Mind the Gap: How to Audit Your Marketing Content

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		January 2009, Issue 59

Featured Article
Mind the Gap: How to Audit Your Marketing Content
By Ahmed Taleb, Director of Strategic Planning, Bulldog Solutions

Excerpt from a Bulldog Solutions White Paper, "Three Steps to Developing Effective Calls to Action"

This article is an excerpt. Want to read the whole thing?
Ahmed's complete white paper, "Three Steps to Developing Effective Calls to Action," is now available for download.

Get your complimentary copy today, and learn about the other two steps to developing killer calls to action.

Competition for your prospects' attention is growing. Creating powerful and compelling messaging has never been more important. But writing sensationalist copy solely for the purpose of capturing attention will do little to entice your audience to interact with your brand further, and may even damage the relationship. Your audience needs a natural rationale to support an ongoing conversation or sales follow-up.

The solution lies in creating messaging that serves several purposes. First and most obviously, effective messaging needs to capture a top-of-mind issue or topic and present it in such a way that it urges your audience to interact further. Second, it needs to offer a clear directive for your audience to take further action to interact with your brand, whether it's as simple as a visit to a Web site, or as complex as participation in a detailed research study.

This format of progressive disclosure will allow you to extend the conversation across many touch points, providing multiple opportunities to reinforce your message, learn more about your prospect, and ultimately lead to a one-to-one sales conversation where appropriate. Powerful messaging will create a bridge between the issue or topic and your company's offering. Through calls to action, you can not only reach your audience—but also assuage their fears and anxieties with credible offerings that pair value (thought leadership content) with fulfillment (in the form of your offering).

Compelling content is an important foundation for the creation of powerful messaging. It's the "bait" that draws your audience into a conversation with you; it powers the exchange of your information for their profile data. And that profile data drives even deeper, more relevant engagements.

The following is step 3 of a three-step process I've outlined in a white paper, "Three Steps to Developing Effective Calls to Action." To read about the other two steps, download your complimentary copy of my white paper.

Step #3: Content Gap Analysis: Identifying Weak Spots

Many marketers find that having a well-defined messaging strategy is only part of the process. A range of content is required to support multi-touch campaigns. Most organizations have little or no comprehensive view of exactly what kinds of content assets—Webinars, white papers, Web site copy, presentations, podcasts, rich media assets—they have at their disposal.

Before engaging in resource-heavy content development projects, we recommend a content gap analysis to:

Determine which existing content can be leveraged in support of a campaign.
Identify critical "holes" where little or no content exists.
Prioritize the creation of new content.

A successful content gap analysis will catalog all existing content that an organization has rights to use. This can include current company-owned assets that are already in use, assets from partners that are available for use, and future content that is already scheduled for creation.

Most organizations have large "spheres of influence" that encompass professional associations, clients, executive relationships and arm's-length advocates. These are all viable channels from which to mine content to repurpose in support of a marketing campaign. Remember that your audience will measure a white paper, article or blog posting that you provided on their intrinsic value, regardless of their source.

Content Gap Analysis: Identifying Weak Spots

Tools for the Content Gap Audit

The content audit can take place using the messaging matrix developed in the steps earlier in this white paper. It can be as simple as a spreadsheet that lists the content you can identify, mapped to your messages. It can be as complex as the creation of an internal database that catalogs content by message as well as other variables (the type of presenter, the mode of content, etc.) that can be used later for even deeper analysis.

We recognize that many organizations need to keep it simple. The outcome is a visual identification of content holes (see chart above), which can then lead to the steps to fill them. The time saved from avoiding producing yet another piece of content around a message you already have plenty of content for, while ignoring an important but perhaps more difficult segment, is generally worth the time spent on the audit.

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Ahmed Taleb is director of strategic planning at Bulldog Solutions, the lead-generation optimization and management company. Visit www.bulldogsolutions.com to learn more.

Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, a lead optimization and lead management company dedicated to helping our clients generate more, better leads and turn them into revenue. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, Director of Field Marketing.