Organizations seek ways to improve content performance and gain an advantage in content marketing.
Optimizing Content for audience relevance and situation relevance is one of the most challenging tactics. Many studies have demonstrated that Content provides highly targeted, relevant, and valuable insights to audiences.
Marketers have difficulty producing Content tailored to specific relevance factors such as industry verticals and personas. These factors should be addressed in demand campaigns or nurture tracks. We hear three main reasons for this: lack of data, poor list segmentation, and the need for more Content.
Marketers will need to be able to provide highly relevant, context-relevant Content to help them move beyond content marketing tactics.
Sales engagement is a one-to-1 activity. B2B buying groups are composed of five to six stakeholders. The specific issues of the purchasing team will be the “one.” Content that is relevant and useful to those issues will have little impact.
The traditional custom-made approach needs to meet this requirement. It needs to be more flexible and fast enough. It needs to be faster and more flexible.
Structured Content Approach
Advanced content marketers are looking for alternatives to traditional methods of marketing. They have explored the “Structured Content” approach.
Structured Content refers to information or Content that has been organized predictably and is often classified with metadata. Wikipedia
This is one approach in a larger concept known as Intelligent Content.
Intelligent Content is a strategic communication business asset:
Smart Content isn’t limited to one purpose, technology, or output. It is semantically aware and structurally rich. It can be reused, reconfigured, reconfigured, and adaptable. It is, in the end, one of the most strategic assets a company can have.” Intelligent Content Conference
The technical publishing profession has used structured content creation for over a decade. It is based on a structured database, similar to how website content management systems work (CMS).
This method typically uses XML content storage techniques. Software authoring systems use DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). The Content is written into and pulled out of a previously-structured database.
Modular Content Approach
Today’s B2B marketing and sales content are more than product data sheets. It is now educational and story-oriented. This segment is the fastest-growing for content marketers.
Unfortunately, most sales and marketing professionals need help to use the Structured Content approach or its systems.
Marketing and sales content are also more dynamic than technical publications or websites.
Modular Content may be a better option than the traditional approach to creating Content that is identical to each other to maximize contextual relevance.
The prior versions include:
Situational context
Audience type: prospect, customer, influencer, industry vertical, buyer role, or persona
The specific topic of interest
Business purpose
Content consistency and quality are improved by sharing and reusing modules. A second example is the need to be more adaptable. One module may work well in one context or asset but must be modified in another context. Modifying context can be easier for source modules not part of a structured database.
