4 Adtech and Martech Content Marketing Best Practices

As an editor and then a content marketing agency owner, I’ve been in adtech and martech for seven years. And our space has the same problems that plague so much of B2B content marketing. 

The takes are uninteresting and offend no one. The content is redundant and not particular to the brand. Companies just talk about themselves instead of offering helpful tips to their readers. And it’s often unclear whom the company is even aiming to help. 

When done right, content marketing can be a huge boon to adtech companies. In a highly specialized space where advertisers and publishers are searching for specific information to get an edge, adtech and martech companies have the opportunity to be tremendously helpful before sales conversations or SaaS sign-ups. And providing this value before the point of sale is what leads to a flood of qualified leads.

But many companies struggle to hit the right notes. Here are four best practices that adtech and martech content marketers should follow.

For the love of Adtech God, say something novel

I’ll admit it; as a martech editor, I published 263 “How to prepare for the death of cookies” thought leadership bylines. I leave it to Adtech God to judge me.

The problem with these bylines is that, after a dozen of them have been published by the industry trades, they cease to be thought leadership. They are the work of sheep, not shepherds. 

This kind of content cannot move the needle for content marketers. Because if a brand or publisher can get the same insights you’re offering from 100 other companies, why should they read your piece and then look into signing up for your newsletter or doing business with you?

If you’re going to invest in content marketing at all, publish novel content. This is not easy, but there are best practices you can follow to differentiate your ideas. For one, integrate experts into content production. These can be on your marketing team, another team, or external. But if you’re hiring cheap freelance writers to cobble together content based on your competitors’ blogs, you can’t expect to stand out.

Also, consider asking those experts these questions: What do you wish people in our industry or our customers knew about x topic that almost no one talks about? What do you wish our customers knew before they spoke to us? What do our customers misunderstand about what we do? What is something important that most people in our industry are wrong about? Talented content marketers act like journalists and generate great insights from experts based on these lines of questioning.

Often, adtech content is derivative because the marketing team doesn’t want to ask the C-suite to get involved, or the C-suite doesn’t think content is a priority. The content will suffer as a result. Content can be a difference maker for your business. Don’t let it wither on the vine because you weren’t willing to ask leaders to water the tree.

Don’t be afraid to take a stand

Recently, the SSP Magnite unveiled a product called ClearLine, which will allow Magnite’s publishers to sell video inventory without going through DSP intermediaries. This followed DSP The Trade Desk’s similarly named OpenPath, which threatened to encroach on SSP territory. Index Exchange took a bold stand, saying it would not compete with DSPs and would remain exclusively focused on publishers.

I was pleasantly surprised by Index Exchange’s content not because I have a dog in the Magnite-Index Exchange rivalry but because, as a content person, it’s very rare for me to see an adtech or martech company clearly articulating a position and telling readers how its view and practices differ from those of competitors.

If you want your content to be memorable, you need to take a stand on major industry issues. And you need that stand to redound to the benefit of your business by appealing to your customers. So, if you’re an SSP that believes you can do a better job serving publishers by focusing exclusively on them at a time when rivals are looking toward the buy side, say it. This is the stuff that AdExchanger and Ad Age’s op-ed pages were made for. And it’s the stuff that will actually differentiate you and earn the attention of customers, competitors, and investors.

Focus on the customer, not yourself

Eighty percent of a company’s content should focus on helping its target audience so that the audience views the company as an authority on their problems and ultimately comes to them for help. Even bottom-of-funnel blog posts that discuss the details of products and solutions should be written in a way that focuses on the reader’s needs, not the company. Twenty percent should be team updates, awards releases, and the like.

So, why is every adtech person’s LinkedIn feed teeming with company updates about new hires (or worse, new board members), awards, and being named the platform of record for such or such retailer or publisher? To be sure, these updates have a place in content marketing; social proof is a thing. But if your company only publishes on social to share updates of minimal value to the customer, you have a content problem.

Check out this guide if you would like more details on how promotional marketing content should be. But remember that helping your customer so much that they see you as the only logical solution to the very specific problem you solve is the north star of content marketing. So, even when you write self-centered middle- or bottom-of-funnel blog posts, ask yourself whether you’re helping that customer. And if you’re just announcing a new board member, perhaps hesitate to blast your customers with that news at all. 

Create a strategy before jumping into content creation

Many companies, especially early-stage startups, jump into content without first doing the strategic work to understand whom they’re helping, what problem they’re solving, and how content will fit into that equation. Moreover, they may create great content, but they don’t think strategically about how they will distribute it, what impact they want to generate and how they’ll measure that, and what timeframe is acceptable to see desired results.

Don’t be one of those companies. If you act without a strategy, you’ll end up with dozens of great blog posts, bylines, or social posts after six months and no business impact to show for them. Instead, hire an experienced content agency or marketer that can help you identify what your key topics and messages should be, how to differentiate yourself, where your customers spend time, and how to distribute the content to generate desired business impact.

Otherwise, your content program will end up in the adtech graveyard along with so many other failed companies and marketing initiatives. Don’t let your content marketing program go the way of Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers. Instead, strategize, differentiate yourself, get experts involved, and aspire to be like contextual advertising. Contextual is dead. Long live contextual!