Marketing Interactions

Is Your B2B Content Tipping the Effort Scale?

I do a lot of work for technology companies. One of the challenges with marketing technology is simplifying complex systems into understandable business enhancers that B2B buyers must have to reach their goals.

I just reviewed a paper written for a technical audience. You know it's tough when you have to keep backing up to re-read paragraphs because your mind wanders or because comprehension is elusive. And I read a ton of tech stuff - given my projects - so I should be a slam-dunk reader.

In the Age of Impatience and short attention spans, we've got to make even technical content fun to read. I don't mean rolling laughter or big entertainment - I mean easy to understand so that your ideas become compelling enough to diminish the urge to click on to somewhere else.

Here are a few of the biggest effort triggers that cause your buyers to flee from your content due to the perception of effort:

• Run-on sentences. Fifty word sentences are not normal. They're hard to focus on all the way through. That's what was causing me to back up when I was reading the paper I mentioned above.
• Alien grade-level competency. I tend to run the content I develop through the Flesh-Kincaid readability tool in Word. In case you're wondering - this blog post clocks in at 8.1 grade level to this point. The white paper I mentioned above came in at 24.1 grade level when I checked it. Can you imagine the difference in effort?
• Big-word syndrome. A big word here and there can add interest when used well. Stringing them together in those run-on sentences and tossing in a bit of jargon to top it off can create twitchy fingers on the back button. We may think it sounds cool to use them, but it's like an assault on comprehension. And, as soon as you lose the thread of what the content is about, your mind wanders...and so will your buyers.
• Abrupt transitions - no context. One paragraph we're cruising along and then we come to a new header and we're off in a new direction, unrelated to the path we were following. A header is not an excuse for a 180 shift. A header is a marker along the path. If you remove the text and string headers together, they should provide a synopsis of your content.
• Abrupt transitions - from compelling idea to forced sales pitch. One of the things that bother me the most is when I'm reading about a compelling take on something and then I'm confronted by the equivalent of a solution brief for the last few pages of the paper. Or a bunch of hyperlinks to product pages embedded within the part masquerading as thought leadership. There's a time and place for everything - forcing the issue is not working in your favor.

There are others I can list, but these are the worst of the bunch. Of course if I don't say it, someone will comment - spelling and grammar should be a no brainer.

I didn't bring all this up to leave you hanging. Here are some simple ways to test your content before you set it loose on the rest of us:

• Read it backwards. Seriously, this works. Why? Because when you read forward your mind has expectations and will try to compensate for words that don't work well with what it expects to see. If you've ever published something you know you proofread to death and discovered a typo after the fact, this is likely what happened. Start at the end and read it backwards. This will help you catch words that have different versions based on context (their, there, they're, for example)
• Read it out loud. This is great for the run-on sentences. Have you ever noticed that you read about the same way you speak? You'll often adjust your breathing when you're reading as if pausing to take a breath when speaking. If you have to gulp for air when reading your content aloud, I'll bet you your sentence is over 50 words.
• Have someone else read it. And then take it away from them and ask them to tell you what it's about. Can they identify the key points you wanted your audience to take away? What did they like about it and what did they not like so much? You'd be amazed how people interpret content. Their reaction may be totally different than what you expected to hear.

About that last one - don't take it personally. If people are afraid to tell you what they really think, they won't. And then you'll end up publishing stuff no one wants to read.

It's the beginning of 2014. I invite you all to take the pledge to make sure your content is not tipping the effort scale in the wrong direction. Writing to be easily understood is difficult. It takes thought and practice.

It's a good place to start in the New Year.

In case you're wondering - the overall Flesh-Kincaid grade level for this post is 6.2 with a reading ease of 73%. Only 3% of the sentences are passive. That's another tip for your content. Passive sentences allow the mind to wander. They're boring.

 

Getting Content Caught by the B2B Buyer's Filter

There's so much information available today that we've been left no choice but to filter the fire hose. I use Google Alerts, see mostly what people I'm connected to post on LinkedIn, belong to specific groups on LinkedIn based on relevance, use longer-tail keyword phrases to find specific information, have a specific group of people I monitor on Twitter because they provide information I find valuable. There are many other ways I filter information, but these came top of mind.

I'm working on a client project right now that's presenting a challenge for which channels to select to get the attention of the personas my client needs to sell to. One of the keys to persona development is to make sure that those you select can actually be reached and attracted by marketing. If you can't, then focusing your marketing efforts on that persona isn't going to get you very far.

When we realized this issue, we started asking our interviewees where they spent time online and how they did their research. One of the things we learned was that quite often, their filter was team or staff based. They engaged with content that was forwarded to them via email by link or attachment from a peer or colleague. They also relied upon associations they belonged to for insights on topics of interest.

So we started looking into the composition of their teams. Not only is the challenge to catch their attention, but to provide content that they perceive their boss or colleague would be interested in. That's a tall order.

What we really need is a pass-along strategy. Content designed to provide value for the team member with easy access to related information most relevant for the person they'd pass it along to coupled with easy sharing options (email to a colleague).

The other approach that holds promise is getting involved with presenting webinars through the associations they belong to.

One finding that was startling was that even after this hard-to-reach person was involved in the conversation, they never visited the client's website. At least not that they remember.

We did, however find LinkedIn groups that they belong to. Although they don't actively participate in discussions, we have found evidence that they "Like" posts, showing that they do monitor the discussions and content shared.

By compiling a list of discussions that they "Liked" we've been able to create a topic list to help us understand what ideas they're showing interest in which is helping with the design of a storyline.

The findings from building personas during this project has obviously changed some of the assumptions we'd had about where we'd invest marketing budget. Creating content without the capacity for getting it found by the right audience would have been a colossal waste of time, effort and resources.

How sure are you that your content is getting caught by your B2B buyer's filter? What have you seen change lately?

B2B Content Marketing is About More Than Publishing

Think like a publisher! That's been the rallying cry for content marketing for the last few years. But, I'd like to submit that content marketing takes a whole lot more than publishing — especially for B2B companies with complex sales.

I've been getting a lot of calls lately from B2B marketers who are saying:

"We bought into the idea of content marketing. We've created great content. It's getting read. But it's not moving the needle."

Quite often, what I find is that they do have pretty good content, but it's based on random acts of publishing. This means, there's no apparent strategy behind it. Nothing to orchestrate buyer progression and next steps.

People may be reading it, but then they just move on. It hasn't impacted their perception of the topic enough to motivate action or sway opinion.

Why not? There are a number of reasons, but most often what I see is:

• Too much focus on the company's perspective rather than the buyer's
  Does your content show that you really understand what your buyers care about? Or have you made assumptions that leave your content short? Do your products sneak into your content? How about feeds and speeds? Do you use "we" and "our" more than "you" and "your"?


• No call to action
  What comes next after the content the buyer has just viewed? Do you tell them? They are not going to go looking for it, they'll just move on once they're done reading what's in front of them. People are often multi-tasking. You have to give them a reason to spend more of their attention with your content.


• Too much effort perceived to take the suggested action
  Does your form ask for the kitchen sink? Do you only offer a video link without a transcript for those who prefer to read? Or vice versa? Are you trying to send them to a different channel that they don't use or a place where they have to set up an account to gain access? Too much effort can manifest in many different ways.


• Gaps in the story - aka leaps of faith
  When I ask marketers when was the last time they experienced their content as if they were their buyers, most of them can't say they have. They often think they've covered all the bases, but they are stuck with the curse of knowledge.
  
  Marketers know the whole story. They think it's reflected in their content. But, often it is not. And, because they don't have a strategy, they haven't orchestrated the story, so they may be asking their buyers to leap from one concept to the next without any foundation. This is a problem that costs the company in credibility and in progressive engagement with buyers. Goes to the effort thing, as well.


• Not taking ownership of expertise
  A lot of content doesn't take a stand because it's trying to make everyone happy. But that's not the point. Sharing expertise must be done with authority and confident ideas that help people visualize what your knowledge will bring to the table that they can't get elsewhere. Show them you mean what you say and feel strongly about it. Tell them why. Make your case.


• Staying too high level
  Phrases like "grow revenues" or "cut costs" can mean anything. Content that motivates action must do a deep dive into the specifics applicable to the audience it's intended to sway. But quite often it just does a white wash across the benefits that does nothing to differentiate your company or your expertise.


• Not targeted to a specific audience
  This is why a lot of content stays high level. Marketers don't know their audience well enough to get into the nitty gritty. But, if you don't get to know them, they won't go on the journey with you. They'll go find someone who delivers more value that helps them visualize their problem being solved.

It's great to publish content. We need to do this to attract and engage our buyers. But an editorial calendar with a list of random topics you think are interesting won't cut the mustard. Quarterly themes won't do it either. All the switching will just alienate people who were finally getting invested in the story you were telling last quarter.

Random acts of publishing won't get the level of engagement and intention needed to move the needle because you won't be able to sustain engagement long enough to help buyers learn what they need to know to move to a conversation.

What you need is a content strategy. A method for the madness that is solving complex problems. A plan for strategic storytelling across channels. And, as you can see, there's much more to content marketing than publishing.

What else should be on this list?

 

Use Content Strategy to Break Into a New Market

I've been on a number of calls recently with companies that want to break into a new market. They think that content marketing may be the key, but are uncertain if they're right, as well as how to approach this new direction.

Content Marketing is definitely a key strategy. In fact, I'm not quite sure how a company would go about breaking into a new market without it. But there are some challenges when your goal is quick uptake and your company doesn't have a lot of exposure or familiarity with the target audience.

Here are the things that come to mind. It shouldn't be surprising that most of them aren't related to the content, itself. There's a foundation that must be set. During these calls it dawned on me that whether you're breaking into a new market or establishing a content marketing strategy, a lot of the work is the same.

Market Research:

To be effective, a content marketing strategy must be based upon knowledge and understanding of the target audience (market). Call this personas, profiles or market research — whatever works for you.

• Who are they?
• What do they care about that your solution helps them get?
• How are they answering the need today?
• Is how they're doing it a workaround or a solution?
• Why is whatever their doing not the best way?
• What is it costing them? (time, money, growth, marketshare, efficiency, productivity, customer retention, talent retention, etc.)
• What could they gain if they switch? (outcomes they care about)
• Why would they be resistant to change?
• How would you overcome this?
• Why should they listen to you?
• Where do they spend time online?
• Who/what influences them? Who do they believe/follow today?
• What's the chatter? (LinkedIn, Twitter, market-specific forums/blogs, pubs)

Value Match:

Given what you learned above, how will this new market define value related to what you sell?

• What expertise do you bring that they don't have access to today?
• Is your thought leadership edgy or provocative? What new thinking will catch their attention that they will find relevant?
• Who has or can develop a personal brand that the market will relate to? It's not just about your company (inanimate) — it's about your people and your expertise.
• What are this person's strong suits? (expertise) What kind of support will they need?
• What does this market relate to that competitors bring to market? Are they truly happy with it or is there dissatisfaction? Where? How? Why?
• Does this dissatisfaction intersect with your company's strengths?
• How will you prove your answer to their problem works? (evidence)

Structuring the Content Marketing Story:

One of the things that I encounter the most is either "me-too" messaging that has companies sound just like everyone else in their markets or convoluted messaging that a Ph.D. would have trouble unraveling. If it takes too much effort, you've lost before you get started. The ultimate goal with marketing is to have your target audience "get it" as quickly as possible.

• Take what you think is your most compelling positioning or core message and rewrite it for a 6 year old based on what you learned above. Seriously - get all the jargon, important-sounding words and high-level crap out of it. You can always put it back in, but I bet you that it will take a bunch of effort to get it out. Go ahead - try it. Get down to the basics that matter. Think the 6-inch view vs. the 30,000 ft view.


• Now look at what you learned in the two steps above and see if you'd change anything else.


• Send it to people who know the market or who are the market and get their feedback. Make sure they're people who will be gut-wrenchingly honest. This can be eye-opening to those of us "in the tunnel." Trust me on this one. You'll learn stuff you never thought about. Be prepared to revise.


• Given this core message you've finally arrived at and what you know about your market and value, what questions will your prospects have? Make a list. It should be pretty long. Go deep, get into the weeds. Pretend you know nothing.

Here's the thing with the questions. Lots of marketing "experts" say to answer your buyers' questions. It's become the standard for simplifying content creation. But, when used strategically there's more to it than that. The difference  when you apply "story" to this process is in the organization of the questions, how you answer them and how those answers work together to deliver what the prospect needs to know to take the next step. This is critical. There must always be a next step.

There's a strategic value to Q & A.

For example, If I ask why should I care about X? You say "because X can help you gain bigger share of customer wallet." The next question asked is not "How much does it cost?", but rather "Really. Hmm. How does X help me do that?"

Sure, prospects aren't linear all the time. I'm sure one of you would say, but they did ask about price! Ah, but do you know what other content they've also viewed? The questions people ask have some level of knowledge behind them that's relevant to the person asking.

The more relevant the next piece of content is in relation to what the person just expressed interest in, the greater your chance to gain an extension in their attention. The more often you can do this, the better off you'll be in generating pipeline momentum from a new market as they begin to nod their head in agreement and trust you.

Every interaction with your content needs to deliver on previously set expectations and set up new ones. I call this orchestrating progression.

There are obviously a ton of other things you need to do to break into a new market with content marketing, but try these three steps and see where you get. The first two will help you decide whether or not to go there. The third will help you determine how to create a story to extend your brand in that direction, should you choose to do so.

These steps will also help to define channels and execution options that will be most effective for generating awareness, reach and engagement within the new market you've targeted.

The B2B Website Audience Litmus Test

Many B2B companies think that their website must serve every type of customer they have—every flavor of persona. I'd ask you to step back a moment and think about your website audience. Just because your company serves a range of people, titles, and roles, doesn't mean that they all use your website—or ever will.

The elephants in the room during this discussion are usually represented by the CXOs—the ultimate persona that all companies want to attract, engage and sell to. However, these people are not likely your website's greatest fans or visitors.

Why not?

CXOs are:

• Too busy
• Relegating research to their staff
• Responding to referrals from peers and colleagues
• Focused on big-picture, business-imperative strategies which most solutions don't address
• Distrusting of vendor content at face value
• Irritated with company websites focused on the company, rather than their needs and interests
• Frustrated at their inability to find what they need quickly
• Disappointed in the lack of strategic thought leadership represented

*Note that this applies to CXOs at mid-size to large enterprises, not necessarily SMBs who may wear many hats, including doing online research.

So you're sitting there thinking, well, we can address this. We'll just change our website and design it to win over those picky CXOs!

Stop right there. The realities represented in those bullets above aren't likely to change just because your website gets a facelift and focus. Build it and they will come doesn't apply here.

The course of action with a higher payoff is to design your website for the staff doing the research and building the business case. I have to tell you that in creating nearly 70 personas in the last year, not one of them has been a CXO in relation to a website content strategy.

This doesn't mean you don't need content that's worthy of CXO attention - it means that getting that content to them will probably not be a direct route. Or, if it is, it's an executive roundtable or a specific thought leadership asset that you can place in front of them. Even if they're interested in that one piece, this doesn't mean they will begin trolling your website.

Additionally, if you design your website for an audience that doesn't trend toward visiting it, you've left the audience that will show up with nowhere to go but to a competitor's site that speaks to them.

By the same token, orienting your website for end users will also not drive the results you need. These folks hang out in customer communities and forums where they can interact with peers and get support and insights from experts for product use and resolving issues. They don't care how many awards your company has received or that your CEO is speaking at an industry event they aren't attending.

This leaves those in the middle of the spectrum. The people responsible for researching solutions to priority problems, building the business case and selling your ideas/solution internally. The content for those who sign off and those who use the solution on a day-to-day basis will, for the most part, be exposed to them by these folks.

Defining The Role of a B2B Website

Although websites should be designed with a primary audience in mind, the role of your website can become a bit convoluted. This is especially true when you consider all the departments that have a stake in the property.

Some possibilities include:

• PR wants the latest news to shine front and center
• Product managers what their collateral to have top billing
• Demand Gen wants gated content and calls to action that capture contact information prominently displayed (notice I did not say leads)
• Branding wants everything to reflect the tone, style and creative they've defined
• Web designers want template standards adhered to
• Sales wants customer stories featured, along with ROI tools and TCO calculators
• Social media wants icons and feeds in the eyepath

I could go on, but you get the point. This is a lot of stuff for one web property to accomplish. It's hard to make everyone happy and attempting to do so defeats the purpose. But, the real problem is that there's one stakeholder that's totally unrepresented in that list, the most important one — buyers.

For each of the "wants" of the stakeholders above, unless it serves the story that will attract and engage buyers, your website will fail the audience litmus test.

Develop A Process for Passing the Website Litmus Test

• Start with the personas most likely to visit your website
• Do the research to find out how they'll get there and what will attract them
• Develop possible scenarios across channels they frequent and determine how best to connect the dots (your website analytics can help with this, so can social media monitoring)
• Given these routes, figure out which pages each persona is most likely to land on and where you want them to go next (or what you want them to do)
• Build connected pathways with content and storylines
• Focus on the problems they need to solve and then (only then) on how your products and services enable that to happen.
• Take a hard look at your home page and figure out how to hook each of them when they land there. Is it obvious what they should do? Is the promise of what they'll get compelling enough given their priorities?
• Also assess your homepage for anything that will cause them to click the back button (your biggest enemy) and fix it.
• Remember you have only 3 - 5 seconds to convince them to stay

Essentially, if you are designing your website to engage Tom, Mary and Dennis, you need to look at it as if you were Tom, then Mary and then Dennis. Better yet - give someone who's not steeped in your site a description of Tom and what he's interested in, have them step into his shoes and visit the site for 5 seconds. Ask what caught their attention. Better yet if you can use an actual Tom, do that.

The turf wars over websites need to end. If your website is not contributing to business objectives, its not built for the audience. It doesn't matter what you think, what your boss thinks or what anyone else in your company thinks unless it's adding relevance for the audience your website needs to attract and engage.

Does your B2B website pass the audience litmus test?

If not, you're wasting time...

 

Content Marketing Should Never Be Advertising

The rise of the term Native Advertising seems to be causing quite a stir. This may very well be in creating a label that's inherently in conflict with itself. The main problem is with the word "Advertising." However, the concept of "Native" is headed in the right direction in regards to addressing context for audiences, rather than the unwanted interruption of ads.

Before anyone gets cranked up, let me explain a few things. I've been thinking about this for awhile. There are all kinds of reactions to the term Native Advertising, but I find most of them to be surface. We need to look deeper to how the model could work - without deception or trickery. Or any illusory benefits will fade fast. And marketers who don't consider this will find themselves on the short end of the stick. 

I haven't known exactly what I wanted to say about this, but I started thinking about it again when Scott Albro sent a Tweet to me, Joe Chernov and Jon Miller a few days ago.

What do content marketers think of this? Ad War: the Perils of Sponsored Content theatlantic.com/business/archi… @jonmiller @jchernov @ardath421

Joe responded with:

@scottalbro I feel very strongly that any attempt to deceive a reader is what Fred Reichheld would call "bad revenue" @jonmiller @ardath421

That really got me thinking. The content in the BuzzFeed example is clearly marked as provided by a company, it's shading is different and it's also noted that the item is from a "featured partner." Seems pretty straightforward to me that it's brand produced.

Is this really deceptive?

We've had Advertorials for years. Although, admittedly, the value of the content was usually more promotional than helpful. We now have promoted Tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn ads and other forms of paid placement or sponsored content that's being inserted into real-time streams. [As a confession, I tend to ignore them as most aren't engaging, but appear to be more of a ploy for attention based on a false assumption.]

What about white paper syndication where the paper is promoted in a newsletter but the company sponsoring/providing the white paper isn't identified until after you've submitted information and downloaded it? I'd label this last practice as more deceptive. I see this method all the time.

Yet, no one is screaming about it.

Is it because it's email and not online? However it's done, syndication companies have made a nice living by taking fees in exchange for promoting vendor content to their audiences. Some more deceptively than others, of course.

Where's the line?

Mark Schaefer recently wrote a post, What comes after content marketing?, where he shared 4 ideas about how to become the signal rather than the noise in the content dumping ground that marketing is relentlessly contributing to.

What prompted his post was a post written by Mitch Joel where Mitch stated, "It is my belief, that content is the new advertising. It is my belief that content is media for many brands." Mark's response of "ouch" was felt by me, too.

But I see his point. Marketing crap is polluting the very channels that give us the opportunity to connect with our prospects and customers. If we screw it up, then what? I don't think returning to smoke signals is an option.

In his post, Mitch also states that channels, "...have become a pumping ground for a marketing message. Very few of them are thinking about utilitarianism marketing and even fewer are thinking about the overall experience of the products and services (or, as the news item calls it, the "design"). Marketers create messaging around campaigns. Few marketers elevate their thinking to a macro brand play and how it engenders the overall economic value to the business strategy."

This, I agree with. And that brings me back to my assertion that an Advertising mindset is the problem. At least in B2B and in regards to the need for content to be a value add for the audience's experience - provide "utility" as Mitch (and Jay Baer) both identify as the key to effective marketing.

Paid placement is not going away. Not while there's a business model for it. Brands need exposure and publisher's sites can provide an audience that matches a vendor's target market.

But, what's important is the kind of content marketers provide within the context the site sets for the audience. This is why it's so important to know your audience, develop an in-depth strategy with a long-term vision (not a one-off campaign) and create truly helpful and memorable content.

One of the top goals for paid placement should be to convert it into earned media. But to do that, the content you create and syndicate had better be damn good! In the audience's eyes, not your company's.

Maybe we should call it Contextual Content Placement, instead of Native Advertising. Maybe it's also up to the publishers to hold their paid placement customers to a higher standard before granting access to their audience. After all, their audiences are their key asset to monetize. Respect for them should be top of the list.

It's time to raise the bar!

Most definitely vendors need to proactively hold themselves to a higher standard. But this can be difficult when marketers haven't yet developed the skills and strategies to do so effectively. Here's your checklist:

• One mention of your products or services and you're out
• One mention of anything remotely resembling a sales pitch and you're disqualified
• If you're content isn't deemed relevant for the audience, say goodbye.
• If the content doesn't drive the bigger business strategy driven by customer experience, go back to the drawing board

Finally, if you can't articulate how the content will provide recognizable value for the targeted audience you seek, start over. Your reputation and credibililty is at stake.

Content Marketing Requires More Than Content

Lately, I've been receiving calls from B2B sales executives in search of how to use content to drive pipeline momentum. Many of their companies have marketing teams that are doing good work. Their websites include customer-centric content, they have active blogs with posts contributed from across the enterprise, their social media accounts show a good ratio of other people's content vs. their content.

• They aren't talking incessantly about themselves.
• The content isn't overly product focused.
• The content is providing solid information that is being read by their prospects.

From the description above, you'd think that they're doing all the stuff that all the blog posts, consultants, agencies and "gurus" say they should, right?

But this is where the rubber meets the road. What it comes down to is that content marketing takes more than content to be an effective catalyst for sales. Content requires a strategy for putting it to work. Without a strategy, there's no work ethic in place for your content. And that means you'll have a nice collection of quality content that people enjoy, read and share, but that never motivates them to buy.

I know you're sitting there thinking, how can this be? You're thinking that you've done what was required. You're getting form completions for eBooks and white papers and webinars. Your videos are being shared on Twitter, your infographics are being pinned on Pinterest and your blog posts wind up on people's Facebook timelines. Wasn't that the point?

Nope. Not by a long shot. That's only the training-wheels level for content marketing. Until that 30% of budget that marketers are investing in content helps salespeople sell something, your content still needs to reach maturity.

One sales executive told me that he thought all the content work his company has done was stellar, but that there wasn't much improvement to the quality of leads. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that they were evaluating lead quality based on the number of resources viewed/accessed. They were using quantity to measure quality and it wasn't working.

Why not?

Because the number of resources doesn't matter as much as the information that's being accessed and what that can tell you about the prospect. [Note that for the purpose of this blog post, I'm assuming the prospect has the right demographics and firmographics to become a customer.]

This company has created a ton of educational information about the industry and the related problems that need to be solved - and can be by their products. But there is nothing to help their prospects build a business case. Nothing to help them visualize what solving the problem could do for them. Nothing to show that the company has a depth of expertise beyond a high-level understanding of the industries it serves.

Do you see the problem?

Each content asset stands alone with no link to any of the other assets. It's all good, well written content with structure. It delivers on the promise made in the title. But it doesn't work together to build the problem-to-solution story. There's no progression of storyline so there's no momentum in the pipeline.

Even if the prospect wanted to expend the effort, they wouldn't be able to find all the pieces of the puzzle to make any sort of decision they could back up in a conversation with their colleagues to gain consensus. The only call to action used was your standard "contact a sales rep." Unfortunately, there's never a strong enough reason to click that link.

It's been said many times by many content marketers - including me - that content must be mapped to buying stages. There's a reason for this. Different stages have different informational requirements. What your prospect is trying to achieve in each stage is different. Therefore, the same kind of content won't serve.

This is where the strategy part comes in. And I'll go back to what those of you who know me, know I always say: You must start with buyer knowledge, aka Personas.

Until you know what they care about and what they need to know as they make each small decision that leads to progress, it's next to impossible to create content that will help them make that progress with you.

And progress is what you need. And it's what your salespeople need.

The bonus is that if you create content mapped to buying stages, your salespeople will not only get quality leads, but they'll have quality content to use in conversations with them that continues that momentum through the later stages that lead to the coveted purchase decision.

Content is not one-size fits all. Each asset plays a different role in the story. Go figure out the story your prospect needs to become the hero of and share it with them. It takes work, but it's also becoming the table stakes for content marketing. And it's called strategy. With all the noise out there, it's what's required to catch and keep attention. This is no longer optional.

Your sales team will thank you! And so will your company and customers...

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!

 

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?