The Taco Bell Content Strategy (pt 2): Your Content Should Be a Crunchwrap Supreme

Welcome back!

Are you ready to talk about Taco Bell again?

Last week we went over why Taco Bell’s menu is an ingenious approach to making a lot of yummy stuff out of a very limited selection of ingredients.

We connected this approach to content strategy--when you’ve got the right collection of ingredients you’ll be set up to create a lot of relevant, valuable content that serves your needs.

You can use your content “ingredients” even more effectively when you have content recipes (or blueprints) that you follow to cook up consistent content without the hassle.

Think of it this way: Have you ever spent hours creating a long-form piece of content that was beautifully written and researched? Then you published it and...what?

Was that the end of the line for your awesome content?

If you said yes, you’re not alone and you are not being judged!

But you are being presented with an opportunity to turn your single piece of content into a content menu of Taco Bell-sized proportions.

Lettuce continue 🥬

3 Habits of the Modern Consumer

An organization’s content needs change based on consumer needs and expectations. In 2021, folks are expecting more valuable content for free, and brands need to deliver to keep up.

When you’re planning your content marketing, keep in mind these three habits of consumers…

Consumers are researching products online before making a purchase.

They might even be facing analysis paralysis, the fear of making a wrong decision when there are so many options. (Raise your hand if you’re a victim of this, too ✋)

If your online presence is zero then your customers are probably going to buy elsewhere. But if you overload them with information that makes coming to a purchasing decision feel overwhelming, you’re going to lose them.

How does your content connect the dots between consumer touchpoints in a way that delights? Are you providing your audience with a variety of content that helps push them further down the funnel?

Consumers expect a digital-first buyer’s journey (and they don’t mind going solo).

Here’s a little something for the B2B marketers out there:

Did you know that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, the majority of their time in the consideration phase is spent researching independently online?

Your content needs just got a LOT bigger. You can’t simply focus on attracting traffic to become sales leads because, surprise, buyers don’t really want to talk to sales reps. They’d rather take the time to do their own research and then decide they’re ready to talk to a sales rep.

That means buyers want more content that can take them all the way to the decision stage. Are you providing it?

Consumers have serious trust issues.

And who doesn’t?!

Think about this eye-opening information from Forbes:

• ⅓ of Americans don’t trust the media

• Only 24% of Americans trust the federal government to do the right thing

• 23% of Americans are non-religious

Whew, that’s bleak.

But there are shining (perhaps unexpected) lights among the Great American Trust Issues -- businesses.

A Kearney Brand Trust Survey in May 2021 found that trust in small businesses was 40-points greater than in government.

Again, a bit bleak, but it reveals a truth that marketers can’t ignore: if you can keep your consumers happy and trustful, you can help fill a large-scale trust gap.

Do this by creating content that supports this trust: provide transparency, create consistent messaging, and invest in building customer relationships.

Can Your Content Plan Keep Up With the Need?

So why in Doritos-Locos-Tacos-hell am I still talking about Taco Bell here?

Because those three habits I just identified have a glaring commonality: content.

To be specific, a need for MORE content.

In fact, consumers expect more content than ever.

And here’s the trick. You can make more content to fit consumer needs at scale if you do it smarter, not harder.

Many marketing teams will spend a lot of time working on one piece of content (that’s great!) and then only use it once or twice (that’s bummer city).

If I told you that an ebook takes (hypothetically) 20 hrs to produce, not including the back-and-forth editing, design, and final proofreading, you might say “SH*T, Amber -- I don’t have the time to invest in that for just one piece.”

But if I told you that one piece of long-form evergreen content could create multiple podcast episodes, a series of blog posts, guest posts, social media content, infographics, and videos...well, it probably looks like a good investment now.

And so we come back to Taco Bell and the Crunchwrap Supreme.

The standard Crunchwrap Supreme uses 7 ingredients. It’s perfect and delicious, and one of the more complicated menu items, if anything from Taco Bell can be called complicated.

Now if you think about deconstructing the Crunchwrap, you’ll notice that from the ingredients of this one food item you can create a bunch of different items:

• A Mexican pizza (are these still a thing?)

• A burrito

• A soft taco

• A quesadilla

...I could go on, but I’m getting hungry.

And with these other menu items, you’re able to satisfy different cravings and different customer needs.

See, Phil wants a snack for his 2-hour drive home but he doesn’t want to fill up on fast food. Brenda only wants cheesy carbs because she’s had a long, hard day.

Jeff...well he wants all of it, but he won’t eat it all at once. He’ll take his food home and reheat it for a few meals. (Please don’t judge Jeff-- he’s entirely made up).

And so goes your audience’s content consumption.

They might not want the whole Crunchwrap Supreme, but they want components of it. Or they might want to order the whole menu of content, but consume it on their own schedule.

So you need to reframe.

Create a Content Menu That Serves Every Customer

Normal people might say that content marketing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

I’m going to say that content marketing is creating a fast-food menu, not cooking a five-course meal.

Instead of pouring all of your time, resources, and investment into big one-time-use pieces of evergreen content, think about your Phils and your Brendas and your Jeffs (oh, Jeff…).

Create content that can be repurposed and reimagined -- use your amazing content ingredients wisely to turn one content idea into twenty. Now your content “menu” will be efficient, strategic, and can span the needs of your audience.

P.s. By the way, my Taco Bell order is always bean burrito + spicy potato taco. What’s yours?