Content Factory Models: A Better Way to Build a Content Strategy

I’ve heard about extra organizations kick-starting their content marketing strategy recently. That’s a welcome change from the previous 12 months, when groups hunkered down to determine generative AI and all of the modifications in social media and search.

However I too usually hear these groups say they’re attempting to rebuild their airplanes whereas flying them.

I don’t know the place that phrase originated, however a 22-year-old promoting marketing campaign from Fallon for digital consulting agency EDS helped popularize it. The comical TV and print ad confirmed folks assembling an airliner within the air and professing how a lot they love their jobs.

The advert’s tagline defined that EDS might provide help to “construct your digital enterprise even whilst you’re up and operating.”

Fallon created the advert as a part of an built-in marketing campaign with two different humorous movies: Cat Herders, about managing the complexity of digital enterprise, and Running With the Squirrels, which claimed EDS might assist legacy companies compete like disruptive startups.

Any certainly one of these advertisements can be related in 2024.

However let’s discover why it’s time to floor the “construct the aircraft whereas flying it” method to new content material advertising initiatives as soon as and for all.

The frustration of in-flight building

The to-do record for implementing a brand new (or rebooted) content material advertising initiative consists of:

It’s lots. Frustration units in rapidly when group leads notice they will’t shut something down whereas they work to implement all the brand new concepts. And everyone else is busy, too. All of them nonetheless have to launch campaigns, write weblog posts, craft occasion supplies, and feed content material to the web site, all whereas attempting to grasp know-how they haven’t absolutely carried out.

I lately labored with a B2C e-commerce firm that recognized an thrilling new mission: a brand new bodily occasion supported by a digital hub and publication that might construct an addressable viewers. 

The issue: It required cross-functional assist throughout a number of advertising and know-how groups. Nobody on these groups had additional bandwidth or sources to dedicate to the brand new initiative. And nobody wished to surrender on present initiatives to make room for the brand new one.

They didn’t need to construct a brand new aircraft whereas flying the present one.

So, what’s the reply? It’s easy: Cease constructing planes for a bit.  

New methods, not new techniques

Every time advertising groups cite the airplane cliché, I counsel a spin on the metaphor: Don’t attempt to construct one other airplane whereas flying the present one. As a substitute, let the present planes fly whilst you construct an airplane manufacturing facility.

Let me clarify.

I lately labored with a shopper within the B2B know-how house. Enabling content material (academic content material that helps clients enhance at their jobs) is scorching in that house.

My shopper initially deliberate to faucet its digital and PR groups to change the present PR newsrooms on its web site to create a brand new on-line studying platform. However neither the newsroom nor the web site suited that content material advertising technique.

All the things from the web site hierarchy to the audiences it interested in the know-how platform it ran on posed challenges to the brand new mission’s success. The content material group wished to construct a brand new studying vacation spot utilizing totally different know-how.

Nonetheless, the agency’s present processes had been constructed to focus all digital efforts — and paid and earned media — on its web site. So enterprise leaders resisted.

They stated, “We have already got this know-how and that group with that talent set. Why don’t we simply use what we have now?”

It was as if the corporate stated, “OK, you may convey us into the jetliner age — so long as you do it by repairing and upgrading our propeller aircraft whereas it’s within the air.”

As a substitute of urgent ahead by explaining why the brand new mission wanted this or that, the content material leads discovered a special reply. They pulled again and audited all the present groups, workflows, applied sciences, and processes used for content material advertising throughout the enterprise. And so they discovered that the corporate had room to do one thing new.

To tie into the metaphor, they discovered that by altering how they manufactured all airplanes, they may improve their manufacturing facility to deal with new initiatives with out having to rebuild previous ones whereas within the air.

Dealing with sustaining vs. disruptive innovation

The thought for my airplane manufacturing facility metaphor comes from Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf.

When the article got here out in 2000, companies confronted disruptions because of the development of the web and globalization. And its recommendation stays related as firms grapple with the disruption of generative AI.

The article explores how to reply to disruptive improvements, which create one thing totally new (e.g., launching a web-based college), vs. sustaining improvements, which enhance one thing already thought of worthwhile (e.g., changing inventory images with AI-generated imagery).

The authors advise towards approaching disruptive innovation the way in which you’d method altering one thing present. As a substitute, you must method it as constructing one thing inside a brand new organizational house.

That’s what my know-how firm shopper did.

I do know – as a result of I meet them day by day – that content material and advertising practitioners are scrappy, resourceful, and progressive. Requests to construct the content material equal of latest airplanes are available in on a regular basis.

And I do know content material groups can hack planes collectively and handle some repairs and modifications mid-flight. However whenever you’re rolling out a brand new content material advertising mission, it’s extra productive to arrange a brand new house.

Christensen and Overdorf define 3 ways to create this new organizational house:

1. You’ll be able to create a brand new group throughout the present organizational construction.
2. You’ll be able to spin out a brand new and unbiased group from the construction.
3. You’ll be able to purchase a special group that turns into a brand new a part of your present construction.

Create a brand new house for brand spanking new content material initiatives

Each profitable new content material technique follows a type of three choices. Listed below are some examples of every method.

1. A brand new content material group throughout the present organizational construction: When a brand new content material group will get formalized, named, and documented, the prospect for achievement instantly improves. Pink Hat Linux provides an amazing instance. At Pink Hat, for instance, Laura Barnes (2019 B2B Content material Marketer of the Yr) created a brand new strategic group to deal with all of the group’s content material advertising. Over time, the group has grown, modified, and morphed because the group has developed. And it stays a core piece of the corporate’s technique.
2. A brand new group separate from the present construction: Content material as a strategic operate in an enterprise is a robust enterprise mannequin. When ServiceNow wished to construct an viewers by means of thought management, for instance, it didn’t add new e-books, movies, or white papers to the advertising group’s load. As a substitute, it constructed a devoted content material product group and launched Workflow, a digital publication, together with on-line studying, a print journal, and an electronic mail publication.
3. A newly acquired group: Content material model acquisitions proceed. For instance, software program firm Pendo acquired Mind the Product, a product administration neighborhood that gives content material, coaching, and conferences that serve a worldwide viewers of greater than 300,000 product managers, designers, and builders.

No matter which method your group takes, step one on the street to content material advertising success entails making a manufacturing facility that permits you to construct any sort of airplane you need.

Doing that gained’t fully remove the necessity to construct airplanes whereas flying them. However for those who count on to remain within the air, you’ll sometimes have to return again to Earth to construct one thing new from the bottom up.

It’s your story. Inform it properly.