Getting to grips with your Content Matrix
“Failing to focus front-line content, whether it’s articles, blogs, customer magazines or industry reports, on exactly what the business is famous for is the most common error when it comes to executing a content strategy,” explains Nick Golding, director at GoldSand Digital.
“Companies lose sight of their main value proposition – the solution that their business brings. When this happens, content becomes vague, divorced from the audience and poor performing.”
For this reason it’s vital that businesses are constantly checking back to re-establish how their content links back to their own value proposition.
The Content Matrix is crucial to this.
The Matrix, that we have consulted on and installed in companies across different sectors and industries enables organisations to realign focus and ensure all stakeholders are working to the same base values. In this article we offer insight into how these frameworks for content add incredible value to strategy and reduce split opinions on how High Performing Content should be created.
Your Matrix is a hierarchy of topics and themes, followed by a set of rules that work most effectively for your audience. Below is an example that we will fill out for a ‘client’ later on.
Approaching a Content Matrix
Delivering High Performing Content involves the process of connecting content to the vision and values of the business, as well as your audience and their need.
Let’s look at a typical type of business we work with in the finance sector, we’ll call them Anglo Bank. Anglo Bank’s mission from a content strategy perspective is to be the number one retail bank for personal financial information.
Their four key objectives are:
- Engage young professionals to utilise mortgage products
- Define our brand as fun, partners for life and always here to help
- Increase market share with over 50’s to 20%
- Create a sustainable content framework to ensure we are the ‘go-to’ bank for advice
When considering audience, Anglo Bank has four primary customer profiles. Each profile has different needs and wants to access information for a specific purpose relevant to them:
Based on workshops run with current Anglo Bank Customers, we were able to establish key drivers specific to each profile – the core reasons behind why their customers are accessing financial information online.
For example, financial anxiety is a key driver for the professional in their 20’s, while the 55+ retired customer is keen to find the best financial advice and information.
Different drivers result in different needs, so while the first example might be looking for advice on personal loans and overdrafts, the second is driven by investment opportunities and pension tools.
Where a company has multiple customer profiles and a variety of services on offer, producing the right content and ensuring the effective targeting of that content is an intricate and complex process.
Constructing a Content Matrix
Let’s start constructing a Content Matrix for Anglo Bank. The first tier should answer the following question: Is the content rooted in the business’ core value proposition?
This refers to the individual products – the services that Anglo Bank is famous for and which, naturally, the wider business objectives are born from.
In the case of Anglo Bank, this includes services such as digital banking, borrowing, personal finance and so on. Every piece of content should tie back to one of these services – the key pillars of their business.
The second tier of the matrix asks:
How is the content being created and for who? This tier focuses both on the customer profile the content is targeting as well as the format and structure of the content itself.
The third tier then helps the business to decide:
How is this content being published and where will get the best results?
The Content Matrix for Anglo Bank could look like this:
Using the Matrix in practice
Let’s imagine Anglo Bank are producing a piece of content and want to focus on their objective to increase market share with over 50s.
We know from our workshops that this customer profile is interested in exciting investment opportunities, and that the type of content they look to engage with is ‘authentic financial advice’.
Based on the current economic uncertainty surrounding Covid-19, Anglo Bank plans to publish a piece of content focused on taking the stress out of investing during a turbulent times.
The content would contain themes around stocks, savings and interest rates, as well as frequency of investments and how to go about investing. They opt for a formal report for a more insightful, authoritative approach.
Before producing the content, Anglo Bank must ensure it stacks up against their Content Matrix, ensuring it crosses each tier and adheres to the base values set out.
So far so good – the report ties back to each and every layer of the Matrix. Before the publishing stage, the last tier of the Matrix (highlighted) asks:
How are we reaching the audience in the best way?
This refers to the channels Anglo Bank uses to seed out the content, and the way they repurpose the content to maximise reach and results. The 55+ age bracket, although digitally savvy, tends to find information via search engines, email and banking websites as opposed to coming across content on social media. Considerations like these are important for Anglo Bank when planning their promotional strategy.
To take this content idea and run it through the Matrix to ensure it will be high performing, aligned with the business objectives and connected to the audience it is intended to reach, would look something like:
Expanding on the Matrix
Once the Content Matrix has been constructed, where next?
At GoldSand Digital, we not only work with our clients to construct a bespoke Matrix but we can also assist with helping to scale communications. To scale effectively, content must follow three specific elements. These are: Themes, Styles and Formats. Where the retired 50+ customer might have the time and inclination to read a formal report, time-poor Gen Z customers might prefer a more succinct checklist guide.
Once agreed, the Matrix is a useful tool to underpin content strategy and ensure the focus of content remains aligned. However, it should be regularly revisited, reassessed and expanded upon to ensure it remains in sync with the visions and wider objectives of the business.
If you are involved in content and communication, we would love to demonstrate the value that a Content Matrix can bring to your business, and to discuss how we can help your content work harder for you.
Get in touch by giving us a call on 020 7287 9233 or email info@goldsanddigital.com