Chapter 2

Reassessing Your Strategy

IN THIS CHAPTER

Experimenting and failing fast

Looking back at critical areas

Reevaluating your media goals

You can’t undertake any endeavor without making mistakes and digital marketing is no different. Mistakes give you an opportunity to assess your strategy and devise a better plan. You won’t always hit a home run; your strategy will need revisions. Eighteenth century military commander Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke is famous for saying “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” The same holds true of your digital marketing strategy.

In Book 9, Chapter 1, you reevaluate your business model and brand plans. In this chapter, you discover how to evaluate and improve your digital marketing strategy.

Allowing for Failed Experiments

You’ve probably heard the phrase “fail fast,” used by agile software developers. The phrase is meant to remind people to experiment — see what doesn’t work and make quick adjustments. The definition of failure is framed as merely a course of action that needs alterations rather than a dead end. Perhaps Thomas Edison was the first agile developer. He is quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Marketers can take some lessons from agile developers whose goal is to work with greater speed and efficiency. In his article “Go Agile: Adapt 12 Principles to Content Marketing,” Jeff Freund, CEO of Akoonu (http://www.akoonu.com), adapts the principles of agile development to content marketing (http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/10/go-agile-adapt-12-principles-to-content-marketing; see Figure 2-1). Five of the principles are critical to content marketing success:

• Your highest priority is the continuous delivery of quality content. There should be no confusion here. You want to consistently deliver high value content.
• You can always change content requirements right up to their creation. You need to demonstrate flexibility and not feel that anything is set in stone. If you get better information, you should be willing to revise content when necessary. This is a hard one for some people to accept.
• Deliver content frequently. You need to be prepared to meet the needs of each channel. If, for example, a social media channel needs several posts a day to meet your goals, you need to be prepared to provide just that.
• The business side must work collaboratively with the content creators. This is another call to break down silos. Strict divisions just won’t work anymore.
• Content should be measured based on its furtherance of business goals. Your content should serve your business needs, and you must have a clear understanding of what those goals are at the outset.

FIGURE 2-1: Content Marketing Institute.

Whenever you look at revising a strategy or making new plans, you want to consider the pace at which you will make changes. Are you going to upend the table and start over or take small steps? Make sure that everyone is on board with your decision.

Looking Back at Your Digital Marketing Strategy

In looking back at the plans that you made concerning content and strategy, you need to focus on several major areas. They are

• Business goals
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Content maturity
• Ecosystem

Read on to look at each of these topics in turn to see how you can make your content strategy even better going forward.

Reviewing goals and KPIs

Reviewing business goals and KPIs are at the heart of your strategy. If you do a good job looking at and revising what you’ve done, you will stay on the path to content marketing success.

At this point, you might find flipping to Book 1, Chapter 1 helpful to remind yourself of the components that go into developing your strategy.

To review your goals, focus on two key strategy areas:

• Mission statement: Most mission statements don’t change in the short run. But looking back to make sure that your actions are congruent with your statement is always good. If, however, you do see a shift at some point, you obviously need to revise your statement, which in turn signals the need for major changes in goals and KPIs as well.
• Goals and KPIs: Your entire content marketing strategy is based on meeting your business goals. Table 1-1 in Book 1, Chapter 1 helps you select KPIs based on possible goals. If you documented these KPIs, you can look back now at the results and ask yourself:
  • Has my strategy been successful so far? Are the company goals still the same? Do I need to add or delete anything?
  • Are the measures I’ve chosen the right ones?
  • Do I still enjoy the same level of buy-in that I had at the beginning? If not, why not? What actions should I take to get it back?
  • Has a person been assigned to play the Chief Content Officer role? Have certain people been assigned to manage the strategy, and do those people understand their responsibilities?

Assessing content maturity

In Book 3, Chapter 1, you consider the Kapost Content Maturity Model to determine where your company is along the continuum. You’re asked to characterize your group as one of the following:

• Novice
• Practitioner
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Expert

If you’ve done that evaluation, or when you do, ask yourself whether you’ve made any progress. Have you broken down silos, created systems, or developed solid channel plans? When you’ve made progress, look at the designations and definitions in that chapter again and evaluate how you can make even more progress.

If you have stagnated, determine what you need to do to get your group moving again. It may seem like a small thing to make this reassessment, but in reality, you need to take small, continuous steps to achieve your goals. Here are three important behaviors you need to encourage in your team to make progress on this continuum:

• Collaboration: You must stress the value of collaboration throughout the organization. You will get better quality content and engender pride from your staff.
• Commitment: Your executive staff must be on board and financially supportive of any content marketing efforts. You need to have the right tools and staff to get the job done.
• Innovation: You need to encourage the staff to try new things and to think creatively.

If you’re interested in learning about a business process that helps you make continuous progress, see the book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way (Workman Publishing Company, Inc.), by Robert Maurer. It discusses the use of kaizen, a method to help you take small steps to reach big goals.

Reevaluating your ecosystem

In Chapter Book 3, Chapter 1, you look at how to create a map for your company’s ecosystem. (See also Book 5, Chapter 1 for a look at the PESO model.) If you created the map, you now have a good evaluation tool to work with. You can look at each of the map areas and evaluate your results as follows:

• Paid media: The first obvious question to ask yourself regarding your paid media is, “Are each of the strategies in this category generating revenue or having some tangible effect on my business?” Paid media refers to your ads, native advertising, and any other sponsorship on which you spend money. Do you know whether they’re providing something of value?

  It’s not unusual for companies to spend money but not take the time to evaluate whether they’re getting enough bang for their buck. In a time of tight money and dwindling budgets, this may seem surprising, but it frequently happens. Are you one of these companies?

  To prevent this lack of awareness from existing, go through each category in Table 2-1 and look at the measurements you’re currently using to determine whether you’re successful.

  You should also determine whether the measures you’re using are still effective and consider changing them. Determine whether the audience you want to reach is still found on these specific platforms. They may have shifted their use and you’re no longer reaching them in the numbers you expect.

  As discussed in Book 5, Chapter 1, the use of paid ads on social media is increasing. This increase is occurring because these platforms are expanding their use of advertising and giving ads a higher priority. In 2017, IAB (https://www.iab.com) reported that year-over-year-growth of digital ad revenue grew 21% from 2016 to 2017.

• Earned media: You knew that you needed to take an active role in encouraging earned media. You created campaigns, events, and other activities to get media attention. One thing you want to remember is that earned media has increased value because people believe experts and influencers. You should look at the influencers you chose and determine their value to your audience. When doing your evaluation, here are some questions to ask yourself:
  • Should I be deepening my relationships with specific influencers or perhaps finding new ones?
  • Am I satisfied with the metrics I’ve chosen to use to measure my results?
  • Do I need to engage PR professionals or change the ones I’m employing?
• Shared media: Obviously, you don’t have control over content sharing. The only actions you can take are these: (1) Make sharing easy from a technical standpoint by providing sharing icons; and (2) Provide the content that you’re certain has the best chance of being shared. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
  • Have I uncovered some new trends that will interest my audience?
  • Are some formats more popular than others?
  • Am I listening to my social media audience and reflecting their interests?
• Owned media: Your owned media is under your control and can be revised in any way you see fit. Your analytics should be guiding you to make improvements to content, design, and formats. Questions to ask yourself include:
  • Am I totally clear about the topics my audience wants to know about?
  • Does my website design impede my customers from finding the right content?

TABLE 2-1 Paid Media Evaluation

Type	Measures Used	Result (Success or Not)
Social media ads: Facebook Twitter Other
Native advertising
Sponsorships
Pay per click