61+ fresh ideas from experts for your content marketing

Author: Ann Gynn / Source: Content Marketing Institute

What would you do if your boss unexpectedly increased your annual content marketing budget? What could you do with an additional $1,000? $50,000? $100,000?

We asked the presenters at Content Marketing World 2018 to share what they would do.

Anna Hrach, strategist at Convince and Convert, offers an insightful grounding thought. “No matter what the budget would be, I would start with a list of everything we wanted to accomplish, then plot them on a grid that ranks efforts from low to high effort and low to high impact.

“It doesn’t really matter how much extra budget you have if you’re not going to spend it effectively.”

Strategist John Bucher advocates keeping a running wish list of what you would do if extra funds become available. “It can help you avoid making impulse decisions,” he says. (Often, this happens as the budget year nears its end and your team needs to spend the designated dollars or lose them.)

What should be on your grid or wish list? From meals and research to customer advisory boards and in-person event studios, these presenters have a lot of good ideas.

Invest in success

First, I hug my boss.

$1,000: Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results.

$50,000: Engage with an industry-specific freelance writer or visual content creator to enhance the content around a strategic business message.

$100,000: Invest in a research project with the goal of uncovering meaningful data that can be presented in a white paper, featured on our website, and distributed in snackable bites across all our communications channels.

Amanda Changuris, associate director of corporate communications, BNY Mellon

Rev up recommendation engines

With $100,000, I’d test dynamic content recommendation engines for email. Based on what our subscribers read online, what else should we be sharing via email?

Jessica Best, director of data-driven marketing, Barkley

Sponsor an event and buy a plane ticket

$1,000: Spend $750 on video equipment and the rest to buy Jeff Julian a plane ticket so he could teach me how to use it.

$50,000 or $100,000: Sponsor events. I’ve wanted to double down on them in the past few years, but as a small consulting shop we haven’t been able to make the math work out yet.

Andrea Fryrear, president and lead trainer, AgileSherpas

Improve sound and visuals

BOOM! With an extra $1,000 I’d buy a better microphone and camera for my video productions. With an extra $50,000, I’d hire an editor to ensure my video content isn’t backlogged.

With that sweet, sweet $100,000, I’d buy some ads to market my marketing content. (Yes, I said buy some ads.)

Andrew Davis, CEO, Monumental Shift

Lights, camera, action

Video, video, video. I would hire a small camera crew to republish my best written content in video format. Mobile is for media. More video, more images, more voice, more mobile.

Veronica Romney, president/co-founder, LoSoMo Inc.

Get face to face

$1,000: Experiment with advertising on some of the lesser-known sites, like Quora. Or I might try a bit of native advertising for our top converting content.

$50,000: Launch an audience research and partial website redesign project. The goal would be to improve conversion rates without hurting rankings. Some of that money would go toward video.

$100,000: Build a studio and start doing a series of weekly events. They’d be a hybrid of live in-person and webinar. I’d fly in top speakers to present on top topics. Then I’d hire an editor to adapt them into a series of paid classes. This program would pay for itself!”

Andy Crestodina, co-founder, CMO, Orbit Media

Host 10 high-value customers

$1,000: Take the marketing team to dinner.

$50,000: Take the team to dinner and invest in user-generated content efforts to have our customers tell our story better than we can.

$100,000: Go to dinner, invest in user-generated content, and host a three-day customer advisory board experience for our 10 most ideal and highest lifetime value customers, and produce more customer story content with them.

Tim Hayden, president and co-managing partner, Brain + Trust Partners

Really talk to customers

Conduct interviews with actual buyers to understand the questions they’re asking at each step in their journey. Then develop content that addresses those questions and shows why our answer is better than any of our competitors.

Adele Revella, CEO and founder, Buyer Persona Institute

Support external content creation

I would create a few campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that we could repurpose. I also would use a portion of the budget to get into influencer marketing, primarily finding those with big followings who align with our brand and creating a campaign that we can bring them in on to help create a win-win situation for both of us.

Jason Schemmel, social media manager, Harper Collins Christian Publishing

Create quarterly e-books

$1,000: Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video.

$50,000: Create quarterly e-book offers.

$100,000: Split between new content tests and paid content promotion like targeted sponsored updates on LinkedIn.

Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group

Develop a new product or offering

$1,000: Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime.

$50,000: Invest in researching buyer/customer expectations.

$100,000: Develop a prototype and test a new product/service offering based on what the $50,000 research revealed.

Jonathan Kranz, principal, Kranz Communications

Go native

Buy native advertising to drive traffic to articles and then quickly grow my email list. Use the rest to set up a good nurture email campaign for ongoing engagement. This could include hiring another role to run this area.

Christoph Trappe, director of content, Stamats Business Media

Follow these three words (maybe?)

Direct mail marketing. Kidding. Sort of.

Derek Flanzraich, CEO and founder, Greatist

Do…

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