Good intentions, great content – a simple framework for marketing success

Understanding why marketing content needs to be tied to the ‘intention’ of your firm and its brand is the first step in creating meaningful digital interactions with clients, writes Leticia Mooney.

If you have paid attention to digital marketing discourse in the past few years, you will have noticed an increasing trend towards content production. From blogs and vlogs to podcasts and webinars, you could be forgiven for thinking that you need to be running a media company just to stay visible.

As firms weigh up their options in this space, there are some common questions and objections. Some of the most obvious objections are around resourcing and time allocation to deliver such content. But the questions go deeper: How do you sustain it? How much scope is there to write material without delving into legal advice? And isn’t everyone doing the same thing?

They are real and important concerns and – apart from the issue around legal advice – apply to almost every sector. Such trepidation is not surprising because content is not your core business.

Not having a framework results in noise

When you create content it is important to have a framework to ensure your material is relevant to your audience, otherwise you end up just making a whole lot of noise. Yes, ‘noise’ is the official term for it. It is content that is fluffy, adds nothing meaningful and leaves you with nothing of value.

As the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi, writes: “The companies that fail to tell a different story will fail. The companies that don’t consistently deliver will fail. Those that find a content niche where they can be the leading expert in the world, then develop a platform of consistent and useful content … will succeed.”

Others argue that content noise is a result of a lack of empathy: that is, you do not understand your audience sufficiently to know what they want to read, and which problems they need solved. That is a recipe for failure.

Meaningful digital interactions begin with your intention

Very often, articles about content strategy discuss the importance of knowing the purpose of your content: whether it is to inform, entertain or help your clients. Few broach the topic of the ‘intention’ of your business.

The intention of your business exists over and above your vision and mission. Your vision is all about where you want to be at some point in the future. Your mission is your high-level purpose. But your intention is much more meaningful. Expressed correctly, the intention of your business will identify what you hope to achieve, for whom, and by when.

Understanding this factor does some critical things for you and your firm. The most obvious point is that a correctly conceived intention is goal driven and measurable. The most important thing is that your intention instantly gives your content a strategic imperative.

How business intention supports your content creation

The intention that drives your business supports content creation in multiple ways. The first is that it gives your team’s content effort real meaning, which addresses the key objection that it is not core business. For example, if your team’s intention is to support indigenous communities by providing access to low-cost legal services – and you’ve identified that offering free resources online is one way to do that – then your content efforts absolutely support your business strategy.

The second way in which business intention supports your content creation is that it gives your topics, types and formats meaningful shape. You don’t have to think about for whom you are producing content because that’s already clear. You don’t have to think about why you’re doing it because that’s clear, too. The topics that you add to your content calendar are shaped by the combination of the two.

Taking the foregoing example, this might include guidelines, explainer videos, case studies and success stories.

With the right framework, every piece of content you create will be meaningful

While this is a very simple framework, it is extremely effective. The intention of your firm is like a thumbprint: it should be unique to you and your team, and your own culture. The quote ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’, widely (though perhaps erroneously) attributed to Peter Drucker, may be apt. People can copy your strategy, but it’s your culture that makes your firm bulletproof.

More important than you and your firm is how your audience perceives your business and your brand, based on the content you produce. This intention-content alignment and its outcomes can’t help but create useful materials for your audience. Just as importantly, for firms that are serious about their connection with people, the small amount of content-creation effort upfront will pay itself back in spades.

How to find your intention

Step 1: Determining your firm’s intention can be as easy as getting senior leaders together for brainstorming sessions. However, for many firms, spending a day in what’s known as a ‘message architecture’ exercise can be more valuable because achieving consensus is more likely.

Step 2: With such an exercise, give considerable thought to the following questions. What does the firm as a whole intend to do? Who for? And why? Does your mission and vision align with this intention? What’s missing?

Step 3: After your senior leaders debate those questions, they should determine the firm’s intention by using the following formula, which demands clarity and precision: (Firm name) intends to (do this thing) for (these people or businesses) by (timeframe).

Case study: National Native Title Tribunal

The National Native Title Tribunal makes decisions, conducts inquiries and assists a range of parties with native title applications and indigenous land-use agreements. It worked with content-strategy firm Brutal Pixie a couple of years ago to define its key message and to better understand its direction. You could argue that the intention of this organisation is crystal clear, governed as it is by the Native Title Act 1993. In doing so, though, you would be making an assumption that everyone within the organisation understands the Act in the same way.

The National Native Title Tribunal chose to go through a ‘message architecture’ process to gain consensus around what the tribunal is, and what it needs to be in future. The process required deep, sometimes difficult, conversations, and it took close to eight hours to reach consensus. The participants included the board, key staff and members.

Getting such broad participation results in clearer and more accurate outcomes. It ensures a broader view of an organisation’s views. In many cases, senior leadership’s idea about an organisation and its intention can be very different to those on the front line.

The outcome of the exercise was a set of clear statements about the tribunal which have since served to underpin how it communicates about itself.

Here is what the National Native Title Tribunal had to say about the process: “It was a great chance to contribute our views about what attributes the tribunal needs to develop as an organisation to ensure we are a valuable leader in native title into the future. There was a significant amount of consensus and much discussion when it came to prioritising the key attributes the organisation requires. This included some attributes the organisation has but needs to build on, such as our native title knowledge, and also being a more innovative organisation and more in touch with the external native title environment.”

Leticia Mooney is a content strategist for the legal profession and the director of content-strategy firm, Brutal Pixie. She can be contacted on email at leticia@brutalpixie.com.