Defining the Content Marketing Mission

Goals & Objectives
Successful content marketing initiatives start with with a robust and healthy conversation about goals and objectives.

We think of Content Marketing Goals as broad statements about how content can advance the future of the brand. Content marketing goals help us answer the destination questions: Where do we want to be at the end of this quarter, end of this year?

We think of Content Marketing Objectives as the milestones on the path to achieving those goals. Objectives answer the "directions" questions: How will we get there from here?

Metrics & Benchmarking
The first question we need to ask when building a map for our marketing mission is straightforward: Where are we now?

We will work with you to establish consensus on which KPIs matter most to your business. We will catalogue the metrics that matter and collect benchmarks that record our starting position.

Over the course of our project, we will regularly provide detailed reports on these metrics to track our progress and results. And we'll use the intelligence we've gathered as both a track record and a compass to make sure we're on course to achieve success.

Discovering Insights & Content Trends

Content Auditing & Influencer Research
The next phase of our engagement will be comprised of in-depth content auditing, influencer research, benchmarking and competitive analysis.

We develop a detailed catalogue of the most important content and influencers in your domain and conduct comparative analysis to your existing content.

We meet with stakeholders and carry out qualitative interviews with you and your customers to gain a better understanding of your product market fit, your customer's journey and their media diets.

Content Marketing Workshops
Next, we workshop with your teams to collect and build consensus on audience personas, your product proof points and your core brand messaging.

By the end of this cycle, together we have developed a thorough understanding of how audiences engage content in your domain, and how your brand position fits into the broader content universe for your categories.

As we transition to making content product, we leverage our new understanding as a foundation for building content campaigns that will work best for your business.

Documenting a Custom Content Strategy

Merging Analysis & Design
It is by now accepted wisdom that having a documented content strategy is key to B2B content marketing success.

We take the conclusions from research and workshop briefings to build a renewed understanding of your brand, products and services.

We then craft and hone a detailed content marketing strategy tailored specifically to meet the goals we've set out to achieve.

Channel Planning
The resulting document will outline our tactical plans for audience development and our primary content offer strategy, including comprehensive step by step guides and the editorial calendars required to carry out our production and distribution plans across all channels.

The playbook we create will guide us strategically and tactically throughout our engagement and beyond. Over the long term, we believe that you will find this project to be worth the cost of our retainer in and of itself.

Deploying the Marketing Technology Stack

Technology Onboarding
Our marketing technologists will work with your teams to consult and assist with configuration and on-boarding of any new or required marketing technologies.

We have expertise across the marketing stack, from CRM integration for marketing automation -- mapping existing lead data to the marketing platform and iterating the marketing nurture logic -- to website optimization, A/B testing systems, and KPI analytics tools.
Managed Services
In addition, we build a managed services mix to help carry out or assist your teams with social media and paid distribution.

Once the technology stack is in place, we build a dashboard for all channel workflows and distribution models to prepare a "ground control" operation in anticipation of our content product launches.
 

Developing Content as a Product

Creating Content Assets
Once the technology setup is complete and our strategy is in place, we crank the content marketing machine into motion and begin to produce the assets that will comprise the ammunition for our tactical arsenal.

Each piece of content we make is based on a detailed creative brief that is built with your teams.

Our producers diligently execute and assure quality content production while keeping your team well abreast of all project and milestone progress.  
Lean Content Marketing
We will work with you to figure out the best way to match our project management to fit your style of doing business and your culture.

Wherever possible, we deploy agile project management templates to keep our teams aligned and iterating as efficiently as possible. With each project, we build a Scope of Work that defines objectives and outlines our project plan. We execute and manage the project with key milestone and metrics reporting throughout.

All of our projects close and debrief with a KPI or other metrics report for evaluation and summative analysis. Measurement is a core value, our primary goal is to demonstrate Marketing ROI

Distribution & Content Management

The Right Place at The Right Time
In our experience, the least well executed piece of the content marketing puzzle is content distribution. What good is your best content if nobody sees it?

We help you understand how to deliver the right message to the right audience at each stage of the customer journey.
Liquid Content
The marketing funnel has changed forever. Your audience will find and navigate your content in unknowable ways. The purpose of content marketing is to provide value no matter where or how they find it. We provide the technical expertise and strategic execution required to build "liquid" content modules that fill out and adapt to all channel formats.

Debriefing and Demonstrating ROI

Measurement & Reporting
As our campaigns roll out, our marketing technologists will monitor all channels for feedback and metrics.  We will regularly provide reporting and analysis on each campaign to measure our results against our defined goals and historical benchmarks.




The one ingredient your content marketing program is missing: time.

Joe Pulizzi

Your External Creative Office
Symbolscape honed its marketing chops as a content production unit. We're proud to have video production as a marketing heritage because video is proven time and time again to be the number one driver of content marketing results.

Whether you're building a website, rolling out an email nurture, or driving lead generation on a landing page, video content is the one tried and true tactic that increases CTR and conversion rates.

Over the years,we've assembled a network of best-in-class creative talent, from broadcast producers, filmmakers and DPs to graphic designers, bloggers, copywriters and SEO specialists to WordPress designers and application developers. If you've got a content project to tackle, we can crush it.

In addition, we deploy creative asset production workflows based on lean and agile development processes. This means we're easy to work with, we iterate quickly and we turn around high quality product as fast and efficiently as possible.
Your Strategic Partner
In the span of just a few years, Content Marketing has transformed the business world. In fact, the predictions made just a few years ago that every business would become a publisher are already regarded as an old industry cliché. It is now widely understood that every business has to make content to be viable in the digital sphere -- but the organizational architecture, the resources and the operations experience needed to drive a custom publishing department are still emergent, at best.

Symbolscape was built on the assumption that content marketing success would be based on the increasing “nichification” of audiences, an inherent effect of the way we use the Internet. Our primary value is our ability to help you understand where your audiences live online and how to make the kind of content that will reach them best.

But what makes our strategies for integrated marketing stand out? Our deep expertise in content production. Our team is comprised of “marketing hybrids” -- digital marketeers who not only see the big picture, but have the hard skills and know-how to execute the tactical content plays that make brand symbolscapes thrive.