Most organisations spend more than 50% of their marketing budget on content, but few marketers have a content strategy. With more and more blogs and articles being published online every second, how can you make yours stand out, and invite high levels of engagement, consistently?
The message from experts at Get Stacked – The B2B Marketing Technology Conference in March was the traditional methods of producing and publishing content are no longer working. This wasn’t a scare tactic, it should be a call to arms. Here, we round-up the new approaches for marketers to beat the competition and drag their content into the 21st Century.
The scale-it-up with AI approach
Andrew Bredenkamp, founder and CEO of ‘content alignment’ platform Acrolinx, was honest about the limitations of machine learning when it comes to great, scalable content.
“AI can be stupid. The robots don’t know what to write,” he told delegates. While simple machine learning based on lots of data can regurgitate some strange results, Acrolinx is positioning itself as a new content aid, focused on learning from brands and what actually works. Described as ‘active content governance’, the AI is there to make sure your content aligns with the goals you’ve set for it.
The platform will ensure everything that’s written is aligned to your strategy, goals and tone of voice. B2B companies often use subject matter experts who aren’t writers to contribute thought leadership pieces. “This is where AI can come in handy,” said Andrew, as it can easily tighten up less-than-perfect copy.
Acrolinx uses a four-pronged approach to elevate content:Its AI engines analyse the content against your goals.Content is scored against those goals, which correlates with a human score, “which means three people don’t have to read it,” Andrew said.AI provides real-time guidance as you’re creating content, picking out parts that need to be rewritten.The platform delivers analytics, based on the scoring and the ability to look at content according to the company’s goals, which can be mapped against your strategy to see if it’s delivering.
The box-set binge approach
B2B buyers don’t wear suits, said Matthew Stevens, managing director at MOI Global. Why is this relevant to great content? Because it’s time to ditch the stereotypes and target customers at a micro-level.
“We’re living in a data-driven era, we’ve got to treat buyers like people with preferences like all of us,” he said. MOI does this by collecting huge amounts of customer data from multiple sources that they can then segment and use to personalise communications to target accounts.
MOI’s 5 tactics for ultra-consumable contentUnderstand your customer journeys.Within those stages are ‘micro-phases’. For example, once a customer is buying a car, they’ll look at how they go to the dealership and navigate the finance. Start mapping against those activities.Conduct a gap analysis. Look at everything your audience is doing and what you’re offering them, and where you could be doing more.Identify the customer pain-points to create content to address them.Focus on best-in-class examples. Steal ideas from your competition.
As a B2C consumer we expect impeccable customer experience and personalisation, but what can B2B learn from this? Matthew advised following your purchasing journey as though you were a customer to understand where the gaps are. When you’ve done this, you can understand what content is working and through which channels.
“Marketing is content, so let them binge yours. Everything should be personalised to the level of Netflix.” If you use analytics to work out which content people are feasting on, you can implement progressive profiling of your customers.
“Create binge-friendly sites. Landing pages should have multiple pieces of content and you should understand what content works together.” For this, he explains, it’s important to leverage your analytics to group content into ‘binge packs’ for your customers to gorge on depending on their personal preferences and favourite topics. These can then be built into personas depending on what content they’re consuming, to provide recommendations and targeted emails.
This hyper-personalisation at scale is crucial, says Matthew. If you’re sending an email, just including the customer’s name will no longer cut it. Netflix is obviously a great example of this. Their emails are personalised based on behavioural preferences, previously consumed content, and tailored based on products they know the customer has.
But the crucial ingredient to irresistible content B2B customers want to consume, Matthew explains, is a story they can get invested in. Much like Netflix’s film Bandersnatch, where viewers make choices about where the narrative leads, a story that’s tailored to the customer drives engagement.
“Understand what your story is from your customer’s point of view. If a story feels tailored to you and you’ve driven the outcome, you’re involved in the brand,” Matthew advised. Think about the tools you can offer that reflect their business challenges, and how they end up in your product. “Email nurtures should be driven by intent. Drive intelligent landing pages, create content binge hubs, and advertise tailored video.”
The test and learn approach
Today, two million pieces of marketing content will be published in the next two hours – and 55% of people who read them will read for less than 15 seconds.
Creating a content without testing, editing, or learning is an ‘offline hangover’, according to Nick Mason, CEO and founder of content software Turtl – an outdated approach that is better reserved for print media. “Publishing is just the beginning. You can now rewrite, change the text, and updates can be made on the fly.”
One of Turtl’s clients put this strategy into action, deciding not to create any new content for six months, but instead simply update old content, enhancing it for their audience. They saw traffic increase by 150%. “Test, iterate, plan, repeat. In the offline world, deadlines are strict. In the online world, there aren’t those restrictions,” Nick advised.
The benefit of testing, failing and editing, he said, is that this is an economical approach in an online world. “Write something new, write a blog post. Failure is as cheap as you make it.” Cisco boosted its readership by 5x, with 7x engagement levels through this refinement process, while Allianz Global Investors saw its content read times go from almost nothing to five minutes. Look at your blog and work out what was successful, and audit for any offline tendencies in your strategy. However, you’ll need a culture that allows for failure to be able to learn from your mistakes and try again.
With the right tools, the barrier to training can be lowered and an agile approach is easily accessible. The first thing to do, Nick explained, is to develop minimal content and analyse the hell out of it. “Rather than the immaculate conception, you take an evolutionary approach and get a more consistent outcome.”
