Organizations of all sizes rely on content marketing to raise awareness, boost web traffic, generate leads, and ultimately expand their businesses. Some do it effectively, others do it poorly, and some don’t do it at all. Since the content marketing efforts of companies vary based on resources, skills, industries, customers, and channels, they fall on a broad range of content marketing maturity. Understanding where your company fits on this range can reveal strengths, weaknesses, and, most importantly, opportunities to use resources for growth.
Chad Pollitt, author of The Content Promotion Manifesto, writes in depth about the content marketing maturity model in chapter two of his new eBook, which is embedded below.
[slideshare id=39397004]Identify Your Content Marketing Maturity Level
You can identify your company’s content marketing maturity level by making an honest assessment of capabilities, resources, talent, strategies and tactics. Your organization should fall into one of the buckets visualized in the graphic below.
Analog
Companies stuck in the analog phase are often averse to online publishing and promotion at most stages of the buyer’s journey. They are likely still focusing on marketing offline content that is heavily sales focused, such as catalogs, coupons and spec sheets. Online properties are typically controlled by IT teams with minimum influence from marketing.
Testing and Scarcity
Companies in this bucket often deploy individual content marketing tactics, but without significant thought to an overall strategy mapped against the customer buyer’s journey. Deprivation of resources and lack of organization-wide buy-in tend to hinder these companies.
Coordinating
Companies in the Coordinating stage have the basic foundation of content marketing in place. This includes leadership buy-in aligned with a thoughtful strategy, as well as marketing automation, demand generation and CRM software in place. Content marketing efforts are typically focused on owned and paid media.
Promotion & Distribution Logistics
Companies in this stage utilize paid and earned media channels to promote, amplify, and enhance owned content. A strategic content marketing process allows for repeatable success, from research to creation and promotion to conversion. Multifunctional groups within the organization contribute to content marketing efforts, and thought leadership content is a staple at the top of the funnel.
Scaling & Optimization
Companies that are scaling and optimizing their content marketing efforts understand the customer buyer’s journey intimately and have accurately mapped cost and revenue figures calculated across most, if not all, deployed channels. Most are seeking or have experienced rapid growth of a significant revenue-driving audience online. Customer service and sales insights are leveraged to create content on a regular basis.
Corporate Publishing House
Companies in this stage have complete organizational buy-in for contribution to content marketing campaigns. Content marketing ROI has been proven and scaled. These brands are often seen as industry movers and shakers that have large, loyal and established audiences. A company in this bucket will own a disproportionate share of voice in its online space.
Assess Your Content Marketing Maturity
Is your company in the bucket you hoped it would be in? What do you need to do to take your content marketing efforts to the next level? Hopefully, this classification system has given you insights into strategic choices that need to be made in order to grow and scale content marketing.