10 Content Marketing Rules to Create Cut-through

The thing with content marketing, is that creating content isn’t enough. Churning out content day in day out costs money. Think of the resources that are going into it. Are you getting a return on that investment? A lot of the people I speak to, can’t tell me whether or not their content is working for them.

Let that sink in. They’re creating content. But they don’t know whether or not it’s working.

Let me unpick this a little bit:

Content rule #1: Get a clear brief

More often than not, content calendars are populated by marketing teams – marketers who are listening to their stakeholders – be it their boss, their clients, or other departments in the business. Why is this a problem I hear you cry? We’ve been taught to do as we’re told. And we like to please people. So it feels right to do what people are telling us to do. But this is causing problems. Let me explain why. As a marketer, your stakeholders shouldn’t be telling you what content they want. They should be telling you what their objectives are. It should be up to you to determine what the right approach to fulfil that objective is. So rule number 1 in content marketing: make sure you’ve got a clear brief. A brief that tells you what the challenge is. Not a brief that gives you a solution.

Content rule #2: Know your distribution channels

You see when your stakeholders give you the solution and you create exactly what they’ve asked for, they’ll be pleased. But then, another stakeholder will ask you for exactly what they want and they’ll likely tell you when they want it too. Sometimes, that might work out well, and you’ll have another pleased stakeholder. But carry on working like this, and at some point, you’ll become a referee. Because inevitably those stakeholders will be working towards their own targets – retail Ruth needs to sell more merch, events Ed needs to sell more tickets, whilst fundraising Fi needs to increase donations.

At best this causes content fragmentation – where you’ve got one organisation putting out multiple messages that don’t appear to the user to be in any way related. At worse, your stakeholders will all want their content going out on the same channel on the same day. If you give in to them your own organisation’s content will be competing with itself. You’ll dilute each of your stakeholders messages by not giving it the space it deserves. So rule number 2: Know your distribution channels. Ensure each marketing channel has got a clearly defined role. Create rules for each channel and stick to them, to ensure you’re maximising your impact on each channel according to its algorithm.

Content rule #3: Align objectives

If you don’t give in to each of your stakeholders, they’ll each argue that their need is greater than the others’ and you’ll find yourself sitting in the middle of a bun fight, eventually giving in to the person who shouts the loudest. Don’t do this. Remember, it’s not about your stakeholders, it’s about your audiences. So make sure you do your research, and understand what your audience needs.

So how do you meet the needs of your audience without neglecting the needs of the business? You ensure your business, marketing and content goals are aligned. The people at the top of your company should have set clear business goals to help them achieve the company’s mission. As a marketer you should have clear marketing goals that will help to deliver the business goals. From here you can assign themes for your content (we call these ‘content pillars’) that fit with your marketing goals. As a content marketer you should be ensuring that every piece of content is helping to achieve your marketing goals and in turn your business goals. So rule number 3: Align objectives.

Content rule #4: Know your audiences

You should have clarity on who you need to reach to hit your goals. And then you should put time and effort into understanding as much as possible about those people. Ideally you will segment those audiences according to their needs and motivations. And from those segments you will create personas. So that every time you create a piece of content, you are clear about which persona you are creating for. This allows your content to speak to your audience directly. Rule number 4: Create each piece of content for a specific audience.

Content rule #5: Create a distribution plan

If you know who your content needs to reach, you can define how you will ensure that those people see that piece of content. This is known as your distribution plan – it’s the plan that defines the channels, the formats and the timings needed if your content is to reach it’s desired audience. This is the piece of the puzzle that so many content creators miss. They create content for the platform they want to create on (rather than for the channel that is most likely to reach their audience) with no thought to where and when their target audience will be active. If you want your content to get traction, you need to understand where your target audiences will be and when. So rule number 5: take time to create a distribution plan for your content.

Content marketing rule #6: Differentiate through your creative

But even if you get your content in front of the right eyeballs, people could very easily ignore it. That probably won’t be a conscious decision. The reality is your audience is busy. They’re exposed to 4,000-10,000 messages each day. So naturally, they’re gonna switch off to a lot of those messages. It’s thought that our brains have developed a screening process to ignore most marketing messages. This means that fewer than 100 messages will make it past your audiences’ ‘attention wall’ each day.

So how do you make them stop and pay attention? You need creative that stands out. To stand out you need to be different. To be different, you need to do your research. You need to look at what your competitors are doing and make sure that your content doesn’t blend in with theirs. There are many ways to develop creative differentiation, whether it’s through copy, colour or format. Rule number 6: Differentiate through your creative.

Content rule # 7: Bring value

If your creative does it’s job and captures the attention of your audience, that’s amazing. But it doesn’t mean your audience will relate to it. For your content to be relatable, it needs to either showcase a situation recently experienced by your audience, or provide a solution to a current challenge that interests your audience. This takes us back to the importance of our audience research – understand what your audience needs from you and give it to them. Rule number 7 – create content that brings value to your target audience.

Content rule #8: Define your content purpose

Creating content for a specific audience isn’t enough. You need to know what you want that audience to do when they consume that piece of content. Do you want them to feel something? If so, what? Do you want them to do something? If so, what? (Make a pledge, subscribe to a newsletter, donate, volunteer…the list goes on). If you’re not clear what you want to get out of a piece of content, then it has no purpose. And if it has no purpose, there is no point, because you’ll never know whether or not it’s worked. So, really, unless you’ve defined the purpose of a piece of content, you shouldn’t be creating it. Rule number 8. Know your worth. Define the purpose of every piece of content you create. And where appropriate ensure your content has a clear call to action (CTA).

Content rule #9: Define success

If you know what you want your content to achieve, you can define how you’re going to measure whether or not it’s been successful. So if you’ve clearly defined your success metrics, you can look at those metrics and know whether or not your content did what you wanted it to. That’s rule number 9: Define what success looks like.

Content rule #10: Learn

A clear definition of success and clarity on which metrics indicate whether or not your content has achieved what you wanted it to, means you can monitor how your content performs on which channel with which audiences. And with the right reporting dashboards in place, you can start to identify patterns in what is and isn’t working. This in my mind is the golden rule of content marketing. Rule number 10: Learn. Learn from every piece of content you put out, and take time to bring those learnings together and create hypotheses that you can test. So that over time, you’re continually improving your content performance, and you’re continually learning what works best for which audiences.

10 Content marketing rules

So there you have it, ten content marketing rules:

1. Work to a clear brief
2. Define the roles of your distribution channels
3. Align objectives
4. Know your audiences
5. Create a distribution plan
6. Differentiate through your creative
7. Bring value to your target audience
8. Define the purpose of every piece of content your create
9. Define what success looks like
10. Learn from every piece of content you put out

Content marketing strategy

It feels like a lot to think about when you pop them in a list like this.

But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Really all you need is a strong content strategy (aligned to business goals, rooted in audience research) and a clear process to deliver that strategy through clearly defined roles and responsibilities. A strategy requires decisions to be made. So once you’ve got your strategy in place, prioritisation becomes clearer, and you can create one content plan that the whole organisation works towards. It sounds so simple, but when the whole organisation is singing from the same hymn sheet, that’s when your content will start to create the impact you’re striving for.

We’ve produced content strategies for a number of visitor attractions and charities (big and small). So if you’d like some help, feel free to give us a call.