Is Your Content Marketing Worth Its Weight In Gold?

How Weighty Is Your Content Marketing? [Chart]

Not all content marketing is created equal; it varies based on weight, both in terms of its mass and seriousness of thought. Intuitively, this makes sense since each form of information fulfills different customer needs.

To ensure your content marketing is worth its weight in gold, provide an array of information because prospects and customers need to hear or see a message three to five times before they believe it.

3 Content marketing weight classes

Viewed from this perspective, there are three basic content marketing weight classes and each has its unique characteristics. To get the most value from your content marketing budget and resources, use a mix of all three options and integrate them into your editorial calendar. Craft each to its own purpose while providing focus and brand continuity.

• Heavyweight content. These are major pieces of strategic content. They’re part of a major marketing effort that positions your company, brand and/or product. This content should be evergreen. Heavyweight content should be an integral part of your promotional and marketing plan.

  Heavyweight content supports top of the funnel purchase activity including brand building, driving traffic and establishing thought leadership. From a resources perspective, while the strategy for heavyweight content should be developed internally to ensure it’s strategically aligned with your business objectives, it often requires external resources to execute. As a result, this content is often more expensive. Therefore plan ahead to ensure you create additional information that can be incorporated into middleweight and lightweight content.

  Actionable Marketing Tip: Get the rights to use content elements in other forms and channels without additional fees in your contracts.

• Middleweight content. This is the workhorse of your content offering. It’s the on-going content that nurtures your prospects, supports your customers, and keeps your fans engaged. This content should provide continuity with your heavyweight pieces. Publish this type of content twice a month or weekly depending on your resources and audience.

  Middleweight content has an impact on middle of the funnel activities such as research, conversion and post sales support. This information requires internal resources that understand how your organization works. In B2B companies, employees involved in generating content must have access to and a working relationship with marketing, sales and customer service to ensure that communications convert leads into customers. (Here’s more insights on B2B lead generation.)

  Actionable Marketing Tip: Leverage this content to create a series of communications when new prospects or leads enter your process as well as over the course of your monthly editorial calendar.

• Lightweight content. This is tactical content. Its goal is to interact with your prospects, customers, fans and the public. This is the information you use to engage with and respond to prospects and customers as well as to participate on social media platforms. It encompasses Just-In-Time content to take advantage of trending topics, curated content to leverage and share other people’s articles, and user generated content created in conjunction with your community (Here’s detailed explanation of these content strategies).

  Lightweight content works at the middle and bottom of the purchase funnel. Publish this type of content at least twice a week to multiple times a day depending on the platform. It requires internal resources who know your company and your brand.

  Actionable Marketing Tip: Use this on-going engagement to discern potential issues and respond to customer questions. It can also give you ideas for future content.

 

Content Marketing by Weight Class

Content type	Heavyweight	Middleweight	Lightweight
Marketing goal	Brand building Traffic driver Customer/lead acquisition Thought leadership	Lead qualification Sales support	Branding Sales support Fan advocacy Thought leadership
Target audience	Prospects Customers Public Media	Prospects Customers	Prospects Customers Public
Content type	Evergreen	Just-In-Time Repurposed	Just-In-Time Repurposed Curation Co-created
Content format (Examples)	Ebooks Presentations White papers Research Webinar Case studies	Email newsletter Articles Infographics Videos Podcasts	Blog posts Photographs Social media
Purchase process impact	Awareness	Research Sales Post sales	Awareness Research Sales Post-sales Advocacy
Publication frequency	Quarterly to monthly	Twice per month to weekly	Couple of times per week to daily
Resources	Internal for strategy, External execution	Internal for strategy & execution	Internal for strategy & execution

Source: ©2013 HeidiCohen.com – All rights reserved

Regardless of business size, you need a mix of different weights of content marketing. Maximize your marketing budget by planning and creating your content with your goals and audience in mind in order to develop the most effective mix to meet your prospects’ and customers’ specific needs. This will ensure that your entire content marketing offering is worth its weight in gold.

Do you plan your content marketing in conjunction with your promotional calendar? Does advance planning help you to save budget and more effectively use your resources?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Related Articles

• Content Marketing: 4 Cornerstones 
• To help you further, here’s a content marketing checklist.

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