Your marketing team has invested a lot of time and money to develop content. You may be using AI to help with content. But yet, despite all your efforts to create content for all channels and meet internal content requests, your content is just not getting the job done. 

Considering that less than half (44%) of marketers think their content is driving conversions, maybe what your organization needs is not more content but less content that is more focused on what’s really important to your organization. Think of it as decluttering your content by simplifying and refocusing.

Here are 6 steps to work through your content to make it more “lean and mean.”

1. Content audit

Create an inventory of every type of content you have – blogs, ebooks, videos, webinars, one-pagers, etc. Be sure to tag each item as to type and buyer stage.

Once you’ve cataloged and tagged all content items, look at their performance data.

Finally, assign each item to one of these categories:

• Teaching – used in the early stage to educate the user
• Proving – used in the middle stage to build trust with the user
• Deciding – used in the late state for driving purchase decisions

Any content item that doesn’t fit into one of the above categories and/or has had little pipeline influence should be archived. The content that is left is the content that’s working hardest for you. 

2. Keep what serves a purpose

After going through the first step above, evaluate the remaining content with this filter before deciding to create any new content:

• Does this content item serve a purpose by solving a real customer problem or meeting a specific business goal?
• Does it provide a persona for one clear audience?
• Does reliable data or verified subject matter provide proof of its worth?
• Does the content item provide the user with a path to the next step?

Items that don’t provide a purpose, persona, proof, and path are essentially clutter and should be archived.

3. If it works, repurpose and refresh

Now that you’re down to the most effective 20% of your content, put it to work by repurposing it for use on other channels. Review the content and update data as needed. Useful quotes from the content can be pulled into emails and social posts. This serves to provide consistent messaging that builds trust and buyer confidence without creating new messages.

4. Streamline the process

It is possible to ruin good new content by over-reviewing it, leading to changes in context and way too many rewrites. Set up a process for moving content through your workflow, such as:

• Threshold for publication - use a creative brief to let reviewers and others know what the audience, intent, and desired outcomes are for each content piece.
• Tiered reviews can give the most review impact to the more high-impact thought leaders and lighter checks to routine staff.
• Assign clear ownership so that reviewers have a common reference point for their reviews and to avoid rewriting by committee. 

5. Measure the most impactful progress metrics

You want to know how your content is propelling customers through the buyer journey, which metrics such as traffic, clicks, and downloads don’t show. You want to see:

• Engagement depth rather than page views
• Opportunities influenced rather than just leads
• Pipeline velocity rather than impressions

One more thing: ask for feedback from sales or its equivalent about which content has resonated most with prospective customers. 

 

6. Mindset matters

Everybody wants more content, especially for their particular area. It’s up to marketing leadership to set limits against content that brings little or no value. By emphasizing impact over output, the value of focus can be shown. Make an example of a single refreshed or repurposed content item that lit up the pipeline more than an entire quarter’s worth of new content. Before agreeing to create new content, ask why it’s needed.

In other words, “less but better” should be your guide.