Join Purna in this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday as she reveals how to create high-impact content using backward design, a strategic approach that prioritizes measurement to achieve better marketing results.

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Hi. Welcome to this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Purna, and I'm going to show you how to create high-impact content using backward design. That's right, I'm going to show you how to aim backwards. 

Now what does it mean to aim backwards? It means to put measurement first before anything else. 

Now I'm the type of person that enjoys a good spoiler. I sometimes will want to read the last page of the book before I read the first one, and that's just because I really want to know what happens at the end. So in that same way, knowing what to measure and knowing what outcomes I'm going to get from my campaigns helps me make sure that I'm moving in the right, highest-value direction. 

As marketers, we can sometimes fall into the trap, or actually we can usually fall into the trap of starting with creating our content first. Then we'll distribute it, and then we'll wait to see what happens. What were the outcomes when we go and measure? There's an element of leaving things to chance that we can optimize if we use backward design. 

Now backward design is a process that I have adapted from the world of instructional design, but it works brilliantly for content marketing. With backward design, you flip the approach completely. You start with the business outcomes in mind. You want to start by what your business would define as success. What your CFO would consider as success.

So let me use an example. Let's say you and I, we’re now working for Fancy Schmancy Smart Car Company. We have a brand-new smart car coming out, and it's our job as marketers to generate buzz for this new car. What does the business outcome look like? What would our CFO want to see happen? We'd want to boost more presales and orders for our smart car. 

Now you're thinking, but Purna, I am marketing, I'm not sales. That's okay. But knowing what business outcomes you want to influence will help us when it comes to the next step, which is, what is the audience outcome that we can influence? What is the behavior change in our audience that we want to see happen?

So keeping with our car analogy, if we're looking to generate more preorders for our smart car, then what we can do as marketers, we can influence the number of people going to the car showrooms or maybe scheduling a test drive online. Those are behavior changes that we can influence. If our content has excited people enough, we should see a lift in the number of test drives, and we can measure that amount. 

And so now, if we know what is the business outcome, how are we making money, what do we want our audiences to go do, then we'll decide on what type of content do we need to create to help get us there.

So now you'd start to think about, okay, who is the right audience? Who might have the means? Who might have the interest? Who might like these fancy features in our new smart car? Where do these people hang out? What do they tend to consume? Now you'll know how to position your features and benefits in a way that can resonate most effectively with the audience that's most likely to buy.

So in this way, you don't start creating content until you really know, and you're setting the odds in your favor. 

So that's the theory. "How do you put it into action now," you're probably asking. Well, a lot of people like to think of this as a roadmap. I personally like to think of this as a treasure map. 

Before you even start creating a single word of content, you want to build out your content brief. It's full of the key clues that you'll need to drive a lot of success for your campaign. So you want to put down in a little one page or a little Word doc, nothing fancy, write down, what are my targeted outcomes? Getting more preorders. What are the immediate next steps that I want my audience to take after consuming my content? Hey, I want to get them to go to the website and look at the fact that they can review a model virtually, they can go schedule a test drive. And so then I'll know that, hey, what are the common questions that this audience asks? What are the top incentives? What are the platforms that they hang out? 

Let's say, for example, we wanted to go and upsell a newer model to somebody who had bought an older model of the car. So let's say we decided that, okay, we're going to go after people who've owned Fancy Schmancy version 1.0. They bought it three plus years ago. Now I'm going to go to them with the outcome that, "Hey, come check out our newer model." So then how can I incentivize them? The common questions that they ask are: "I already have version 1.0. Why should I upgrade to version 2.0? What's needed? What's different? Can I trade it in? What kind of different financing options?” If I know all of this, I'll know exactly how to word it to try to ensure that I am answering objections ahead of time in the content, and that way I'm reaching them right where they are.

Super simple but super, super effective.

So now you're like, "Okay, but Purna, how do I measure it all?" It's not that hard. What I've really found is something that I call the four R's of measurement, which is line of sight measurement into content marketing.

It is so much more effective because you evaluate impact at four different stages, which will allow you to course correct even before you get all the way to the end, before you're like, "Oh, well, I spent six months on this. It didn't make any money." No, no, no, you want to course correct in the beginning.

Step one, you want to look at reach. Who did I reach? How many people did I reach? And not just in terms of the actual numbers, but look at the types of people who tend to come in. Who's filling out the lead forms? Is it the right type of audiences? Is the right job titles? Are they people in your targeted list? That's how you'll know whether you're reaching the right people, or you might want to adapt your distribution strategy.

The next one is really the reaction. What's the sentiment? Are they liking it? Are they engaging it? Are they sharing it with people? Are they commenting? What are they feeling about your content that you've put out there? If you're reaching a lot of people, but it's crickets, then you'll know that maybe your content is not really onto something, so you want to tweak it a little bit. So, again, you can course correct quickly.

Then you want to look at the response. What is the behavior change that you're trying to drive?  Are they booking more of the test drives? Are they submitting inquiries on the website? Are you seeing increased footfall into your car showrooms?

And then finally, the results. Did we drive the right people? Did we see the volume of cars going up? So, in that way, if you aim backwards, if you put measurement first, you'll be much more likely to hit high-value targets with your content marketing.

Thank you, and stay tuned for the next episode.