Content Marketing Tips: Don’t Let Internal Processes Get In The Way!

Content Marketing Tips : Today, marketing managers are challenged to create increasingly personalised digital experiences. However, this is made more difficult by eliminating cookies and restrictions by Google Analytics on how those responsible for content marketing in companies can lead to success.

Currently, relying on “business as usual” is no longer enough to achieve good results in content marketing. Many marketers are now experiencing this the hard way. 

Use Creative Forces Sensibly For Content Marketing 

It is not always easy to organise the team so that bright minds use their brains and creativity instead of doing repetitive work. According to Bynder’s report, a majority of 72 percent of marketers involved in video, design, and creativity spend too much time on minor fixes and adjustments. 

A team’s creative capacity is being used in a very underutilised manner because creative people would spend this time more sensibly creating new, high-quality content. Or to develop the next original concept that gets the brand noticed.  

One way marketers can help their creative teams address this is by implementing a template solution. This could handle simple, tedious tasks like resizing social banners or switching from American to British English. This allows digital marketers to make the necessary adjustments themselves quickly. At the same time, ensuring that the visuals are high quality and fully on-brand.  

Additionally, it helps to understand creative teams as a single global group and not as several different teams. This allows companies to save costs and accelerate time to market. Both financially and in terms of the creative resources required, it makes far more sense to organise just one shoot and share the resulting assets with all regions via a digital asset management system. However, this presupposes that a coherent technical marketing package is in place. Global campaigns are the goal, but global processes and platforms are required first.

Content Marketing: Internal Collaboration Should Be The Norm

Digital marketing and creative teams should work together like a well-oiled machine. But their collaboration is often hampered by inefficient workflows and complex platforms. Marketers often complain about the slow turnaround times of social media assets. “By the time we received the material, the moment was already over.” Meanwhile, the creative teams are puzzled over why the digital units request certain content. In addition, they often lack essential insights into which formats work best. So how can marketers break down these barriers once and for all to increase efficiency and improve results?  

 Your first step should be to review current marketing technology. Is it intuitive, centralised, and highly automated? Or is it fragmented, disjointed, and difficult to use? Digital marketing teams shouldn’t spend hours sifting through files when they need an asset. At the same time, creatives shouldn’t be burdened with creating multiple versions of the same banner based on a one-line brief sent via Outlook. And both sides should avoid logging in to each other’s platforms to make changes they may not fully understand.

A Clear Understanding Of Marketing Technology

Without a clear understanding of your marketing technology ecosystem and a strategy to ensure it delivers what businesses need, the gap between creative and digital elements will only widen. And when it comes to sourcing technology, whether it’s a digital asset management solution, a content management system, or a marketing automation tool, both parties should have a say. After all, these tools lay the foundation for cross-functional collaboration.

Of course, technology is only one side of the coin. Forward-thinking companies invest in hiring web content managers and filling similar positions. These individuals strategically orchestrate content marketing workflows, helping brands stop manually formatting and uploading content daily.

And The Same Goes For External Collaboration 

Rather than outsourcing services entirely, more and more brands are employing agencies as specialised partners focused on a specific project, marketing discipline, or region. This requires a higher level of collaboration between internal and external teams. First, decide whose way of working you want to adopt. 

Of course, most marketers will try to develop a mutual understanding of what is expected of both parties. But all too often, they overlook the critical role that technology plays. And whose technology will you use for project management, for example?

Work With A Single Data Source

After all, working from a single source of data is critical to the success of a project. And what about sharing and permissions? Have you agreed on a recording system for all creative content that can be used freely? Dropbox and SharePoint don’t cut it anymore in this new agency paradigm.  

At the risk of sounding trite, excellent content marketing comes from within. In other words, creating timely, personalised, and effective content-based campaigns depends equally on company culture, creative strategy, and technical equipment. And in today’s 24/7 marketing environment, streamlining the internal processes surrounding content creation and reuse is non-negotiable.