• March 22, 2016
• Content, Demand Generation, EMEA

How to Conduct an Effective Marketing Content Audit

In an online lead generation world, we talk a lot about content promotion as being a crucial element for success. However, it all starts with the content itself – your content is the best way to influence your readers.

The IT space is a very competitive and fast-paced environment and more than 70% of the IT buyers’ research is made without talking to a vendor, so your content is thus your best chance to reach your audience and influence their research process.

For those reasons, a marketing content audit is crucial in evaluating your content strategy. It can take some time to complete, but it is important that you know what content you have available in order to serve a strong and powerful mix to your readers.

In order to do a marketing content audit, you must answer 2 simple questions:

What type of content do I have available?

Your message should be communicated through many content varieties (Fig 1). Just like in real life, IT researchers’ content preferences can vary. Also, not all asset type serve the same purpose: while an Infographic will address a broad topic and basic pain points, case studies will make your advice trustworthy.

Evaluate if you have a good variety of asset types (Fig 2) available in your content mix.

 

 

What stage of the research process does my asset belong to – Awareness, Consideration or Decision?

An easy way to define this is looking at the wording used in the asset (Fig 3).

 

 

 

You can go one step further and analyse your content by Asset Goal (Fig 4). This tasks takes you into a more in-depth evaluation – what is my content meant to achieve?

 

Review your results and see where content gaps exist

We recommend building out a simple spreadsheet (Excel) with the basic evaluation parameters:

• Asset Title
• Asset Type
• Asset Stage
• Asset Goal

 

This spreadsheet will then help you identify your content alignment across research stages (Fig 5) as well as Asset goals (Fig 6). The visual perspective helps to clearly highlight the gaps in your content strategy.

 

Localise content for better lead generation

Our research has shown that more than half of the IT buyers in France, DACH and Spain think there is not enough IT-related content available in their native language. So, if you’re serious about lead generation in those markets, make sure you create localised content or translate your English assets in order to reach the IT-buyers locally.

 

Marketing Content Audit image via Shutterstock

content audit, content marketing, international demand generation, localization