Labels: business to business (B2B), thought leadership

Chris Koch wrote an excellent blog post, "There is No Social Media Strategy, Only Marketing Strategy," in which he states:

Social media simply makes starkly plain what we’ve known for some time but haven’t had to face yet: We don’t have a lot of content capable of generating trust and relationships.

Chris sees, as I do among clients and prospects, that B2B marketers are eagerly adopting the next-generation tools, but are learning the hard way what it takes to use them properly. That requires feeding them with content--and the right kind of content.

Chris asks, "What do you think? Are we overemphasizing social media strategy at the expense of overall marketing integration?" Yes, many marketers are. As I blogged recently, there are marketers who want to produce content quickly, and social media turns the demand for content into a race. It is easy to rely on what's familiar--the old product pitch--but that isn't effective in social media. What is effective is thought leadership, which requires real strategy and forethought.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content strategy, social media

We enjoy a good debate here at The Content Factor, and we're watching one play out on the Demand Gen Report Blog.

• Marketo's Jon Miller blogged on "Seed Nurturing," suggesting some new practices for using social media to "turbo charge" lead nurturing.
  
  Miller writes:
  "For example, after identifying a prospect’s Twitter username, follow his or her Twitter conversations that include relevant keywords, and track this data in your marketing automation system."
  
  
• Malcolm Friedberg of Left Brain Marketing makes an engaging counterpoint in "Seed Nurturing? Not Unless You're Walt Whitman."
  
  Friedberg writes:
  "Call me cynical, but I’m not comfortable betting my job on whether anonymous leads will 'likely' surface from the social media world and appear on my front door."

For all the conversation about social media in B2B marketing, real best practices for generating leads from it are still bleeding edge. According to the latest Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems, no standard approach has emerged.

Although on a high level I agree with "seed nurturing," (as stated in a previous post, "Are We Torching Our Leads?" which advocated the registration-free white paper download), the detailed practices that Miller describes in his Demand Gen Report post seem far-fetched to me. The B2B marketers I work with don't have the resources to follow prospects on Twitter, trend their topics, and look for signs that they are in the early stages of a buying cycle.

And, if getting a phone call ten minutes after downloading a white paper wasn't bad enough, a demand generation solution that provides Twitter-trending functionality is even more "Big Brother." (Will I get a phone call from Marketo after I tweet this blog post?)

Social media is the realm of public relations and thought leadership marketing, not of metrics-driven lead generation. There are some amazing tools emerging for marketers to analyze information as it travels through the social media, but is it realistic for these tools to help marketers warm-up prospects for sales? I will side with the cynics for now.

Labels: business to business (B2B), lead generation, marketing automation, thought leadership

Recently I spoke with a CMO who wanted to market a commoditized IT product. Naturally, his product has its own competitive advantage. But it was clear to me that his target market would be shopping first on price, and that a feature-benefit message would be challenging to push.

Early in our conversation, he asked, "How much will a white paper cost?"

Like his own prospects, he, too, was shopping on price. He was thinking of his marketing message as a commodity, too.

But that's the last thing he can afford to do. Pedestrian, fill-in-the-blank content simply doesn't have enough appeal to sell a commodity product. On the contrary, the message must be that much more compelling to stand out. That is why hard-to-differentiate products, like cola, beer, and wireless service, have the most creative TV ads.

B2B marketers are increasingly tempted to churn out cheap content. They have hungry channels to feed, such as blogs and email newsletters. Meanwhile, budgets are slashed. So the question, "How much will a white paper cost?" tends to be the first question marketers ask.

Relative to other marketing expenses, good content is a great value. B2B marketers can easily waste the budget they have if they push a weak message that sales won't use, and the market won't read. Our job is to make the prospect care--and the harder the product is to differentiate, the more creative we need to be.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, white papers

Back in the 1980s when computer automation first started to make a big impact on business, many people started to realize the truth in the old axiom: Garbage In/Garbage Out. Putting in bad or erroneous inputs, and then processing them faster and more efficiently took its toll on a wide range of businesses, ranging from newly automated dentist offices to numerical punch machines that went awry.

But perhaps nobody saw the paradoxical power of GIGO better than the thousand of business planners who discovered that the speed and dexterity with which they could manipulate Lotus 123 didn’t make their assumptions any more prescient or their forecasts any more exact. Their companies found out as sales forecasts foundered and inventory levels swelled.

We are seeing part of the same scenario play out today with the advent of marketing automation systems. Don’t get me wrong, marketing automation and campaign management are great concepts. Many companies are recognizing breakthroughs in activity levels and prospect touches, but just as many are pumping banal and uninteresting content through these systems. In the process, they may be damaging their reputations and even their brands. Certainly, they are inuring their prospects to this email onslaught and making them wary of these digital touches.

What’s the cure for GIGO in the marketing automation model? Good content. As explained in this MarketingProfs post, expensive inbound linking, SEO, and analytics won't be worth the investment if readers don't have something good to read on your web site.

Good content keeps the audience in mind, which goes slow and doesn’t force everything down their throat. Most importantly marketers need to remember that even though they are feeding information into an automated system, that there is still a human being on the other end.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content strategy, marketing automation

As content strategists, we stress to our clients the importance of repurposing content in all channels. This post titled "6 Things the iPad Means for B2B Marketers" by Steve Woods of Eloqua, describes the new opportunities of Apple's iPad as one of those channels. Number 3 of the 6 is particularly interesting:

Books and whitepapers become interactive: as books and whitepapers are more and more read on devices like an iPad, rich interactive aspects become increasingly possible. Embedded videos within a book, links for more detailed exploration of topics, and interactive experiences to highlight a point all become possible, allowing us to rethink the book and whitepaper formats entirely.

The iPad--and other technology that will inevitably follow--will not only provide new channels for repurposing content, it will up the ante.

There is a lot of talk surrounding the iPad's potential to revitalize print media--but not just from the economic standpoint of selling more newspapers and magazines. The iPad will revitalize the formats. The boring white paper will become a thing of the past--the interactive, fun-to-read, fun-to-play white paper will take its place.

Of course, we have had the ability to create rich media content in the web browser for a long time now. For some reason, readers have not demanded media much more rich than a PDF file for e-books and white papers. YouTube has made video a viable channel, but rich media remains rare and expensive to produce.

Will the sheer portability of the iPad change the media formats for marketers, just as the iPod changed the format for music? Are thought-leading marketing executives ready to engage their audiences in bold new ways?

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, technology, white papers

Here's #10 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #10:
Great Web content is dynamic and changing.

Your business is constantly changing. (If you were in a static industry, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.) New opportunities are emerging. Prospects have new questions and concerns that must be addressed. So your website can’t be static.

News releases are dynamic content—and they give you an often-overlooked way to leverage more traffic to your website. “Getting coverage for your business in mainstream media can be hugely beneficial in bringing a swathe of new visitors to your site, and building inbound links from the media and from all the other people who comment on it,” writes Internet marketing consultant Ken McGaffin.

Every time you create a significant new information paper, write a release and send it out on a wire service.

A related tip: If you have to rely on IT to keep your website current with fresh content, you might be in trouble. Invest in a content management system.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing

Here's #7 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #7:
Great Web content is authoritative.

Great Web content puts your company’s best foot forward. It is original and demonstrates your company’s expertise, not lifted from outsiders or distilled from brochures. It is in-depth, targeted, believable information, not sales hype. Readers will judge your company’s credibility on the quality, depth and interest of your content.

Copyblogger.com makes this point in its “Content Marketing 101” column: “In contrast to traditional ‘interruption’ marketing such as advertising or direct mail, content marketing involves delivering information with independent value that creates trust, credibility, and authority for the business that provides the content.”

When content is credible and authoritative, it builds the reader’s (or listener’s) confidence in the seller. Confident visitors are converting visitors, copywriter Jeff Sexton states. “Make it easy for your customer to imagine taking the action you want her to take. Eliminate any unresolved concerns and replace them with mental images that inspire her confidence in doing business with you.”

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, ten hallmarks of great web content

Here's #6 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #6:
Great Web content is emotional. It raises the hairs a bit.

Whether you’re selling financial services to consumers or databases to businesses, remember: Companies don’t buy things; people do. So their purchase decisions are influenced by more than steel-trap logic and facts.

“Since we all buy with our emotions first and our rational minds second, you’ve got to uncover the emotional reasons for buying your products and services, or you’ll just be competing on price—a bad place to be,” says Web copywriter Sid Smith. “A strategy built around satisfying your customer’s emotional needs works far better than one focused solely on lead generation ‘tactics.’”

Good content gets the reader involved personally. Look for ways to put the reader into the story. Perhaps her inspired purchase of your product will earn kudos from her peers. Or maybe the content shows a family man how your product or service will give him more time with his wife and children.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing

I enjoyed this book excerpt by Grant McCracken in AdAge, "In His Nike Work, Dan Wieden Is the Prototypical CCO" (McCracken's forthcoming book is Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation.)

McCracken identifies the trend called the "generous stranger," which is akin to "Pay It Forward" and "Practice Random Acts of Kindness." He tells of how Nike embodies this trend in a recent groundbreaking ad.

If corporations can put aside any aversion they may have to the touchy-feely nature of the "generous stranger," they can take a lesson from the concept in developing a thought leadership strategy.

Thought leadership requires generosity, as we explain in "Is Anybody Following Your Thought Leadership? Five Best-Practices." Corporations can be thought leaders when they create a corporate culture that is about "paying forward" their vision and expertise.

Corporations may waffle on the idea of actively developing corporate culture, but almost all want to be thought leaders. Thought leadership requires culture. Culture galvanizes the passion and generosity that makes thought leadership possible.

Labels: business to business (B2B), thought leadership

Forbes has published a study "The Rise of the Digital C-Suite: How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information" that is particularly useful for b-to-b marketers who want to reach C-level executives with their content.

The report confirms, with research, several trends we've assumed to be true:

• Younger executives are more likely to use social media than the previous generations.
• The Internet has edged out print media as a trusted information source.
• Text is still king, but online video is on the rise with younger executives. Look for a shift away from KnowledgeStorm and towards YouTube.
  

There are also some surprising findings:

• C-level executives don't delegate research as much as we might think. Executives do perform their own searches, and download white papers and read blogs. That means: decision-makers do find and read good content.
• Competitor analyses are the #1 topic of research executives seek. That means: there's a payoff for companies who take a cue from social media, and adopt a content strategy that addresses competitive differentiation. A rah-rah white paper won't be as effective as one that helps the reader compare apples to apples.

This report will be helpful to marketers who know the age of the executives they want to reach. Articles and white papers will appeal to "Generation Wang," while blogs and video will be effective for "Generation Netscape."

Forbes.com requires a free registration to download the document (name and email address). Download "The Rise of the Digital C-Suite" here. Thanks to Joe Pulizzi for blogging this report.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing

Custom content is up, and trade publications are down. This week, BtoB Magazine published these two stories, and it is up to me to connect the dots.

Public companies shedding b-to-b media

Incompatibility with volatile ad cycles has big publishers selling off properties

The global downturn has underscored advertising's cyclicality, with ad pages plunging an average 30% this year. The decline's magnitude has left trade magazine publishing a diminished business that appears increasingly incompatible with publicly traded companies.

Custom publishing on the upswing
With corporations competing with media companies, content marketing makes everyone a publisher
There was a time when custom publishing entailed a few pages of “advertorial” in an appropriate trade publication or, more ambitiously, an extended advertising vehicle in the guise of an actual magazine. ... Today, ... companies are turning eagerly to digital content, providing customers and potential buyers with business and technical intelligence that's high on credibility and low on promotion.

It's official. As the trade pubs struggle, the vision of content marketing is borne out. Thought leadership is no longer controlled by publishing companies. Marketers are becoming the publishers. Why wait for a trade magazine's editorial calendar, when you can publish your own micro-site and YouTube channel?

I see the opportunity for marketers--in b-to-b, particularly--to push the "reset" button on their thought leadership content strategy. BtoB published two other articles this week forecasting bigger marketing budgets 2010 ("Making a splash after the crash" and "2010 Outlook survey shows marketing budgets to grow"). The crash of '08-'09 has already forced b-to-b marketers to abandon old habits; with new money to spend in '10, they will be looking for new habits.

2010 will be a big year for content.

Related white paper: Is Anybody Following Your Thought Leadership?

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, thought leadership

Here's my third and final "deep dive" into the high points covered in a recent ClickZ article by Bryan Eisenberg.

The ClickZ article:
Optimizing B2B-Demand Generation
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625240

Here are Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of posts.

High Point: Set the bait.

Your incentive piece, or "digital morsel" as Eisenberg calls it, is the bait that generates the lead. It can be a white paper, podcast, mailed packet, or anything that your visitor will find valuable. Try different "bait" to optimize your offering. And even if it's "free," don't treat it as if it has no value.

Deep Dive: Give it away, give it away now.

In olden days, every company had its trade secrets. These were the little morsels of knowledge and experience that the company kept close to its corporate vest. Coca-Cola's formula is the ultimate trade secret, but in B2B companies, these would include business processes, best practices, and research.

In today's world, a company is not differentiated by keeping this information secret--but instead by its ability to churn out value continually. So these morsels of information are the bait that they need to share--openly--with their entire markets, on their web sites. B2Bs can't afford to fear sharing at least some of their good information. It does more good to use your "best kept secrets" on the front side of the sales cycle, to prove your worth and value, and to attract attention to your business.

Labels: business to business (B2B), lead generation

Here's my second "deep dive" into the high points covered in a recent ClickZ article by Bryan Eisenberg. Eisenberg takes the 10,000 foot view...but there is a lot more to be said, deeper down, about content.

The ClickZ article:
Optimizing B2B-Demand Generation
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625240

From these high points, we at The Content Factor can dive deeper into ways you can optimize your content to make lead generation work--and why the content part of the process is so important.

High Point: Drive them in.

Your driving points are your ads, inbound links, emails, and other sources of traffic. Make sure that the text and context of your driving points speaks to the audience--and create multiple driving points for multiple audiences.

Deep Dive: Drive them in by speaking their language.

All too often, businesses (especially B2Bs) get into a trap of speaking their own language to their audience (their potential customers)...when really they need to speak their audience's language. In the ads, inbound links, and emails that drive traffic to your web site, it is imperative that you speak directly to the audience's pain (see Part 1 of this series), in the audience's language.

Here's an example: I cringe when I see the audience for marketing copy described as a "market." Who cares if your technology is "designed to be the highest performing system in the accounting and compliance market?" Or even if it is "best-selling" or a "market leader"? Your potential customers don't think of themselves as your market--they think of themselves as competitors in their own market, with problems to solve.

So use the language of their industry to help them solve their problem: "designed to give accounting and compliance professionals prompt updates as R-1023 laws and local regulations change." (I'm inventing the details but you get the idea.)

The third deep dive is about "bait"--that content piece at the end of the trail that lets you reel them in.

Labels: business to business (B2B), lead generation

Here's an article from Bryan Eisenberg, the Persuasion Marketing guru, covering the high points of generating business-to-business (B2B) leads on the web:

Optimizing B2B-Demand Generation
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625240

From these high points, we at The Content Factor can dive deeper into ways you can optimize your content to make lead generation work--and why the content part of the process is so important.

High Point: Know your audience.

Create personas--not just high-level demographics, but go in depth to "understand their personal and business motivations," as Eisenberg says.

Deep Dive: Discover the messages they will respond to.

For business audiences especially, it's helpful to know what keeps them awake at night, or what part of their jobs are they most worried about. What is the CEO going to pop-quiz them about during a staff meeting? If your business can solve this kind of pain, there's the key to some excellent content that you can deliver to either begin or enhance a sales cycle.

Talking to existing customers, and even looking at competitors' web sites and white papers, are great ways to discover these pain points. When reviewing competitors' materials, remember that if it is boring to you, it is probably even more boring to the intended audience--don't repeat your competitors' mistakes. Instead, look and listen for the most profound pain that you can solve--or ways that your competitors are trying to solve it that you can improve upon.

Your company's differentiators can also be great subjects for content, as long as they are framed to benefit the audience. "We are the premier provider of XYZ software" is a snoozer, but "No other solution is as scalable as ours, and here's why" will turn heads. Make any claims you can make that speak directly to solving pain.

I'll take some more "deep dives" from Eisenberg's article in my next two posts. (Here's #2 about driving traffic to your site.)

Labels: business to business (B2B), lead generation