Is Your Content Strategy Production, Presence or Authority?

One of the analogies I often tell people about our agency is that we're not a Marketing Jiffy Lube. Our job isn't to get you in and out quickly, throw a sticker on your windshield and see you next month. We're more of the pit crew frantically getting the car ready for the race. There are plenty of Jiffy Lubes out there – we don't want to be one of them.

Content Production

As it refers to content, these agencies provide a production line for you. X number of posts per month, X number of whitepapers, X number of infographics at a cost of X dollars. The contract begins and they produce. They're paid on the output and timeliness of the project with no attention paid to whether or not you're winning the race.

We see a lot of companies sign up for this strategy because – first – there's a ton of copywriters out there that want a steady stream of work and – second – they haven't been able to produce the content internally and know they're losing to their competitors. Unfortunately, since they're not paying attention to the performance of the content, they continue to lose.

It's a flat-lined approach with no return on investment. It's an assembly line with an average product.

Web Presence

The second strategy we watch many agencies deploy is the share of voice or web presence strategy. This one includes content and promotion, with the rules being that you can own more of the inbound leads if you just write more and promote it more. Ack… what a waste of time. Sure, growing your share of voice will get you more leads. I'm not at all poo-pooing a strategy of mass production and promotion, but it's missing a much larger opportunity.

It's a linear approach with a flat-lined return on investment. It's a faster assembly line with the same average product.

Content Authority

What if you could write less content that was more meaningful, promote it, and increase demand exponentially? That's why we developed our content authority approach with clients. It's not speeding up the assembly line and spewing out an oil change. It's building the race car and then pulling it into the pits every time you lose the lead.

It's an iterative approach with an increasing return on investment. It's a slower assembly line with a premium product that sells much better.

Case Study

Last night I attended the Big Data Conference here in Indianapolis. In attendance was a client who we had served for years until they brought in new marketing management. That marketing manager had a background in event management and looked to the website as more of a brochure rather than an inbound sales platform. She cut our engagement and the company subsequently lost much of its authority via search and social.

Despite this, the salesman from the company said that without a doubt, the infographic series that we had developed for the company 3 years ago was still their strongest source of qualified leads via the web. That's the kind of program we're talking about here. You pay more today, but you get exponentially better results over time!