The Content Marketing Matrix
A Cheat Sheet to Turbocharge Your B2B Content Marketing Results
90% of B2B marketers say they are increasing or at least maintaining their content marketing efforts, according to recent surveys.
The results support the consensus that content marketing is effective. So, what if you could increase your content impact by 10X? That’s the goal of the Pepper Group Content Marketing Matrix.
The Value of Content Marketing
Content is a crucial part of the Pepper Group Revenue Tower® framework. If you’re not yet familiar with the Revenue Tower, you can check out our eBook. In short, it’s a strategic, integrated marketing and sales approach built to deliver the highest revenue and profitability from your marketing investment. It’s an enhancement of the outdated funnel model, offering a more comprehensive and modernized approach.
A strong Revenue Tower continually attracts and elevates prospective customers. Great content, whether it’s education, promotion, demonstration or even entertainment, powers this process and drives results.
For example, thought leadership content, testimonials and team bios can establish credibility in the Showroom. Demonstrations, research and educational pieces help create Initial Engagement by strengthening SEO results and creating calls to action for outreach efforts. Success stories, third-party content and updates support contact nurturing and Ongoing Engagement. Case studies, calculations and product info augment Sales Enablement. And how-tos, industry trends and timely updates help improve Customer Retention.
Remember, however, that your buyer’s journey is not linear like it is in the funnel model, so don’t get too wrapped up in assigning content types by stage. For example, case studies are often viewed as a tactic for the later stages in a buyer journey. However, with a global software client, we found that a particular case study outperformed all other types of content regardless of where the buyer was in their journey.
Increasing Results Through Strategic Repurposing
In a recent survey, most B2B marketers reported that their top challenge is consistently developing new content. Most of them also reported that they don’t do enough content repurposing. These issues are directly related. The challenge of developing new content is because many marketers think one-to-one. This may sound like, “Create a YouTube video.” The approach is then to develop the content, create the video and post it to YouTube (and of course track KPIs). Then, the marketer will move on to develop the next piece of new content.
The most difficult part of this process is developing the original content itself. So rather than a one-to-one approach, the Content Matrix encourages a repurposing mindset. It helps visualize how one type of content can be created in various formats, and then distributed through multiple channels, amplifying results and creating a higher return from your efforts.
A Cheat Sheet for Content Marketing
Since effective content marketing is so crucial to B2B success, and because this leverage effect is so powerful, Pepper Group developed a unique and proprietary cheat sheet called the Content Marketing Matrix to help our clients maximize results.
The cheat sheet will help you first identify various content types. By thinking through the 12 types of content—what you might already have, what you can most easily create, and what would be the most powerful in supporting your strategy—you’ll uncover many new opportunities and unlock a plethora of options.
Then, for each content type, you can apply various formats to bring it to life. By considering how each of the 12 different categories of formats can be applied to that content type, you’ll generate fresh, creative and powerful ideas.
Finally, for each format, you can review the 12 categories of distribution channels. This will help you identify the most effective tactics, maximize reach and drive optimal efficiency.
Here’s an example. Instead of starting with the channel (e.g. YouTube), start with “What can we share?” Let’s say it’s a great client success story—one of our 12 content types. After doing the hard work to gather the content, data and assets, you could bring that story to life in multiple formats, such as an article, a video, an infographic and a slide deck. Then, each of those formats can be distributed to the world through the most optimal content channels such as the company website, various paid and organic social platforms, direct emails, a sales presentation, channel partners, third party websites and multiple others. Instead of a one-to-one approach, it’s a one-to-many strategic repurposing operation.
The Content Marketing Matrix addresses the biggest content marketing challenge, and helps you create smarter, more effective and more creative content programs. Planning your content through this repurposing lens can exponentially increase your results. The 12 x 12 x 12 approach means there are nearly 2,000 possibilities!
Taking Content Marketing to the Next Level
In the survey, developing new content was a top challenge. However, a close second was creating engaging and differentiated content. Marketers realize that in content marketing, quality matters.
Especially with generative AI, the amount of content being produced every day vastly overwhelms humanity’s capacity to consume it. Your task of getting attention and generating engagement is much harder when the competing noise is growing exponentially.
You’ve heard the phrase, “Content is King.” That’s outdated. Today, we say instead that content is critical, but creativity is the real king. Your content must stand out, otherwise it will be lost in the void.
This creative differentiation comes in two main forms: specificity and novelty.
Specificity is about creating content for a carefully defined audience and/or a niche pain point and getting it in front of the right people. Content that’s specialized is going to get more attention and engagement. For example, an aerospace engineer is going to be much more interested in how your mechanical seal solved the exact same problem he’s facing with his design.
In some cases, you can also create additional versions for specific audiences. While that customer success story above might be developed for aerospace engineers, another version could be created from the perspective of how that sealing solution solves specific challenges in rotating equipment—focusing on a niche application vs. a specialized industry.
The second form of content creativity is novelty. Novelty is about presenting your content in a unique or different way. This could be accomplished through the content itself, through an interesting format or via a unique distribution channel approach. We even have a name for it—The Novelty Multiplier™. It’s content that gets attention and sometimes it’s even so good it elicits a, “Hey Joe!” reaction, as in, “Hey Joe, check this out!” Novelty drives engagement, stimulates sharing and can dramatically boost content success.
Novel content can use humor, design, interactivity, a unique call to action, a new perspective, technology, animated graphics—the sky’s the limit. Or maybe not even. We once created a game for a client where the right guess would win a trip to outer space. Seriously!
The bottom line is that quality matters. And content creativity, achieved through specificity and novelty, can dramatically boost success.
Using Content Marketing to Build a Stronger Revenue Tower
Are you struggling to create engaging content on a consistent basis? Are you creating new content and then just using it one way? Ask yourself if you could be getting more from your content marketing. If the answer is yes, then let’s talk. We can review our Content Marketing Matrix cheat sheet together and no doubt identify some big opportunities to help you succeed. If you’d like to learn more or get a copy, email george@peppergroup.com.