Businesses today have a solid understanding of what content they need to push in order to maintain the traffic to their pages. Most of the content that is pushed can be a tremendous help in keeping in touch with what the company is doing to keep its consumers engaged. But, when is that content too much? When do you know you need to trim some of the proverbial fat that will help streamline and optimize the information that will keep your engagement running at peak efficiency?

When Is It Time To Perform a Content Audit?

When you feel that your content is over-saturated and that it’s not reaching the target audience as much as it should, it may be time to consider a content audit. While that may sound like a scary term, we can assure you, it’s bark is much worse than its bite. While you may be thinking ”When will I know for sure when it’s time to audit my content?”. There are a multitude of reasons why that might need to be assessed, and we’re going to break those down for you here.

One of the main reasons for considering auditing your content is if your content output isn’t reaching all the qualified leads. An interesting statistic to consider is that one-third of B2B marketers don’t track where their leads come from. If you think this may be your business, this is a big step in the start of streamlining your content into reaching that target audience. A way to fix this issue is to reevaluate the content that has been put out and make sure that it fits the buyer persona of the leads you’re trying to reach. Once you’ve revisited the content, you should notice a shift in the number of qualified leads that are consuming your content. By adjusting this information, you’ve addressed the specific needs or pain points of your target audience.

Include Sales On The Content Audit Process

Another avenue that may require the attention of your marketing team is if your blogs don’t play a role in your sales. Statistics show that B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than marketers who don’t. While that may mean starting blogging, it also may be because the lines between the marketing and sales teams are blurred. When blogging, your information should help push leads over to the sales team, which in turn helps create qualified leads. Blogs can also help leads be more aware and help guide them along throughout the decision stages of the buying process.

Does The Strategy Match The Content?

Sometimes some of the issues that arise are due to the content strategy may not tie together with the sales strategy. If the information in your content aids the sales process, you can increase the number and/or quality of “sales-ready leads”. So don’t panic and change the sales process! Take some time and revisit the content you have, it might just be a simple touch-up on some blogs or other content. 

Some of these things above are what to look out for when performing content audits. However, even listing some of these things, there are still multiple things that can be targeted when trying to pin down the content audit. When looking at your content, consider how you would answer each of the following points.

What Drives The Content?

When composing your content, is it “value-driven”? Your content should align with the companies value proposition. When your key value points relate to your customer and the content reflects their key value points, you can verify that your content has been correctly streamlined. So ask yourself: Does our companies value align with the content? Will your consumers relate with your key values?

Is the content “persona-driven”? Your buyer personas are a powerful tool that can help narrow down your target demographic and find the qualified leads that will benefit your business the most qualified leads. So ask yourself: Does my content line up with the current buyer persona I have? If I add a new persona to this content, will it carry over and relate to that target as well?

Are your contents driven by results? Your content that gets produced should help convert leads and sales opportunities while also leading target audiences to produce results. Ask yourself: Does your content convert leads into customers? Is your current content creating results?

Do Your Teams Align With Each Other?

Are the sales and marketing teams aligned? By making sure each of these teams are symbiotic and benefit from each other, you can assure that your results are going to follow suit. Ask yourself: Are my sales and marketing teams aligned to fit the success of the content for each other? Are the teams meeting on a consistent basis?

If you have read over the last few points and answered no to any of the previous questions, it’s time to audit! Many of these things are small and may boost your business’ efficiency and reel in more qualified leads for your business. All that being said, content auditing doesn’t seem so scary anymore does it? Get out there and streamline your content today!

For more information on topics like this, head over to our blog.