Spending quality time with loved ones, perhaps a peaceful snowfall and a rewarding cup of hot cocoa after sledding or shoveling: These are the reasons November and December are deemed the most wonderful time of the year. For marketers, however, there’s another reason to cherish these months: Your budgets are likely earmarked, and you can now indulge in mapping out a comprehensive content marketing strategy.
On the other hand, maybe you’re so swamped with year-end responsibilities that you can’t imagine taking time to hone in on a dedicated content marketing plan. After all, this is also typically the time of year when many of you are in your busy season both personally and professionally and, therefore, your ability to take on another commitment is stretched thin.
Despite this, I urge you to push through the clutter and make your content marketing strategy a priority. Even simply committing to one new tactic will enhance your overall marketing success.
Consider the following three examples:
1.) Identify a new content marketing vehicle to focus on during each quarter of 2016.
2.) Double your weekly number of blogs in an effort to bolster brand awareness.
3.) Attend a certain number of marketing shows in the upcoming year to network with other marketing leaders.
Solidify such plans now so they don’t get lost in the shuffle. With 83 percent of B2B companies having a content marketing strategy of some sort, and 45 percent of B2C companies having a dedicated content marketing group within their organization, according to research from the Content Marketing Institute, it’s clear that content marketing should have a seat at the table when it comes to your 2016 marketing efforts if you want to stay competitive.
As 2015 winds down, your organization should be planning to optimize revenue-earning opportunities by developing a robust content marketing strategy – or updating your existing strategy. In fact, this was a message that was strongly emphasized at Content Boost’s most recent Content Marketing Crash Course event, which took place Oct. 29.
We emphasized that now is the time for your organization to prepare to take a bold stand in 2016 by making a statement and sharing your brand’s story in the form of custom, original copy. As well, we suggested that now is the time to fine-tune your existing strategy so that it better reflects your ever-changing business needs.
Wherever you currently fall on the content marketing spectrum, the bottom line is that you, and your competitors, are rapidly approaching the start of a new year – one that is overflowing with incredible opportunities that are unique to content marketing intelligence. Are you prepared to take advantage of all that 2016 has to offer? Make this year’s end your company’s most memorable by planning what you can do to improve your brand’s image further with content marketing.
If you’re unsure of where to start, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to continue the conversation.
Allison Boccamazzo is the director of brand strategy for the Custom Publishing Division (www.contentboost.com) at Technology Marketing Corp. (www.tmcnet.com).
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
