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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.
Behind every news junkie or voracious reader is the know-it-all kid in school who always had his or her hand up to share the answer. You want to know the know-it-all’s biggest secret? They spend less time searching for information and more time consuming it.
And that’s the coolest thing about information management in the digital age. We all have the same tools at our disposal to be equally knowledgeable and, hopefully, the good sense to be a lot less annoying.
Here are the 5 steps I take before embarking on a research project. Each helps me get smarter faster on desired topics, customer segments and any relevant discussions occurring online.
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.
A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog called “Who is Buyer 2.0?” This week I would like to discuss how to engage and sell to this new type of prospect.
Develop Buyer-centric Demand Generation Strategies
You are always competing for your buyer’s mindshare with several competitors and a list of other priorities. In order to successfully win their attention, your communication must demonstrate that your focus is specifically on them. This requires an understanding of their needs – a “buyer-centric” approach to demand generation marketing.
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.
Does your marketing organization have a thoughtful blueprint upon which to build pre-sales nurturing programs? A strategic plan will help you and your team understand the goals and objectives of upstream lead qualification and serve as a step-by-step framework for moving from initial buyer engagement to vetting the specific buyer as a lead that is ready to engage with a sales team member. It also helps diagnose opportunities and gaps that exist in many demand generation programs, by narrowing the objectives for lead qualification at each stage in the nurturing process.
On September 19, I am releasing my new book, Balancing the Demand Equation: The Elements of a Successful, Modern B2B Demand Generation Model. (As a note, it will be available in hardcover via Amazon, and also will be on iBook, Kindle and Nook. Details to come.)
At the heart of the book is a sophisticated framework that is designed to help B2B marketers understand and succeed in the modern demand generation environment … and to help them move away from the persistent, legacy, top-of-funnel, mass-marketing approaches that are ill-suited to today’s B2B marketing challenges.
What are these challenges?
B2B marketers find themselves more challenged than ever in connecting with the modern buyer – i.e., Buyer 2.0 – at the right place and the right time in the buying cycle. B2B marketers also find it challenging to scale marketing operations that drive perpetual, one-to-one engagement, acquisition and nurturing of prospective buyers. Complicating things, technology is both problem and solution in this equation – i.e., technology is in part to blame for our challenges, as Web 2.0 has resulted in a more-empowered buyer, but it’s also a key piece of the new equation via marketing automation and customer relationship management technology.
Thus the B2B demand generation ‘formula’ has never been more out of alignment.
Sounds like a problem that needs solving, right?
Yet you might react to what I’ve written so far by saying, “Isn’t this really just an operational challenge for B2B marketers? Why should the rest of the company care?”
Once a year the demand generation ‘glitterati’ – i.e., the major thought leaders, the vendors and the packs of in-the-trenches B2B marketing and sales practitioners … a lot of them – all descend upon Scottsdale, Arizona, to talk B2B demand generation for two-and-a-half days.
The catalyst? The annual SiriusDecisions Summit, put on by an analyst firm that has emerged as a leader when it comes to covering strategic and technological innovation in the B2B marketing and sales arena.
There are definitely other firms doing great work around the broader marketing arena. One of those is Forrester, whose Forrester Marketing Forum is an event I attended about a month ago in San Francisco, and whose new analyst covering the B2B marketing space, Jeff Ernst (Twitter: @JeffErnst), is one smart guy. Richard Fouts (Twitter: @Richard_Fouts) at Gartner also has some tremendous insights around the evolution of marketing strategy. And Aberdeen has produced some thoughtful research around B2B lead management over the past two years.
But if you have any question about who’s leading when it comes specifically to B2B demand generation research and benchmarking in the marketplace today, 800+ attendees at SiriusDecisions Summit 2011 – a number that is easily 2X the number of 2010 Summit attendees – can’t be wrong.
