In response to the pandemic, 70 percent of B2B and 63 percent of B2C marketers changed their targeting/messaging strategy. Ironically, this wasn’t even one of the steps in the content marketing planning process a couple of years ago.
As I explained in Chapter 1, strategy has also been “the elephant in the room” for digital marketing since 2019. And it may also explain why the CMI needs to keep reminding marketers they need to have a documented content marketing strategy.
Having a documented content marketing strategy is correlated with being successful, but correlation does not imply causation. Documenting your strategy only helps if it leads your team to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content that attracts and retains a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, drives profitable customer action.
So, focus on creating a successful content marketing strategy first, before you harness the benefits of documenting it to accomplish the following:
- Align your team around a common mission/goals.
- Make it easier to determine which types of content to develop.
- Keep your team focused on documented priorities.
- Help your team allocate resources to optimize desired results.
- Provide clarity on targeted audience(s).
You’ll need to start by making some scientific, wild guesses about the best targeting/messaging strategy for your brand and industry. Let’s use Direct Line, one of the leading insurers in the United Kingdom, as an example. Start by mapping your customer’s journey:
- See: People who could end up owning a car
- Feel: People who feel they might need a new car
- Think: People who think they might need car insurance
- Do: People who compare their car insurance options
- Care: Your existing customers whose car insurance is about to expire
Then, craft an overall message for each stage of the customer journey, identify some of the key communication touchpoints that you’ll create in an ongoing content marketing program, and identify the KPIs that you’ll use to measure the impact of these touchpoints on customer perceptions and behavior.
Table 5.1 shows how that might look.
TABLE 5.1 Preliminary Targeting/Messaging Strategy Overview
| See | Feel | Think | Do | Care |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| See that your brand exists and provides car insurance | Feel that “You’re On It” | Think you are more proactive rather than continuing to show how you can react to problems | Drive long‐ and short‐term business impact | Care that you give people their money back and put things right when they go wrong |
| Short articles/posts | Videos | Virtual events | Case studies | Email newsletters |
| Brand awareness | Favorability | Consideration | Purchase intent | Brand affinity |
Finally, Table 5.2 is my hypothetical outline of the headlines of the key messages, which are tailored for each communication touchpoint in a targeted persona’s customer journey.
The proposed headlines for the short articles/posts, virtual events, case studies, as well as email newsletters should be self‐explanatory. But you might want to know a little more about the proposed content of the videos.
They build on Direct Line Group’s “We’re On It” campaign, which took home the top prize at the Marketing Week Masters in 2021 for driving long‐ and short‐term business impact (Figure 5.11).
Direct Line took over a year to develop its new campaign. After delivering the brief to creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi in 2019, the brand launched “We’re On It” in February 2020.
The successful campaign featured three characters—Bumblebee from Transformers, Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Robocop—showing each of them being beaten by Direct Line in an emergency situation including a car accident or office break‐in.
A hypothetical content marketing’s targeting/messaging strategy matrix would leverage these characters to craft a tailored message for targeted persona during the “Feel” stage of the customer journey. This should drive even more long‐ and short‐term business impact.
How do you measure that? Well, you could use Google Surveys once or twice a year to measure brand awareness, favorability, consideration, and purchase intent. You could also use Google Forms to conduct an annual or semi‐annual customer survey to measure brand affinity.
(I’ll examine other ways to measure results at the end of this chapter.)
TABLE 5.2 Hypothetical Targeting/Messaging Strategy Matrix
| Personas | See | Feel | Think | Do | Care |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Educate me | What car insurance do I need to deliver food? | Bumblebee encounters driverless cars | What factors impact the price of your quote? | Why they chose Direct Line | Can I drive any car? |
| Reassure me | Will car insurance go up next year? | Robocop examines the Smart Crossing | How would you cope without your car? | Why she chose Direct Line | Will my price be different if I choose to renew automatically? |
| Help me | How do car insurance deductibles work? | Donatello offers tips on how to get your parents off your back | How do you insure your electric car? | Why he chose Direct Line | Can I transfer my No Claim Discount (NCD) to another individual? |
| Surprise me | Are car insurance companies open on weekends? | Interview with Bumblebee on being beaten by one of the U.K.’s leading insurers | Who will sort out claims more efficiently than any other insurance providers? | Why my friends chose Direct Line | Can I add a temporary additional vehicle to my policy? |
| Thrill me | Will car insurance cover a blown engine? | Stories about Robocop in emergency situations | Who goes beyond what you would expect from an insurer? | Why I chose Direct Line | Are my spouse and I covered for business use? |
| Impress me | Which car insurance is best for new drivers? | Will Donatello be #OutHeroed again by The Fixer? | Which insurers are best at solving problems? | Why our kids chose Direct Line | How do you get a multi‐car insurance discount? |
Leave a Reply