Top 5 Insights About the Rise of Content

December 12, 2012

It’s refreshing to see that content is becoming a core competency and a priority for organizations, according to BtoB Magazine.* As an agency focused on B2B, content has been a core piece of our client GTM planning for at least five years.

It seems to me that maybe there’s been a gap between recognizing the right approach and having the strategic-meets-journalistic expertise to actually develop great content. The good news for businesses looking to bridge this gap is that there’s some great information out there about how to do so. This post offers a quick roundup of trends and best practices.

Excerpted from Sirius Decisions Core Strategy Report, Building a Content Strategy

Excerpted from Sirius Decisions Core Strategy Report, Building a Content Strategy

 

1. Best of breed marketers’ No. 1 challenge is producing enough content.

A recent BtoB study “Content Marketing: Ready for Prime Time,” credits marketers that invest 30% or more of their budgets in content marketing as “best of breed” practitioners. The study reports that this group’s No.1 challenge is producing enough content to feed the various channels.

2. By next year, the percentage of marketers engaged in content will nearly double.

34% of BtoB study respondents say they were “very” or “fully” engaged with content marketing—18% more than last year. And the study suggests that by next year, this group will nearly double to 66%.

3. Everyone in an organization needs to be content-centric.

Last week, I attended the Sirius Decisions conference, The New Content Paradigm: Strategy, Process and Best Practices, where Jay Gaines and Marisa Kopec discussed how companies are using content development to fuel inbound marketing and sales content optimization strategies. Marisa explained that successful organizations are defined by ownership of content across the entire marketing ecosystem.

4. The new content strategist should be second in command.

In a content-centric organization, someone needs to be behind the wheel. The new paradigm defined by Sirius Decisions puts the content strategist second-in-command, reporting to the CMO. The strategist not only understands that content is the lifeblood of marketing, but is also senior enough to have influence across the organization—ensuring that sales and product marketing are on board.
 

5. The future of content is in our hands, and measurement can harness its power.

Now that we all agree on the importance of relevant content and why we need to invest resources in developing it, my prediction is that 2013 will bring exciting experimentation with nuancing channels and formats—from mobile to outdoor experiences to highly engaging online experiences. Through measurement, we’ll understand what’s doing the best job of engaging different types of people and converting them directly and indirectly.

Want more insights about content? Check out these posts!

Do You Speak Content? Top 8 Terms for Savvy B2B Demand Generation Content Experts

Three Things NOT to Do When Curating Content for B2B Demand Generation

Effective Content Measurement in 6 Steps

* Obrecht, John, ”Content ascends to marketing throne,” BtoB, October 8, 2012 4.

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Posted by LaurenOnDemand

Content Marketing Orange Awards Results Are In!

October 25, 2012

 

“The Driving Force of Tech Marketing In This Decade: Education” — Tim Harmon, Forrester Research

I could not agree more. As marketers, our roles have evolved—in an exciting way. Marketers have always been tasked with creating communications and delivering information. But to accomplish “education”, we must truly know our audience, our buyers and our customers—and ensure we speak to their needs.

Content is the currency of this education; it brings conversations to life. The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) Orange Awards honor the content marketers who are setting the standard for this dialogue, and this year’s results are in. Big congratulations to the winners:

  • Content Marketing Agency of the Year (50+ employees): Imagination Publishing
  • Content Marketing Agency of the Year (15-49 employees): Babcock & Jenkins (Full disclosure: I work for this organization.)
  • Content Marketing Agency of the Year (<15 employees): King Content

The judges were juiced about BNJ: “They made a strong case as a cutting-edge content agency. Their philosophy and thought leadership stood out among other agencies of their size. Their funnel formula and focus on the buyer’s journey, and content opportunities within, is worth noting in particular.”

For the inside scoop on what makes content marketing powerful, I asked Carmen Hill, our content queen, to share a few tips from her arsenal. She says:

1. The most important thing we content marketers can do is to think more about what our audience wants to learn, what they need to know to solve problems that are important to them at each stage of their buyer’s journey, and less about what we want to tell and sell them. This gives us a direct conduit to their decision-making process and provides the opportunity to influence that decision.

2. We also need to focus first on the substance of the information we’re sharing rather than on the format. People aren’t looking for a webinar or a whitepaper, they’re looking for information that’s relevant to them.

3. Finally, with so many creative options available to us now, we should expand our vision of how we present information. If you have relevant data, don’t bury it in text—bring it to life in an infographic or SlideShare presentation. Interview your company’s subject matter experts in a Google Hangout and post the video on YouTube. Host a Twitter chat and collect the best contributions via Storify.

 Want to learn more about who’s doing great things with content—and how? Check out the press release announcing all Orange Awards winners and finalists, take a quick tour of the BNJ Content Practice and see how BNJ turns up the juice on content marketing.

 Congratulations to all!

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Posted by LaurenOnDemand

6 Tips to Ensure Your B2B Demand Gen Content Connects

September 25, 2012

Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing Eloqua

Strategically mapping content to the Buyer’s Journey is important—and so are the basics that make content connect. I recently checked out a video where Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing at Eloqua, shares some content marketing tips that I thought I’d pass along. Joe offers a few good reminders to help ensure your content gets shared:

  1. Un-friend the form
    In short, compelling content should be set free. Not sure which content should be gated? Check out my post Four Criteria for Gating Content to Aid Demand Generation.
  2. Be visual
    Include visuals to break up the copy—and leave plenty of white space.
  3. Be brief and digestible
  4. Be personal
    Make sure content is authored by a real person at your company.
  5. Be the viewer’s advocate
    Meet real needs and desires to make a real connection.
  6. Take a big idea and break it down into different kinds of content (or “atomize” it)
    Want to learn more about atomizing content to reach more people with greater impact? Get started with Three Essentials For Atomizing Content to Fuel B2B Demand Generation.

When making content choices, Joe favors the slideshare over the infographic and doesn’t think too highly of the whitepaper. He and I don’t entirely see eye-to-eye on this. I think there’s no silver bullet when it comes to content. Diversity is the spice of life, and our job as marketers is to offer diverse formats and experiences—because everyone consumes information in different ways.

What steps do you take to ensure your content connects to drive demand, and what has been most effective in meeting that goal?

Leave a Comment » | Content Marketing, Data Base Marketing, Demand Generation, Lead Generation, Relationship Marketing, Thought Leadership | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by LaurenOnDemand

iQ by Intel Takes the Food Cart Viral: A B2B Demand Gen Case Study

August 28, 2012

I was checking out one of my favorite foodie blogs, Eater 38, when I came across the iQ by Intel series on Mobile Food. These videos investigate how popular food carts in New York and Portland are using technology to succeed. The first, “Starting the Food Cart,” shows mobile restaurant owners discussing how technology shapes the industry. Next, “Powering the Food Cart” looks at how these businesses use the latest payment technologies. And the third, “Promoting the Food Cart,” will show how they use social media to connect with customers. I think these are great examples of how smart content becomes discoverable—by revealing something people want to know and are excited to share.

A colleague of mine knows Bryan Rhoads, iQ Editor-in-Chief, and he gave her the inside scoop about this project. “iQ is designed to feed a content-hungry 24/7 cycle. It may sound cliché, but content is the currency of the modern web…and social shares are the transactions in this market place for eyeballs and exposure.”

How has iQ been effective in grabbing eyeballs? “As consumers of information, we still Google or search for information, but content discovery has changed. I’m much more likely to discover interesting items, news and product offerings in my social news feeds like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. An additional and very pleasant surprise for us is how often we’re seeing our content in news aggregation sites, magazines and apps like FlipBoard or Zite. That’s effective modern marketing. That’s how the game is now played: getting one’s content to appear organically in these new tools and apps. Seeing an iQ story, including the Foodcart series in FlipBoard and Zite, is what it’s all about.”

How can businesses increase exposure? “It’s a 24/7 on-demand market place. Brands need to think more like publishers, i.e. cater to what the audience needs, wants or wants to share. iQ’s content strategy is ‘demand-side’ economics, not the ‘supply-side’ where brands have traditionally focused. Brands historically want to supply content and messages that they want to push out. However, in this on-demand world, messages and content will fall helplessly flat if there is no demand.”

The Mobile Food series is a great reminder that we can increase awareness and credibility without being salesy. One of my social gurus, Carmen Hill, agrees that these guys have knocked it out of the park. “I love what Intel is doing with the iQ site. Bryan and his team have truly blazed a trail with their social and content marketing practice. It’s so easy to fall back on the bad habit of always talking about ourselves. What Intel is doing—and what we should all aspire to do—is to create content about things our audience cares about. Talking about our products is boring. Talking about how our products help get your lunch paid for and ready to eat faster is much more interesting.”

The takeaway? When B2B demand gen efforts are aligned just right with what’s hot, content can become not just relevant but magnetic.

How are you delivering the content your audiences are hungry for in ways that reveal your true value—and get you the eyeballs you want?

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Posted by LaurenOnDemand

Top 3 Playground Rules for Sales and Marketing Teams

July 31, 2012

Sales and marketing teams are often at odds, blaming each other for a loss of revenue or lack of success. In the Playground Rules for Sales and Marketing Teams event presented by the Marketing Automation Institute (MAI), I was on a panel of industry leaders including Brian Hansford, Account Director—Marketing Automation, Heinz Marketing and Alex Shootman, Chief Revenue Officer, Eloqua that was moderated by Jay Hidalgo, President of The Annuitas Group. Together, we explored what it takes to get sales and marketing aligned to work (and play) well together—and what to expect along the way.

All of us on the panel agreed that in today’s market, the focus should be on buyers—what they need and how they want to buy. With 70% of the buyer’s journey now happening before sales is even engaged, sales and marketing alignment is not an option; it’s a requirement. It is not surprising that top performing organizations where sales and marketing effectively collaborate are seeing improved performance and increased revenue. How do they accomplish this? Following are the top three insights for businesses striving to align sales and marketing efforts:

1.  Employ these 5 practices that companies with great alignment share

  • Establish a common understanding of knowledge, vocabulary and goals.
  • Understand that buyers go through a journey and that sales and marketing both need to work with them through the journey.
  • Ensure that sales and marketing each know their role—as if in a partner dance; each should know who is leading and who is following at each stage in the buyer’s journey.
  • Commit to clean data.
  • Employ a common set of metrics and joint reporting.

That’s the big-picture overview. Following are a few of the finer points that can help you be successful as you put these practices into play.

2.  If you meet resistance, start small

When you are first aligning sales and marketing, you don’t have to bite off the whole organization at once. If you are meeting resistance, try piloting with a specific region. Once there’s proof that marketing’s efforts are advantageous to the sales process, the rest of your organization will get on board quickly.

3.   Softer metrics can help you gain traction

When you hear anecdotes about sales enablement tools that help close the deal, make sure to capture and share the enthusiastic feedback. (I gave an example of how my agency helped CenturyLink analyze target audience needs to inform a custom demand gen solution. When one prospect immediately agreed to a meeting and actually brought the tool we created to the meeting, it was evident that marketing helped sales gain both access and credibility. This went a long way toward speeding adoption.)

The good news is that alignment is within reach for your organization! The practices outlined here are very achievable when you start small and remain committed to the process. Our panel suggested that you keep in mind the Steven Covey quote “Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and business” as you investigate opportunities to maximize the impact of sales and marketing collaboration.

Want the full download? You can listen to the entire Playground Rules for Sales and Marketing Teams conversation any time.

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Posted by LaurenOnDemand

6 Tips & 10 Touch Points for Social B2B Demand Generation

July 19, 2012

Today, social media is as important as email and whitepapers in driving demand generation success—and this is widely recognized by high-performing businesses. In fact, according to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, 41% of best-in-class companies have integrated social media with their lead management and lead scoring efforts. And 33% of those companies have integrated social profile data into their customer or prospect records.

If you’re considering using social media to generate leads, you’ll find dozens of guides and thousands of blog posts on this topic. I think Eloqua’s The Grande Guide to Social Demand Generation delivers a succinct and useful introduction that will help you dip your B2B demand gen toes in the social waters. Below is my distillation of the guide’s greatest hits.

Blueprint for Your Integrated Contact Strategy
I’d suggest that companies getting started in the social sphere check out “10 Touch Points for a Socially Savvy Contact Strategy” by Carmen Hill, Social Media Strategist at Babcock & Jenkins, on page 8 of the Grande Guide. (Yes, I’m biased because we work together, but we work together because Carmen is awesome!) I’m going to share my three favorite tips from Carmen here:

1.    Influence the influencers
Participate in influencer blogs and forums by providing relevant, data-rich content and commenting or responding when appropriate.

2.    Be social
Interact with others on social networks by joining or starting relevant conversations, sharing content and providing your insights.

3.    Nurture relationships
Stay in touch with responders via email and social channels until they indicate interest or intent to purchase.
I think Carmen offers a smart place to start, without biting off too much. I encourage you to read the rest of her tips about how to get your message in front of the right people at the right time.

Six Success Tips from Sage Software
Take a look at the case study “How Sage Went Social in Just One Year” on page 4 of the Grande Guide to learn how Sage Software established a social media presence for their human resources products that outpaced the competition in just one year by following these six steps:

1.    Outline clear goals
Reached influencers by developing a content creation process that feeds social engagement and joining prospects’ and customers’ conversation.

2.    Find the audience
Conducted a social media audit for their space, identifying the relevant posts, articles and targets to engage.

3.    Pick the platforms
Focused on creating a branded presence on the four most relevant channels for HR conversations: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

4.    Identify the influencers
Developed a methodology for identifying and reaching out to the key influencers in the HR social space leveraging tools like Klout.

5.    Turn on the tools
Employed a socially savvy content management system and marketing automation platform.

6.    Measure meaningfully
Through a custom dashboard, measured number of leads generated and cost per lead.
What I most appreciated about this case study is how it demonstrates that taking basic (and repeatable) steps can make a significant impact.

Get even smarter about social
Want to dive a little deeper into the social B2B demand gen waters? Check out a few of my previous posts, plus other industry intelligence:
•    A Knockout Social Media Guide for the B2B Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
•    How to Use Social Media Tools for B2B Demand Generation
•    Two Major Building Blocks for Social Media Success in B2B Demand Generation
•    Develop a Winning Combination for Social Media Integration: 9 tips from a recent MarketingSherpa webinar
•    Understand How B2B Social Media Connects to Your Audience

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Posted by LaurenOnDemand

How to be Enchanting: Top 3 Tips from Guy Kawasaki

July 17, 2012

If ever there were a man who practices what he preaches, it would be Guy Kawasaki. I was thrilled to experience Apple’s original chief evangelist while at the 2012 International BMA Conference. The conference was fabulous, the content it delivered was top notch and hearing Guy speak was the icing on the cake.

Author of the new book Enchantment, Guy reports that he has been in the business of enchantment since 1979. And I can back him up on this: Guy is as enchanting as they come. Not only does this thought leader have great proof and credibility, he knows how to captivate an audience with a story. Guy’s advice reminded me of some of the universal truths of what makes business (and human) relationships work. He emphasized the importance of the softer side of marketing: ultimately, people buy from people. I’ll tell you three reasons why (and what you can do about it).

1.    Be likable.
When you are genuinely friendly, you can make a genuine connection. Guy told a great story about how enchanting he found Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group, to be when the big shot got down on his knees and rubbed Guy’s feet. A colleague was just relating a story to me on this point. When she was leaving the office of a long-term client, he said to her, “You do great work. But the real reason I love to collaborate with you is that I always feel better when you leave my office.”

2.    Be trustworthy.
The point that really hit home for me here was that when you trust others first, they will trust you. Guy pointed to brands like amazon.com, zappos.com and Nordstrom that have earned loyalty and brand equity by leading with customer trust. One of the suggestions Guy made on this point was to always approach people seeking to help them accomplish their goals (rather than wondering what they can do for us.)

3.    Tell a story.
Stories are currency. They can create intrigue, make an emotional connection and offer proof of likability and trustworthiness. One of the great legends of Silicon Valley, according to Guy, is that Ebay was started because the founder’s girlfriend wanted to sell PEZ dispensers. This makes a huge company seem completely approachable and even personable—even if its true mission (to democratize commerce) is far more lofty. Why talk about 64 gigabytes, for example, when you could explain that an iPod holds 10,000 songs? When you talk the talk of your desired listener, you are far more likely to make a connection. (Want more ideas about making an impact with story? Check out my post Storytelling That Sells: Five Tips for B2B Demand Generation Marketers.)

Are you enchanted yet? I encourage you to experience all of Guy’s insights about enchantment. Click the link to listen to his hour-long presentation and review the slide deck. Then, get ready to change hearts, minds and actions.

Note: the recorded presentation was given at Stanford University. It is very similar to but not exactly the same as what we heard at the BMA Conference. I think it’s a great example of how a story can be customized to connect with each audience, as Guy (a Stanford alum) weaves quite a bit of Stanford insider jesting throughout his presentation.

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Posted by LaurenOnDemand

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