8 New Year s Resolutions for B2B Marketers Take your content marketing to the next level in the new year!
With the new year quickly approaching, there s no better time to start thinking about your marketing campaigns for 2015. Make these resolutions and you ll be a world-class B2B marketer in no time! Table of Contents 01. Plan your campaigns around content pillars 02. Start measuring the ROI of your content marketing 03. Stop spreading yourself too thin 04. Offer prospects the right content at the right time in the buyer s journey 05. Make an effort to understand your target audience and their pain points 06. Develop a content strategy that s consistent across several channels 07. Develop a content distribution strategy 08. Don t forget who your audience is
01 Plan your campaigns around content pillars Content marketing takes time, and prospects may not find, take action and interact with your content in the way that you want them to. Content marketing isn t a campaign in the sense that there is a start and stop date. Rather, it s an ongoing process, said, Michele Linn, Vice President of Content at the Content Marketing Institute. However, if you consider a campaign to be a key theme that will run through your content marketing program (some call it a pillar), I would identify what that pillar is and then create the individual plan for the specific pieces of content from there. 1 If you start by identifying your content themes or pillars, you can then optimize the types of content depending on how your audience is interacting with it. Aim to keep your content production process nimble, so that you can quickly adapt your content on the fly rather than sticking to a plan you laid out months ago. Once you know who your audience is, you need to know what they re talking about. ScribbleLive s topic recommendations and social insight tools let you listen in on that conversation in real time. Our software tracks the Twitter conversations of your followers to let you know precisely what your audience is interested in and when they re talking about it.
02 Start measuring the ROI of your content marketing Once you have identified your goals, it will be easier to attempt to measure the ROI of your content marketing campaigns. For many B2B marketers, lead generation is the main objective of content marketing. I tend to lean toward lead generation and ideally revenue attribution as my key metrics! When I can, I create content that generates leads or accelerates deals for my sellers. If those deals close, I can then associate revenue back to the content pieces that touched that deal, thus giving me great insight into true content ROI, 2 said Jeff Marcoux, CMO Lead, Worldwide Enterprise Marketing at Microsoft and board member of the Internet Marketing Association. Getting more granular with your content analysis can be infinitely helpful because it will pinpoint which types of content you should be creating more of to reach your goals. One of the big things we are looking at is path to goal/objective. So what streams of content are driving to conversions? To mean, it is never ONE piece or type of content that works, but rather how do they flow together to advance the individual forward, Marcoux said. Measuring visitors or click-through rates is like counting people who walk in the door: It s a decent start, but it s not nearly enough data. You need a broad range of information to drive conversions. What are people doing once they get to your site? Where are they coming from? Are they commenting, participating in discussions, or voting in polls? Our software helps you create progressive profiles of the people who visit your site so you can craft content that meets their needs, wherever they are in the buyer s journey.`
03 Stop spreading yourself too thin With new social networks popping up almost weekly (remember Ello?), marketers can t help but feel pressured to join each new network and participate. Where are your buyers hanging out? If buyers aren t there, you re wasting precious resources, said Ardath Albee, B2B Marketing Strategist and CEO of Marketing Interactions, author of emarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. As a B2B marketer, it s important to remember that you should spend your time where your clients and prospects are instead of trying to be everywhere at once. Marketers want to try everything and think they need to be everywhere, but doing a mediocre job across channels because you ve spread yourself too thin is not the answer to building audience, 3 Albee said. By spending your time where your ideal prospects are, you re able to continually iterate and optimize your content marketing campaigns. User-generated content is an incredibly effective way to speak to your prospects in authentic ways that gives them a stake in the content. Audiences are more likely to engage with and share content that speaks to them in a genuine voice. Our software helps you monitor, collect and manage these efforts. You can run UGC campaigns that spread across social media, your website, and more without losing control of the conversation.
04 Offer prospects the right content at the right time in the buyers journey Too many marketers create content before knowing who their audience is, or who the decision makers are. The more information you have about potential customers, the better your connection with them will be, and ultimately, your content will be more useful to them. That s why honing in on a buyer persona is key. If you get in front of someone, three, four, five, six, seven times before they ve made that purchase, you ve provided them with content because you ve engaged with them on social media, because they follow you; they got an email from you, Moz s Rand Fishkin said. All of those touches will contribute to a vastly greater chance at conversion. Upfront research to develop buyer personas assists in developing targeted messaging and content that your prospects are interested in and, most importantly, will act on. Presenting the right content to the right persona is key in moving prospects along the lead funnel. If you re not building iterative profiles of your visitors each time they come to your site, you re flying blind. One-size-fits-all marketing is the wrong approach, you must be nimble and ready to react. Our software lets you set up prospect profiles that are specific to each visitor and automatically build each time they come back. You can also establish specific goals for each piece of content (i.e. I want people to leave their email or click on a link) so you know, for sure, not only who you re talking to, but the best way to get them to convert.
05 Make an effort to understand your target audience and their pain points A study by Regalix shows that 86 percent of B2B marketers and executives see customer experience as extremely critical to an organization s growth 4. Yet only 4 in 10 respondents are confident in their understanding of their customers wants, needs, likes and interests. Some questions to ask to make sure your content will move the needle: What does an engagement scenario look like for your prospects? How will you get them back to your owned properties (website) from other channels? What kind of information will keep them there - or keep them coming back? 5 said Albee. As a marketer, you may not be an expert in your prospects pain points and how your product can help solve their problems. Talk about what the thing enables for your customers. What s the value? Talk to salespeople and customers to get this right. Don t rely on assumptions - you are not the audience, so what you think doesn t really count, Albee said. The most effective way to learn about your clients pain points is also the most obvious one: just ask. ScribbleLive gives you lots of ways to interact with your website visitors. You can use real-time polling, commenting, social listening, automated Twitter following, hashtag campaigns and more to identify pain points from the very people who are visiting your site. You can also host live chats focused around specific issues or types of problems and utilize our software to present comments and questions that are both moderated and relevant.
06 Develop a content distribution strategy Dell s Tech Page One website uses a combination of owned media, which is Dell s own content, paid media to promote the original content and earned media such as getting their original content picked up by other websites to increase the content s value and, most importantly, ROI. It s like a triangulated approach where paid, owned and earned all work together to increase our ROI. There are definitely teams that are related to each arm that whole system, 6 said Tech Page One Managing Editor Nicole Smith. Tech Page One s earned media includes its content being picked up by Venturebeat and the Smithsonian. Content partnerships like these maximize the impact of your content, while providing SEO benefits, as well as increased website visitors. ScribbleLive customers also have the option of making their content available on Scribble Market, our content marketplace of hundreds of partners, which is a unique way to distribute, promote and amplify your content. Putting your content in front of as many prospects as possible requires a multi-faceted approach. Our software not only lets you post to Twitter with one click, but also turns smaller content items like polls, Tweets, Vines, slideshows, or videos into shareable and embeddable content that can live anywhere on your site. In addition, the Scribble Market provides a unique opportunity to get your content in front of thousands of people who might never otherwise see it.
07 Start repurposing your best performing content Every time you create a piece of content, you re making an investment, using both time and resources. You don t want to publish it and see it disappear, you want to keep promoting it and getting use out of it over time, 7 said Jenna Hanington, Marketing Content Specialist at Pardot. Next time you begin writing a white paper or other piece of longform content, think about how you can repurpose it and distribute it in different ways. A few ideas to get you started: a blog post wrap-up to highlight key takeaways a series of blog posts to promote the white paper short video clips an infographic a Powerpoint deck distributed in Slideshare email nurture campaigns live chat or Q&A with experts quoted in the white paper Repurposing content helps to keep your digital properties fresh, and positions your business as timely and relevant around industry issues. Repurposing content into different mediums allows you to convey your message in several different formats. Our software makes that simple with social walls, embeddable content atoms, pinboards, timelines, streams and more. In addition, you can add visual content from Instagram, Flickr, Getty, YouTube, Twitter and more with a simple drag and drop interface.
08 Don t forget who your audience is Too many marketers fall into the trap of writing for search engines, forgetting that, whether you re a B2B or B2C marketer, you re still writing for people. I have yet to meet a building that writes a check. Decision makers are people like you and me, whether it s a B2B or B2C sale, 8 said Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing Inc. The tone, brand message and timing of that message must reach people ideally decision makers. Tools and tactics can be applied to help boost SEO, but the message must ultimately hit home with your targeted audience, not algorithms. Refining your message and establishing a voice that s both genuine and consistent takes time. You need to track what content your prospects are engaging with and talking about, as well as consistently looking at analytics to determine whether your content is resonating. ScribbleLive lets you do all of those things in one place. From audience profiles to social trending and insights to advanced analytics, we take out the guesswork, so you can focus on creating the right kinds of content to reach prospects and drive conversions.
Endnotes 1. http://engage.scribblelive.com/article/816892-content-marketing-institute-mapping-your-content-marketing-plan 2. http://engage.scribblelive.com/event/live_chat_content_marketing_roi?page=0 3. http://engage.scribblelive.com/event/live_chat_balancing_promotion_with_audience_growth?page=0 4. http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/b2b-execs-perspectives-on-cx-problem-areas-and-opportunities-48298 5. http://engage.scribblelive.com/event/live_chat_balancing_promotion_with_audience_growth?page=0 6. http://engage.scribblelive.com/article/824230-dells-tech-page-one-managing-editor-nicole-smith-on-content-marketing-planning 7. http://engage.scribblelive.com/article/680901-chat-wrap-content-marketing-with-few-resources 8. http://engage.scribblelive.com/event/content_marketing_lessons_learned?page=0
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