In the dynamic field of content marketing, strategic thinking is not only beneficial; It is important.
That was the core theme of the thought-provoking episode 33 of the Marketing Smarts Live Show, titled “How strategic focus in content development can drive results and save time and money!”
The show featured content expert Ahava Leibtag, president and owner of Aha Media Groupa consulting firm for copywriting, content strategy and content marketing.
The conversation was a masterclass in content strategy, exploring various aspects of content development and highlighting the importance of a strategic approach.
Key Takeaways:
- Understand your audience. The first step in a strategic content approach is to understand your audience: what are their needs, challenges and pain points? This understanding forms the foundation of any effective content strategy.
- Align content with business goals. Every piece of content should align with your broader business goals, be it brand awareness, lead generation, or customer retention. Your content should be a stepping stone to achieving the goals that lead to your goal.
- Content creation efficiency. One of the highlights of the trade fair was the discussion on the topic of efficiency. By being strategic, you can create more impactful content in less time, optimize resources, and maximize ROI.
By focusing on understanding the audience, aligning content with business goals, and striving for efficiency, companies not only save time and money, but also significantly increase their content marketing results.
The path to strategic content development is not just about creating content; It’s about creating a legacy of values-driven, impactful communication and messaging.
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Episode details, guest information and referenced links
Episode #33
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Transcript: How being strategic in content development can drive results and save time and money, with Ahava Leibtag
Welcome to MarketingProfs’ “Marketing Smarts Live” show and the Marketing Smarts Podcast. Here we dive into B2B news, resources, valuable guest content, and more every week.
If you’re a B2B marketer looking for a place to learn, stay updated, and have some fun along the way, grab a drink, a notepad, or at least a writing utensil and welcome to the trade show!
The basic premise is that every B2B buyer wants to touch your website, check out your social media channels, and meet you in a variety of ways before actually having the old-fashioned experience of picking up the phone.
This week we’re talking about things like:
Why marketers need to be strategic with their content in 2023
What content strategy really is
The negative hype around AI-generated content
A good starting point for strategic content
And much more!
Hello to all my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I’m so excited to bring you EPISODE 33 of the Marketing Smarts Live show.
This week’s topic is all about how being strategic in content development can drive results and save time and money. Our guest is there.
So if you’re ready to start learning, buckle up and get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I’m your George B. Thomas speaker, trainer, catalyst and host of this audio show, the Marketing Smarts Live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast found on your favorite podcast app.
Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Ahava Leibtag.
Ahava was inducted into the Healthcare Internet Hall of Fame in 2020 as an Innovator and has more than 20 years of content experience.
She has consulted with some of the world’s largest companies on how to attract and grow their audiences. Ahava is president and owner of Aha Media Group, LLC, a copywriting, content strategy and content marketing consulting firm.
She is also the author of The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web and loves great logic puzzles, a long game of Apples to Apples, and anything involving chocolate.
Remember, Ahava Leibtag’s clips today are from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode. If you would like to listen to the full interview with Ahava Leibtag and me, be sure to tune in to the Marketing Smarts podcast. Link to Full Episode The show will be listed in the description below after the live show ends.
In this episode, I talk to Ahava Leibtag about how strategic content development can increase results and save time and money.
Why is your prospect’s experience important and how does content impact the experience? And how does content impact the money that appears on the bottom line?
So many questions and so little time. I wanted to start by addressing why it’s so important to be strategic about B2B content efforts right now. So I asked Ahava the question: Why do marketers need to be strategic about their content development now more than ever?
Here’s what she had to say!
Ahava: I love the people on LinkedIn talking about what they predicted for 2022 and what really happened. I appreciate this intellectual honesty. Nobody has a crystal ball. I don’t remember who did the research, but I believe there are 14 content touchpoints before a B2B buyer actually contacts an organization to have a conversation about purchasing the service or product being offered.
I think particularly many of us work in highly competitive markets where there are a range of options and levels for people to choose from. You can buy HubSpot or Salesforce, or buy a customized version of Salesforce. As someone who dabbles in CRMs, project management systems, and digital marketing tools, it can sometimes be overwhelming just how many options there are. I think the basic premise is that every B2B buyer wants to touch your website, check out your social media channels, and meet you in a variety of ways before actually experiencing the old-fashioned picking up of the phone.
When I say pick up the phone, I’m talking about a clearly sales-qualified lead who has given you enough signals that they’re ready for an in-depth conversation. I’m not talking about signing up for a newsletter as they may be used for educational purposes. That’s great and that’s a metric you should track and it’s a marketing channel you should use if necessary.
What I mean is that if you are a B2B marketer, at the end of the day your job is secured by what the numbers look like at the end of the Excel spreadsheet or profit and loss statement. If they’re not round and green, no one cares how much content you’ve created. They care if you push people into a funnel and let them come out the other side as customers. So I think it was incredibly important and it continues to be incredibly important.
The other thing is that for about a month everyone has been freaking out about AI, like we won’t have jobs anymore. I guess don’t worry, there are more jobs than we know what to do with. It reminds me that I always show that picture of Buckingham Palace when the phone lines were laid there, before there were automatic routers for the phones, and I don’t think there’s a shortage of phone repair people out there, because they still exist Cell towers and technology advance. Going back to my original premise of AI writing, it’s just so clear that it’s not high quality, that it’s not suitable for your customers. I think that’s yet another reason why it’s really important for B2B marketers to be as strategic as possible.
Did you hear that?
So much good in this clip!
I love that Ahava has addressed the mindset that content marketers may struggle with by using AI in the content creation process.
But I also like how she talked about overwhelm and experience and how many touches your prospect needs before thinking about starting a conversation!
Bonus Tips: Content that increases sales puts you in a different league and also sparks some interesting internal conversations.
So a strategic approach is important! Are you strategic when creating content?
Type the answer to that in the chat section or let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #mpb2b and of course tag me @georgebthomas.
We’ll return to Ahava Leibtag and his thoughts on how being strategic in content development can drive results and save time and money. But first I have to ask…
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by going to mprofs.com/mptoday – that’s mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now it’s time for one of my favorite sections…
In B2B News we talk about current B2B news or really important tips that we find in the Google News tab about you and your B2B company. Because Ahava brought up the AI conversation…
This week’s title is: Generative AI for B2B Marketing: Use Cases and Challenges by Anna Anisin
A little foretaste of the content…
Marketing is one of the areas that I believe can benefit significantly from the power of AI tools like ChatGPT.
AI has already brought great results to many marketers through solutions like recommendation systems or customer service chatbots, and tools like ChatGPT could offer even greater opportunities in this area.
This article is about how companies can use large language models and generative AI for marketing and what they should keep in mind.
So to learn about the use cases and concerns and read this article, click on the link below after the live show.
So let’s get back to Ahava Leibtag and his podcast episode “Marketing Smarts”.
I wanted to get to the heart of this conversation, so I asked Ahava the questions that I thought would help a lot of B2B marketers like you!
The question was: How does strategizing your content development drive results for B2B marketers?
Let’s see what her answer was.
Ahava: First of all, thank you for asking the question again. I think you asked the question two years ago and I haven’t really answered it.
The first thing I will tell you is that I am married to an economist. An economist talks about resources. Time and money are resources, but also energy. Emotional energy can also be saved through strategic action.
I’ll give you some tactical examples from our side. We work with a lot of B2B healthcare companies that are in digital health, medtech, and pharma, and they’re very often told by their stakeholders or executive sponsors, “We need to write content about X, we need to get this message across.” Out there. Do it. They’ll sit down and try to make that happen, and their audience couldn’t care less. It’s great that leaders want to talk about something, but if there’s no marketplace or audience for that particular topic, then why do we care?
One of the things we always say to our customers and clients is, “Do you really know who you’re talking to and do you know if this is the right audience?” That’s really either one in a B2B world There are always two personas: the buyer and the signatory of the contract. This means that the decision maker must always be the person you have in mind, which gives the buyer the opportunity to contact the decision maker.
CFOs exist to crush dreams. I mean, they’re great at what they do, and I love my CFO, she’s fantastic, but very often she says to me, “Give me proof that you really need this.” When I, on the other hand If I have a good salesperson, I can make a convincing argument. If not, then I have no evidence.
Being strategic with your content and documenting it will save you a lot of time and money by targeting the right audience. It’s like advertising in an area where no one buys anything. It would be like selecting the group of 14 year olds to sell baby diapers. That doesn’t make any sense.
From my perspective, if you think about another strategic element that can save you emotional energy, a resource, then if you have a documented content strategy, you can do that when a stakeholder stomps on you and says: “I want to do this.” Pull out your beautiful slide deck or whatever and say, “I like to do this. Show me how this fits into what we’re trying to achieve and I’ll be more than happy.” This can be a really great starting point for a great conversation. If you’re over here, I think it’s really important to save time and money.
The other thing is that if you don’t have a strategy, you end up buying really expensive technology because you think tools will solve your problem. They never do that. Tools enable greater efficiency within a company. People solve problems. What I find a lot is that they say, “We need a bigger CRM because we have a bigger audience.” Then you ask them, “When was the last time you really looked through this data and found out how clean it was ?”
These are the things where I think strategy is incredibly important. I’ll tell you from my own company. We are a healthcare company. When COVID hit, we knew what we were going to do and we completely changed our strategy. We thought we were serving our audience, we shared all of our content, health communicators need what we do, we created plan language cheat sheets, and our business grew tremendously. Then, in 2021, it was like: What do we do now? I worked on several projects myself because I lost touch with the market and realized what we needed to do. So 2022 was the first year of a two-year strategy and we grew tremendously and got everything we needed done.
My daughter plays high school basketball, she’s in college. Her coach often yells at her from the sidelines: “Move. We know what we’re doing.” That’s strategy. It gives you the freedom to say, “Do what you have to do, make the plays on the court,” because you know what you’re doing. When you know what you are doing, you save effort and energy, you don’t wonder what is happening and constantly feel like you are in a whirlpool of chaos.
Do you view time and money as resources that you only have a limited amount of?
What about energy or emotional energy? Is this a priority for you in the context of your content creation process?
Are you talking about things that no one cares about? Are you also paying attention to your two potential B2B buyer personas?
I really love this topic, Ahava skipped over it pretty quickly, those were proof points! Does your marketing content have proof points? To dive deeper into this conversation, you need to check out the episode we did with Melanie Diezel on the Marketing Smarts podcast!
And one last thing. Do you believe your tools solve problems or the people in your company? Maybe rewind this part and listen to what Ahava shared again!
We’ll return to Ahava Leibtag in a few minutes, but first it’s time for something…
Dope B2B learnings from the Vault of MarketingProfs articles
That’s right, it’s time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two golden nuggets that will help you become a better B2B marketer.
This week’s first article is: “This Simple Process Can Eliminate Four of Your Biggest Content Creation Nightmares” by Kelsey Raymond
Remember back when, after every birthday or holiday, your mother would insist that you hand-write personal, thoughtful thank-you notes to everyone who gave you something? And how did you probably wait until the last acceptable minute to start sending?
Well, successfully executing your company’s content marketing strategy can bring on the same nightmarish feelings of procrastination and panic – especially when you’re trying to find a balance between creating engaging, high-quality content and producing it at scale.
Although you may have felt like it was almost impossible to write an elegant and sincere thank you letter to every relative or family friend who gave you a sweater or a book for your 12th birthday, it is still a difficult task to create consistent, thoughtful content at scale.
This week’s second article is: How to Tackle the 4 Ws of Creating Marketing Content with Data by Lux Narayan
As with most endeavors, before you begin writing or otherwise creating content, you should ask yourself a few standard questions: Why, What, When, and Where – the 4Ws of content creation.
And because marketing content creation is as much science as it is art, data is the most powerful weapon at your disposal.
So before you start working on your next piece of content, consider the 4Ws. Also, think about how you can use data to address the concerns you should address with each question.
Would you like to continue learning? If so, check out the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both great MarketingProfs articles.
OK, back to Ahava Leibtag… Let’s dive back into this conversation about how strategic focus in content development can drive results and save time and money
So are you paying attention to the hurdles that could stand in the way of your strategic content? Are you paying attention to people who could be the hurdles? At this point you may be thinking: WHAT!!!
Let’s see what Ahava had to say when I asked her: What hurdles do you think stand in the way of B2B marketers when it comes to content, strategy, or creating strategic content?
Ahava: Actually there are only two. I think everything can go up to two levels. The first reason is that the people who pay the salaries of the people who do the marketing work don’t value marketing or communications. The second thing is that leaders and stakeholders don’t fully understand who their true audience is and what they want to consume, how quickly they need to consume it, and what really drives the business in terms of the audience listening to them. There could be a third reason: digital marketing is evolving so quickly that it’s difficult to keep track of trends. This could be the third one.
Those are the hurdles, and I don’t think they’re internal hurdles, I just think they exist. Medicine also moves at the speed of light and doctors have to keep track of research. Technologists and software programmers need to stay on top of things. Drilling rigs are constantly being developed. So I think everyone needs to do that in their field. In content marketing and content, it happens that it is not valued and the stakeholders are not close enough to the true target group.
Two big hurdles!
Lack of value in marketing communications and lack of knowledge of your target audience!
I’ll just drop the microphone on this question.
But for you, it’s about how we use people and systems to overcome these hurdles!
We’ll hear some words of wisdom from Ahava Leibtag here in a few minutes, but now it’s time to shine the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yes, time for…
From the #MPB2B community
We’ve searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversations to bring to the masses.
So firstly, make sure you use the hashtag and secondly, make sure you are having fun and adding value to the community.
We will then put you or your crew in the spotlight on the show. This week it is…
René Siegel
Connecting colleagues, customers and communities.
Rene is passionate about strengthening your entrepreneurial spirit, spreading authentic stories and empowering the next generation.
Your post goes something like this…
Shouldn’t EVERY webinar session include a wardrobe change?
It was an honor to share my thoughts on Personal Branding for Introverts at the MarketingProfs Shakeup B2B Conference yesterday!
And Lady Gaga is a great example of an introvert who uses creative ways to build her brand and stand out from the crowd. To add variety to our session, best-selling author Ann Handley helped me rock the Q&A session with some Gaga finery!
There’s more to the post, but you’ll have to check out the description and click the link to check it out!
Marketing Smarts viewers, I have to ask: will you be next in the spotlight?
Remember the community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and let your awesomeness be spotlighted on the next or future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!
Pro tip: It wouldn’t hurt if you tag me in your post too. I’m @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Okay, let’s go back to Ahava Leibtag and some words of wisdom on the topic: “How being strategic in content development can drive results and save time and money.”
Here’s what Ahava Leibtag wanted to leave us…
Ahava: Always read. Just always read. Always read new things, novels, non-fiction, magazines, blog posts. Always read. Language is a technology, a tool we use to communicate with each other. It’s constantly changing, it’s constantly evolving. If you continue reading, I think you’ll always have a handle on these new adaptive ways of communication. That’s my best advice. Or listen to books on tape, I don’t care how you do it.
I think it’s really about always learning. I truly believe that real marketers and communicators should read. I think when we do that, something happens on a neurological level that really keeps our brains sharp, it’s like a kind of training for the brain.
Always read! Always listen!
Language is a technology!
Language is a tool!
The language is constantly changing!
Always learn! Keep training your brain!
Did you enjoy today’s trip? Let us know and use the hashtag #mpb2b on the platform you join us on.