Content marketing is a challenging game that requires constant adaptation to stay ahead. A blog post that was once popular can now receive barely any traffic, while a niche that was previously relevant may disappear entirely. Andrew Chen’s law of clickthroughs states that every growth hack eventually stops working, which means that conventional practices around hiring, rigid systems, and production will not be effective in the long run. Instead, it is necessary to have an agile, malleable team that is willing to try new things, iterate strategies, and adjust quickly. Here are six actionable ways to set your content marketing team up for success:
- Start lean: Avoid staffing up too early and only hire when the workload becomes too much for your current team to handle. This prevents your managers from being spread too thin and ensures that your team has a cohesive marketing strategy.
- Work backwards from your customers: Define and understand your target audience, and focus on producing quality content that appeals to their interests. This involves sending out surveys to existing customers to learn about the topics they are most interested in learning about.
- Nail down a repeatable writing process: Create a systematic way to consistently churn out great pieces of content, such as creating a writing schedule, outsourcing some of the work, and repurposing material.
- Focus on educating your audience: Instead of constantly thinking about how to position your product, marketing teams should focus on creating content that their customers and prospects would be interested in. This involves providing actionable advice to your target audience and not just writing about your own product.
- Prepare to scale with collaboration tools: Communication is one of the biggest challenges when growing your team, so using tools like Quip, I Done This, and Teamwork Projects can help open up channels for communication and collaboration.
- Stay on top of industry trends: Keep an eye on new trends, tools, and techniques in the content marketing industry to stay ahead of the game and ensure that your team is always up-to-date with the latest developments.
If it all seems too much, get the help of someone who knows how to build, manage and get the best from a marketing team. Lets chat about getting you a CMO today.