Content marketing is a major challenge for B2B marketers. Chris Hare, business partner at Ogilvy reveals four steps to content marketing success.
In our B2B marketing leaders survey, we asked for respondents’ top three challenges. The good news is that content came out as the number one issue. In the past marketers may have focused on the new opportunities; social, blogs, mobile, and the need to make them work harder – often in isolation. Now everyone is recognising what we say and the stories we tell are more important than where we say it. It feels controversial saying we should focus on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘how’ but it shouldn’t be, and fortunately from the evidence of the research you seem to agree.For B2B marketers, especially those with limited budgets, their content strategy should be the glue holding everything together. Below are four things marketers need to remember.
1. Segment by behaviour
It isn’t time to rip up the rulebook and start again. The pillars of what we do, how we do it and why we do it remain the same. We still need to create awareness, stimulate interest, drive consideration and sell. And good content, utilised at the right touchpoints and at the right time in your customers’ buying cycles can help you achieve these objectives.However, the fact of the matter is that the world has changed; it is that internet thing again.
Increasingly your customer’s behaviour better defines where they are in the buying cycle, profiling becomes less important the more they interact with you. Think about Amazon. Do they care who you are? No, not really, your previous buying and search behaviour is a far better indicator of what you are likely to do next. Because the B2B purchase cycle is so much longer than the B2C, it is all the more important marketers design content that fits the different stages of the buying process and learn to derive clues just like Amazon. Marketers need to make sure they don’t bore prospects on the first date; initial interactions are best when they are short and sweet.
2. Integrate content
Greater onus now falls on the content marketer to help prove content adds value to the business. Here are some ways to do this.
First, identify and agree what the role of content is and how it fits into the marketing mix. Don’t be assumptive that everyone in the organisation agrees it is a good investment. If its purpose is to convert prospects into luke warm leads, make sure that is understood and acknowledged, as well as part of your marketing plan.
Second, measure what customers are engaging with and publicise it internally. Assess the reach of your content by exposure, complete views, the value of earned views, the number of ‘shares’, ‘likes’, subscribes, favourites and more qualitatively, by ratings and reviews. This will ensure you have got the quantity and quality of activity right. Measure the impact of it on the sales funnel through leads generated and products sold. You can also measure post-play interactions (the number of times a business shares it around, forwards it on and any repeat views), the brand lift and the increase of relationship value. If you don’t measure these aspects already, then now is the time to start.
Third, ensure all content is ‘versioned’ for sales collateral or visa versa – taken from content created by the sales teams. If sales and marketing feel they own part of the content strategy you are half way home. Deliver that content on mobile devices and it will be close to a holy conversion.
3. Be brave or don’t bother
It is said the world generates as much information every two days as we did from the beginning of time to 2003. So it goes without saying – what you do produce needs to be great. For it to work, your audience must want to see it, read it or listen to it. Don’t be boring and replicate what everyone else is doing.
This means start with what your customer is interested in. Then think hard about what content you can deliver that is unique to your brand. It is the cross over that is important, interesting and unique. Concentrate on producing content that ticks both these boxes, 50 per cent of your content you should hit this sweet spot. So before you craft your content ask yourself: Are we telling a story in our own unique style or delivering content our competitors can’t or wouldn’t? If you are not, think about binning it.
Fail to apply these filters and you will just be adding to the noise, jumbled in with your competitors doing the same thing, doing the same search analysis, wasting money and resources duplicating efforts. Market leaders can get away with doing the generic education pieces; customers go to them first. You probably can’t.
However, sometimes you can tell the same story in a more engaging way. Stats are made more interesting by the use of infographics. Video allows you to show a sense of humour. Blogs are great for more controversial content. Your uniqueness can be in how you tell the story.
4. Get started
Above all, I recommend you just do it. You would be surprised at how many organisations intellectualise themselves into inertia. The less you do the less you learn.
Those organisations that have started are learning what formats work, what don’t, how best to distribute content, how to build your editorial plan and whether anyone can blog or not. You will be learning what improves search scores and what doesn’t.
And hopefully you will be learning that content helps drives sales.