brand narrative

Humans love stories. They connect us, give us something to believe in, and make us feel better.

Business storytelling is similar. It helps align your business with your target audience. But your brand's story is more than what you write on your website. It's also your mission and how you communicate it consistently to your audience, wherever they are.

Position your customer as the hero

Telling your brand story means recognising that the customer is the hero. A common mistake many companies make is focusing their messaging on themselves, not the customer. But it's not about you; it's about them. Your customers are not seeking another story or a hero; they are looking for a guide.

Your buyer persona profiles tell you much of what you need to know about your customers, including what they are trying to achieve, their pain points, and what they hope to gain from a solution. Using this insight and drawing on your core proposition – how your company can help relieve your customers' pain and help them achieve their goals – you can create a brand story that will resonate with your customers.

Your brand story should:

• Identify the principal problem your customers face, how they feel about it, and why it matters to them
• Empathise with them and establish your authority as a solution provider
• Identify how you can help them and what they will gain
• Evoke jeopardy (the stakes) and qualify the merits of implementing a solution.

All content or messaging you create should flow from the customer's perspective.

Create your content

With well-defined buyer personas, a clear picture of the buyer's journey, and a library of content formats to play with, now it's time to start thinking about the topics your content needs to cover.

Use your buyer personas

Your buyer personas illustrate your ideal customers' needs, interests, fears and aspirations. The profiles you create for each persona will be bursting with opportunities for content that will respond to those aspects. Your goal is to create content that answers buyers' questions at every stage of their journeys.

Involve sales and marketing

Be sure to involve your sales team, too. They are speaking to OEMs day in and day out. The information your salespeople gather is a treasure trove of relevant insight and material that can help produce more specific and targeted content ideas. Likewise, the marketing team must remain alert to opportunities to develop bespoke content for the sales team.

The following are tools to help you generate new content ideas:

• Buzzsumo: Do you want to discover popular content around a particular topic? This resource uses various tools like social media shares to help you see which content ideas would do well if you created content about them.
• CoSchedule Headline Analyzer: Do you have a general topic in mind, but are you stuck on what to write about? The content idea generator will do the work for you. Or, if you have an idea in mind, the Headline Analyzer tool will help you strengthen it.
• Feedly: Do you want to track popular topics in your industry and discover new content ideas in one place? Feedly pulls together a curated list of content around topics you're interested in, compiled from news sites, newsletters and social media, so you don't have to scour the internet yourself.

Distribute your content

It's not enough to create great content. Develop a plan for distributing and promoting your content to reach your ideal customers.

Just as you can create content in different formats, you'll also have various channels to publish your content, including your website and social media.

Ideally, you should select a mix of distribution channels. Your blog is an excellent place to start. By regularly publishing content through your blog, you will boost traffic to your website.

Social media is another essential distribution channel. Contract manufacturers should prioritise LinkedIn. Depending on buyer personas' habits, you may also want to consider posting on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media platforms.

Be sure to select distribution channels based on where your customers are. You'll also need a plan for promoting your social media content. Will you share your new post on LinkedIn rather than your website? When will you share your latest eBook with your email mailing list?

By planning your social media posts and email campaigns around your content, you can ensure your target audience finds it.

Analyse content performance