There are a ton of content options available to marketers today, and choosing the right mix is critical to success.

But how do you know what content is best? How do you know what content works where?

To answer those critical questions, conduct a basic marketing audit that builds a matrix around the type of content mapped to the stage your buyer is at in their purchase decision.  There are five general stages of the buyer’s cycle: general education, business case development, implementation scenarios, shortlist creation, and final decision. Once you determine where your prospect is at, validate the assumption by using Google Adwords, phone interviews, and/or online surveys.

Example: a small IT software company (revenue 230M) is launching a new product targeting system admins. The company has a strong vertical market focus in healthcare SMBs. After basic audit, we determine the product solves a very big problem, but the nature of the problem isn’t 100% clear to the prospects. We need to build clarity around the issues and trends with the solution. We need to foster discussion, and be visible. This is, therefore, a general education campaign – and so we need to map content that works well at early stages of the sales cycle.  So what content works best here? Essentially any content that is high level, including white papers, general blog topics and publication editorials. We want to stay away from social networks, wikis, discussion forums, case studies/success stories, product demos, and in-depth videos.  We do a teaser Adwords campaign to see what type of content would be clicked on the most, and we validate further with an online survey from a list purchased form a leading health care content publication. Turns out – this audience loves white papers more than general videos, blogs, or third party editorials.  We end up delivering a white paper that clarifies the situation, and exposes the audience to our solution.