Custom content is a highly effective marketing tool, but if you don’t have the resources to create it, you’re missing out on new leads and new business. Here’s how a content studio can help you leap past hurdles.
Is your organization telling its stories as well or as often as you want to?
The ROI on custom content can be big, but a lot of marketers struggle to create it.
In an annual survey of B2B content marketers, 71% said content marketing has become increasingly important to their organization in the last year. Yet, 59% of respondents said they find it challenging to create content that appeals to different stages of the buyer’s journey. And only about 29% felt their organizations are extremely or very successful with content marketing.
Let’s be honest: Developing custom content is challenging for a lot of marketers. The most painful part is knowing what assets you need but not being able to execute.
A content studio can fill in the gaps — time, resources, expertise, amplification — and alleviate an internal marketing team’s pain points, all while developing winning custom content.
Pain Point #1: No Time, No Team
Challenge: Has your company’s content needs grown but your team hasn’t? The biggest pain point for marketers is not having enough time or staff to produce the kind of content they want and need. If you’re tasked with too much or operate with a skeleton staff, you’re not alone. Almost half (46%) of surveyed content marketers say one person (or group) is responsible for every type of content their organization produces.
Solution: Outsourcing content creation can help you keep up on creating quality content marketing assets. Among the most successful B2B marketers, 57% said they outsource content marketing activities, whereas only 36% of the least successful content marketers do.
A content studio can also serve as a failsafe when team members leave the organization. The Content Marketing Career & Salary 2023 Outlook found 57% of the content marketers surveyed plan to find another position within the next year or are unsure about their next steps. If you’re relying on a team that is already struggling to produce enough quality content, having an outsourced team on hand can be the backup plan you need if someone leaves.
“In our many years of custom content development, ‘no time and no team’ have always been common themes we’ve heard from our clients,” said Paras Maniar, Bobit CEO. “Working with a content studio can relieve both of those pain points, but many of the organizations we’ve worked with also find the added benefit of a fresh perspective on their marketing strategy and a unique but on-brand creative approach.”
Pain Point #2: Understanding Customer Needs
Challenge: Creating a piece of content should always start with the needs of the audience you want to target, but a 2021 study found that 49% of marketers struggle to determine what their audiences want to read.
Solution: Surveying current customers is one way to understand the needs of prospective customers. Learning who they are and why they chose your business can serve as the basis for buyer personas for each type of customer you need to create content for.
At a minimum, personas should include these two elements to be effective:
- The demographic and psychographic details of each buyer type
- What motivates them to make a purchase, including their feelings and expectations related to what your product or service will deliver.
Your survey could also serve as the basis for a research report with a focus on data-driven trends that in turn can become a piece of content itself (think annual report). A custom content studio can take this on from start to finish: conducting the research, telling a compelling story about the findings, and putting the report in the hands of the right people.
Pain Point #3: Access to Subject Matter Experts
Challenge: One-third of surveyed marketers say it’s difficult to get subject matter experts (SMEs) to participate in content creation. People within your organization may genuinely want to help but simply don’t have the time.
Solution: If internal SMEs aren’t available, look to external experts. These could be individuals who are a part of a professional association, editors and writers for trade publications, academics, or other industry experts. Specialists in their field are often eager to share their insights. Their input can inform your messaging and lend credibility to your content.
Content studios often are aligned with subject matter experts in a variety of fields to provide the knowledge to power your message. Some can also connect with experts and book them on your behalf to write content, sit on a webinar panel, or appear in a video.
Pain Point #4: Hosting Webinars
Challenge: B2B content marketers rank webinars as the most effective content asset to produce results. However, webinars require a great deal of time and planning, as well as the proper technology to execute them well.
Solution: Webinars are ideal candidates for outsourcing. With a webinar expert at the helm, you don’t have to worry about the technology platform, planning details, invitations, or metrics — the outsourced team you hire will be skilled at all of these things because it’s their area of expertise. A content studio that also functions as a webinar provider offers copywriters and designers to create the presentation and promotions. Your webinar partner will also have quality webinar tools, like a reliable webcast platform, so you don’t have to invest in a hosting platform yourself.
Pain Point #5: Creating Videos
Challenge: Video is content — and using it to market is at an all-time high: 87% of enterprise marketers said they use video as a content marketing tool, up from 79% the year before. Video now ranks second among the most-used content marketing assets, with short articles and posts edging them out by just 2%. Although video is becoming increasingly important to content marketing efforts, businesses report lack of time to create content and not knowing where to start as the two biggest barriers to producing video content.
Solution: Quality matters, and professionally produced videos will yield the best results. If you don’t have lighting, equipment, a videographer, or an editor on staff, hiring a production studio delivers a quality product without the investment in full-time staff or expensive resources. A videographer can travel where you need them, whether that’s to film at your corporate headquarters, at a customer location, or off-site at a trade conference.
Pain Point #6: Distributing Content to the Right Audience
Challenge: You’ve developed your content, but now you’re not sure how to get it in the hands of the people who matter.
Solution: Putting your content in front of the right audience starts with thinking through where they spend their time online.
For instance:
- If you’re targeting people in a certain industry or with a specific job title, you can purchase ads for amplification on social media, then customize the audience they will be delivered to right on the platform.
- If you have access to a list of prospects, emailing a link to a gated whitepaper or inviting them to attend a webinar will yield a list of interested parties to follow up with.
- A full-service content studio can be outsourced to help you to not only ideate and develop content but provide you with amplification options for reaching your target audience.
- What media does your audience read? What associations do they belong to? Companies can partner with trade magazines or professional organizations to deliver content to their subscribers and members.
Pain Point #7: Measuring Results
Challenge: Among B2B content marketers, 42% say developing a consistent method of measurement is a challenge.
Solution: Outsourcing can be helpful in this regard, too. The team you hire should already have well-established processes and tools to measure and report on success. This is yet another way outsourcing is worth the investment — not to mention the time it will save you or your team digging through data.
Pain Point #8: Budget
Challenge: Budgets are always a challenge. To create more content, you need to spend more money.
Solution: Outsourcing content creation comes with a price tag, but it can quickly pay off. One study found that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing on average…and also brings in three times as many leads.
How can you demonstrate the average ROI on your content investment? If you’re not sure where to start, begin with an outsourced piece. You’ll know exactly what you spent, and the partner you work with will provide the necessary metrics.
How to Be a Top Performing Content Marketer
The Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2B survey found that the most successful content marketers:
- Measure content performance (90%)
- Expect their marketing budget to increase year-over-year (75%)
- Characterize their content marketing as sophisticated or mature (71%)
“Partnering with a content studio offers untold opportunities to create custom content that generates leads and new business, while building brand recognition and credibility,” said Maniar. “We have access to engaged audiences and effective processes that go to work for our clients, and we thrive on helping them succeed.”
Learn More
If you’d like to improve your content creation efforts from ideation to amplification, the Bobit Custom Content Studio offers a range of expert creative services to create professional, high-performing content assets like white papers, webinars, eBooks, HTML email campaigns, videos, and more.
by Bobit Custom Content Studio News Desk
