1. Content Strategy

When you need to produce large amounts of content with limited budget and resources, content strategy is key - you can’t afford waste. Ensure you have a clear picture of your audience, what content they need, how they currently consume it (and how they want to consume it), then develop a strategy which is laser-focused on delivering. Establish feedback mechanisms using analytics, surveys and more, to ensure your strategy remains effective.

[Box-Out] Top Tip

Content calendars are an effective tool for both B2B and B2C marketers. By developing seasonal content assets and coinciding campaigns to deliver at key times of year, such as back-to-school, or at the start of the financial year, you can boost relevance and audience engagement.

2. Reduce Complexity

Unnecessary complexity usually stems from inadequate tools or inappropriate processes - which are often a result of organisations not evolving as quickly as their customers. Review both, seeking out unnecessary steps in approval processes, and bottlenecks - such as specialist staff requirements, hard-coded app updates, or software that is no longer fit for purpose. In today’s content intensive landscape, this can help minimise production cost and time-to-market. Implement software tools to manage workflows and enable collaboration.

3. Increase Efficiency

Whilst the demands placed on marketers have undeniably grown in the last decade, the digital tools available to help them meet those demands have also advanced significantly. Modern marketers need to harness modern technology in order to produce more. Perhaps the simplest example of this is process and workflow automation: where previously, human intervention would be required to turn 200 words and several images into customer-facing outputs, such as a blog post and a digital magazine article - modern automation tools can deliver this in real time.

4. Make Content Go Further

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, make the most of your content - past and present. Some good tips here include; importing legacy documents, updating older pieces, and repurposing - can an article become a video? Can a collection of blogs become a dedicated magazine? Injecting interactivity and rich media into previously static assets, and redeploying them through platforms which offer enhanced functionality (such as support and communications, sharing capabilities, bookmarking, and more) can give your content a new lease of life. You can even build out high-performing content assets with ancillary pieces. Explore new content avenues, such as enabling staff to contribute, and incorporating user-generated content into your mix. If budget isn’t an issue, you could consider investing in external content creation.

For new content, where possible, create content in discrete chunks, which can be used in a variety of different configurations depending on your (and the consumer’s) objectives - They’re easy to personalise, and easy to use across channels.

So, whilst the 4 areas above are (at least to some degree) universal, it’s essential that you consider your own organisation - what are your needs, budgets, and capabilities?

Finally, an important concept in content creation is agility. If your strategy or tools are no longer delivering what you need, change them. If customer response to your content is changing, adjust! Creating unsuitable content reduces ROI, by consuming budget and resources.

Build content, adjust frequently, optimise constantly.