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It’s no secret that content marketing is a huge strategic priority for B2B organizations. According to analysts like Forrester Research, B2B marketers are paying even more attention to content development and content marketing strategy in 2012 than in years past.
As I work with clients at Left Brain DGA to develop and create the right content for their demand generation marketing programs, one of the continual challenges I see is helping them understand the role and importance of what we often call “brand-agnostic” content. That doesn’t necessarily mean brand-neutral content (though sometimes it does). It signifies content that doesn’t promote your brand over another, and may in fact even mention your competitors.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post called “Who is Buyer 2.0?” I followed up last week with “How to Engage Buyer 2.0,” stressing the importance of buyer persona research and analysis. Now that we know how to properly identify prospects, influencers, their content consumption patterns, and their sources of information, lets take it to the next level and talk about moving away from old school batch-and-blast techniques to thoughtful, well-designed nurture processes.
Is your marketing one-to-one or one-to-many? One-off email blasts to your house list offer a very low probability of your critical information making it through to your potential buyer. Even the greatest piece of marketing content does nothing to support the buying process if it is delivered to a prospect too early or too late in their journey. Marketing automation can be an effective tool for delivering content but it is often misused. Utilizing it without an integrated buyer-driven strategy that maps relevant content to your buyer will only add to your list fatigue challenges.
Like many marketing professionals, I’m a big fan of the TV show “Mad Men,” which premiered its new season last weekend. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a drama centered on life in a 1960s New York advertising agency. Beyond the soapy storylines and retro styling and music, the show’s best moments for marketers are when the agency’s creative team meets with clients to discuss strategy.
The truth is, many of the “ah-ha” moments for clients could be applied to today’s brands, whether B2B or B2C. Content strategy in particular is all about telling a brand’s story to potential buyers. Even in B2B, many buyers ultimately make their decisions based not just on facts, but on how the company makes them feel.
Greater access to information has provided B2B buyers with unprecedented power – resulting in “Buyer 2.0.” Marketing success in the Buyer 2.0 environment requires a new set of people, processes and content to better leverage new marketing technologies and to engage with buyers on their terms.
Buyer 2.0 rejects traditional, interruptive marketing tactics, preferring a buyer driven, Web-educated and peer communication approach. Why? Because it’s a process buyers can control and it helps them get the answers they need from the sources they trust, when and where they want.
This new buyer behavior requires marketers to focus on buyer-centric demand generation. Buyer-centricity in demand generation means tightly integrating inbound marketing efforts, such as search, Web and social, with elements of outbound marketing, such as email nurturing and offer landing pages.
Last week was my first at Left Brain DGA and in true jump-into-the-deep-end spirit, I spent it largely in client meetings. I’m pleased to report there were no major surprises, since I was already familiar with the company’s basic methodology (the Left Brain Model) and had met most of the key players. I did learn a bit about my new co-workers drinking habits (Jack and Coke? REALLY?) but that was about as soul-revealing as things got.
One thing that did surprise me was how much content our programs require. This may rank with Newton discovering gravity in terms of stating the obvious (was he really the first to notice that things never fall up?) But as someone who has focused largely on marketing strategy and technology, I haven’t given much thought to content except as something to test. Here’s what I realized last week: a basic Left Brain program involves four lead stages and three levels per stage, so somebody has to draft at least a dozen emails plus whatever white papers, webinars, worksheets or other materials are offered as response bait. Add unique versions for three buyer personas across four vertical markets and you’re well past one hundred items.
This week I had the pleasure of presenting at the very first Content Marketing World! It was very exciting, a lot of great content marketing, social media experts and authors attended and spoke about the industry and how it’s evolving. There was a good combination of motivational (get out there and do it!) speaking as well as plenty of how-to, practical advice to get your content marketing efforts in order, and aligned with revenue goals.
One of the presentations I gave was on more of the tactical side. I spoke about 21 ways to distribute content. Originally it was from the perspective of “I have all this content, now what?” but I really felt strongly about emphasizing the fact that content distribution is really a discipline that needs to be considered much earlier on, when you’re in the content strategy phase. If it’s something you think of after the fact, the success of your content marketing programs may be at risk.
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