Lots of marketers will tell you they have a plan for doing content at scale but turn around and struggle to fill out the content calendar. And when you notice that you aren’t getting the results you want, the answer is always, “well, we gotta spend more money!”
More money for video shoots…
More money for ads…
More money for tools…
But that wasn’t part of the contract, was it? And it’s not just more money, it’s more of your time and that’s somehow just as bad if not worse.
But let’s assume you spend a little more time and money to get a little more. It’s still not enough because it wasn’t that they needed more time or more money. They needed more ideas. In the absence of new ideas, your content calendar gets filled with stock photos, memes celebrating made-up holidays, and curated content.
Now your content isn’t on-brand, on-message, or on anyone’s mind because it doesn’t stand out or resonate with your audience.
Not a good look…
The reality is that the agency you hired only has one arrow in its quiver when it comes to making more content. And the “more money, more time” arrow doesn’t cut it.
Getting to the Root Cause of Poor Marketing
Why though? Why does this always happen? I have a theory…
I believe that this behavior stems from the agency having a lack of connection with your Brand Strategy. Look at this graphic:
Most marketers are hyper-focused on the Brand Expression buckets of Persona, Communication, and Visual Expression. And they’re not connected to your Brand Strategy.
But let me ask you something. Are you connected with your Brand Strategy? Do you deeply understand your Mission, Vision, Purpose, and Values? Do you viscerally know your audience and your differentiators in the marketplace?
If so, awesome! You’re ahead of the game. But if you’re not, it’s no wonder why your marketers aren’t creating powerful content on your behalf. They only know what you can articulate to them.
If you can’t tell the stories, neither can we. We didn’t live the creation of the company. We weren’t there when you built your product in response to a problem you saw in the market. And we don’t have the same knowledge base as you do.
Now, you’re probably thinking that I’m just a marketer trying to pass the buck back to you, absolving marketers everywhere, and encouraging them to shirk their responsibility to you and your business.
I’m not. In fact, I’m challenging marketers to take more responsibility, not less.
You see, the reality is that many business owners who are in the early stages of scaling their business aren’t connected with their Brand Strategy as tightly as they could be. That lack of connection can cause marketing issues because marketing is all about telling compelling stories.
So, the trick is getting those stories unlocked even if you aren’t sure what they are yet. And that’s where most marketers falter. They expect you to know all the stories and they don’t have a way to help you discover them.
Systems to Unlock Your Inner Storyteller
A colleague of mine said something a while ago that caused my ears to perk up. He said that organizational design can either exacerbate problems or reveal them. I heard that and I had this Aha! moment.
Marketers build content creation systems that require you to hand them everything. And when you can’t, they get generic.
In the beginning, it’s easier because the stories are obvious. But, once the agency has exhausted the about the company posts, the about the owner videos, the cultural puff pieces, and the overviews of the product and demos—marketers get stuck.
Then here come all the poor marketing tactics.
Instead, agencies should focus on building a system that helps you connect to your Brand Strategy so that you can get super clear on who your brand is, why it exists, how it helps people, and what you want to accomplish.
Deeply connecting with these foundational elements of your brand snaps everything into place and helps businesses and the agencies that create content for them tell better stories. But not only tell better stories, but it also helps us to discover new stories that we didn’t know were possible because we can all see how the brand acts in service of its audience and customers.
At the end of the day, more brand understanding leads to more stories that are more compelling. More compelling stories lead to more content. More content leads to more eyes, more followers, and more success.
So, the next time you’re looking for marketing help and you see an agency tell you they do content at scale; ask them if they have systems in place. Systems that will help connect everyone to the Brand Strategy. Systems that will reveal more compelling stories over time. Systems that will optimize for your time and empower them to create a scaled content strategy without you to deliver a robust content calendar.
Or do they simply have a system that requires more from you?
