Today’s consumers crave information. At every stage of the buyer’s journey, consumers expect content that answers their pressing questions and makes them trust your brand.
And if you’re not providing valuable content that meets your customers’ needs, then your competition likely is.
Why should you care? It’s only content marketing, right? Wrong.
Creating great content for your target audience goes beyond marketing. Your content strategy should cover the entire sales process. Each piece of content you develop should generate momentum that pushes buyers from stage to stage in your pipeline.
But how do you ensure your content satisfies the needs of your target customers? How can you identify what’s missing from your content library?
Start with a Content Audit.
What Is a Content Audit?
A Content Audit is an analysis of how your content meets the needs of your target customers and drives business goals forward. It’s designed to help you understand any gaps that exist in marketing and sales efforts.
Audits are closely tied to the buyer’s journey. This helps show companies a clear picture of available content at each level of the sales funnel – from top to middle to bottom.
You’ll see which areas could use more content. Some companies with products that require larger groups of buyers find they aren’t delivering content specific to each buyer persona.
From the content audit findings, you can create content that generates better engagement, increases conversions, and accelerates the sales pipeline. You can also use the outcomes for long-term planning, campaign planning, or sales enablement.
During content audits, Refactored typically covers your:
Business goals and company background
Target audience and personas
Marketing content review
Sales content review
Findings and recommendations
Benefits of Content Audits
Content audits provide several benefits. Through this exercise you will:
Discover what’s missing from your content portfolio that your target customers want more information on.
Become better at targeting individuals in buyer groups.
Understand customers’ pains and motivations, which will help generate new content ideas.
Timing
When should a company consider completing a content audit? Really, there is no wrong time. Content is critical to moving buyers through the pipeline and there’s always demand for high-quality information.
That said, Refactored recommends auditing content to help with:
Discovery process
When you start working with an agency, like Refactored, a content audit can help establish a foundation and clear direction for future campaigns.
Creating a content marketing plan/ editorial calendar
An audit compiles your existing assets, their performance/quality, and whether they need an update. Easily plug in these assets into your marketing plan and determine net new content to create.
Building a new – or better – website
Sometimes companies already have great content, they just need present it in an online-friendly format that’s easily consumable for customers. That was the case with U.S. Borax, part of Rio Tinto. To read their story, click here.
Refactored Makes Content Audits Easy
The term “audit” may sound like an intimidating, demanding, large-scale project. It doesn’t have to be. You control the scope of your content audit.
Using a proven partner like Refactored makes it even easier to complete a content audit because you can offload much of the work.
For example, compiling all your marketing and sales content then mapping it to different stages in the buyer’s lifecycle can be time consuming. Save time and let Refactored handle the time-consuming aspects so your team can focus on other initiatives.
Let’s Maximize Your Content’s Potential
Interested in understanding how you can use your content to generate better engagement, increase conversions, and accelerate your pipeline? We can help.
Please contact us for a free consultation to discover how Refactored can maximize your content’s potential with a content audit.
Get Started with a Needs Assessment
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