So, you’ve been considering utilizing syndicated or templated content as part of your MSP marketing strategy. But there are a number of things that you have to consider that could actually be detrimental to all the work that you’ve been doing on your website.
First of all, purchased, or syndicated content isn’t original. It’s directly lifted from another source and republished onto your website or blog. Google’s syndication guidelines clearly state that the page needs to end with a direction to the original source as a page URL. This means that even if visitors to your site thought your team was producing some great work, they’ll be sorely disappointed when they get to the end to discover the content wasn’t actually your thought leadership.
We understand your challenges though. Marketers the world over are finding less and less time to craft original, well-thought out pieces.
- The top content marketing challenges, according to the Content Marketing Institute, are
- Producing engaging content (60%)
- Measuring content effectiveness (57%)
- Producing consistently (57%)
- Measuring ROI (52%)
- No budget (35%)
- Therefore, the top most outsourced marketing activities include writing and design at 44% and 41% respectively. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
- According to eMarketer, 40% of respondents said they lack an effective content strategy.
However, the answer to these challenges is not in syndicated content. This type of content means exactly what is says it is. It’s “Pre-Packaged Content for MSPs” including blogs, pre-written emails, and social media posts. A number of firms that we’ve spoken with have taken advantage of content marketing services like these. The end result? No additional leads, and declining conversion (unless your baseline was 0 in which case you might have seen a small lift — but don’t get excited, this is not long term!)
These assets rarely match your brand voice, and aren’t targeted to your buyers. which is why Contently reports that 68% of marketers prefer original content over licensed content.
As a content marketing agency, we agree with the majority. Original, unique content is what makes your brand stand out. Combined with SEO that generates traffic directly related to their searches, your blog and website content differentiates you from the rest of the crowd, and positions your IT firm as a leader.
The Disadvantages of Syndicated Content:
It’s Detrimental to SEO
Google likes fresh, unique content. This isn’t the case with syndicated content. A disclaimer at the bottom of your page directs your visitors back to the original posting site, and a tag in your HTML also directs Google robots back to the original site. While this reduces duplicate content bad juju, it doesn’t add anything to your SEO rankings. It’s just content for the sake of content. You get zero SEO value from this. Further, if the majority of your site’s content comes from duplicated pages, the value of that small portion which IS unique will rapidly diminish over time.
- Search engines will actually credit and rank only the one original content publisher site that has that article. Since you and everyone else is actually linking back to the original you are infact boosting your vendor’s SEO and they are charging you for it!! feeling cheated?
- The Core Panda update in January 2016 is all about eliminating spammy, low quality, and duplicated content. All adjectives we would use to describe syndicated content.
You don’t stand out and you shoot your sales reps in the feet
If you’re positioning yourself as a value-added reseller, wouldn’t you want to add value to your content? Think about it this way: If you received the same email from two different vendors, what would you think of them? That’s what syndicated content does to your brand. As 67% of B2B buyers rely on search content to make buying decisions, not being able to find you on SERPs, or seeing duplicated content isn’t doing much for your branding, or for your sales. (DemandGen Report).
- The plug-and-play content model is great if you don’t care about your professional services branding, image, or company differentiators. But one size does not fit all, your brand identity should be in everything you do.
- In IT marketing, your target buyers span job titles from marketing managers, to CEO’s, to IT managers. Industry-specific jargon is only suitable to one of those target markets, you need content that addresses your buyer directly.
- If your sales reps did a great job positioning your firm, and then all of a sudden your lead starts receiving the same emails and reads the same blogs on your site as they did on a competitor’s site, all that effort goes down the drain and you have one pissed off and confused set of sales reps.
The conversion sucks: No leads = No revenue
- What would you rather? A website that generates a tonne of traffic, but no leads, or an average-sized amount of traffic that generates more than an average amount of qualified leads?
IT changes quickly – is the article even still relevant?
News stories, updates to software, and opinions on new tech are obviously timely in nature. Reposting articles on these subjects may actually do you more harm than good in terms of trying to boost your thought leadership.
The fact of the matter is that if you’re not clearly defining your unique value proposition, providing your readers value, and nurturing them along their sales cycle in your brand voice, it’s all too easy to lose leads to another firm who is doing better inbound marketing.
Content Marketing Works For IT Companies, MSPs & SaaS, when it’s done right.
There’s a reason marketers the world over claim success from content marketing services and strategies. You can’t just spray and pray, however, content isn’t simply about words on a page. It’s about getting the right message out to the right people and then measuring your successes and making changes based on the data.
- For 2014, B2B content marketers’ top goal was creating more engaging content.
- For inbound marketers who measure their ROI, they’re 12 times more likely to generate a return.
- Making blogging a priority resulted in a positive ROI 13 times more than those who didn’t focus on creating custom content .
What does “doing it right” mean?
We can’t stress enough that your content needs to be personalized to your buyer personas. This content ranges from blogs to email messages to landing pages.
The goal in creating unique content isn’t just pushing it out and forgetting about it, though. You can take that content and repurpose or curate it later with more insight, a counter argument, an infographic, or even by fleshing out an entire webinar based on the topic.
The ideal mix of content types is 65% original, 25% curated (reworked from your original research or topics) and less than 10% syndicated content.
If your IT content strategy is more than 80% syndicated content, you’re not getting the kind of ROI that you could be getting with original content. As a content marketing agency, our writers at Jumpfactor knows a thing or two about creating original, researched, and interesting content that generates leads and sales as part of our IT, MSP & SaaS marketing services.
Get in touch with our team today to get started on a content marketing strategy that builds your brand voice, while building your leads.
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