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Content StrategyField Notes

Field Notes #002: Your Content Program During a Recession

Your content program during a recession

Where does content fit in during a recession?

That’s one of the many questions every demand gen leader has to answer as they reallocate budget and figure out how to continue driving growth in marketing while slashing budgets.

We’re biased but we believe content has a place in every demand gen program.

That doesn’t mean you should allocate all spend to just content production. You definitely should not do that if your paid marketing has a great ROAS.

But regardless of whether it’s a podcast, blog content, or a video series, content is worth investing in to make your demand gen program recession-proof.

Here’s why and how:

1. Content can be repurposed for multiple jobs.

This means you can be economically efficient with content:

  • Podcast and videos turned into blogs or ebooks
  • Blogs turned into email campaigns
  • Email copy turned into social media copy and snippets
  • Team discussions turned into podcast episodes

…so on, and so forth.

Moreover, these different pieces of content can be used for lead-gen campaigns.

Rule of thumb: If you write something and think “Damn, that’s good,” consider promoting it on multiple channels where your audience spends their time.

2. Content can generate organic traffic for the long term when done with SEO in mind.

Really important if you’re cutting ad budget.

It’s not actually “free” traffic but the upfront investment will pay long-term dividends vs the hamster wheel of paid ads.

3. Content can be used for sales enablement

This is the most forgotten use case for content.

If your sales team runs into the same objections over and over, create content that addresses those objections at scale.

Bonus points for also optimizing that content for folks to find it on Google.

4. Content is how you distribute your unique opinions on the market and industry.

Most software are commodities, and the best companies differentiate through product marketing and positioning.

Most people think thought leadership is a content type—nope, it’s a content goal.

Get your unique perspectives and positioning out there with content. 

Yes, I’m completely biased because I run a content marketing agency for B2B software companies, but we’ve helped businesses do exactly this.

We’ve also grown our business with no paid ads and know other businesses who are doing the same.

I’m happy to chat if you’re trying to figure out what type of content program to build with a small budget. I won’t even sell you on our agency services. I just want to be a partner in brainstorming what it might look like for your company.

If you’re interested, feel free to respond to this email with “let’s chat,” and we’ll find some time.

  1. Write content for keywords with zero search volume: Sounds counterintuitive. How do you expect to grow traffic if there’s no one searching for those keywords? Well, those tools that estimate search volume are helpful but not always accurate.
  2. Twitter’s new feature for longer posts: Who knows if this will actually on, but Twitter is a big platform for businesses and thought leaders to get their ideas out into the world. It’s not available to everyone yet so it’s worth being aware of the feature, and potentially worth testing out when it’s available generally.
  3. The Content Optimization Bible: Comprehensive 22-Point Guide: If you already have a large portfolio of content, you might be cutting spend but you also know you can get more out of that content. This guide will help you do that.
David Khim

David is co-founder and CEO of Omniscient Digital. He previously served as head of growth at People.ai and Fishtown Analytics, and before that was growth product manager at HubSpot where he worked on new user acquisition initiatives to scale the product-led go-to-market.