Your brand needs a steady stream of content to feed tactics, audiences, and campaigns. It’s the fuel to your inbound engine, making an impact across all channels and buying stages. But how much content do you really need?
The answer? It depends. We know that B2B buyers consume an average of 13 pieces of content during the buying journey. Their consumption ranges from top to mid to bottom of the funnel, and audiences find 70 percent of it on the company’s website. So, that’s a benchmark to consider when defining the stages and interactions of your audience’s buying cycle.
How much content you need depends on:
- Buyer expectations
- The complexity of the buying cycle and product or service
- The goal of the campaign
- Data insights on performance taken from content analytics
In this post, we’ll look at a variety of channels. Then align content needs and throughput with objectives and audience demands.
How Much Content Do You Need for Your Blog?
Your company blog is your primary content channel. It’s the library of resources you create to solve problems, provide thought leadership, and demonstrate the effectiveness of your product or service.
There’s lots of data around blog publishing frequency that tends to align with more posts equal more traffic. However, the ideal amount of production doesn’t exist. Too many factors impact this, including the industry, the audience acumen, internal resources, and content marketing operations efficiency.
You also don’t ever want to end up in the position of quantity over quality. You can crank content out that’s all fluff and no substance. You may initially see some organic lift, but it won’t convert consumers to customers.
Identifying the right production frequency includes diving into your data and analytics to determine:
- The traffic your content drives to your site via organic search and other referrers (social media, third-party sites, etc.)
- The clicks your content receives from these sources
- The conversion rate from content to lead
- The overall role of content in pushing a prospect down the funnel
Based on those insights and your production capabilities, you can land on a number that you can confirm drives traffic, clicks, and conversions.
How Much Content Do You Need for a Website?
In this category, we’ll look at content outside your blog. Those would include:
- Home pages
- Service or product pages
- Process or “how does it work” pages
- By audience profile pages
- About, team, and culture pages
- Pillar pages
You don’t want your website to be overwhelming, and that’s a significant possibility with large enterprises. You have so many layers of products, solutions, and locations that your static page count is high.
In any case, organizing your content and your navigation hierarchy is critical to delivering a good user experience. Again, there’s no hard rule of what you need. Rather, consider these questions:
- Does having specific pages for roles or industries lead to better engagement?
- Does each static page have a purpose for the audience?
- What does any prospect need to evaluate your company?
- How long does a user stay on your site, and how many pages, on average, do they visit?
- Are there reasons to have pages purely for the SEO benefit?
- Where do new users land on your website (home page, blog, product page)?
How Much Content Do You Need for Paid Search Campaigns?
Another channel that requires content is paid search. How much content you need for one depends on your strategy and objective. Where are you trying to meet buyers in the funnel? That’s the first question.
If it’s top-of-the-funnel (ToFU), you may be offering a gated content asset. If it’s bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFU), you likely send them to a product page or a conversion-centered design offer page for a demo or consultation.
Initially, you just need that starter or finish type of content. But with ToFU or middle-of-the-funnel (MoFU), you’re going to need to nurture them.
How Much Content Do You Need for an Email Nurture Series?
Email nurture campaigns are pivotal to moving the prospect toward the purchase. It typically covers all three funnel stages. The length will depend on your industry, product or service, audience, and more.
For example, if you’re launching a new type of technology tool to an audience with little awareness, your nurture track will be longer. You have to lay the foundation of acknowledging their challenge and introducing a new solution. Then you build trust and credibility with proof points. Then you explain why the time is now to get started.
Data can help you here as well, as you assess the performance of previous campaigns.
More Best Practices About Content Production
Some overarching elements should be a consideration for any channel and the content you need to provide results.
- Define what you can consistently produce each month: This should be a realistic amount based on your resources. If you want to monitor and measure this, it’s possible with a content marketing platform that provides analytics on how your team is doing.
- Understand what your audience expects: Based on your internal data that shows the average path of a buyer from awareness to decision, you can assess what they want. Longer buying cycles usually mean more content. Others are quicker.
- Diversify your content mix: No matter the channel, different types of content are important. People learn in different ways and have unique preferences. However, don’t let this strain your team. You can often repurpose content from one format to the next.
Mastering the Content Workflow: Getting What You Need with Help from Tech
Meeting content throughput goals requires workflows that solve inefficiencies and boost productivity. When you use a content marketing platform, you manage all projects from a central dynamic content calendar. You have content workflows that include every task for a project. You also have tools for planning, publishing, and promoting.
Work collaboratively and more effectively with the help of tech like DivvyHQ. See how it can support your content production needs by starting a free trial.