The drawbridge is up. The walls are lined with archers. There are kettles of boiling oil at intervals between them. This is not going to be pleasant.
Getting executive management to agree to try a new approach to marketing can feel a bit like one lone knight storming a well-defended castle. You know there are riches to be had inside, but your odds of getting to them are pretty slim. And when the approach you propose is something radically different than old school marketing, you can expect to see extra kettles looming overhead.
But getting the C-suite to hear you out, and maybe even trust you with the keys to the treasury, is not an impossible task. It just takes some planning and preparation. Below are five tips for increasing your odds of winning this critically important battle.
- Go in with goals. Executives don’t get to their level by being wishful thinkers. Your belief that content marketing is “a great new way to interest people in our products,” no matter how passionately expressed, is not going to sway them. They want to hear numbers. (Protip: know your personas.) So present a plan with detailed figures (estimates on new leads, new newsletter subscribers, etc.) and how you plan to produce them.
- Anticipate objections. You should know how your audience is likely to react to your pitch, and be ready to overcome their reservations. Will they argue that content marketing is too expensive? Too time consuming? Unproven? Too different from what’s driven success in the past? Whatever concerns they voice, you need to be ready with a confident, reassuring response.
- Pitch a pilot project. It only takes a small taste of success to whet an executive’s appetite for more. Rather than suggesting wholesale changes to your marketing strategy, recommend a small pilot project—one that you know can deliver significant results quickly.
- Be resourceful. Odds are your company already has a great deal of “content” if you simply look at existing materials in a new light. You are much more likely to get approval for a content marketing project if you show that you are cost conscious and will find ways to get maximum bang for your buck.
- Play the competitor card. It’s likely that one or more of your competitors is using content marketing to engage prospects. And every prospect they are engaging with is one that you are not. Find examples of how other companies in your industry are using quality content to drive success and tactfully share them. The risk of trying something new tends to look smaller when compared to the risk of being considered a dinosaur.
We don’t have many castles here in Colorado, but as an experienced content marketing agency, we know how to help you scale the walls between you and the management approval you seek. Talk to us about the tremendous success our clients have had and how we can help you meet your marketing objectives as well.
