Better Together: Why Your Content Marketing Campaigns & Always-On Programs Should Work in Harmony

Regardless of industry or niche, nearly all B2B marketers—91% to be exact—are focused on leveraging content marketing to reach, resonate and inspire audience action. But budget and resource constraints and lofty lead generation goals—not to mention increasing buyer numbness to marketing messages and the extinction of organic visibility on social media—means you have to get scrappy when designing a content marketing strategy that drives toward business goals. Oftentimes, this leads brands and marketers to focus on content marketing campaigns to quickly generate buzz, spike awareness and foster audience engagement. However, in our experience, campaigns alone will not help you reach your short- and long-term marketing goals. Why? They’re simply not sustainable. Campaigns create spikes in activity that can quickly die out if there’s not a significant investment in ongoing promotion—specifically paid promotion. But does that mean it’s time to drop campaigns from your marketing mix? Absolutely not. Quite the opposite, actually. Campaigns should be intertwined with an overall, always-on strategy to create marketing harmony and get the ultimate value out of all your efforts. Below I highlight a few reasons why.

#1 – Integration enhances your nurturing capabilities.

Content marketing aims to create multiple touchpoints with your audience whenever and wherever they’re searching—and wherever they may be in the funnel. Campaigns can absolutely drive valuable spikes in traffic, engagement, or conversions, as well as help you target specific audiences or verticals. But you need to be able to nurture the audience you’ve built beyond the confines of the campaign—otherwise you’re not only wasting your budget, but also leaving longer-term value and opportunity on the table. By building campaigns as part of your overall strategy, you can nurture your audience or leads more effectively, as well as enhance the buyer’s journey. [bctt tweet="By building campaigns as part of your overall #ContentMarketingStrategy, you can nurture your audience or leads more effectively, as well as enhance the journey. - @Alexis5484" username="toprank"]

#2 – Integration helps you get the most out of your campaigns.

Campaigns are often used for promoting a new idea or product, or generating or leveraging the buzz around an industry conference, event or hot topic. But once the newness wears off or the event passes, your campaign can become stale if you fail to iterate on the content or neglected to consider how it could enhance your other efforts. Regardless of how successful your campaign is, your work shouldn’t stop once you’ve released everything into the wild. You want the momentum to continue so you should be continually optimizing your campaign for maximum performance and longevity. But campaign content is also the perfect repurposing candidate, helping fill your editorial calendar, find opportunities for extending the conversation, and enable you to experiment with other content forms—all while helping you keep the people, trends or topics covered in the campaign top-of-mind. The bottom line here is that you can get more out of your campaign by thinking strategically about how the content can be refined and used again and again to drive continued success. [bctt tweet="You can get more out of your #contentmarketing campaign by thinking strategically about how content can be refined and used again and again to drive continued success. - @Alexis5484" username="toprank"]

#3 – Integration helps you build stronger influencer relationships.

If you’re looking to add influencers to your marketing mix, a campaign featuring influencer talents and perspectives can be a great starting point. Oftentimes, an influencer campaign will feature multiple experts and content types, but it’s anchored by a big and snazzy asset—which not only gets influencers excited about what they co-created with you, but for future opportunities, too. But the key to influencer marketing success is building lasting relationships that are mutually beneficial—not just reaching out when you have a need. Baking ongoing influencer relations into your overall content marketing strategy will help you focus on building those relationships, while also boosting your campaign efforts. [bctt tweet="Baking ongoing #InfluencerRelations into your overall #ContentMarketingStrategy will help you focus on building those relationships, while also boosting your campaign efforts. - Alexis5484" username="toprank"]

#4 – Integration helps you create a steady drumbeat.

There’s no denying that campaigns are invaluable for generating buzz and excitement, but once the campaign has run its course that excitement and relevance will fade. By coupling your always-on program with campaigns, you have the opportunity to create a steady drumbeat of awareness and thought leadership to drive traffic, engagement, and leads, while also adding pops of variety to reinforce your brand and give your audience a little something special. [bctt tweet="By coupling your always-on #ContentMarketing program with campaigns, you have the opportunity to create a steady drumbeat of awareness & thoughtleadership. - @Alexis5484" username="toprank"]

Strike Balance & Harmony

At the end of the day, there’s no doubt that campaigns can be wildly effective and successful. However, those results aren’t sustainable if there isn’t a larger integrated strategy backing it up. So, when it comes to developing your next campaign, think critically about how it can enhance within your overall content marketing strategy, how you can sustainably promote and repurpose content, and create harmony to get the most bang for your buck. Looking for more B2B content marketing insights or inspiration to help you recalibrate your strategy, check out this roundup of six B2B brands using content marketing to fuel their business.

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