My colleague recently posted about the success realized by one of her clients, having shifted to an ABM strategy with one of their business lines. This sparked a series of subsequent discussions amongst our team, specifically around the importance of content and the role it plays throughout the sales process. While you might be thinking to yourself, “I don’t have the time or resources to churn out brand new content every few weeks,” – fear not. Leveraging content as a part of your ABM strategy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the hook for the heavy investment of developing new content. Instead, you can start by simply fine-tuning your existing content to ensure it aligns with the goals of both your marketing and sales teams, and – most importantly – the needs of your target audience. And this process begins with a content audit.
What is a content audit?
A content audit is a systematic approach for identifying, analyzing and organizing your existing content. It’s essentially a quantitative and qualitative look at your current assets. And while this may sound like a time-intensive and somewhat laborious process, the upfront investment can provide a hefty return by increasing audience engagement and facilitating sales opportunities, ultimately leading to more closed deals.
If you’re unsure where or how to get started, don’t worry – that’s what we’re here for!
We have crafted a 4-step process that, while varying slightly for each client, consistently leads to success:
1. Clearly articulate the goal(s) Identify what you hope to accomplish during your content audit, so you can structure your efforts around achieving your priorities.
2. Catalog an inventory of your content assets
Aggregate and compile a single repository of all your content. The audit should be omnichannel and go well beyond your four (digital) walls (i.e., website). Think white papers. Infographics. Videos. Webinars. Podcasts. Interviews. Etc.
3. Define your inventory/audit type Depending on how the content will be leveraged, identify the attributes you want to capture within your audit, which may include:
a. Name/title of the content piece and author b. Internal/external URL of where the content lives c. Format (e.g., video, blog, eBook, etc.) d. When was the content published? When was it last updated? Bonus: If possible, consider mapping content types to points within the buyer’s journey (i.e., Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Advocacy)
4. Analyze and tag the content in your inventory
In addition to reviewing any analytics around content performance metrics, examine content quality and look to develop a quality scale (e.g., High quality with good performance | Mediocre quality, but has potential | Low quality, unusable). Note: content quality can often be upgraded simply by rectifying outdated information, changing content format or shortening/elongating.
Use the results of your content audit to identify gaps where new content should be prioritized, develop a stronger ABM content strategy, and lay the foundation for demonstrating the greatest value to your top accounts. Interested in hearing more about how Pragmatic can help with your content needs? Contact us.