One idea of many struck home with our Reload Consulting team. It was to do with creating content that matters most to the target market. The question was raised: how does an organisation generate content that is meaningful and represents resources well-spent? Kurt Sanders answered with our team clapping. Kurt emphasised that the power is in nailing the customer journey at each point of that journey with relevant and value-adding content. I think it’s important to add that what is considered ‘value-adding’ may look different at various stages of the journey, from one organisation/brand to another. The trick is to create poignant content for each part of the customer’s experience. In other words, do your best to understand the journey that your customers (or stakeholders) are taking with your brand. Dig into their journey and see if you can spot any opportunities to outwork content better. Revel in knowing that content can have a purpose at all those different points. Then and there, is where you can strike powerful content.

???? this from @sanderlands at #nxbris

TO DO: Nail the customer journey at each point with content! Create relevant and poignant content for each part of their experience… what’s their conversion experience like? Their post purchase? Match content! ???? @NetworxEvents

— Reload Consulting (@ReloadConsult) July 24, 2018

We understand that the idea of ‘digging deep into a customer journey’ may seem a bit complex and time-consuming, this is because customer journeys are rarely linear and rarely super simple. We subscribe to the notion that there’s not always a one-journey-fits-all approach to most brands. Although this means that customer journeys can get complicated and timely to unpack, it makes customer journeys also incredibly exciting and nuanced.

Off the back of this core takeaway, we’ve sewn together 5 steps for you to follow to craft meaningful and stand-out content for your own social media success.

1. Know your customer’s journey. By that, we mean whipping up a journey grid on a whiteboard and using your insights and customer-intel to fill it in. Try analysing your customers’ behaviours, thoughts, feelings, touchpoints with the brand, barriers to them moving to the next stage of interaction and common influences they have – at each stage. Stages may follow a journey like awareness of need, initial research, evaluation of alternatives, purchase, post-purchase, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, loyalty and then advocacy.

You may like to start simple with asking questions like, ‘what content should we be serving up prior to conversion? Or after purchase?’ but the art of meaningful content management is with being hyper-aware of your market’s needs and desires, and what would help them reach a certain goal state (greater awareness, engagement, and conversion etc.). Break down a customer journey map into stages to tackle one at a time, but try to not sacrifice depth and specificity for the convenience of doing a quick and easy journey map. You may also like to rename your journey stages to align with the customer experience. For example, a boutique art gallery might have stages such as ‘arrive at the art square in the city, arrive at the boutique building, experience the exhibition, exit location’.

2. Select areas of the customer journey most in need of content, or the ‘lower hanging fruit’. If this is a new way of strategic content planning for you and the team, start easy and start by breaking up the journey into chunks. For example, what would make for an easy landing page or eBook download?
3. Design content around the customer journey. At Networx, one of the points tackled by the panel was how do you even begin to tackle content creation? We get it, sometimes creating content in-house (or even mapping out an action plan for outsourced content) is sometimes (quite honestly) overwhelming. The key as highlighted by the panellists however, is to just knuckle down and start simply. Ashton Rigg says to grab out a whiteboard, pull out some post-it notes and simply go at it with your ideas and with what could work in line with the customer journey. Put all your creative ideas as a team within the scope of possibility. Try not to overthink it at this point.
4. Post content to meet the market right where they’re at. Here, begin to integrate the appropriate content ideas within the stages of the customer journey. In this, you might like to be thinking about how to integrate content pieces with one another, or with the next stages of that customer’s experience with the brand.
5. Evaluate the effects of the content you’ve woven into the customer’s journey. Don’t stop at the execution of content, about your users. Perhaps your data sources will reveal a new need or behaviour of users on your website or out at your location. How can you adapt your content to meet this new need?

What I appreciate most about brand content is that it can achieve several purposes and conversion goals. Meaningfully-crafted content has the power to alter behaviour and mindsets; subsequently, it can cut through the crazy noise of social media and aid in achieving your social media success.

The post A Customer Journey Solution to Crafting Content appeared first on Reload Consulting.

So what’s in store for 2017? While the future is never truly known, we envisage the following 7 trends will make their mark over the next 12 months.

Trend #1 – Sales Reps become Subject Matter Experts to drive business growth.

While the concept of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) isn’t new, it is expected to become more prominent, as businesses realise more the value of aligning sales and marketing. Sales professionals within a business are a gold mine of industry knowledge and customer insight that can be highly beneficial to areas such as marketing, and also makes them ideal candidates to become SMEs. This can be achieved by identifying their strengths and making them responsible for providing a single point of sales expertise, which will then refine their knowledge bank that can be tapped into as needed by other departments.

Trend #2 – Full integration of sales and content marketing

When marketing and sales teams come together to speak a common language, it is more likely they will see sales results off the back of their marketing budgets. Businesses that understand the importance of this will look to formalise marketing-to-sales handover procedures and better open up lines of communications. This can then lead to the creation of content that brings more, better quality leads through, with more informed content that educates the intended customer and stands out from the crowd. It will also ensure that the messages customers receive from marketing channels and sales interactions are consistent, presenting a unified message.

Trend #3 – C-suite executives turn to video content for business information

A study by Forbes highlighted that video content is becoming a critical source of information among business executives, with over 80% watching more videos online now than they were a year ago, and 75% watching work-related videos on business-related websites at least once a week. This trend is confirmed by HubSpot’s Consumer Behaviour Survey, showing that over 55% of users consume videos in their entirety. Based on these insights, it is evident that video is a preferred medium for ensuring an entire message is consumed and a promising channel for B2B brands wishing to reach business executives.

Trend #4 – Clearly and narrowly defined market segments increase engagement

Narrowing a broad target market into clearly defined segments is a trend that we have already been seeing over the past year, and we expect that this will continue to rise as more business become savvy to the need for greater target market understanding. Digital marketing allows for highly targeted marketing campaigns, however, without understanding ‘who’ the intended recipient is for these campaigns, it becomes difficult to choose the right marketing mix, ensure the right message is being sent and set the right targeting parameters.

Businesses that want to get the most out of their marketing budgets will also look at the customer journey, identifying the thoughts, needs, feelings, and behaviours at each stage along the path to purchase (from awareness through to advocacy). This will mean that not only is the right message being sent via the right channels, it is also being served at the right time to guide the customer towards the purchase decision.

Trend #5 – Millennials take the lead and start moving into management and executive roles

Baby boomers are now reaching retirement age and we see millennials starting to step up into management and executive roles. This is expected to shake up business operations and impact on office dynamics, as they begin to influence the workforce based on their values and preferences. Key areas where this change is expected to be most prominent include:

• Office layouts – as traditional office space designs are transformed to encourage broader communication and increased collaboration.
• Flexible working hours – with the ‘9-5’ being replaced by more flexible and adaptable work schedules.
• Less internal emails – as different internal communication tools are adapted to allow for more effective collaboration, replacing traditional emails.

To prepare millennials for this new level of responsibility, many businesses are making asserted efforts to train their future leaders through effective knowledge transfer and up-skilling.

Trend #6 – Greater focus on connecting customers to what they want.

It is well known that consumers are growing tired of being ‘sold to’ and are able to determine a sales pitch from a mile away. With traditional sales-focused methods turning people away, businesses need to find new ways to encourage people to buy their products or services. What we have seen in the market, is that consumers are responding more positively to brand messaging that considers and caters to their preferences and needs. Services that connect them to what they want are gaining significant cut-through (i.e. Uber), as we well and truly enter into an economy built on connection and sharing. This creates opportunities for service-based businesses to enter the market with little to no physical assets (i.e. Uber doesn’t own a single car).

Trend #7 – Leveraging employees’ strengths

A study by Gallup established an undeniable connection between employee strengths and their engagement in the workplace. We have already seen a shift in the mindsets of a number of businesses towards identifying and leveraging the strengths of their employees, to build stronger and more effective teams. In 2017, we expect that businesses will hire more ‘specialist’ roles and invest in strength-based training. One of the organisations included in the study that capitalised on this method implemented a “Lead with Your Strengths” program that, within a year, saw employee engagement levels improve by 26%.

These are some of our thoughts, based on our observations and what we have been seeing in the media. We would love to hear if there is anything you would add. What trends do you think will become prominent over the next 12 months?

The post 7 Business Trends to Watch in 2017 appeared first on Reload Consulting.