Picture a marketing team on a daring quest, armed with creativity, data and strong coffee. Lurking in the shadows are some unlikely heroes: your stakeholders. They might not feel like heroes when they’re rewriting your headline for the third time – but they’re often the secret to content that really works.
Why stakeholders make content better
1. They bring new ideas
Bring finance, sales, product and service teams into the room, and you get perspectives you’d never find on your own. Sales know the questions customers really ask. Service teams know their frustrations. Experts know the detail that makes content credible. There may be clashes of opinion, but those diverse minds make your content richer.
2. They keep us grounded
As marketers, we’re always chasing return on investment. Stakeholders who guard the budget stop us spending time and money on content that gets plenty of likes but no leads. They push us beyond vanity metrics and towards measurable results.
3. Creative tension sharpens the message
Ever debated the placement of a comma with a senior leader? Those creative clashes – eye-rolls and all – often make content better. Stakeholders test our ideas against reality and make sure our messages fit the brand’s value proposition, values and goals.
4. Feedback drives quality
Each round of feedback, however painful, is a chance to make content clearer, more accurate and more persuasive – even if it means rewriting the whole saga (erm, blog post) one more time.
How to make stakeholders your allies
A little structure turns stakeholder input from a battle into a genuine advantage:
- Involve them early: ask for input at the briefing stage, not when the content is almost finished.
- Agree the brief: set out the audience, goal and key messages up front, so feedback can be judged against them.
- Be clear about roles: decide who advises, who checks facts and who has final sign-off.
- Ask specific questions: ‘Is this accurate?’ gets more useful answers than ‘What do you think?’
- Set deadlines and limit rounds: two rounds of consolidated feedback is usually plenty.
- Close the loop: share results with stakeholders afterwards, so they see the impact of their input.
Stakeholders might not wear capes, but they’re often the difference between good content and great content.
Bringing it together
Stakeholders’ feedback, guidance and challenge are all part of the adventure that leads to content success. So the next time you’re caught in a creative disagreement, raise your coffee mug to these unlikely allies on your content crusade.
Need help creating content that keeps stakeholders and audiences happy? I plan and write marketing content for organisations of every size. Get in touch to find out more.