A good content plan has become an essential starting point for industrial marketing as the industrial buying journey has become more elongated and complex, and more buyers are doing a majority of their research online before engaging with companies. And while there are more content channels and types of content than ever, putting together a content plan does not have to be complicated. The Industrial Marketing Podcast takes you through a simple process for creating a content plan.
A good content plan has become an essential starting point for industrial marketing as the industrial buying journey has become more elongated and complex, and more buyers are doing a majority of their research online before engaging with companies. And while there are more content channels and types of content than ever, putting together a content plan does not have to be complicated. The Industrial Marketing Podcast takes you through a simple process for creating a content plan.
Welcome back to another episode and another season of the industrial Marketer Podcast your place for the tips, tech trends and tactics for industrials, who care about driving leads to their companies. I, as always, and back for another year, I am one of your hosts industrial marketing Fanboy and lover of all things neat joing. And as always, I am joined and I'm making a New Year's Nels solution. And having joined me yet again, on the industrial Marketer Podcast, how are you Nels a new year new you, it's good to see ya. It is.
Nels Jensen:And it's good to be here. I enjoyed this time so much with you, Joey and love talking trade with folks and ready for another season.
Joey Strawn:I can't be I can't express enough how happy I am. To be back, we had a fantastic season. Last year, we had, we talked a lot of things that were very important and great for industrial manufacturers and people dealing with the manufacturing trade and figuring out how to get sales and leads and business in this weird world digital age that we call 2021 and 2022. And I am so happy to be back to be talking more strategies and trends. And we're getting deeper this year. Next, we're going into planning ideas. We're going into tool reviews, we're going to be talking all sorts of good stuff here in season two. So it I've been looking forward to this for a week or two and I can't wait to dive right back in with you.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And to our listeners too. You know, we also want to know, what do you guys want to hear about too. So we would love the engagement, I can pretty much guarantee you if somebody comes up with a suggestion and says, hey, we'd love to hear about I think we're pretty responsive. And we'd be jumping right in there. So we will you better believe it listeners? What is it that you want to know about the industrial marketing ecosystem?
Joey Strawn:So if you're commenting on our posts, we're reading them if you're sharing our stuff on social media, please do and if you're following along on the website, industrial marketer comm we're reading what's your commenting. So if you want some topics, if you have some questions that you want to answer to on air, send them our way. And we're going to be doing that for you this this season on the industrial Marketer Podcast, I, here's the thing. Now, if we wanted to start big, we wanted to start with something that's really going to help people. And honestly, it's the beginning of the year, we are in the season of launching new plans of making plans for the year of looking forward to see what 2022 can offer us as industrials and people that are, you know, thinking about the wholesale, like marketing strategy and manufacturing strategy for their businesses. And then the people on the ground floor looking at new tools and new trends and new ways to drive drive leads to their businesses, you know, we have a big year ahead of us. And so we wanted to start with the idea of planning, I think it's a great idea Nels especially around the idea of content planning, and not for nothing, you and I happen to know a lot about that topic.
Nels Jensen:Yet we live it breathe it every day.
Joey Strawn:I, the idea is this whole quarter guys, we're gonna be talking about the foundations of what you need to actually step out into that digital marketing world in that industrial marketing world. So we're going to talk about media planning and content planning, we're going to be talking about things that you need in place before you even send leads into your ecosystems. But we're going to start with content planning, because, you know, quite frankly, in the world of online search in the world of Voice Search, and in the world of having long sales cycles, to nurture and convince people to do business with you, you need a lot of content, you need to put it out regularly. And we're all at the, at the disadvantage of search engines on this one. So we got to play by their rules, because that's where people are looking. So we're gonna dive into all of that on this episode. So I hope you stick with us at the very end, and are on the shop floor segment, we're gonna actually be diving into building a content plan and thinking about it so we can walk you through the process. So I mean, let's get started. Now, what is content planning? What does content planning mean? When someone says, Hey, we're gonna put together a content plan? What does that mean to you when you hear that?
Nels Jensen:Yeah. So to me, it it kind of I work backward. It's like, right, right. What are we trying to accomplish? What are the business goals right? Kind of work backwards from there. So you look at you know, sample business goals, then you're looking at you know, some marketing strategies and objectives and then you can basically start to, you know, set your your align your tactics match those. And I and I know that's generic, right? That's that that's a planning process for sure thing, but content, you know, some content is, is very quick and immediate and responsive, like email marketing, and some content is a long slow play. So, you know, you just have to there, there are a ton of variables there lots of different types of content. But generally speaking, there are a couple common themes that we'll be talking about.
Joey Strawn:I love it. Yeah. And and to add on to that, and, and to kind of throw in my thoughts into the pot is, you know, when we're talking about content planning, obviously, we're thinking of like, what are we going to write and, you know, oh, well, we have, we're going to be, you know, doing an August special. So we want to write something about that August special, or we have a new partnership. And so we need to write a press release about it. And though, you know, those types of things, obviously, are involved in content planning. But you know, when we are approaching this conversation, when we would encourage all industrial marketers, when you're approaching the conversation of content planning for the year, we need to be thinking about it in those facets McNellis, that you lined out, like, what are we trying to accomplish with our content? Then what is that content? Like? What a pieces of it, what are they going to do? And then how are we going to make sure that it's working? And between those three things, that's what we're really diving into and looking at in this content plan and this content, you know, this universe that we're calling content planning term?
Nels Jensen:Sure, you've you've referred to the term goalposts before, right? So content planning, you know, one simple starting point could be alright, what does success look like?
Joey Strawn:Exactly? And that's honestly where I think everyone needs to in their head get started, like, Okay, we're gonna put together a plan for our content this year. Alright, well, first pause, what do we want to accomplish as a marketing department or as an organization, so let's say, you know, you may be a metal fabricator. So you're, you know, your need is to get more business or get more leads in the door, the big thing for you is to get more leads in the door, well, then the type of content you should make should probably be social proof, the types of content that will encourage people to you know, answer questions when they are looking for jobs to be done, when they are needing specialized services that you may, you know, that you may have. But on the flip side, to your, to the idea of goals, if the goal for your organization is to hire a lot of people, your content plan is going to be very different, it may very much be about creating enough job openings and job opportunities and job listings and pieces of job opportunity content to push out into the market and have more of a distribution play, then, you know, some other some other content, goals and objectives. So it really does depend on if you know what the goalposts you're looking at, you know which direction you need to be running, then that will help you decide which pieces of content along the way will be helpful pieces of content.
Nels Jensen:Sure, and you're almost always going to have regular content that lives on your site. And works for you at all times. Even in a recruiting realm, it's going to be why people should come work for your company, it's going to be the value prop you offer, as an employer, why you're at a Employer of Choice, kind of thing. So you're always gonna have the content on your site that works for you. 24/7. And then, of course, you're gonna have the behavioral, you know, reaction type content about something very specific, you're asking somebody to respond to. Right.
Joey Strawn:Exactly. I mean, and like, like, well, I since we're talking about the types of content, let's just stick there, I think there's three big areas that come into a content plan. And now people are going to love the on the shop floor segment, because we're actually going to do this in order and kind of talk through some hypotheticals. But you know, the, one of the big areas is the types of content like what are we going to create? You know, so you mentioned it, if we know our goals, we know which direction we can go. So the next piece of the puzzle? And if you're putting this out on a spreadsheet, which I hope you would, you know, these are the these are the puzzle pieces that you can move around, but the pieces, the types of content, and you mentioned, like regular site content pages, that is 1,000%, a piece of this puzzle and should be considered in your content planning as what regular pages are you going to build on the site? Are you going to have new surface pages? Are you going to be launching new divisions? Should you be adding an about page or a team page or a page about a specific service or offering that you have that has some search value? So those regular pages definitely need to be in that mix? Yeah, and then, and then yeah, just
Nels Jensen:Don't don't overlook updating your regular content pages. Because yes, you may have largely the same offerings, but How often in our worlds? Do we encounter somebody who's like, oh, yeah, the site's kind of out of date, you know, it's like this is it's a powerful content is a powerful 24/7 tool. But you know, if your content needs updating and who's doesn't every now and then do it. So that's why the regular site content, don't forget your your workhorse content that's been powering your business for many, many years. It everything needs a little freshening up, everything needs little SEO, attention, everything needs, what are the updates on the, you know, capabilities and features on and on and on. So yeah, don't don't ignore the stuff that's been working for you for a long time.
Joey Strawn:I couldn't agree more. And then honestly, he's talking about workhorses. You know, another element of your content plan should be pillar pages, you know, those massive pages that you're going to build, like, let's say you had you guys, your company offers structural engineering consulting. And so you need to be found for structural engineering, consulting, or terms related to that, well, you should have a page on your site that is all about that term, all about your experience, it should have a lot of words, it should have a lot of links to other elements that you have in the world that talk about those and even maybe link to some off site, things that can add to your site credibility, but you need to build in those pillar pages. And those are going to take effort, like those should be probably quarterly, or you know, half, six months investments of time. But those should be a lot of research a lot of time, but they need to be in your plan, you need to think about them, you need to lay them out and know when you're going to be developing them.
Nels Jensen:Right. So we've covered kind of your, your building block site content, what about the rest of it the inbound? What are we Yeah, for, for the inbound side of our content,
Joey Strawn:We'll see. And that's the other element that I don't want people to forget in this. So if you're looking at this in the spreadsheet, you should have a row for your website stuff. So we're going to launch these pages, we're going to write these blogs, we're going to do these major pillar pages and put investments into this deep content research. But also, don't forget that you have social channels, you have email channels, you have downloads and media channels, as well. So make sure that you know you have a row for your emails, if all that you're doing is sending out a monthly email or a quarterly, you know, brand update email to your stakeholders, whatever it may be, make sure those rhythm rhythms are documented, and make sure that at least accountability and themes are accounted for. So you know who's in charge of those emails and what they're going to be talking about. Because theoretically, when you get to the end of this, you need to be able to look across the plan, and all the content should match on theme. So if you're talking about safety, in one month, you know, your email should be about safety site content should be about safety. social posts should be about safety, you know, and social posts, maybe even easier to just document themes, monthly themes of content. We're going to talk about this in August, and we're going to talk about this in June. And aligning those with all of the pieces of content allows you as an entire department, a marketing team and a brand to step back and look at the spreadsheet and your calendar and say, Okay, we are covered for the year. And our most important times of year are even super covered. Because we know what those times of year are and what are important to our companies and our customers and our businesses.
Nels Jensen:Exactly. And don't overlook also with your lead magnets, right, you've got your blogs, you got your case studies, you got your white papers, collateral, you know, your existing material still works for you, right, you may have something, you may have something on compliance. That is, you know, you published last year still perfectly good, whatever your most popular pages on your website are. Don't underestimate the power of just directing more people to those not. Unfortunately, not everybody opens every email we send and reads and clicks through on all of that. So there's no there's no problem in re circulating your best stuff for the marketplace.
Joey Strawn:Well, and you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback on that Knouse because that's a fantastic point. And also, don't forget you're thinking, well, Joey now, this sounds so crazy, but I am so busy, like when am I going to even think about writing all this new content? You know what put on your plan that you're going to repurpose your most pivotal piece from last year, and that's going to be your content pieces, you're going to reap push the piece that did really well with updated information, updated stats and capabilities and re put that out into market in a good quarter. There are a lot, right. So make sure that you are thinking of the content that you have on hand and the efforts you could make to make that stronger.
Nels Jensen:Right and your calendar planning, you're paying attention to not just the quarterly or monthly themes, as you suggest, but also your release dates, right? So, you know, every year might be in the summer, you have a really big trade show, right? Yeah. So you know that you're going to be trying to attract people to come to your booth at that trade show. So, right, you know, it'd be good to write content that you're especially promoting at the trade show prior to that, that, you know, it's not always the case, you can't always just okay, it's a new year. And let's crank out all this content in January, and then we have covered, it would be nice if it worked that way. But that's, you know, if you can, if you can pull that up, hey, good for you. But the what, you know, there are some, there are some seasonal factors that you should take into account in your plan, obviously, right?
Joey Strawn:No, I mean, and I think that's the perfect segue, because we've talked a lot about so far about the what have a plan. And so that's one big element is, well, what are we going to put in the plan? All these different pieces of content? Okay, well, we have big pieces and small pieces and themed pieces and email pieces and social pieces. Well, so the next piece, as you've just outlined, now is the win. Well, we obviously can't write all of those in the same day, we can't launch all of that in the same day, we have lives and jobs. And you know, and so we have to be able to lay it out on a calendar and know, okay, well, these blogs, and this piece of content, and these social pieces are going out in this month. And we're going to talk about this, we're going to release this and you will study in this month, because it is two weeks before our biggest trade show appearance at you know, at Fabtech. And we need to get this out into the market before fat before our appearance at Fabtech. So then we have this to talk about and this and this and this. So knowing the timing of the pieces of content is the next big piece of the plan. It's not just it's not enough just to have the stuff it's you have to then put it on a plan, look and know when things are launching. And when they're due. Because to your point. Now, if we have a trade show coming up, let's say oh, there's a trade show super important trade show or another another thing that people deal with is factory shutdowns, we know you we know we're going to have this three week window of we have to get a lot of work done because the plant shutdowns and that's either our prime selling time, or that's our prime production time, or getting things done time. And so you know, per day to ensure that you're exactly make sure you're planning for those because the last thing you want to do is be like, Oh, we're going to that trade show next week. And we need a bunch of new collateral two new site pages an offer and a brochure. That's not the position you want to be in. So if you have that on your plan, if you know that that's in q3, then you can start setting the works saying the work in the framework for that done ready in q1. So knowing when, and how things are rolling out is just as important as knowing what you're putting out into market.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, and let me hit you up for what your thoughts are on this in terms of say you've got a new machine that you're, you know, the big fourth quarter sales initiative, you're you're selling a quarter million dollar, you know, metal fabrication machine, and you're going to the tradeshow in the summer. And you know, that's where you're going to be introducing it whatever. There's Google doesn't care when you put your content up, right? You could have something ready, put it up and not tell the world about it, it can still be sitting on your site, somebody might find it unless there's a competitive factor involved here. Is there? Where do you fall on the well, you know, you really want to make a splash versus get the material out there. If somebody finds it. Great. You know, you don't put it in your newsletter until prior to the trade show. But you know, is there is there any downside of having this stuff out there in case somebody finds it even if you're not pushing it out yet?
Joey Strawn:No, not necessarily. I mean, it depends. It depends on if Is that accurate and ready? So if it's not ready, if it's not something you can legally say or if it's not launched yet, then then no, don't have it out there. But other than that, if it's content, and it's stuff that's related to your business related to your services or whether they related to something you will and are currently doing, then having that propagate on search engines, even if it's never hitting a human beings eyes yet because you haven't started promoting it. It will still be hitting the search engine spider bots eyes and they can start assessing its authority. SEO takes time you know One of the lessons of SEO is they have to be constantly crawled, they have to be constantly assessed, and their authority is constantly re done on, you know, second by second nanosecond basis. And so if the pages are out there, it theoretically it could start propagating and actually seeing some rankings because of how well it's built or what it's linked to, or other factors. And then the big splash, as you put it, is that that's when we send out an email and have our article published in you know, metal fabrication, or, and, you know, tube and pipe journal. And that's when, like the big promotions and ads start going, and that's the big splash, but secretly the page has been being read, you might have crawled for a month,
Nels Jensen:It could be a way to help boost that initial search bounce, if you will. Right.
Joey Strawn:Exactly. And, and not for nothing. If it's not like on the NAV of your site, no one is going to most likely stuff exactly. Right. And it gives you the opportunity to test it in real time to see what people will see, to be on the site and to make sure you can get to end on it and around it without any big problems. So I think that's that's a fantastic question. I mean, like, that's, these are the questions that I want industrial marketers thinking about when they're putting these plans together, I want you thinking of, well, why would we launch it, we have the what, and we have the the when at least so you know, we know we're going to these trade shows, we know we need at least this many emails per month, or whatever it may be. So you know, you have to answer the why, like, that's where it all really comes together in the conversion. And knowing if we're accomplishing what we set out to accomplish is, well, what pieces are going to work in different ways? And why are we putting this out into the market? I mean, and Nelson, have you asked me a question? So I'm going to kind of I'll ask you one right back is one of the things that I know that we talk a lot about when when you and I talk about content is where on the buyer journey, the content is for, like, why are we creating this? So, you know, help help tie some of that together for our listeners? Like how, why is it so important to be thinking about the buyer journey, when it comes to the pieces of content?
Nels Jensen:Well, it's and this is what makes industrial marketing so challenging, right? It's an elongated buying process. Sometimes it's not even linear, right? Sometimes it kind of circles back around, and you have different, and you have different people involved in the decision making. So it's not just your lead engineer whose job it is, is to find cool solutions. And it's not just the facility manager whose job it is, you know, to make sure that you're running, operating at a profit. It's also the finance person who's got to put together the capital equipment plan, you know, this, you know, so you have different stages of the buyer journey, right? Education and Awareness, telling people about what your products and services are what they do you know, that the consideration, okay, how do I evaluate this process? Or this product? And you know, what am I comparing it to in the marketplace? The decision ultimately, you know, who's going to decide who's going to close the deal? How do you close the deal? So you have different stages of the buyer process, and you have different people involved? So what is the right pieces of content? What are the right pieces of content at the right time for the right people. So this can get very granular, this can get very complicated. And that's one of the challenges in the content planning process. You, you could map out where you really were looking at different pieces of content for different personas. Not everybody has the wherewithal to pull that off. That's a lot of content. So it might be something where Okay, you want to account for the products, capabilities and features, right? You want to account for the solutions, what is it that this helps you do? What are the pain points that helps you relieve? You want to account for the ROI, okay, so why should you invest in this? So those are three different pieces of content that have three different spots in the buyer journey, right? The awareness, what are the products, features and capabilities, the consideration? Right, what does this actually help us solve? And then the decision Okay, your ROI should be about 15 months on this or it's if you do this, you get this? You know, right? That's that's the why right. And as I said, it can get very granular and you can overthink it, but there are different types of content that you should be considering for the different people involved in the buying journey.
Joey Strawn:Well and for the the industries and their companies. He's involved. So we are here talking about industrials. You know, we talk about industrial marketing a lot. And obviously the people who were in that world know exactly what we mean. But you know, someone who's selling like, you know, bubble gum, at a convenience store, you know, you're right there at the purchase, you're going to get the bubble gum, if you want to get bubblegum you have brand loyalty, and all of that. But the things that we're talking about is you may be trying to uncover a vendor for a staining process that goes through, you know, into an OCR tiered distribution system, and you want to, you need to be able to make those connections, and you need to be able to have those timelines thought out. So with the consideration, Phase II, all of your content may need to be focused around the consideration phase, when people are doing research for how your product will solve their specific problem. In another industry for another company, a lot of the content may need to be focused around the decision phase or the evangelizing phase because 90% of business is done, post sale from referrals, and relationships and things of that nature. So the content that you create may be heavily weighted on the side of getting those evangelizers, the correct pieces of information so they can go out and grow your business, and you can support their efforts. So knowing how your business falls, and where like, if you're in an area where awareness doesn't really matter, there's 20 million people, there's four people, you know, in the game, and everybody knows who all four of those people are, then you probably don't need a lot of content that says, This is who we are, we work in this business, you should focus then that's where these three pieces really come together to as Nelson so you don't have to so much overthink it if you don't want to is, well we know what we know what our goals are. And then now let's know what the types of pieces of content that we can create. And then once we lay those out on a calendar, we know what trade shows are going to and what you know, maintenance periods and shutdown periods are going to be available to us, then great, we can lay some of those out. And some of those pieces overlap. And we have a nice Venn diagram. And now you lay the last piece of the puzzle on top and you say, well, these pieces need to be aimed at these types of people during this phase of their journey. And everything will start to kind of line up, it'll start to make sense. Once you put all those filters together.
Nels Jensen:You're right. And then the industrial buying cycle consideration content is really, really important. And that's because there's some intent, right? Education and Awareness, as you're always they're always on somebody who's gonna find it. But once somebody is considering a project, there is some intent your mid funnel, you're, you know, probably getting ready to hand something over to sales leads, you know, it is definitely a excuse me a definitely a lead qualifier type of content. So, yes, not all of those phases are obviously created equal. Obviously, the closer you get to decision making, the more behavioral, you know, your your content needs to be the more call to actions matter and things like that. But yes, the mid funnel is the sweet spot for a lot of industrial marketing.
Joey Strawn:Oh, I yeah, I am. Man, I think that we've talked a lot of theory, we've talked a lot of, you know, general brainstorming. I think it's time now for the first time in season two, to head on down to the shop floor, and actually put some of this into practice. What do you think? Let's go. All right, head on down to the shop floor. All right, whether or not there was there was music there. I heard hope you heard intro music in your head. We are down on the shop floor for the first time in 2022. In season two of the industrial Marketer Podcast and now is one of the things that we want to give people this year is keep going with that really practical advice. really practical, helpful stuff. So we're actually going to go through a theoretical we're gonna brainstorm an actual content plan on how we would put it together. And we've created a special template for people that if you want the framework for how a content plan could be laid out in a spreadsheet, email us at podcast at industrial marketer.com and let us know who you are, who you work for and we will send you back your free very own content planning template just for you. Just as a new year's season two industrial marketing present and that nice night is yesterday night. We are We are super gracious.
Nels Jensen:You can see the worlds that Joey and I operate in.
Joey Strawn:But and that's the thing is a lot of people are like, well, I don't even know where to start with content planning, like, how do I know what we're going to be needing in September like I don't even want to think about blogs for for winter, I have too much on my plate I have too much to think about. So where do I even start? Well, that's what we want this on the shop floor segment to be. And so I think what we need to do is we should kind of theorize the company theorize in general, what industry they would work in, and then sort of like walk through what we're so what are some goals we could try to accomplish with blog with content? Let's look at a plan and lay out some. And then, you know, like I said, if people want that template, they can just email us and get a free one. So I think what would be it would be a fun, fun business to theorize a plan for I mean, knows what, you know, any off the top of your mind.
Nels Jensen:A fun business.
Joey Strawn:Let's say let's say, Look, we're working for somebody who makes wind turbines. Okay. They're, they're fabricating the big old wings, on the wind turbines. So what would a company like that need? What would be some of their goals for the year? I would say?
Nels Jensen:Yeah, so you know, maybe your your business goals are around selling into a new geographic market? Mm hmm. Maybe maybe there's a maintenance goal about new technology that helps you with your predictive preventive maintenance. So maybe there's a business goal around reducing your transportation costs, those things can be extremely difficult to move around.
Joey Strawn:I, I like I like where your head's at, let's, let's keep it simple for the listeners. And let's stick with three and I heard maintenance, there had to have a maintenance goal. They have, they're trying to move into a new Geo. And, you know, everybody needs leads, they want to they want to buy, you know, they want more leads from their current customers. That's, that's three pretty good, realistic goals. So how would we go about that? Okay, let's think about some maintenance stuff. What what types of content? And what types of people would we be talking to, with the maintenance stuff? Right, so
Nels Jensen:And I don't happen to know those precise personas, we've never done wind turbine,
Joey Strawn:Oh, I'm sure we can see, we know enough. Like, here and there. Yes, we so facility managers are involved,
Nels Jensen:There's, there's an actually, I'm gonna say there might not be a Facility Manager, because the nature wind turbines are out there, or whatever. So you, you're probably going to have somebody in the field. And you're probably going to have somebody in finance. So you, you want to make sure that you account for the technical expertise, the capabilities and features, if you will, and you will want to make sure you account for, okay, what are the benefits in terms of savings, and preventive, predictive, you know, remote, whatever, whatever it may be, right. So the the financial benefits, you want to articulate those. So those are, those are two primary pieces of content that you can think about in terms of that category that go
Joey Strawn:And I like that. And so with maintenance, let's kind of get our getting an idea of maintenance, visualize it in the calendar, if we will. And so with maintenance, I hear we need a pretty constant stream of, you know, just proof to say that we are good maintenance technicians, and we know, the world of maintenance.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, you're around responsive, right? So your responsiveness in terms of emergency, got to get it done. uptime is premium, you know, that kind of thing. So you you account for that. So that could that could be...
Joey Strawn:So you definitely got a cage, you definitely have a page on your site, you want to have a page out there. And then probably a handful of blog posts that go out throughout the year to talk about specific, either seasonal or specific maintenance issues.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, right. What to write if there are whatever those right, whatever those specific trade specific things happen to be. But you also want to articulate the investment value in terms of preventive and predictive maintenance. You know, that's just how do you extend the life? You know, of the of the equipment? Right?
Joey Strawn:Well, that to me, that goes into the third question of why so you're talking to a finance person, we know who we're talking to, you know, and this goes back to why is it important to know when we'd be talking to a finance person, most likely, a finance person in this sort of scenario would be brought in when it's decision making time. So they're looking at the numbers, they're looking at the cost, the turnaround and the actual logistics of it. So it should probably be in a more invested piece. It should be a longer either piece. The F or workbook or some sort of financial walkthrough document, that can be given at the proper time to that finance person. So that's more like in the line of what are we our lead magnets nails what we were talking about, so like,
Nels Jensen:Exactly
Joey Strawn:Study, or a PDF, or a workbook, or some sort of larger asset. And let's add the timing layer in here. We know that with our business, everybody has a shutdown at the end of the summer. So everybody's calendars end in you know, for the year in June, and we need to plan to have a big, you know, financial launch in q2,
Nels Jensen:right? Or in this day, right, right, or, you know, this might be a really long lead time, and those decisions are made whatever. So it might even be more than that. It's not, you know, it's people don't decide to shut down, you know, these things, two weeks, and without a plan kind of thing. That right, you're you're backing it out from, and you're that's the beauty of the sale, you know, your CRM system, too, if you if you have that, you know, humming along, then you kind of know, when are those decisions being made?
Joey Strawn:Right, exactly, yeah, those maintenance windows and those and those spin up times and those new builds. So right there, we've got, at least we've got a steady stream of blog posts to add into the blog post line, we have at least one standard website page that needs to be built. And we have a large downloadable finance piece that needs to be laid out. And so far, we can lay out all those on a timeline. And we go, who they're going for, and what stage in the buying process.
Nels Jensen:And you also could have a case study, hey, here's how we helped Company A or company B, here's what we delivered, here's what their challenge was, here's the opportunity, here's what we did the process, and here's the outcome. So exactly, you know, and there's, there's another way to think of these content plans, too, right? We're using a quarterly example where you could be pushing out, you know, this in q1, and you're gonna have these four things that first you do this on your email, and your next email, you do the case study and your next email, you do the, you know, Finance Blog, you know, whatever, it's, there's definitely a, a seasonal play into how you roll out that content. But the other way to look at that, and if you think about it is kind of a I like to use the old, what does it look like horizontally and what does it vertically, you know, okay, for every one of your key goals, you are going to have a big lead magnet, whether it's a, you know, a long document that talks about the product benefits, the product features, the product specs. So you're for every goal, you're going to have, you know, a solutions oriented blog post, for every goal, you're going to have an FAQ for every goal, you're going to have a case study, for every goal, you're going to have, you know, the finance case for it. So and then, you know, that's like I said, that's another way to develop your content plan. So you can then easily plot those out, what is it you're going to do for every goal? And then where does it just fit on your, your seasonal matrix? So
Joey Strawn:Yeah, that's more of a template rollout. I like Exactly. And, honestly, I think that segues
Nels Jensen:Right, right. So you know, you can there's lots that. of different ways to approach this. But I think the key things are, you know, as you summarized it so nicely, you know, sort of nicely into the next part of our plan that we need to build for the, the, the when and why, right? What the What is pretty basic, the when, and why is where your nuance and sophistication can rely on especially if you've got your CRMs and your marketing automation. this winter buying company, which is they're moving into a neat new Geo. So that's going to require a couple pieces here. And you know, just thoughts, obviously, we're probably going to want to watch some sort of media effort. And if there's a local, you know, trade publication or an article in a trade publication that's going live that we sponsored to help in that area, we want to know when that's going live and make sure that content is created on time for that. But if we're launching media in those areas, and we have a new capabilities, a new locations site page, on our website, there's at least on the site page that needs to be built. We have some media ads that need to be built in times and you know, copy written, and we probably have at least one trade article or one sort of directory insertion that needs to be your route that new location. So there's there's three right off the bat for a new geo that those can be laid out on a plan when if you know we're launching in q3 Or we're launching at that new location in March, yeah. And your social you can push out to certain you know, reach to certain trade groups or certain You know, other geographic specific organizations? I mean, you know, again, it's it's working backward from your from your goals and a new geography presents a lot of challenges. And yes, you, you have to invest money to do it. Maybe you're buying lists, maybe you're joining a community efforts, and you're getting out in the field, whatever. But that should obviously that's already part of your business development plan. You don't just roll into a new market and conquer all just like that. But yes, it's. And that's, that's you need to be very organized for that, but content should be part of your new geography plan.
Joey Strawn:And then finally, with new leads, I mean, we talked about this almost the entirety of last year Nels, but everything we're doing is trying to drive leads to a business. So blog posts, and downloads, and ROI calculators and helpful tips and tricks and FAQs, and videos and all sorts of content can be created around driving leads to your business, it just depends on what question do you need to answer for your clients and then convincing them to use you? So yeah, those that should be the easiest one too loud is like, well, we could spend all year talking about how good we are at this stuff. So let's just figure out the five best ways to do it, and lay it out on our calendar. Because now if I mean Nels, if people emailed us at podcast@industrialmarketer.com, and they've been using our template to follow along, you should be able to see now for an entire year, we've already done a quite a hefty bit of planning, we have three or four or five new site pages that need to be planned and mapped out and launched, we have at least six to 10 new blog posts that are going to be launching, we have regular regularly scheduled emails and social posts that are going out. And I think we've mapped out at least four or five big downloads that are going to have to be written, researched and launched. We just planned a whole year. And it wasn't that hard.
Nels Jensen:And again, a lot of this is prioritization. And don't underestimate the cross departmental communication, right? The beauty of this CRM, right marketing automation, it tells you where your best leads come from, right, make sure you're current with that with your sales team. Because it might be you know, you present the plan to them. And they're like, well, this, this and this, but this is what really worked for over here, this is what really worked over there. So don't reinvent the wheel if you guys have proven processes leverage him. And I know that's kind of Captain Obvious. But if you don't have that cross departmental communication, you might not know and you might overlook it.
Joey Strawn:That feedback loop is of utmost importance. And I can't stress that enough. So always be if you're not tracking your efforts, what you're doing, which you should be, make sure that you have somebody that is feeding back information on you on what is working in which leads are the good ones, because that is the other critical element of this is we've talked about, you know how to plan it, putting it on a plan. We've set it against goals, but now you need to track them. Are you moving towards those goals throughout the year? And if you're not shift the plan, that is okay. It is okay to shift the plan.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, if you're not shifting plans, then why not? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And the best companies do, right? You look at the data, you analyze, you adjust. That's the continuous improvement mindset, right?
Joey Strawn:I agree. Yeah, we're big fans of kaizen in our worlds Nelson. So I would say you know that bring that approach into your content planning as well. And again, guys, please reach out to us we want this year to be as helpful as possible to our industrial marketers and the listeners of this show. So if you want that template, email us at podcast at industrial marketer calm and we will send you your template, reach out to us let us know questions you want us to answer on the podcast and episode topics that we should research and get answers for, for all of you listeners out there. So this has been another spectacular episode. I think we have started off with something very helpful and very tactile for people. Now I at this point if people aren't subscribed to the industrial Marketer Podcast and subscribing it to it on all of their friends phones, I don't know what more we can do, but I'm going to keep asking I'm going to keep saying it. You guys got to be subscribed, listen to our new episodes. And if you haven't already, go to industrial marketer COMM As we have a wealth of other information on that website, between articles and tool reviews, and newsletters and so much more. So find out what you need to know about the world of industrial marketing wherever you can get it but definitely stick around with us. This has been such a blast Nels and I can't wait until our next episode.
Nels Jensen:Thank you good stuff.
Joey Strawn:All right everybody This has been the industrial Marketer Podcast and we cannot wait to talk to you guys again have a good
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