Sagefrog Marketing Group has been delivering branding and integrated marketing services for more than twenty years. Behind our success is a team of managers, digital specialists, copywriters, and designers who continually evolve processes and best practices to drive results. Welcome to the “Frogs Tell All” blog series, a place where you can be a fly on the wall and observe what we do best.
Content is king. It was true in 1996 when Bill Gates first said it, and it’s true today. Without content, thought leaders—and all their brilliant ideas—just exist, waiting for customers to find them. Our B2B partners are on important missions to improve and disrupt industries and truly change the course of critical industries like healthcare, technology, manufacturing, finance, and so on. Their knowledge is gold, and it’s our job as copywriters and content creators to convert their ideas into valuable, digestible resources for diverse, global audiences—ultimately supporting their goals, growth, and success.
So, what is content development anyway? It’s the end-to-end process of planning, creating, and promoting written resources. Through content development, B2B companies can educate their markets, build trust with their audience, provide valuable insights, and empower customers to succeed.
Sagefrog’s Content Development Process:
- Plan + Set Goals
- Strategize + Generate Ideas
- Write + Optimize
- Publish + Promote
- Review + Repeat
Sagefrog has worked with hundreds of clients, refining our content development process along the way. Let’s break down each step, detailing our role as a full-service marketing agency and your role as a B2B leader and industry expert.
1. Plan + Set Goals
This is the information-gathering step and arguably the most critical one. This is where we all get on the same page. Sagefrog will take the time to determine your target audience and buyer personas and the challenges they face on a daily basis. This is who we’re writing for. We’ll also take time to understand the ultimate goals of our content marketing efforts, ranging from social shares to lead generation, website redirects, and form fills. We’ll then recommend a content marketing tactic and format to help achieve your goal—think blogs, case studies, marketing videos, eBooks, webinars, and so on.
2. Strategize + Generate Ideas
Once both teams align, we begin the strategy and idea generation phase, which can take many forms depending on your time, budget, and goals. We may start with a Content Audit to assess your existing content for quick wins, content gaps, or opportunities to repurpose content you’ve already spent valuable time creating. We could also engage our expert Digital Marketing team to determine which topics are trending online, what your competitors are talking about, and what angle we should take.
Alternatively, we may collaborate with your sales team on Frequently Asked Questions from prospects to create content that anticipates objections or common concerns in the sales cycle. Once we choose the topic, our Digital team will conduct SEO keyword research and pass the final strategy and outline to our Copywriters to work their magic.
3. Write + Optimize
We peruse the resources provided to determine if we need more information to write. If so, we’ll conduct an interview with subject-matter experts from your team to fill in the gaps. We write with today’s best practices in mind, sticking to appropriate copy lengths, providing meta-information when needed, and setting up internal links and buttons. We also include the Digital team’s recommended keywords to ensure the piece is optimized to perform well organically and pops up in search engines when people search related terms. We produce original and insightful content because there’s nothing more valuable than being seen as a trusted resource and thought leader in your field.
4. Publish + Promote
Once we workshop the piece with you and get it to its final form, it goes to our Design team if creative elements are needed. Then, it’s time to hit “post” and let the world see your brilliant ideas. Social media has become increasingly important to people; thus, it has become increasingly important to us, Frogs, as well. Not a day goes by when client content and news isn’t shared in our company Slack channel. That’s where the likes often start, but they continue on major social platforms where potential and existing customers, partners, suppliers, and vendors will engage more and more.
5. Review + Repeat
Like any good wash cycle, we rinse and repeat to keep your content fresh. We’ll monitor the pieces with the most (and the least) clicks, conversions, shares, and interactions. This data reflects your audience preferences and helps us refine your content strategy, so we can truly serve up the most relevant content to your target market.
This methodology flexes from client to client, industry to industry, and resource to resource—but in maintaining these five facets of the content development process, we produce high-performing thought leadership pieces for B2B companies just like yours. Get in touch to further discuss Sagefrog’s award-winning content development services.
