Why you should consider working with a design agency to incorporate Shorthand into your next content campaign

When it comes to content marketing, cutting through the noise is never an easy task. The content marketing revolution has been an incredible success story for marketing teams but it has come at a price – there is so much content out there (of varying quality) that making an impact is getting increasingly harder to do. With so many brands competing for your audiences’ eyeballs and dwell time on-page, what can marketers do when working with a design agency to ensure that their campaign stands out from the herd?

Garbage in, garbage out as the expression goes, and the ingredients that make up your content marketing programme need to meet the quality control test in order to have a chance of engaging your audience. That means the strategy, the plan, the timing, creatives, channel selection and the way in which you choose to measure and evaluate the success of your campaign. If any of these elements are missing, poorly planned or executed or are underrepresented in the campaign mix, it’s likely to show up in the final result. If your marketing team doesn’t have all of the skills and capabilities that you need to execute against all of these disciplines, it is well worth considering partnering with a design agency or a firm of branding consultants to support your inhouse bench.

One key aspect of the content marketing campaign that needs consideration is the medium in which you choose to deliver it. Too many content marketing stories, particularly from corporate brands, professional services firms and financial services brands, default to delivering in pdf format without stopping to consider the range of options now on offer for marketers to use. At Rostrum, we find that content campaign stories built in Shorthand have a much better impact in terms of visuals, time on-page, audience engagement and marketing-qualified leads generated by the content. Our content built in Shorthand for a global law firm, for example, has generated over 1,000 leads, multiple new client wins for the firm and created a real buzz about the content marketing programme with internal audiences.