How to Pitch Content Services to a Client
The Importance of Your Content Rivals the Importance of Your Brand Voice
After coming across an excellent article called “Don’t Let Your Client Write the Content” on the GatherContent blog, I thought long and hard about how we at Britton Marketing & Design Group position our content services and how we could improve the current process.
Knowing how to do content strategy and content marketing is a lot different from showing how you can do content strategy and content marketing.
We have a solid track record. We have a content-marketing formula called Content Cartography, which effectively uses content strategy to consistently plan, create, manage, share and repurpose content. It’s been really successful for us.
Creating content can be easy.
However, presenting and scaling this formula to fit client needs and an internal content-production structure is more of a challenge than just saying, “Hey! Look what we did. Look how well we’re doing.”
If it were as simple as that, sales wouldn’t really be a thing, right?
Maybe. What we focus on in our client relationships is taking a brand-centric approach to everything we do. We always start at the core, at the brand center, and from there we build out. Getting to know the brand, the voice, is crucial when creating content for clients. Without that “look under the hood,” it becomes very difficult to completely cultivate successful campaigns and content that will resonate with the client’s audience.
So how do we effectively show our clients the benefits and advantages of investing in their content? We do and show.
What I mean by that is that we don’t waste time on the subject of content creation. We talk the talk and walk the walk. The most common fallacy in the marketing world (there are probably many fallacies, but this is No. 1 in my book — I may be biased) is when people say, “Anyone can create content. Anyone can send emails. Anyone can post to Facebook, etc., etc.”
Most of the people and brands that are unsuccessful with their content creation have the wrong people and processes in place.
While those statements can be true, they are also very misleading. Creating content is hard. It’s the most important piece of any type of marketing. And yet it is often seen as an afterthought to design and choosing the right channel. Lorem ipsum, Web templates and other content templates enable users to create and scale their content easily, but they don’t address the root of the business — the words, the story, the brand.
Creating content can be easy. It depends on what you want out of your content. It can be easy (nay, easier) if you have a content strategy. For instance, anyone can create a website. There’s a ton of different services out there that allow businesses to create and manage their own website content (e.g., WordPress, Squarespace, Wix). So in theory, businesses can create their own websites with relatively few barriers.
The negative effect of this is that a business often creates a website based on its own biased perceptions instead of using the latest best practices and proven metrics.
Creating content is hard.
A business owner may not worry about an internal linking structure or the information architecture of a website and how that relates to online visibility. However, a business owner may worry about having the company contact information and logo visible on every page. A content core model workshop could assist with this.
A business owner may think about what she needs to have on the website for the launch. However, a business owner may not think about what happens with the website, and content, after it is launched. Governance and a content-production-and-workflow plan would help with this aspect.
A business may think about how to create a website that serves many different purposes. However, a business owner may not think about the contextual needs and wants of the user. Creating buyer personas and user scenarios could help with this aspect.
A business owner may think about how to get all of her PDFs up on the website so that users can read them. However, a business owner may not think about the fact that no one (well, maybe someone) reads PDFs online. Whether we consider people, or search bots (you can make PDFs searchable, but why?), the content would (probably) be better served as HTML. Conducting a content audit might help with this aspect.
You will think about all this. And a hundred other things.
Creating content is very hard.
So when “pitching” your content strategy or content marketing strategy, make sure that you show not only what you have done and how successful you’ve been but also how the client’s current content can be improved. Conduct a content audit and show areas of concern and opportunity. Show clients that you have thought about their content from a strategic standpoint. This can really help connect the dots — maybe even more so than showing your own content metrics.
Emphasize how you have a proven content-production process that enables great content production, appeasing technical content and user-signal ranking factors. Show clients the intersection of how good content is created. Show them the content sweet spot.
The Content Sweet Spot
Show them that you not only have the capacity to create their content but that you also know the ins and outs of getting the most out of organic reach. Show them your research and your formula that you base this on. Give them actual examples of ROI and organic reach stemming from organic blog content or social posts.
Content Cartography Formula
Another thing that you could emphasize is the fact that you are efficient. You’re dedicated to creating great content, optimized. This is an opportunity for you to ease their workload. Taking care of their content creation takes a huge load of work off their plate. How much is X number of hours of their workday/week/month/year worth to them?
You have a content-production process. If you don’t have it recorded in a flow chart or in some kind of visual format, this might be the time to do so. Show them how much of your resources and time go into the high-quality content that you create. Show them your content-production process.
Content-Production Process
Quantify the time and effort you take into account in your content-production process. And quantify how many hours of time you will save them by using your processes and formula. If there’s something that most business owners can relate to, it’s efficiency. So show them your efficiency.
Creating content is hard.
This is the truth. Some do a fantastic job of creating content. Some don’t. Most of the people and brands that are unsuccessful with their content creation have the wrong people and processes in place. They’re not able to efficiently scale and produce content. They’re not taking into account the many barriers that are inherent in the content-production process. They may not be valuing content.
So content creation is hard, right? Don’t be afraid to show a client how hard it really is. This quantifies the process, the effort and the importance of content creation. And since content is usually synonymous with the voice of the brand, it should be one of the priorities of every business. It should be priority No. 1. It all begins at the brand center, the voice.
Storytelling and branding can be hard. We make it seem easy. Let us help.
Follow BMDG on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Subscribe to our newsletter
Photos: BMDG
Originally published at www.brittonmdg.com.
