How Agile Content Marketing Powers Up Your Sales Funnel

Staying Agile. Staying Fresh.

One of the biggest challenges for modern marketers is how to structure your staff and set them up for success. With so many platforms to engage in, emerging technologies to learn, and an audience with a decreasing attention span, it’s difficult to know where to start and how to focus your departments for maximum impact.
It’s not uncommon to see this handled with a structure by channel: content channel, social media campaign channel, partnership channel. Each channel then has its own team with their own objectives and KPIs.
While this ensures all areas are fully tended to, Dan has learned that what you make up for in coverage, you lose in agility and efficiency. The solution to having your cake and eating it too is to evenly distribute your workforce throughout a series of interdisciplinary squads that work and communicate across channels towards a common goal.
Dan’s successful implementation of this structure has given him unique insight into the pros and cons of existing setups and knowing when it’s time for a change. His knowledge is a valuable tool for any marketing manager looking to revolutionize their approach to content.

In This Episode

• How the traditional marketing channel structure leads to bumping against each other and wasted resources
• Why agility means being able to accomplish objectives without needing to go outside the squad
• How cross-functional teams lead to a deeper dive into understanding the buyer’s journey
• The importance of super-groups in cross-team communication

Quotes From This Episode

“Squads are interdisciplinary teams made up of a combination of content creators and designers and strategists, each of which is responsible for a different point in our buyer journey.” —@danjl
“If somebody still wants to specialize and grow within their discipline, there’s an opportunity to do that within the chapter. If they want to stretch out a little bit and become more of a full-stack marketer, then the squad structure is a good opportunity for that as well.” —@danjl
“It’s really important for all the team members to be fully focused on their squad work and not being pulled in different directions.” —@danjl
“You have to leave room for a certain amount of serendipity. It’s important to focus on your KPIs but not become a slave to them.” —@danjl

“Leads is how we measure whether what you’re doing is effective. Your mission is actually to grow awareness of our brand and our product, and that’s much broader than just lead generation.” —@danjl

“We’re making sure we are planning as a department what we’re focusing on and what those bigger themes are for that quarter.” —@danjl
“We’re targeting different parts of the funnel or the buyer journey, but ultimately it is the same people that are going through this journey.” —@danjl
“Things like personas and customer voice need to be shared across the journey and not just be the purview of one specific squad.” —@danjl

Resources

• Dan Levy on Twitter: @danjl
• Unbounce
• Call to Action Podcast
• Walk Before You Sprint

What is one key takeaway from Content Marketing World 2016?

There is a growing idea around “slow content” which is you shouldn’t be a slave to your editorial calendar. You should always lead with your business goals, you should do things because they have a goal attached to them and not just because there was a slot on the calendar that you have to fill up. Don’t put out content for the sake of it, and that way every piece of content will be more thoughtful, more effective, and also more campaign-centered.