Cultural Content – How to Advocate for Content Marketing in your Organisation
Guest post from Christina Lister, who's recently written a book on the subject!
Happy New Year Cultural Content-ers, I hope you had a great one. I’ve just got back from a few weeks in Egypt, which was wonderful.
Our first post of 2024 is this excellent guest post from Christina Lister.
Christina is a marketing and audience development consultant working with cultural and heritage organisations, and a Trustee of Kids in Museums. She’s just published “Marketing Strategy for Museums” with Routledge, and Cultural Content readers can get 20% with booking code CC2024. She’s passionate about understanding audiences and advocating for marketing.
I think lots of readers will empathise with the scenario in which digital content effectiveness is stymied by senior management decision making and buy in. This article is about exactly how to mitigate around that.
So, without more ado, here’s the wise words from Christina:
How to advocate for content marketing in your organisation
Introduction
Content marketing – like marketing more broadly – is often misunderstood, and its impact sometimes diminished, in cultural and heritage organisations.
People with responsibility for content marketing in our sector are doing brilliant work. They’re creating relevant, engaging, and meaningful content; supporting marketing, audience development, and engagement goals; juggling a vast brief and countless demands on shrinking budgets; and staying on top of never-ending algorithm changes and platform evolution.
But this isn’t always recognised internally. There can be a reluctance to give content marketing – and those responsible for it – the strategic recognition and resources it deserves. I’m passionate about championing marketing within cultural and heritage organisations, so have been reflecting on how we can shift perceptions. In this article I share some ideas on how we can advocate for content marketing within our organisations.
Common content marketing challenges
There are several common challenges I frequently see across the sector:
Content marketing is often seen as a tactical activity, and sometimes as frivolous.
Content marketing is rarely properly resourced, with no/low budgets and not enough time allocated to its planning, creation, and evaluation.
Where it is evaluated, there’s often a focus on outputs not outcomes.
The starting point for content is often “What do we want or need to tell our audiences?” rather than “What do our audiences want or need from us?”
There’s pressure for promotional output and short-term sales-driven metrics, over content aimed at longer-term brand-building and community-building.
Those with responsibility for content are sometimes unfairly blamed when tickets, events, and performances don’t sell well.
People with responsibility for content are thinly stretched, juggling a range of competing priorities and sometimes unrealistic expectations:
“Make us go viral!”
“Why can’t we be like the The Tank Museum on YouTube?”
“Why aren’t we on Threads?”
Advocating for content marketing internally
Advocating for content marketing internally can be difficult. Here are some ideas that I’ve found useful over the years:
Identify barriers
A good starting point is reflecting on how content marketing is viewed in your organisation. What are the main barriers to content marketing being better understood and resourced? In my experience, the most common barriers interrelate and are a vicious circle. Many people across the organisation:
lack an understanding about content marketing;
don’t see the relevance of it (at least to their role);
lack the time (or don’t see a reason to set aside time) to get to grips with it.
A vicious circle of common barriers to content marketing being seen more strategically
There’s often a tendency for people to just see the end content, without realising how much effort as gone into it (the iceberg analogy is a useful visualisation of this – the smaller, visible tip compared to what’s beneath the surface).
Align your content with your organisation’s strategy
Ensuring your content takes its lead from your organisation’s overall strategy, mission, values, and goals is obvious. But this also needs to be articulated and clear to everyone. What can – and can’t – content marketing achieve? Agree what success looks like and manage expectations. For example, a focus on longer-term brand awareness won’t double visits overnight.
Identify your internal audiences
I find it helpful to split internal audiences into groups. Below is a matrix I’ve used as a prompt to consider how to involve and communicate with different internal stakeholders:
Who do you need to consult about content?
Who will you collaborate with to create content?
Who needs to approve your strategy, budget, or output?
And who do you need to inform and keep in the loop about what’s going on and/or the results?
A matrix template to populate with internal audiences
Think about how best to communicate with different internal audiences – are there existing formats or do you need to create something new like a monthly coffee and cake catch-up, or a Google sheet with the latest data for everyone to access at their convenience?
Understand your internal audiences
Don’t make assumptions about other peoples’ understanding and knowledge about content marketing. Avoid (or explain) jargon and terms that some people may be unfamiliar with. Even definitions of commonly used terms such as “marketing” and “engagement” can vary enormously.
Different people will have different requirements:
Someone from the learning team wanting support with promoting a workshop will have different needs to a trustee looking through board papers;
Some people love statistics, whilst others need to see examples or visuals to bring points to life;
Some people just want the minimum necessary information whilst others prefer context;
Some people prefer to digest reports at a time that suits them; others prefer a meeting where someone can talk them through the highlights and answer questions.
Speak in the language that your target internal audience is comfortable with – is it about KPIs, data, and metrics? Or about Return on Investment? Or a quote that summarises how audiences were moved by a piece of content? If you don’t know, try to find out.
And ultimately, don’t take it personally if/when others aren’t interested in your work. Chances are they are (understandably) preoccupied with their own overflowing inbox and plate-spinning.
Share meaningful evaluation
Measure what you and your organisation value and avoid the temptation to value (and share) just those vanity metrics. Link the difference and impact that content is making towards your organisation’s overall goals. Share the evaluation in a format that works for its intended audience. For example:
A one-page infographic snapshot.
A key headline of the main story that your evaluation tells that month, quarter, or year.
Progress tracked against KPIs, shown visually in graphs.
Traffic light colour-coding to show at a glance what’s working well and where there’s still work to be done.
Screengrabs or links to examples that bring key points to life or showcase successes, trends, or something that didn’t work alongside a succinct explainer.
A featured “Content of the month” and explanation why you chose it.
Joined-up evaluation that draws on data from other departments to set content marketing into the bigger picture.
I really like the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ format (Rolfe et al), a simple framework where you reflect on and share:
The What: A summary of the data.
The So what: The implications, the insights, what the data means.
The Now what: The next steps or recommendations as a result.
It can be easy to focus on the What, but this tends to be descriptive and can end up overwhelming people with data. Ultimately, the So what and Now what are where the magic tends to happen!
Involve colleagues
Involving colleagues in your content planning, creation, and evaluation increases their understanding of content marketing, and usually their buy-in too. It also brings together a range of perspectives, experiences, and knowledge. Example workshops include generating content themes and ideas, tone of voice and personality workshops, and audience journey mapping.
Audience journey mapping works well with input from people beyond marketing, for example visitor experience, engagement, audience research, events, membership, and fundraising. It encourages everyone to think about content as more than just an awareness-raising or promotional tool. It helps you to think from an audience perspective and to plan content for different stages in a typical audience journey, so that audiences receive appropriate content, messages at an appropriate time on appropriate platforms/channels.
An example audience journey mapping table that can be populated with ideas
Be clear on what you’re after
If you need something from someone (ideas, approval, information, access to something), consider the best timing – when will people be most receptive to your requests? And what format is most appropriate, for example an email, a meeting, or an informal question at the kettle?
If you’re after content contributions (and to prevent well-intentioned but unrealistic requests), provide a list with parameters and examples. If asking for more resources, can you show what impact this is likely to have? For example, in terms of increased output, engagement, improved team wellbeing? Can you use any sector benchmarking data to help your case (for example from One Further’s Cultural Content report or the Arts Marketing Association’s benchmarking resources)? Do your homework – anticipate problems or likely follow-up questions and prepare responses. In many cases, building up a breadcrumb trail that reinforces and leads to a big request over time can be more successful, than what is seemingly a request out of the blue.
Build your visibility
Whilst doing good work that meets agreed goals can build trust and credibility, unfortunately, hard work doesn’t always equate to recognition or being valued. Building your visibility within an organisation can feel icky – I’m naturally someone who prefers to knuckle down and hope my work will speak for itself. But that isn’t always the case, especially in large and/or multi-site organisations, or those with lots of people working from home. Increasing your visibility is likely to increase your influence. Refer back to the internal stakeholder matrix and consider if there are any key relationships you need to develop. Be proactive; share your expertise, experiences, and ideas; show an interest in others’ work; celebrate colleagues’ achievements; ask for feedback and input.
Shout about your successes
And finally, shout about your successes! I still come across senior managers and trustees who won’t pay attention to content marketing achievements unless it’s written about in traditional media or it’s validated through acknowledgement by their peers … Don’t be shy, no-one else can be expected to do this for you. So, enter those awards, apply to speak at sector events and conferences, and chat to your PR/media team about sharing your successes.
That’s it for this week, have a happy camel to round out your week