How to Totally Eff Up a New Content Investment
Deciding to invest in third-party content with an analyst firm or an influencer can bring almost instant credibility to your brand just by associating with their name and logo. But pulling off the content launch can be a huge lift for a small team, so it requires some upfront planning.
In large organizations there’s often an established workflow with multiple marketing groups and complex planning and approval processes. But small size, high-impact marketing teams are our favorite because they usually aren’t required to adhere to rigid brand guidelines, plus the creative process is flexible so they can experiment with messaging and execute quickly. For example, one highly effective marketer can spend an hour or two outlining a campaign launch to ensure that projects have clear processes documented to fully execute a long term distribution strategy to ensure that it reaches your buyer at the right time. So plan big and plan early. Anything you don’t have time for now can move to an evergreen strategy.
So how can you eff it up?
Falling for the overzealous salesman. So you just took on a big project with a third-party who was very enthusiastic about your engagement and oversold you by offering a big discount on multiple projects. While the savings were delicious, you may not have the internal resources (SMEs!) available to consult with you, the lone marketer, during the content creation process. We've seen this situation more than once with 6-figure investments - and it can be painful! What happens is that when your internal resources are tied up with other priorities, you miss your production deadlines, then your vendor gets frustrated, applies pressure, and even though you did your part to stay on track - your team just can’t keep up with the project’s demanding schedule. This definitely happens with small teams wearing multiple hats - but it can also happen when your team is focused on supporting paying customers and closing new business. So forget the discount, just take investments one at a time, see what it’s like working with the vendor, and build phased investments without commitments into your marketing budget and content calendar. This also lets you put things on hold when you need to preserve cash flow. A good partner will respect your need to space the investment over time so you can make sure your stakeholders see the results, momentum, and quality of the final product.
The content silo trap. You haven’t organized existing content or considered how the new piece will complement your existing content library. It’s hard to know where to go next with a content strategy or campaign if you don't have an understanding of where you are now. This is why investing in something like our Stealth Audit up front enables more effective and efficient content decisions. I suggest keeping it simple to start by organizing campaigns in a PPT or Google deck. Why? Because the reality is that even if you have the most organized shared drives or HubSpot content library it still won’t account for sprawl: the asset, email templates (1:1 and subscribers), the social media posts, featured graphics, the landing page, the resources location, etc. The deck can serve as a history snapshot of everything you created to promote this asset that lives on - and it helps you replicate the success from one to many campaigns.
The sales assumption. Sales campaigned for this investment, but no one asked your current customers if they would have been interested in this type of content when they purchased. Make sure you’re engaged with your sales team to have them validate interest with some of your most loyal customers and especially those who will give you unfiltered feedback.
Short shelf life. Not knowing how and when to renew or refresh this content. Some reports come with a month and year on the cover page. Seems timely and fresh until it takes you a few weeks to launch the content or it's been 6-months. And what happens if you have a new feature or new dashboard look (GUI, or UI/UX)? Can you easily work with the vendor to update the content or is it going to require another big investment in time and financial resources?
No big picture. Not having a plan to immediately share it with your key partners and prospects. Create a partner outreach plan with key contacts that will help you distribute the content widely and faster than your sales team can deliver in 1:1 communications. Make sure partners know how it should be used and have the tools ready to go to get the word out.
The AI blind spot. You haven’t leveraged AI to analyze its potential or to double check your campaign plan. How can you do this? Pose lots of questions to your AI tool of choice. For example, I'm launching this campaign [describe] for [audience] and have these constraints or resources available: [budget, timeline, distribution platforms]. Build a launch sequence that includes pre-launch, launch day, and 30-day follow-up activities.
So how do you not eff it up?
Start with a simple project brief and complement it with a Google Slides or PowerPoint deck that demonstrates how you will showcase each element in the content launch (so boring, but we like decks for this because you can easily edit while leaving notes and comments) and then build a timeline for execution with reminders in an obvious place (any of: notes app, doc, spreadsheet, calendar tasks). Everything might shift later - but this is a plan that highlights THE BEST way you know how to do it. Okay we know generating these iterative resources contributes to creative sprawl, but they ensure that you’re following a simple process for creating content and let you shuffle through iterations and even track vanity metrics in one place. This is all key to making sure you can repeat what worked - and also see what happens when you try new things. If it seems overwhelming - call us, we love this kind of thing.
Interested in a resource? We’ve got you. You can copy our Google slides campaign launch planner.
