Content creation is an important pillar in a successful marketing plan. In fact, content has become so important for marketing that many organizations now have designated roles to oversee its strategy and execution. In the Aerospace and Defense industry, useful, targeted content creation enables organizations and brands to share their expertise, highlight innovation and achieve other organizational goals, despite an increasingly cluttered digital landscape.
With an immense amount of content being put out on a daily basis, it’s important to plan how you’ll utilize content carefully and ensure you’re maximizing your effort and achieving productive marketing results. This includes thinking about why you may be creating the content, who you’re aiding with the information you’re providing, and how you can help them in a way no one else can. This type of planning is known as creating a content strategy.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is a content creation and deployment plan to help you achieve your marketing, and ultimately business, goals. A good strategy sets a roadmap to plan, create, and manage content. Organizing, scheduling, generating, publishing, and promoting content pieces all fall under the content strategy umbrella.
The development and execution of a content strategy can be organized into five steps:
Define your strategic business goals
Questions to ask:
Every organization should have business goals, which are generally defined by how you see the future of your business playing out. A good strategy should always be in support of your goals, and a content strategy is no exception.
Identify and understand your audience
Questions to ask:
To create a successful content strategy, it’s important to understand who you want to receive your information, as well as where they receive that information, so that your efforts are targeted and efficient. Many organizations create content and send it skyward while crossing their fingers; while anyone can do this, there is no way to guarantee it will be received or effective in meeting your needs. For your content to be most effective, you need to ensure that you craft a narrative that resonates with a highly specialized audience, so you can meet the mark the first time.
One great way to develop useful audience-driven content is to address questions and challenges commonly faced by your audience (as we are doing in this blog post!) and provide solutions and tips that can help them. This is a highly effective way to build your brand, drive traffic, leads, and sales, and establish yourself as a trusted source of knowledge in your industry.
For example, a defense technology company who has developed a new assessment tool they would like the Department of Defense (DoD) to consider utilizing or purchasing, could carefully assess the current technology, military and homeland security landscapes to better understand their “audience” and the problems such a technology might solve.
Write your brand story
Questions to ask:
Here, you determine what ideas and messages you want to communicate, how those messages differ from the competition, and how you see the landscape evolving once you have shared them with your audience. This serves as a framework for how you present your brand, and/or your organization, and can define how your target audience ultimately perceives what you have to offer.
Continuing the example of the defense technology company above, an appropriate brand story would establish them as experts in defense innovation, and problem-solvers specializing in cutting-edge defense technologies. Their content could then focus on dissecting the current defense technology landscape, current problems the DoD might be facing with existing technology options/current needs that aren’t being met, and how certain types of technology and/or new skills (which they might be the most qualified to develop) can solve or address each element. This builds a framework that ultimately “sells” itself from a buyer’s perspective.
Identify the call to action
Questions to ask:
A completed communication product contains a useful narrative targeted to a specialized audience that provides a clear path forward. Now that you’ve laid out the various elements of your narrative, it’s important to clearly spell out where your readers go from here. Do you want them to buy your product, contact you for a meeting, assess how badly they need what you have to offer, etc.?
Develop a content distribution plan
Questions to ask:
There are several locations available for you to share targeted content, and the social media platform we believe is most effective in helping you fully carry out your strategy is LinkedIn. LinkedIn stands out as an exceptionally valuable tool within the Aerospace and Defense industry for connecting companies with clients and driving business growth. You can leverage LinkedIn’s advertising tools to create targeted campaigns, refining your audience based on specific criteria and guaranteeing your content reaches the right people within your sector. Using the digital world of LinkedIn to engage in industry dialog and showcase innovation is a powerful way to build connections that can have real-world financial impact.
Consider how you may format or frame your content. One great way to present information in an engaging way is video; on LinkedIn, video content is five times more likely to generate engagement compared with other types of content. Be sure to produce video content that speaks to your audience and showcases your technical expertise, as just uploading videos on random topics or on topics that you are not familiar with will not do the trick.
Useful graphics or images showing statistics or showcasing a specific sound bite or quote is another effective way to garner attention. Make sure that when you share images or video, you always include your call to action, which involves sending people back to your website to engage further with your organization. If you have a lot of content, consider doing clickable slides in a PDF that can be uploaded and walk readers through the content like we did in our post here.
Distinctive Edge is available to discuss your content strategy needs for 2024. The Distinctive Edge team are business-builders with unique communications expertise and industry specialization. We help leaders solve business problems, thrive through transition, and achieve growth and engagement goals. The tools of our trade are strategic storytelling, investor and public relations, communications, and marketing. To learn more about our services, visit https://distinctiveedge.partners