Marketing Interactions

Revelations from Content Audits

I've been doing a lot of content audits lately. Boy are they an eye opener! When you have to sit down and read a slew of content from one vendor in a short timeframe, it can be exhausting. But I always learn a lot of great stuff from the immersion.

I was reading a great post by David Brock this morning, "But we gave them every thing they wanted!?!" and it really brought home the point of how we can diminish our opportunities by requesting too much effort from our prospective customers.

One of the core principles I've rallied around for a long time is the need to simplify effort. In fact, it's one of five of what I call Catch Factors that I've written about since 2008. It's one of those things that marketers remain blissfully unaware of unless they subject themselves to the marketing process they expect their prospects to embrace...or do a deep-dive content audit.

During the three audits I'm conducting at the moment, I've found numerous things that I've earmarked for improvement. But, today, I'd like to share three elements that make your content too much effort to deal with.

Don't Belabor the Point

This is a common mistake that writers often make during a first draft. When you're not quite sure how to say something, you try it out in a variety of ways. The problem is that if you don't clean it up, you'll exhaust your reader. They're just looking for a reason to abandon your content. Make it too difficult for them to slog their way through to the good part (Assuming there is a good part.) and they're gone in a click.

Make the point and move on. Saying the same thing—albeit—in different ways for three paragraphs is irritating, but it also can leave prospects with unfavorable improessions, such as:

• You aren't confident in the ideas you're sharing
• You don't understand the topic
• Or, even worse, that you think they're a bit slow on the uptake

Drop the Self-References to Company and Product

I can't tell you how many content assets start out great to only rapidly deteriorate into the equivalent of a solution brief. This is especially true in content labeled as white papers, for some reason.

I'm on a roll, reading a great line of reasoning for why a problem must be solved and then a jolting leap is made to showcase the solution—complete with company and product names, trademarks, etc. Whoa! Stops me in my tracks. It's like the writer made the assumption that two pages of rhetoric bought them the right to shove 6 pages of product information in front of me.

Unless I'm a late-stage buyer looking for that type of information, you've missed the mark. But, the other risk you take is on not delivering on the expectations you set at the start. If your white paper is actually a solution brief but the title and summary promised thought leadership on a topic, you've disappointed your reader. Sometimes fatally.

There are a couple of things I'd like to point out about self-referencing:

• Whether on a web page or in a white paper, I'm pretty sure that your company's branding is highly visible. In other words, your buyers know who's producing the content. It is not necessary to beat them over the head.


• If you are discussing a problem that's on your buyer's priority list and following with expertise about how to solve it, do you really think the reader will think you're talking about someone else's solution even if you don't mention your product name?

Recent IDG research found that one of the biggest challenges for IT buyers was in finding content free from vendor bias.

By talking about the solution without using product names, you're more able to achieve the "illusiion" of less bias and more expertise. By sticking to the reasons why the problem should be solved and the value of doing so, you present your reader with the opportunity to consider your ideas without the impression that you're pitching the sale.

Buyers are not stupid. If what you say resonates and they want to learn more, they'll visit your website product/solution pages. You can even link to them from the paper to reduce that effort. Just do it subtly.

The point is to use your content to help position how buyers think about solving the problem by criteria that (amazingly) matches up to your solution when they go check it out.

Be Careful When Repurposing Content

When talking about solutions, we often draw comparisons to experiences or motifs that establish common ground. Sports, factories, space flights, the Wild West, cooking recipes, and other metaphors and analogies are incorporated into content because they're memorable and help us to help our readers connect the dots.

The precise problem that happens when we repurpose content and keep those metaphors is that they're memorable. Even with a new title and some new information, if an analogy is remembered, the prospect will assume they've read the content before and discard it. If this happens too many times, they'll discount your content as a valuable resource.

The same is true if you always discuss the challenges or problems your prospect is addressing in the same ways. Marketers must continuously think of new ways to approach the problem to create new takeaways and memories that motivate their prospects to discuss your ideas with others involved in the purchase.

Repurposing content is a good thing. Just pay attention to what gets repeated.

When's the last time you audited your content?

Seriously. Sit down and start reading. It's amazing what can become clear to you when you immerse yourself in your own content instead of only thinking about one piece at a time.

When you're doing this, try to determine what question each content asset is answering and for whom. It can be an eye opener!

 

The Role of Content in the B2B IT Buying Process

The 2012 Customer Engagement Study, conducted by IDG Enterprise and released at the end of September, focused on learning more about the role content plays in an IT Decision Maker's buying process.

A validation for the role of content:

Enterprise IT Decision Makers engage with an average of 10 content assets during their buying process.

When I first read this, I nodded my head and thought, yes, this justifies the need for increasing the volume of content, as well as the quality of that content. But then I wondered how many of those assets were sourced from the vendor they decided to buy from? Or, at least referenced the vendor, as would be the case with an analyst report such as Gartner's Magic Quadrant Reports or other vendor analysis.

If the average is 10 resources, would you need to have at least 5 of them be from your company to sway the decision in your favor? Eight? Or would 2 or 3 well placed assets be enough to gain your company a spot on their shortlist?

That brings up which stage you need to influence the most. My money is betting on weighting more heavily the content buyers engage with before they fully engage in the buying process. Not at the exclusion of the other stages, but most companies are lacking in content that sets the stage, so to speak.

Here's why:

• The company that sets the stage for thinking about the problem and pondering the options for solving it can become the anchor for how their prospects think about doing so.


• Cementing your company as an option prior to the review of other vendors makes your company the yard stick by which all others are measured.

Don't just stop at the number 10.

10 content assets is reflective of one buyer. In many of my client projects we've identified 3 - 5 different stakeholders (personas) that must be educated and persuaded across the buying process. That's a total of 30 to 50 pieces of content. It's also 3 different focused "stories." So there's work to be done.

The report also states that:

The average IT Decision Maker needs to consume 5 pieces of content before they are ready to talk to a salesperson.

This is great to know, but if you wait until you see a prospect access 5 pieces of content from your website, have you waited too long? Unless you're certain that all content on the subject consumes is produced by your company, then this isn't awfully helpful except to give content increasing credit for influence - which we all know it has, if it's designed for the buyer in question.

All of this aside, there are three findings from the study that I find immensely useful:

1. Buyers are willing to receive follow-up content related to what they've already downloaded. And they want up to two pieces within 4 weeks of the original download.

This indicates that marketers using marketing automation systems that can be set up with triggers to send related content after download will have an advantage. Of course, that also means that they will need to plan their content development to ensure that the follow-on content is purposely an extension of the resource the buyer showed interest in.

Even better: "Only 20% of respondents said that they do not notice when content is delivered relating to search or previous downloads."

2. IT Decision Makers share information mostly by email (86%), but 73% also use social media to source ideas and information to discuss with peers and colleagues.

• Twitter is used by 59% primarily to share/Retweet technology articles, news, & info
• G+ is used by 54% primarily to stay on top of trends in their industry or business
• Facebook is used by 50% primarily to post comments on tech-related topics
• YouTube is used by 49% primarily to receive tech advice from others

3. The following chart dispels the idea that specific formats of content are only desirable during one buying stage. This being said, notice the variety that interestes ITDMs.

Note that Case studies can be used beginning, middle, and end and that feature articles and how-to information also play a bigger role. It's not just heavy-duty content, such as white papers. Overall, a variety of content is needed across the course of buying. It's the topical progression that must be considered to generate movement and ongoing engagement.

[Click to Enlarge Graphic]

Content is definitely driving a large portion of the IT buying process. Are you serving up what your buyers need to take next steps toward purchase with your company?

The Painful Reality of Social Spam

I've been writing a series of posts lately trying to dispel B2B Marketing Buzzwords. This isn't exactly a buzzword, but it's becoming a problem and should be a source of embarassment for those who do it. Yes, this is a rant. You've been forewarned...

You know who I'm talking about? People who are abusing the InMail feature of LinkedIn to spam their contacts.

I don't know about you, but I'm receiving lots of InMail promotions every week from contacts who should know better - and as you'll see below, people who aren't contacts but have learned to "game" the system.

Just this week, in addition to valid personal exchanges, I've received:

• A blanket invitation to a webinar
• A couple of conference announcements
• A handful of straight-on, blasted-out sales pitches
• And six invitations that were direct sales pitches from people I'm not connected to

The first thing I'd like to say to these misguided individuals is that LinkedIn is not your ESP or your sales database.

What surprises me the most about this is that LinkedIn is supposed to be a professional networking system where you can develop relationships with people you know, or would like to get to know better - hopefully with mutual benefits as a result. In other words, it's a relationship opportunity.

Many companies still buy lists and spam people who have never opted in to their databases, but this is even worse. This has your name on it. You. Your personal brand is now labeled with the equivalent of "desperate spammer."

Have you thought about that?

I received an email from a new connection and fairly new user of LinkedIn this week who asked me if the primary purpose of LinkedIn was to gain as many connections as possible without ever having any meaningful interactions via InMail. He said that he only hears from people via InMail when they want something.

That set me back. I had to really think about it. I probably have a handful of dialogues with contacts each week via InMail - but soon we move to email as it's easier to correspond directly.

My response to my contact was to point him toward discussion groups. That's where I think most of the conversations happen on LinkedIn that are useful. Good group moderators are trying their best to manage the spammy promotional junk and maintain the integrity of the conversations taking place. And many of the groups are valuable exchanges of information.

The difference to me with spam in discussion groups and spam via InMail is that the discussion group spam can be easily ignored. The InMail spam is more of a personal violation, in my book. Even though both methods are those of the unimaginative and self-focused.

And BTW - for those of you who preface your InMail abuse with "if you don't want to be bothered with this information, just ignore it" that is NOT an acceptable mea culpa.

A couple of things to think about:

• LinkedIn (as in all other forms of digital communications) will be as valuable as the level of trust and credibility you create with your participation.
• What can you do to have a meaningful interaction with a prospect or contact via LinkedIn? One that isn't focused only on what you want?
• A meaningful dialogue must be relevant to both sides.

If you want to open the lines of communication, here are some steps you should take. Warning, they take a bit of work. But, for the love of puppies, get hold of some initiative!

• Take the time to do a bit of research for each communication you want to initiate.
• Make it relevant to the person you're sending it to. Heck, their profile is a click away. How hard can it be?
• Don't make it all about what you want. You can have your turn later - once someone decides they think it might be worth their time to talk to you.
• Think about what you're putting your name on. Is it worth it?

Spam doesn't work. It never has and it certainly won't on a professional networking platform. Although I'm irritated, it hurts you much more than it hurts me.

There are so many ways to communicate and engage people that this shouldn't even be a feasible option.

Okay - I feel better now. You?

Making Assumptions About The Buyer's Journey

I'd like to take pause to question how marketers are using the term "buyer's journey." This also applies to buying process, buying cycle, sales cycle, etc.

If you've been reading my blog lately, you know I've been on a bit of a quest to get marketers to stop and think about what the terms we use every day actually mean. We're moving so fast and trying to expand our skill sets in real time and I think we adopt terms and apply them to what we're doing without really analyzing the underlying meaning.

So, let's take on the buyer's journey.

I write a lot about the buyer's journey/process. In fact, I took a very hard look at it when I was writing my book. Since I work with B2B companies with complex sales that have very long periods of prospect gestation, I came to the conclusion that the usual definition was just too broad to be meaningful.

I'm talking about the usual nod to: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase.

If the cycle takes 9 months, that's a lot of gray area for each stage. And all stages are not created equally in length of time or objectives that must be met for the continuation of forward motion. Plus, it occurs to me that the construct above is for us more than it is representative of our buyers.

I chose to break the buyers' journey into 7 stages based on how I've seen prospects navigate problem solving:

• Status quo - Their situation today before they are actively trying to resolve a problem


• Priority - Their realization that a problem exists that's worth solving


• Research - Actively seeking education, best practices and whatever they need to know to determine a viable course of action


• Options - Determining who has the expertise to help them solve the problem with the least risk


• Step Backs - Handling the doubt that occurs to restore confidence that all their questions have been answered and they're on the right path. Answering the "What if...?" questions


• Validation - Verifying that they're making the right choice in solution and vendor


• Choice - Making the purchase

However you choose to define the buyers' journey is fine. There are many roads to Oz. But what's important is that we consider this process from the buyers' perspective, not ours.

For example - let's say you use Awareness as your first stage. For some reason, marketers assume that if prospects are just "aware" of their company and solution that they will move on to the consideration stage.

Why?

I'm aware of a lot of companies that I never buy a thing from. So are you. What creates that defining moment that speaks to your prospect and motivates them to take an action to learn more about you or from you in relation to a problem they are trying to solve?

If they do learn more, do you assume they're now in the consideration stage? Or are they just becoming more aware? What is the catalyst that creates a stage transition? And how do you evaluate that?

With buyers taking control of their "journey," what makes you think you have the inside track?

These are not easy questions to answer. Developing a strategy to engage buyers by answering their needs as they look for solutions to problems requires hard work, research and continuous testing as markets evolve and priorities shift.

The starting point (in my opinion) is buyer personas. You've got to compile insights across the entirety of the process to determine what to provide, when. And how to provide it in a way that works for them.This includes uncovering the questions they need to answer to open up a path of discovery with the intention to solve a problem.

I think that in order to do this well we need to forget about format and think about information. For some reason, marketers always want to assign formats to stages before they think about the information that prospects need. I see this a lot.

Should we use a case study here or a blog post there? Who cares? If the information isn't what the prospect is looking for, it doesn't matter what format you put it in.

I took a road trip this summer and it occurs to me that turn-by-turn navigation from my GPS is pretty much definitive of the buyers journey. In other words, you can't turn right on Main Street until you take exit 12 off the freeway.

The same is true from an informational perspective. For example, until I know what my problem is costing me or what I'm giving up by letting it persist, I may not be motivated to seek change. So if your information is about why your solution is the right choice for solving my problem, I'm not interested because I haven't decided it's worth doing...yet.

If you want to know where your buyers are in their decision process, you've got to create tightly targeted content that will tell you based on their interaction with it.

And that's where marketers tend to miss the point. One interaction with your content doesn't prove a thing. How do you know it was really what they were looking for? Did it resonate or did they walk away after viewing it unimpressed?

Only by observing patterns of behavior over time can we ascertain how interested someone is and if we're truly seeing the display of intention.

There's much more to be said about the buyer's journey, but I'm stopping here. I'd like to know what you think. Where can we improve how we address problem solving for our prospects?

In fact, maybe it shouldn't be called a Buyer's Journey at all. Maybe it should just be called Problem Solving. For without problems, there would be no need for solutions, right?

And for those of you who look at the other end of the stick, an opportunity that isn't realized is due to a problem that is limiting potential. Just saying...

A Few Thoughts on B2B Marketing Buzzword: Relationship

I've been a bit of a journey to explore B2B marketing buzzwords. Today's focus - at the suggestion of Eric Wittlake — is the buzzword: Relationship.

Relationship is formally defined as a connection between people — emotional or otherwise. A relationship can be thought of as a dependence, affinity, or kinship.

What I find the most interesting in relation to marketing is the word "connection." This seems to be the missing link for many marketers whether they're referring to potential or existing customers.

Let's first take a look at what does not equate to a relationship:

• One white paper download. From experience, I know that I won't remember the company or the paper when they call me to schedule a demo because I had a brief encounter with their website form.


• Showing up when it's time to renew the contract. This is a case of what have you done for me lately? A relationship must have a personal or human component. It cannot be solely reliant upon my experience with the product, alone. A relationship must have some kind of human value exchange.


• A ReTweet, follow, like, or invitation to connect on a social network. I have a lot of followers. I follow a lot of people because I'm interested in what they're talking about or a cause they're passionate about. This does not mean I "know" them or that they know me.

In fact, if we go back to the work "connection," it must encompass some kind of "knowing" or recognition. This generally means there needs to be an exchange or even a longer term engagement, as I discussed in my blog post on that term.

The problem in marketing is that we seem to paint the word "relationship" with a one-size-fits-all brush. We talk about customer relationship management as if we actually spend time with all of our customers equally. We seem to think that transitory experiences with prospects mean more to them than they would in any other context if we thought about it rationally.

For example, when you think about your personal relationships, you have levels of them, right? Your hierarchy could look something like:

• acquantance - someone you've met a couple of times
• colleague - someone you've worked with and perhaps respect
• professional - someone who delivers a service (dentist, doctor, accountant)
• mentor - someone you learn from
• friend - someone you like and rely upon
• spouse - someone you know intimately, love and rely upon for the long term
• family - people you love unconditionally (if all is right in the world)

I'm not going to argue semantics on this one - you get the point. There's an evolution based on how well you know them and what role they fulfill in your life.

From a marketing perspective, establishing relationships with prospects must also be thought of in some kind of hierarchical fashion. This may run in parallel with buying stages and the level of engagement that can be established and earned along the way.

If you flip what I said above about personal relationships to a B2B prospect's perspective then the relationship you have with them will be determined by how well they know you and what role you may have earned the right to fulfill in relation to their needs and priorities.

Their hierarchy with respect to your company could look something like this to your prospects:

• nobody - I may have heard of your company, but I have no opinion or affinity.


• acquainted - I may have had exposure to your content or brand in some way.


• familiar - I know who you are, but I'm not yet sure you're relevant to my needs.


• known - I've discovered you may have insights I find valuable so I'm paying more attention


• respected - I'm following your blog or have subscribed to your newsletter because I see consistently valuable ideas.


• mentor - I'm now on the lookout for your content and have shared your stuff with my network.


• expert - I'm in conversations with your salespeople to see if you can really help me.


• customer - I've decided you bring enough value to the table that I'll invest in having you help me solve my problems. I think I can rely upon you.


• advocate - You've proved your value and I'm so enthusiastic, I think others should have you help them — and I'm proactively sharing my praise.

Do you notice the additional steps and time it takes for a worthwhile relationship to form for both of you? Yet the standard today is that we treat people who consider us "nobody" or maybe "acquainted" as if they're bonified prospects. This stems from our determination that anyone who could become our customer is viable whether they want to be or not. If you look like a "duck," by gosh we're going to make you one!

Relationships are not something to be taken lightly. They take a lot of work and a lot of consistent value delivery. This is why the way you go to market is so important. Think of the hierarchy as a ladder. If you slip up, you slide down a rung or two, maybe more. Then you have to rebuild.

The level of relationship marketers can build will pretty much dictate what they can accomplish with their marketing initiatives. Relationships are about credibility and trust, as much as value and relevance. This being said, prospects don't just build relationships with one part of your organization. Marketing can only take them so far. What happens when salespeople get involved better be a seamless extension and the same when it comes to implementation teams and customer service.

The challenge is in how to establish lifecycle relationships, not just an experience in a pocket of time.

So be a bit careful the next time you start to throw around the word relationship. It means quite a bit more than we often give it credit for. Especially with our growing reliance on digital marketing that tends to remove the human part in many ways.

Bollocks to B2B Marketing Buzzword: Relevance

Recently, I’ve felt compelled to take on some B2B marketing terms that make me a bit nuts as their meanings become blurred through the casual way we’re using them. I’ve taken on engagement and conversation, and now I’ve got a twist going about relevance.

Be Relevant!

Design content that’s relevant to your audience!

If you’re content isn’t relevant, you’re marketing efforts will fall short.

I agree with all of these statements, which is easy to do because they really don’t say anything. What does “relevance” really mean in a marketing context? If marketers understood this, there would be a whole lot of content in the trash bin. Just saying…

In order to answer the relevance question, marketers need to back up to the “who” question. Because, unless you know who you’re trying to engage and what they care about, the point of relevance is, well, irrelevant.

Questions to answer in evaluation of the relevance of your marketing content:

• Who is the content is designed for?


• Why will they care? (Hint: make sure your content passes the “so what?” test)


• What value will they recognize? (Hint: not what you want them to value, but what they actually care about)


• How important is the information to them? (Hint: is the topic related to helping them solve a problem keeping them from achieving a critical business objective?)


• What will they learn? (Hint: share your expertise)


• What will the audience takeaway as a next step? (Hint: identify the most memorable thing about the content asset)

I hear from a lot of marketers that they don’t have time or budget to do the research and legwork that will help them answer the questions above in relation to the content they are developing. There’s still a lot of “we need one of those” types of discussions going on. (Think infographic, Facebook pages, videos, etc.) But when asked “Why” they need it, their answers speak more to shiny object syndrome than valid business reasoning.

If you stop and think about it – we’re all tuned to relevance. Think about the way you delete stuff out of your inbox without giving it more than a cursory glance. Why do you decide to register for the webinars you attend? Relevance is an instinctive reaction. Something either catches your attention or it doesn’t.

And what makes the difference can be remarkably subtle: For example, if I’m thinking about how to get more insight from my web analytics and I receive an email from a company I’m not familiar with that’s focused on “business intelligence” or “big data,” I might delete it without taking the time to stop, think, and relate it to “insights from analytics.” But, if I remember the company as being an expert in analytics, I will probably take the time to make the connection.

The words we use, as well as the topics we choose, and the perception of our companies by our audience all play a role in the recognition of relevance by those we intend to engage.

Some of the stuff that ruins relevance for audiences includes:

• Overuse of company or product names and references – who cares?


• Focus on the company, not the audience – why should they spend their attention?


• High-level, surface information that doesn’t get to the depth of interest that makes it valuable – where’s the learning?


• Content that leaves the audience hanging – where are the takeaways?


• Content that’s a replay of 27 other articles your audience has likely been exposed to – (Hint: if you have nothing new to add that spins the topic in a new direction, let it go)


• Talking to the audience like you know them, but obviously don’t – clueless!

Relevance is in the eye of the beholder. (Sound familiar?) What you think or want doesn’t matter.

The secret to relevance in B2B marketing is to learn what your intended audience is interested in and applying what your solutions enable in relation to that interest—using words that resonate.

What are you doing to ensure that your marketing content is making the right connections with the right audience wherever they find it? (website, blog, nurturing programs, email copy, white papers, etc.)

Taking on B2B Marketing Buzzword: Conversation

Everywhere I look, I see B2B marketing that spouts "join the conversation," "get in the conversation," and other references to the word that skew it's meaning into the equivalent of "talk to the hand."

In my last post, I wrote about debunking the B2B buzzword, engagement. In the same vein, I'm wondering what the heck happened to the art of conversation? Have we become so numb by the ability to publish whatever we want that we've forgotten how to be human?

The words dialogue and conversation are also interchanged without thought but, in online marketing, they have different criterion:

Conversation: an interchange of thought, information actively shared between/among people. (Requires 2 or more people)

Dialogue: an exchange of information (Only requires one person)

The difference here is that a conversation is an active exchange of information between people where a dialogue (as an exchange of information) could be between a person and a website, blog, video, etc. without the need for two active (human) participants.

I think this is an important distinction. I do not think the two are interchangeable.

Let's look at some examples of what a conversation is NOT:

• A push email - even if the recipient clicks
• A Tweet with no commentary (title and link and handle)
• A blog post with comments from readers, but no response from the author (This does, however, change if readers are commenting in response to each other.)
• A white paper download
• Viewing a video

Examples of what transforms dialogue into conversation is response.

• I receive an email, click the link, and forward the email on to a colleague who responds back to me with comment about the content I shared. We may exchange several more emails in discussion about the content.
• I receive a comment on my blog, respond back and ask a follow-on question and the person comes back to answer the question. Or another reader jumps in and answers the question I asked and I respond to them.
• Someone posts a question to a LinkedIn group and provides a link to a blog post or article on the topic. Group members respond by leaving comments and referencing perspectives of others - discussion ensues.

If I had just clicked the link and read the information in the first example, there is no conversation. It's the act of involving others and adding my commentary that turns the dialogue into a conversation. There must be back and forth between people for a conversation to form.

The evolution is that we don't need oral communication to have a conversation. As long as two people are involved, a conversation can be facilitated by a variety of technology platforms, from email to communities to social media and beyond.

But, it's only dialogue if technology is carrying on half of the conversation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge proponent of marketing automation. Use your technology to establish a dialogue that engages people through contextual information they want and need, GO YOU! But it's not a conversation until another person gets involved. This is because the "dialogue" is dependent on the behavior of the single participant, not both.

[If I visit this webpage, the system sends me a link to content A. If I visit a landing page and download a white paper, the system sends me content B. Etc. In a dialoge scenario, there's not a possiblity that it could veer off to content X.]

This is even more important when you consider social media. I see so many exchanges where someone is looking for help, only to be told to call an 800 number. Really? That's the best you can do? Although that fits the criterion for a conversation (2 or more people), there's also a difference between a valuable conversation and a crappy excuse for one.

So, when you think about "conversation" in marketing terms - what are you doing to make it more human?

And for those of you thinking "Wait. I get thousands of responses to my nurturing program! I can't possibly deal with this..." I would point you to buying stages and personas and battening down your lead scoring schema to get to intelligence that's useful. It's all in your approach to prioritization.

Don't let conversation become a meaningless buzzword. With a little art and science we can make marketing human, approachable, and definitely more social.

Debunking B2B Marketing Buzzword: Engagement

I'm tired of seeing so many concepts that should be being used to evolve content marketing applied to vague notions or traditional practices that just serve to confuse marketers and cause a lot of semantic arguments across the space.

I'll be writing a few posts about buzzwords that are making me a bit nuts. Feel free to jump in with your thoughts. I think it would be great if we can bring some clarity and new thinking.

Let's start with the term ENGAGEMENT.

What does engagement mean? I hear it being used in reference to clicks, email opens, page views, time spent on page, new followers, ReTweets and a variety of other point-in-time activities.

I'd like to suggest that engagement is not about point in time. It's about longevity and sustained attention. If it isn't then lead nurturing wouldn't work. And it does. If engagement was about point in time then one touch should get someone to talk to sales, right?

As an aside - judging by the number of calls I receive from salespeople who just know I'm ready to buy from them since I downloaded their white paper - obviously that belief is alive and well.

But it makes no sense. Marketers that I work with have sales cycles that are long (9 - 12 months or more) and growing longer. Salespeople say that they're not getting into conversations until much later in the B2B buying process. So engagement must mean more than point in time.

The ability to measure engagement is (IMO) what lead scoring was meant to do once you get past the demographic scoring. But then we must take into account if all activity is contributing to engagement in the same way or if specific activity should mean more than other activities.

For example: If a prospect visits your website and bounces around, viewing 5 unrelated pages, is he as engaged as a prospect who arrives, clicks on a topical content asset and then follows the path you created with a string of relevant and related content that delivers a storyline about how to solve a business problem that may be a priority for him? There is a huge difference in those two scenarios.

What marketers need to do is to get better about how they design scoring frameworks. In those two scenarios, only one of those people warrant further attention from inside sales to validate their interest level. And I'd even suggest that their activity should trigger a follow-up with another related content offer that also provides contact info they can use, unless the prospect specifically requests contact.

And offer up some compelling reason for them to interact with you personally.

So think about how you're using the term "engagement" and whether or not the definition you're using is adding value to how you achieve your marketing objectives.

Engagement is about what comes next. Are they interested enough to click, read, and respond when you send the next email or publish your next blog post?

As marketers, we measure opens and clicks and as long as the numbers look good and continue to grow, we're satisfied that we're doing our jobs. But who is responding? Is it the same people? Or is it a whole new group of folks whose interest you caught?

I'd be curious about levels of engagement that we're creating. For example, go look at your lead nurturing program. Take the last 5 sends and look at the prospects who clicked on your links. Across the series of 5 touchpoints, how many times did each lead respond?

How many 5:5 results do you have?

There's research that shows a minimum of 5 touches are needed before a prospect will engage with a company on a personal basis. Are you sustaining that many? In which channels?

If you look beyond that, how many "see also" clicks did they pursue from the content assets you linked to in your emails? (Perhaps some to blog posts, an on-demand webinar, a slide share, etc.)

If you looked farther, are they on Twitter? If so, are they following you/your company? Better yet, do you follow them?

Are they following your company on LinkedIn? Did they join the group you sponsor? Do they post anything? If so, have you responded to them?

To stretch engagement a bit farther, it's a two-way street. You/your company needs to express as much engagement in them as they express in you. (More and you may look like a stalker), but think about it. Why should they be the only ones putting it out there? Could you shorten sales cycles if you become more responsive?

Yep. You absolutely could. What would that take?

If you had to create an engagement scorecard what would you put on it?

5 Points from the 2012 Buyersphere Report

John Bottom from Base One was thoughtful enough to send me the latest Buyersphere Report - hot off the presses. You can read his initial thoughts and download your copy here. Below is my first take upon reading the report that asked EMEA buyers involved in a purchase during the last 12 months about their buying experience.

Type of Purchase Directs Informational Needs

In the report, one third of respondents said that their purchase was something brand new to their organization in comparison to 50% who said that the purchase was something the same or similar to something they already have.

Has your content strategy considered the difference in the type and amount of content needed for a brand new buyer vs. a replacement buyer who is already familiar with the basics? Both types require content, but the emphasis will be different. A new buyer needs to be convinced the product is going to pay off and a replacement buyer must be convinced that they'll get more value than they have today and that the risk of changing is manageable.

Channel Consideration is Key

Who your targeted buyers are will determine which channels will be most useful to you--and to them. The survey found that social media use overall was in play with 21% of respondents. But, when considered by role, 41% of IT Managers used it, while only 12% of senior directors (business buyers) did so. But it's interesting that when considering the type of purchase (new or replacement), 30% of those buying new used social media to source information.

Usefulness of Channels

Word of mouth still edges out web searches for most useful channel. This should be a big wakeup call to B2B marketers that they're either not producing content that provides hard hitting information that buyers consider to be unbiased and truthful - or that it's languishing away on their websites unfound by their target audiences. What's interesting to note is that usefulness is also determined by the buyer's interactiveness with the channel. For example, in this study, buyers who engaged in conversational exchanges on LinkedIn found it to be more useful than those who only browsed.

Career Length May Influence Type of Content Used

One thing I found intriguing was the discovery that those younger in their careers (other than IT managers) were more likely to download white papers than those with a longer career track. This may be due to having more to learn and less confidence that they're making the right decisions to grow their careers, as well as meet company objectives. Also in this areas is more validation that buyers purchasing something new to them also used much more content than those buying a replacement and were familiar with similar solutions.

The Influence Value of Supplier Websites

Supplier websites and emails were both considered highly influential, followed by web searches. What I wished the survey has asked was whether or not the influence was negative or positive. Either way, buyers are attributing more influence to corporate websites than they did last year - 73% rate them influential this year, up 5% from last year. This corresponds to research I've seen that shows marketers rate website optimization at the top of their budget lists. And it's about time.

I'll leave the rest of the report for you to sort through, but what I want to point out is that each of these nuggets should be factored into your content strategies - expecially as they apply to personas representative of your buyers.

What other points will you take away from this report?

3 Critical Tips for B2B Buyer Personas

As many of you know, I spend a lot of time working on buyer personas in my client projects. I thought I'd share a few things that should be obvious, but apparently are not.

• Objectivity is critical. One of the benefits of an outside perspective when creating buyer personas is no baggage. When I come into a project, I don't have any pre-existing beliefs, company Kool-Aid, or political pressure to see them in a certain way. I'm always open to input and feedback from the client. They know their markets better than I do, but when they start rewriting the personas to match their own beliefs, we have a problem.
  
  Before you say that I'm protecting my work, let me explain. If you conduct interviews with salespeople and customers and the feedback differs from everything you heard, then the reality is off. The reason i push back is to make sure that the client has an objective tool that works, not something that they like that represents their opinion.
  
  
• Personas aren't interchangeable. If your personas are developed around problem-to-solution scenarios your prospects pursue in relation to what a specific solution helps them achieve, you cannot use the VP of Infrastructure or Director of Online Marketing personas you create for one solution in application for another.
  
  Here's why: If your Director of Online Marketing persona is created in relation to influencing the purchase of a marketing automation system and you also want to market a PPC optimization tool to them where they're the decision maker, the persona for one won't address the needs of the other. Those are totally different dialogues. If the objective of the dialogue changes, so does the persona. You may be able to reuse certain parts - such as orientation and obstacles, but the objectives and the questions the persona will need to have answered across their buying process are different.
  
  
• The person who makes the final decision may not be a persona candidate. If the purpose of creating a persona is to create a tool that informs content strategy and prospect engagement then each persona you create should be an avid content user. They should be the ones who will research to build the business case, spend time evaluating options and be charged with solving the problem your solution solves. If they are only holding the purse strings, then you may be wasting your time.
  
  The CIO persona is often representative of a misstep in persona selection. Most companies want to target them because they hold budget and have the final say. But if you dig deeper and look at the folks who are actively involved in the buying process, I bet you'll find them a couple of layers down. Who you target with personas is a critical decision. After all, you're investing a lot in content marketing. If it's not engaging anyone, it's not doing it's job and you're wasting that money. This being said, there are a few strategic pieces of content that will serve the CIO extremely well. But make sure that they're truly involved in the buying process in a way that involves sourcing content, knowledge and information, before you invest in an entire strategy to market to them.
  
  One example would be utilities tools for managing infrastructure. The CIO will want to know about them, see the business case for making the selection and have that meeting with the team to make the final decision. But they will not be out searching online for automation tools unless they're running a very small IT department.

These are 3 important things to consider when you set out on your buyer persona journey. What else would you add?