Marketing Interactions

B2B Content for Customer Retention Tells a Different Story

I'm starting to see customer retention, up sell and cross sell getting a bit more attention from B2B marketers these days. From account-based marketing programs to targeted microsites and nurturing programs, marketers are finally looking to increase the value of their existing customer portfolios. And I like where they're looking.

The challenge is that customer marketing is a very different animal than net new logo marketing. We can't just show up at renewal time and get them to sign off. Customer retention is no slam dunk.

A few reasons why:

• Their status quo is different
• They have a relationship with you
• Their expectations are higher

In light of the points made above, let's take a look at how content strategy must shift to engage existing customers.

A New Status Quo

Your customer's existing situation is different (It had better be) because they've purchased the solution to their original problem. Therefore, everything you said to them prior to that purchase (your lead gen and nurturing content) is now redundant.

Consider that the problem-to-solution story has changed. Now that the original problem has been solved, what comes next that your product and company can help them resolve to add more business value?

The only time there's an overlay with new buyer content strategies is when the target is a line of business or department that may not be familiar with your company. But I still contend that a referral/reference strategy is a core component to consider. In fact, I'd suggest using a case study - or several - about the value you've already helped them to accomplish internally.

The buying process for retention, up or cross sell will look somethinng like:

Use and Rely Upon: After purchase, your content should help them embrace the new solution and address issues such as user adoption, reporting, and other things they need to know to get the value you originally promised.

Gain More Value: Once the customer is using and relying upon the original solution, your goal is to help them find even more value than you promised. This could mean introducing new ideas that take them from their new status quo to a position of higher value - often by purchasing enhancements or additional solutions.

Keep the sales pitch subtle. This is about thought leadership, education and expertise. Then cement that with case studies that focus on what your customers have achieved beyond solving the original problem.

Renewal or Expansion: Given your goal, this is the late stage of the buying or renewal process. This is when marketers really need to focus on creating the content that account managers need to convince customers to stay and continue to put faith into the value of your company.

Talk to your account managers and really probe to understand what they're hearing from existing customers. Ask them questions such as:

• Who are they trying to get to for an expansion deal?
• What new lines of business are they trying to get to?
• What problems might existing customers be having with the product they purchased that could keep them from renewing?
• What's next in their customer's strategic plan?
• What successes are their customers most proud of? (Is it what you thought?)

The Customer Relationship

One thing to consider is how to segment customers not only based on what opportunities their new situations present, but by how much attention they get from their account managers. Often, for economical reasons, only the best/biggest accounts get a lot of attention. It's marketing's job to help the customers with limited account manager relationships feel the love. And that means creating content programs that they find valuable.

In fact, retaining customers is getting more competitive in line with the speed of change to the business landscape. Remember that to someone else, they are a new logo. Just as you try to become the replacement vendor for those using your competitor's solutions, well, so do they go after your customers. Losing sight of that reality can be costly.

Higher Expectations

Many buyers say that a key factor in their decision to do business with a company rested, in part, on the value of the content and unbiased information provided during their buying process. Why wouldn't the same be true of their renewal process? But, based on that previous buying process, their expectations are high. They expect evolution from what was a stellar engagement process during buying to a better one now that they're customers.

And, they should. Given the fact that markets change quickly and solutions evolve much faster, there will always be a new story to tell. The marketers who tell it first and best, putting an insightful spin on how their customers can reap even more value, will be the ones who help their company win more business.

Providing value to our customers does not stop with purchase. The story just changes. It's up to us to help them connect the dots to find more value and new approaches to reaching their business objectives.

How are you evolving the story you're telling to your customers?

 

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?

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.)

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?

Robotic Email Campaigns Miss the Point

In addition to learning that lead generation is the top marketing priority for tech marketers, IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study asked them about their perceived effectiveness at lead nurturing. In reponse to the 22% who said they use regular nurturing touches geared to buying stages that include more than email and web-based multi-step campaigns, Kathleen Schaub, VP-research, CMO Advisory Service at IDC, said:

“I don't believe this, or people don't understand what nurturing means,” Schaub said. “I talk to a lot of our clients and people in the industry, and I know for sure that people are not nurturing well.”

Based on what I've seen, I agree with her. Kathleen also made the comment,

“A lot of people look at nurturing as, "Now we can program our campaign system to deliver six emails in a row.'"

Hence the need for this post. Yet again.

Lead nurturing is not about sending out emails on a regular schedule just because you can. Or just because you think that constant communication (regardless of relevance) will help you sell something. It won't.

And it's evidence that marketers have missed the point.

Lead nurturing is about providing education, expertise, and evidence that help prospects learn what they know during each stage of the process and build the confidence to make a buying decision in your favor — or to gain the consensus from those involved in the decision to get the deal done. It's about positioning your company as an expert that can bring more value to the project than the product would alone.

Let's face it, perceived value, expertise and credibility are the true differentiators in today's marketplace. Otherwise it would just be a price war.

Stringing together 6 emails as a set-it-and-forget-it program won't do this. Don't misunderstand. It's not about the number 6, but the laziness behind the robotic campaign that sets my teeth on edge. Based on the length of the buy cycle, 6 touches may do the trick — if they're relevant and build the right story.

The problem with robotic email campaigns is that they:

• Lack the consistent provision of relevance and value
• Irritate your prospects (based on the above)
• Don't build your credibility
• Are likely focused on feeds, speeds and products
• Don't take into account buyer behavior during the campaign
• Are a campaign, not a strategy
• Have no progression of story that builds momentum
• Have no cohesive story
• Do not differentiate your company
• Are more about timing than context
• Do nothing to stimulate dialogue
• Create another marketing silo
• Don't integrate with programs in other channels
• Probably push the sale for lack of anything better to do
• Are instantly forgettable
• Train your prospects to achieve speed records in clicking delete
• Are about you, not them
• Let you check the box without achieving objectives
• Put you squarely in the marketing fluff camp
• Usually aren't tied to revenue
• Make your company irrelevant
• Don't provide ideas worth sharing (or even pondering)
• Lack the ability to stimulate curiosity
• Repel engagement

I can probably think of more, but you should get gist.

Please understand that this has nothing to do with marketing automation. I think every marketer should have it. It's what you do with it that counts.

Lead nurturing is a process. It's the unfolding of a story that helps the buyer understand why they need to solve a problem, options for solving it, why they should change and why they should choose you to do so. It's never about buying a product. At least not overtly.

This takes thought, planning and the establishment of a lead management process that's managed to goals and objectives.

And it takes the chops to develop outstanding content designed for buyers.

It also means that you need to think outside the Inbox. Lead nurturing happens with every asset your prospects come in contact with in whatever channel they're using. Whether they see a Tweet and click to read a blog post or receive an email with a link to an article or white paper, or find your infographic using search, the result should be the perception of value and time well spent.

So before you go hook up 6 emails in a row to send out on a schedule, take some time to think about the experience you're creating for your buyers. If you need more motivation, review the list above highlighting the consequences of using robotic emails.

Picture courtesy of Robot Pictures

B2B Content Strategy Should Never Be a Wallflower

A B2B content marketing strategy should never be contained in a silo. First of all, to be literal, a silo is a dugout, cave or shelter for grain. Secondly, it denotes walls and barriers that keep its contents apart from everything else. A B2B content marketing strategy must lead somewhere. It should be based on a continuum that matches the needs of prospects and customers wherever they may be in the experience at any time.

The issue I see often, is that content marketing is an add-on to everything else that marketers have on their plates. It's viewed as a campaign, a project or a standalone initiaitve. A silo. This is in part related to the way marketers are wired. In the traditional sense, most of what marketers do has start and end dates and each effort is graded on its own merit (I'm using the word "merit" loosely).

How's our SEO strategy doing?

How many "leads" did that last campaign produce?

Did our webinar attendees increase for this topic?

How many followers did our Twitter account attract last month?

Is our web traffic growing?

Don't get me wrong, we need to measure and evaluate, but we need to quit using our metrics as boundaries that separate one initiative from another. To do this, we need to look at transitions and experiences across buying and the customer lifecycle.

An experience is a set of dynamic transitions that flow together. Until you step out of it or it ends.

When marketers focus on campaigns, they are instituting a construct that boxes in and ends the experience. Three email touches and a sales call, move on. This construct is for us, not related to anything our prospects or customers need, want or value. It was created so that we could manage and measure our efforts based on some ridiculous notion that a short-term campaign can definitively drive sales for a long-term buying process.

But I digress. The point I want to make is about the need to integrate transitions.

Channels are proliferating and marketers need to pay attention to the transitions between them. If your social media team isn't cognizant of your nurturing program, for example, how fluid will the experience be for a prospect or customer taking part in both?

If a buyer watches a video on your YouTube! channel and finds it fun and informative, then visits your website only to see a bunch of dry, product-focused content they find neither fun, nor informative, how will you overcome that disconnect? Or can you?

Often overlooked is the critical transition from marketing to sales. Marketers often plan their content strategy without ever sharing it with sales or - highly recommended - involving sales in its development. If the entire be all and end all of marketing is to help produce and grow customers, why the heck is this transition so overlooked?

It's time for marketing to stop producing more wallflowers and start creating the Belles of the Ball! You may laugh but the Belles of the Ball are sought out, followed and considered highly engaging. This will never happen if we don't integrate all of our marketing initiatives into our strategy and consider how to gain the benefits of dynamic experiences based on transitions.

I know this is difficult. If it was easy it wouldn't be near as much fun!

Take the first step by evaluating everything you're doing and discovering how to create better transitions that tell a story your audience finds engaging. Start connecting the dots. Just don't leave your content strategy sitting on the sidelines as just another project.

 

Designing Calls to Action for B2B Marketing Content

During my keynote at the B2B Content 2 Conversion conference on Tuesday, one of the questions the audience asked was about a slide I used when discussing how to create a content flow. To sum it up, I suggested that each "touch" should be based on three components:

• The question your content will answer for a persona.
• The answer to the question that becomes the content asset.
• A call to action (CTA)

I was asked to elaborate on what I meant by a call to action.

The normal response to the "call to action" mandate is inserting a "have a sales rep call me" or some other version of pushing the sales conversation. But, this is not helpful during much of the marketing process.

Marketers need to reframe the way they think about the CTA, flipping it from what they ultimately want (qualified leads that will buy from their sales team) to what will be helpful to their prospective buyers. But what's even more concerning is that much of the content used by marketing doesn't even nod in the direction of a CTA - demonstrated nicely by a post written by Eric Wittlake — New Research: B2B Content is a Dead End — which he telepathically knew to publish today so I could link to it!

Calls to action should be used to build the best and most engaging buying experience imaginable. They can take many forms and accomplish the momentum needed to turn cursory attention into intentional attention directed toward embracing change to solve a specific problem.

Some of the benefits available from putting thought into designing calls to action:

• Extend engagement by providing additional information about a topic the prospect showed interest in.


• Showcase your company's expertise in solving the problem.


• Expose the prospect to content that they may have overlooked by linking to the previous touch in your nurturing program.


• Differentiate your company's expertise from the competition.


• Build credibility for your company as a valuable resource.


• Cement your ideas with prospects so they get used in conversations when your company is not "in the room."

I'd say those are some pretty good reasons to give CTAs some serious thought.

An additional consideration is to make sure that you vary the types of content you're linking together to create that interesting experience for your buyers. For example, all calls to action don't have to be links to other resources. A call to action can also be an embedded resource within a content asset, such as embedding a video or slideshare into a blog post or article. If the prospect reads the post/article and views the embedded content then you've achieved that extension on attention.

One note of caution: Just because you can add CTAs doesn't mean you should saturate every content asset with links, embeds and "see also" extensions. This is why designing CTAs takes thought.

What's the one thing you'd like for your prospect to learn next?

Give them that with each content asset. If you do this, you'll create connected pathways that thoughtfully engage prospects by offering them additional ideas that make sense given what they've just engaged with. Don't overwhelm them with choices or it will backfire on you by increasing the effort to choose.

Calls to Action enable marketers to serve as the guide to the buyer experience. Go out and build a great one!

Below is my presentation from the B2B Content 2 Conversion conference. Slide 19 is the one I mention at the beginning of this post:

10 Steps to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy from Scratch

View more PowerPoint from Ardath Albee

Content Marketing: Theory vs. Practice

Sometimes I think content marketing can be made so convoluted and complex that it's nearly impossible to execute. I've seen spreadsheets and diagrams and lists of things you must do that make my head hurt. And, yes, I know I do this for a living. I'm a B2B content strategist - and dang proud of the work I do.

But reality is what we have to work with and a phased approach can be a beautiful thing. After all, if you can't execute the strategy it's not delivering a service to your company—or your customers.

Here are a few things I find true in practice:

• Marketers must be able to wrap their heads around the why, what, when, where and how.


• Content theories abound and if you try to kluge it all together, you will become as immobilized as a deer in the headlights of a rapidly approaching semi.


• Theory is great, but often difficult to put into practice in a reasonable way.


• Expectations need to be appropriate based on your resources, capabilities and limitations.


• Content marketing never ends, so quit trying to get it perfect before you launch.


• Until you launch, you have no real-world feedback to judge your strategy or programs. It's not about what you think, but what your buyers think and how they respond.


• Once launched, you can tune on the fly and add layers as you gain proficiency.

What I find with most projects is that the marketers taking on content marketing already have a full plate. This means that we need to figure out how to incorporate what they're already doing within the content strategy rather than approaching it as a standalone effort - which a content strategy should never be.

First, marketers need to build buyer insights and identify personas or market segments. It is only through gaining a clear understanding of each persona's orientation, objectives and obstacles that marketers can begin to design a relevant content strategy.

Without knowing your buyers, where's your focus? On your products and company, of course. Because that's what you know. This is why there's so much crappy content floating around in the ether.

Once you know your buyers, choose a segment, step into their shoes and figure out what are all the questions they need to answer based on their specific situation. Open a document and type the problem statement at the top of the page (or get a group together and use a white board to brainstorm).

Persona problem statement: I need to do X in order to get Y.

Start tossing up questions this persona would have about solving that problem.

For example:

• What are the different ways I can do X?
• How much of Y do I need?
• How are our competitors solving X?
• What competitive advantages could we gain if we solve X?
• Who else will be impacted in the company if we solve X?
• How will I convince them that Y is worth the effort to change the status quo?

Keep going until you can't think of another question this persona would ask in order to gather all the information they need to build confidence, gain consensus and make an informed purchase decision.

Now, given what you know about your persona/segment, how would you answer each question? The answers are the premise statements for your content development. And the answers should not be all about your product, but focused on what it enables that your prospect couldn't do before. The why, what and how that will get them Y. If possible, identify several different ways to answer each question.

Assess your existing content to see what questions it answers, or if it needs to be reinvented or retired. Identify your gaps for new content development.

How do your current and planned campaigns and events, etc. fit in with your content flow for this persona? Match them up and insert them into the flow.

Consider your marketing mix and where you've determined your persona goes to find information and create a distribution program. Based on the modes you use this can include website, email, blogs, social, etc. This is when formats come in. Not before. Your focus should be on the information first. Make sure you have the resources to execute and know what the timing looks like to get it done.

Don't forget to consider calls to action. What do you want them to do after engaging with the content? Be reasonable about what makes sense as a next step given the information they just viewed. It's not generally "have sales contact me." And, based on the technology you have, determine the best ways to measure and monitor outcomes.

Get it out the door and tune on the fly as you go. Even if you only start with one persona, just get it going. Evolve and add layers as you learn what works and what doesn't.

Content marketing in practice can be as easy or difficult as you make it. Focus on learning what your buyers need to know to reach objectives and give it to them in digestible ways they will value. That's really what's at the crux of content marketing.

Theory is great. All marketers should understand it. But practice is about execution.

Marketing Cloud Computing to Non-Believer CIOs

Cloud computing is a pretty big deal. It's one of the top priorities for many CIOs. So, it should be a pretty easy process to build a B2B content strategy that helps CIOs make a purchasing decision.

Or is it?

I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and have a ton of Google Alerts to help me mine for information I use to learn more about the buyers my clients sell to. In my Inbox today was a bonanza of a resource. SearchCIO sent me a link to: Quick take: Why iRobot's CIO doesn't like enterprise cloud computing

This resource is a quick interview with Jay Leader, CIO of iRobot, in which he clearly distills exactly why he's not sold on cloud computing. He shares the questions he has and the obstacles he'd need to overcome to change his mind. This kind of stuff is uber helpful to constructing nurturing programs, as topics for blog posts and providing seed ideas for all types of content.

Take a look at all the great nuggets from this interview:

IT Projects Completed and Planned:

• Completed: Integration of ERP and Product Lifecycle Management systems to shorten product time to market
• Completed: A major upgrade to their collaboration portal
• Planned: enterprise architecture and business intelligence

Culture:

• The CEO has a degree in computer science from MIT
• The company's legal counsel has a degree in engineering from MIT
• The company is filled with engineers - according to Leader, "It's like having 700 CIOs"
• Actually, the company was a brainchild of MIT

Now, if you were pursuing this company as a named-account, you can do a lot with the above information.

But take a look at the questions Leader raises that can be applied to a campaign directed at CIOs in companies with similar characteristics, such as: High Tech Manufacturing, $500M revenues, 700+ employees

Objections and Obstacles:

• Show me an economic model that proves cloud computing is cheaper than how I manage my storage today.


• How do I get out of a cloud provider if I'm unhappy?


• What change in competency do I need to manage disconnected enterprises?


• I understand the potential, but how do I actually reap the value promised?


• Why would I pay to store documents somewhere else?


• If it isn't more secure, cost-effective and functional that what I have, why would I do this?


• I don't have an environment that needs burst resources, so the ability to scale quickly doesn't make a big impression on me.


• How do I integrate the data that is out in the cloud?


• I have a data center and staff, don't plan on getting rid of either.


• How will I really know where my data is being stored?

Leader also mentions a colleague who implemented Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) who has a staff of sysadmins when what he now needs are project managers and coordinators.

If you're selling cloud computing, how many of these questions and obstacles have you addressed in your content strategy?

Even if you're not selling cloud computing, the glimpse into the questions that come to mind for a CIO considering a technology purchase can help you dig deeper into your own content strategy to ensure that you're addressing the issues that come up for non-believers.

I'd also bet that even if your prospect is a believer, there are a few non-believers that must be brought around in order for the deal to move forward. The interesting thing is that cloud computing is being discussed all over the place. It's hard to go to any IT community or portal and not hear about it.

Don't let the hype about a solution serve as blinders. There are always objections to change that must be addressed. Interviews with people like your prospects can be terrific sources of insight for generating relevant ideas to weave into your content strategy.

NOTE: This is only one perspective, so don't base an entire strategy on Leader, but use it to assess your strategy and possibly fill any gaps that exist. Go talk to your salespeople to see if they're experiencing any of these objections and obstacles. Ask customers with similar characteristics if they had to answer any of these questions during their buying experience and how much importance was placed on those they did have to sort through.

Are Shorter Sales Cycles a Wake-up Call for Marketers?

Marketing Sherpa's chart of the week shows the answer to this question.

Q. Please select the time period closest to the length of your organization's entire sales cycle, from first lead inquiry to purchase.

In the commentary, Jen Doyle states that these results showing shorter sales cycles correlate to the lower deal prices Marketing Sherpa's annual benchmark survey also discovered.

But I think there's more at stake here than lower prices. Everyone has been talking about how much time buyers spend self-educating and researching prior to identifying themselves to vendors. Buyers have even said that they may not request contact with a vendor until they have selected their short lists. Some estimates gauge the time buyers spend outside of vendor-defined sales cycles to include up to or beyond half of the buying process for a B2B complex purchase.

So, could this chart actually be reflecting that the period of time that buyers spend with a vendor is shorter, but not truly reflect the length of the actual buy cycle? I think it's very possible.

And, if so, then it validates the imperative for marketers to get their content found by the right audience, rather than waiting for them to enter their databases so they can nurture them formally. If your company's ideas and expertise aren't helping them decide how to solve the problem, then why would you think your company would make their short list when the time comes?

What do you think?