Christine: I’m very passionate on this topic. There are three reasons to seriously consider doing it with an outside agency. First is your own resources. It is a heavy lift. There’s an individual who reads every piece of content. Most of the audits I’ve done have been upwards of 2,000 pieces of content. It’s untenable to consider that internal resources can do that. And do you really want to take them away from other important go-to-market activities?
Second is the objectivity that comes from working for an organization like Content4Demand. You can make sure that you’re getting consistent results, that the criteria you set is known and understood on a consistent basis.
And finally, the objectivity. People get very connected to their content. When you present the results and start talking about some of the content you’d like to retire, it removes it from being a question of, Do I like the content? Do I think it’s of high quality? You’re leaning on the credibility of an objective third party who’s making those decisions.
Brenda: Sometimes we actually verify what our clients think their assets are in terms of asset type or buying stage, and sometimes we find that it’s very different than what they thought. When we start the audit, we make sure that the criteria are well defined so that when we do the audit, everyone is auditing the same way so that the results are very consistent.
We might find some assets that look like they’re middle stage assets that are middle of the funnel. And when we go through them, we find that it’s all about product and solution and it’s really bottom of the funnel. So that objectivity Christine talked about is very important to an audit. That’s why it can be so important for an outside party to do that audit for you.
