Marketing Interactions

Design B2B Marketing Content in Pursuit of Inquiry

In writing my new book, Digital Relevance, I spent a lot of time thinking about how a digital approach changes a lot of things, including the opportunity we have to become more relevant to our audiences.

An obvious line of thought, given the title of the book, right?

But here's the thing. Most marketers have gotten so tied around the axle about wanting their content to perform from an audience perspective that they've not given much thought to how it can perform as an inquiry to improve that very relevance and engagement that they're after.

The big question to answer is - What is my content designed to help me - as a marketer - learn about those who engage with it?

What I see mostly is the assumptive stuff based on format, such as:

• If the audience engages with an ROI calculator or views a demo they're late stage
• If they complete a form they may be a "lead"
• If they attend a webinar they're in the evaluation stage

But, how do you know? Because someone said so? Hmm.

We need to be better than this. We need to develop a rousing curiosity about what our audiences are interested in and what engaging with a specific piece of content could mean to them.

Based on the information in the content, not the packaging.

Content must be designed to have mutual value. It must deliver something your audience cares about AND it must deliver an answer to a line of inquiry that can help you improve relevance in a way that leads to additional engagement.

Part of the issue with this is that, as marketers, we're conditioned to think in a perspective based on one-to-many rather than one-to-one. I'm not saying that we yet have the tools or skills to excel at the latter, but I do think we have a huge opportunity to move in that direction. We may as well start now, because that's what's coming.

Think about nurturing for a moment. The point of nurturing is to create continuous engagement based on enticing prospects to take steps toward purchase over the course of their buying process.

This doesn't mean sending out an email with a link to your latest blog post every two weeks.

It means unfolding a story that creates curiosity and anticipation for what's next in the journey to solve the problem on their plates - aligned to their perspective (persona).

So what can you learn if you design your content both to serve prospects and as an inquiry?

Start simply by considering how the dots can be connected to reveal insights you can act upon to find improvements.

For example, if they read A, what's the propensity for them to read B? Or do more of them skip right to F? If they do skip to F then perhaps your content is out of order for how the problem presents to them. Perhaps a change to the way you connect your storyline would improve response and next steps.

As another example, let's get to the meat of the content. Let's say someone reads a content article about determining whether to build or buy the solution to a problem and they share the content with their colleagues. What can you learn? Obviously, if you're selling the "built" version, the slant of the content would be toward that choice.

So could you discern that the person who forwarded the content is trying to convince others involved in the decision that buying is the better option? Or, is that too much of a leap and maybe the group is still wrestling to answer that internal question? If you have a "see also" about how to make that choice and the person also clicks to read that, you may have an answer.

But, more importantly, what you also learn is that where they are in the buying process. They're still considering whether or not to move forward with buying as a means to solve their problem. Until that question is answered, they won't move forward. They are early stage. Does that tell you how to move forward with engaging them? It should.

However, if you're only looking at the format or the number of content assets they've engaged with, you really have no idea about what stage they're in or what they truly care about. The content of the content is what can tell you. If you design it in pursuit of inquiry. The way in which you connect the content about a topic together can also tell you which way they're leaning.

What does your content and the way you share it help you to learn about your audience?

How Did Buyers Get Here?

I interview a lot of people during buyer persona projects. This includes representatives from product development, customer service, sales teams, marketing professionals of various flavors, and, of course, customers and prospects. The thing that continues to astound me during internal interviews is the lack of knowledge about how buyers get here. In other words, how buyers become customers.

Each of these roles knows their piece of the puzzle, but more often than not, I don’t see a big picture view based on connecting the pieces from start to finish, including the bumps along the way.

For example:

• Product development conducts customer focus groups and surveys to find out what new features are desirable and how existing features are performing. But they need to dig deeper into the “why” about the products. Why do customers want new features? What outcomes are they trying to achieve? Why can’t they do it now? How are they doing it now?
• Marketers are focused on lead generation, brand awareness and driving traffic to the website and specific content offers. Often they are focused on just what it takes to generate a “lead” or reach the traffic volume number needed to show improvement. But what happens next? How does what they do in the early stages facilitate what happens in the later stages? (Not that marketing shouldn’t be involved across the entire process, but that’s another post) Knowing that “this” white paper drove the most form completions is not enough.
• Salespeople are focused on prospects who have been qualified in some way. They are focused on next steps and getting the sale, not necessarily on what guided or helped to progress the prospects to that stage.

This is not necessarily anyone’s fault. It’s the way it’s always been done. But it needs to change if companies want to keep pace with their target markets and customers. We need to share our knowledge with the others involved across the relationship. We need to collaborate openly.

Buyer personas should serve to pull all the pieces together. A comprehensive buyer persona should provide context across the entirety of the process from status quo to buyer to customer. If your company is engaged with a number of buyer personas, there should be an overlay to help all parties understand the relationships between them and how they work with each other during the buying process.

This foundation is what’s needed to build a content strategy that turns prospects into buyers and retains customers because we've gained an understanding of "how buyers get here."

Before any offense is taken, I'm not picking on anyone. Nor am I saying it’s true for all companies, just that I see these circumstances enough that it’s concerning.

I'm frustrated at the lack of true knowledge about customers coupled with the inability to articulate details about the buying process and how it's not being aligned with critical business goals. I'm frustrated at the opportunities for orchestration that companies are missing out on because they aren't enabling collaboration between all parties to create a consistent customer experience in execution and across channels.

I'll bet that product managers, marketers and salespeople know much more than what I summarized above only they haven't really thought about it in terms of how it all looks from the customer's perspective across the entirety of the experience. They have been trained to think about the buying process in terms of the product and in terms of how they're judged on performance, which often isn't aligned with what customers care about.

We need to find out what prospects struggle with so we can match them to the right solution!

This is what I was told in a recent conversation. I thought, fantastic! Now we're getting somewhere.

So I said, "Tell me about what your customers struggle with."

And I got - "It's hard to say as each one is different."

So I said - "Just tell me a few you've heard."

And I got - "Well, they know they need to alter direction to match customer demands but they don’t know how to go about it"

So I asked, "Can you give me an example of what [this problem] looks like for your prospects in a way that you can address?"

The response: "They can’t effectively sell the change to their executives."

Now, we're getting somewhere! And the interview continues and we finally start getting into the depth we need to find out how to develop content that addresses issues that helps buyers take action. It takes more digging than you think to get to the good stuff.

It's one thing to get buyers to view your content or recognize your brand, but it's quite another to motivate them to take next steps with your help. Without increasing the relevance of the information and insights you provide via content, your marketing programs won't ever move the needle where it counts.

Marketing technology is a wonderful thing to have. It can allow us to discover patterns of engagement and behavior that can help us to identify the parts of the story we’re telling that they care about. The data can also tell us what's not working – sooner, rather than later.

To discover “how buyers get here” we need to start looking at the whole experience or story about how that happens. That's the only way to create continuous content marketing programs that support the buyer every step of the way and result in more of them choosing your company to help them achieve objectives.

Why do we not spend more time looking at the bigger picture across the continuum of the buying process?

A focus on one successful piece of content here and learning from one not so good campaign outcome over there isn't going to tell you what you need to know. We need to look at cause and effect, patterns of progression and understand the significance of each step taken – whether backwards or forward.

B2B Marketing Content Must Address "Soft" Factors

For some reason, in B2B content marketing, we seem to forget about the "whole" buyer. More and more marketers are embracing buyer personas and the idea of becoming customer centric, but we often only focus on the business side of the buyer, as if they walk into the office and leave the rest of themselves outside.

In the personas I help my clients create, a lot of research goes into what I call "orientation." Orientation is an attempt to identify commonalities across the personalities of people who tend to hold the roles that our marketing and sales programs pursue. These traits can tell us a lot about how to structure content to make it more appealing.

For example, an engineer who is detail oriented would likely prefer content that backs up a premise with research and fact, rather than relying on the company's credibility for it to be believable.

But a report released by Fortune Knowledge Group, in collaboration with Gyro, makes it very clear that there's much more to be taken into account. In Only Human: The Emotional Logic of Business Decisions, 720 business executives clearly reinforce the notion that "soft" factors, such as trust, relationships, and reputation still hold sway.

I have heard this first hand in customer interviews during persona projects where the response to why a vendor was selected was a version of "we just felt they 'got' us and what we're trying to do more than the others." Or "we felt more comfortable with them." And "they made us feel like a big fish in a small pond."

While it's undeniable that insights from data are being used in decision making, the final factor that cements the deal or decision could be intuition or based on a gut feeling. And, marketers may be part of the problem.

You see, the business executives strongly agreed that as information grows and decisions become more complex, they are relying more on those "soft" factors to decide the way forward, including the vendor's culture (53%) and reputation (70%).

Notable highlights from the study:

• 71% say short-term financial sacrifices are worth more than long-term gains
• 65% believe subjective factors that can't be quantified increasingly make a difference when evaluating competing proposals (only 16% disagreed)
• 61% agree that when making decisions, human insights must precede hard analytics
• 52% say ambition, admiration and potential rewards outweigh fear of failure

So how do we, as marketers, use these insights?

First - add a cultural assessment to your persona development. Review the cultures of your best customers and learn what they have in common. Then correlate those qualities to your company's culture. How can some of them be woven into your content and messaging wtihout skewing the content back to a company focus? Think of this as a style factor for the way your content is written or created. What words emulate the values that your company shares with your best customers?

Second - use more carrot than stick. Take a positive path with your content, rather than the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) approach that content takes in an effort to build urgency to change. Help your prospective buyers see the success, rather than avoid the failure.

Third - become better storytellers. Stories engage intuition and help people think for themselves. A well done story invokes emotion in the reader/viewer and helps them to anticipate what their future will look like with the objective met or the problem solved. Stories are meant to engage humans - they've done so for thousands of years.

Finally - take a serious look at what it takes to build long-term relationships, not quick wins. The study finds that trust is a key soft factor for decision making. Earning and sustaining trust and credibility were proven to trump analytical intelligence. This means it's even more important to create consistent experiences across the entirety of the relationship, not just during part of it. And this goes for everyone involved - marketing, sales, customer service...

How is emotion manifesting during the buying process at your company? 

Are Salespeople Screwing Up B2B Marketing Performance?

I sat pondering another in a burst of self-serving emails sent last week by salespeople who obviously lack any discipline in prospect research or the energy needed to attempt meaningful personalization. As one of the emails was from a company I'd thought "got it," it occurred to me that the salesperson just screwed up my perception of the company they work for.

This made me wonder how much salespeople may be screwing up marketing performance now that more marketers are being tasked with proving contribution to revenues and business objectives, not simply lead generation.

Before sales-oriented, progressive types take issue with me, let me explain.

First - why there's need for concern:

• Buyers are self-serving content for a longer portion of the buying process. This means, if marketing is doing its job, marketing content and strategies are helping to attract and engage those buyers, building their perception of the company as helpful, credible and experts in their field.
• Buying cycles are lengthening and the size of the buying committee is growing. This means that content must be produced to engage more people with differing perspectives and responsibilities. For example, a technology purchase is often driven today by business executives, not just IT executives. Marketing is tasked with engaging as many on the buying committee as they can in the most relevant way they can.
• The amount of content buyers engage with during buying is also growing. Marketing is working hard to help increase the amount of content their prospects engage with. If they're reading yours, that's less time to read the competitor's - just saying.

Given those three reasons and assuming that a buyer has been nurtured and qualified before being handed off to sales (although research shows this doesn't happen for most companies who toss form completions to sales - but ignoring this) then it's up to the salesperson to capitalize on the work that's already been done. Or to screw it up.

I'm seeing more and more sales communications that are screwing it up.

In my work I do a ton of resarch which usually includes submitting a lot of forms to download white papers and reports that help me learn about an industry, market or solution. I get a lot of email as a result. Just this last week, I received a dozen or so examples.

I'll share a couple them to illustrate my point:

The first is a bucket approach. I hate this type of email. This is the lazy email that tries to make you feel bad by saying you're non-responsive and then asks for you to expend effort because the salesperson can't be bothered to do it themselves. Below is the email copy with only the brand name removed to protect the guilty party.

Hi,

Good Afternoon. I have tried contacting you in regards to [brand] software.

Would you be so kind as to provide me some guidance, as I do not want to be a bother and will gladly follow your direction. Which of the below describes where you are at:

A - You have made a decision regarding [brand] and want to chat now. Great End of Month Incentives.

B - You want to schedule a call at a future date

C - You are no longer interested in [brand]

I appreciate your feedback and hope all is going well.

Thanks.

This same email was sent three times in one day. It was also sent by a salesperson who works at a company that I've talked about as having a truly engaging marketing approach. I assume that I was subjected to this salesperson because I downloaded a bunch of content to see what they were doing. I will not be inclined to mention them again as their marketing processes don't seem to cross over to their sales processes. And, I'm irritated.

The first problem with this approach is that the salesperson couldn't even bother to include my name in the salutation. The second is that it puts the onus of effort on me. The salesperson is obviously cutting and pasting a template. A poorly written template at that. Or, God forbid, it's automated. And, until he sent the above three times in one day, I'd never heard from this salesperson before - so the first sentence is a lie. He hasn't been trying to contact me.

The second problem is that 5 seconds on Google would've told him that I'd never be his customer. As a consultant, I don't buy 5 figure BI systems. But because he did no research and sent a lazy email, not only did he waste his time, but he cost his company an advocate. Advocates don't come along every day.

But here's what's worse. Imagine if I was a buyer. I can tell you that their marketing content is very good. It's informative, well written and interesting. It's a considered purchase so what if I'd been a prospect for months, learning what I need to know, getting all my questions answered... and then I receive that email.

There's nothing helpful. It's like the anti-experience of the company in question. And I, as that primed buyer, decide to move on to my second choice, thinking that the quality of what I'd seen so far is a smoke screen. Could this be happening in your company?

Here's another example:

Hi Ardath,

I had a note you registered for the recent webcast, “Name of Webinar I Never Registered For”, about [XYZ] in the  enterprise. I’m not sure if you were able to attend, but I’d like to avail myself as a resource in case you were interested in learning more.

We've helped clients find great efficiencies for business users, reduce complexities for the IT organization, while mitigating risk for the organization as a whole when [doing XYZ]. 

If you're open to a brief conversation, I'd love to learn about your business objectives in these areas. Would it make sense to speak? If you’d like, test the system with your own [trial]

Thank you.

Best Regards,

First off, if he thinks I registered for the webinar then he should know whether or not I attended. That data is in every webinar attendee report. But, in reality, my one interaction with this company was to download a white paper, so his information is faulty. And, you can tell it's a template he lifted because of the double sign off. He pasted it in and didn't even take the time to notice.

Now, if this was a one-off, I'd just delete it and not pay attention. But, I received this email twice plus a voice mail. And I took a look at his company. Once again, five seconds on Google would have told him not to bother with me.

So this is when it really hit me. Because of the repeated irrelevance, I will automatically delete any email from this company. If I was a potential prospect, marketing wouldn't have a shot. No matter how good their content or communications. In fact, the next day, I received a marketing email and immediately unsubscribed.

If your salespeople can't even be accurate about the type of interaction had with your company, what will your prospects think? And why, after one white paper download, do salespeople pursue leads? And, if they're going to do so, they'd damn well better figure out something more relevant that the email above. Which actually could be from any company, it's so vague.

So I ask you: How much damage are your sales team's practices doing to your marketing performance?

And, I'm not putting this all on sales, either. Marketing shares responsibility, in my opinion. With sales enablement that teaches salespeople how to effectively engage prospects based on a continuation of the story marketing is telling, this can be avoided.

If we want our marketing performance to contribute to revenue, we need to help salespeople have a better shot at not screwing it up.

And to all the salespeople out there who do "get it" and do their research and work hard at relevance, bless you!

The B2B Funnel is Now a Sieve

The buying process has gotten messy for B2B marketers. This easy access to information means that engagement one second can turn into disinterest in the next. Every new channel puts a hole in your funnel. (Although I've never liked the funnel construct, it's appropriate for making the point.)

Marketers who don't integrate new channels into their content marketing strategy will find they have a very leaky funnel. I'm not talking about using them, I'm talking about considering how they all work together.

If you want to plug the holes, it's time to consider:

Consistency of Story

Given that only 32% of enterprise B2B marketers consider their content marketing effective, they need to pay attention to what they're doing with the 17 tactics they use, on average. Forty-one percent are creating more content than they did last year but the question remains as to what it is and why they're creating it?

Many of them don't have a documented plan which leaves me to wonder how they manage it all. But I'd wager that this is an indication of why consistency across channels is lacking. If you're relying on memory or hoping that everyone is publishing to the idea of the plan, good luck.

The problem I see is that in lieu of a strategy, marketers use different channels for different things. One example I've seen a lot is a really well done blog and a Facebook page that's about the company's favorite sports team and silly contests. If you're a buyer and you encounter a really thought-provoking blog post and then click through to the silly Facebook page, what are you left thinking?

The other is a conflict of personas. You may have a blog focused on IT professionals and a LinkedIn Group for line of business. But somehow there are cross links that make no sense but were done for SEO purposes. I've seen horrendous crimes done to content in the name of SEO. This can also happen with hyperlinks on phrases that link to product pages on the website with no context. Who do you think you're fooling? I just read a buyer research study that found buyers are hesitant to click on links when they don't know where they'll go. Why do you think this is?

Marketers need to think about the impression made by all the channels in use where prospects and customers may encounter their company. What will the overall impression be if they run into your company on the channels you publish in most? When's the last time you looked at it from the outside, from this perspective?

Depth of Relevance

I was reviewing content for a potential project the other day. The content was solid, focused on industry trends that mattered to their prospects, but it felt off. It took me a bit to put my finger on it, but I finally figured it out. The company had taken the idea of journalism to an extreme. They were trying to be so unbiased that their content was dry, it was like straight reporting and it was stiff because they weren't actually taking a stand or speaking directly to anyone.

The company is actually really interesting and has SMEs galore that are willing to contribute content. But they don't know how to talk to their prospects with any tone, voice or personality. If you stripped away the company brand, the reader would think the content was provided by an association or news publisher. And that's not the lasting impression you want to leave.

To get to depth of relevance you not only need to know your buyers intimately, but your brand's personality. Instead of brand guidelines, why not create a brand persona that can help your company become more relevant in information, as well as in style?

Formats Don't Matter More than Information

One of the first things I hear in a lot of content conversations is about the type of content the marketing team wants to create. We need a white paper or an eBook or an infographic, etc. This is the wrong place to start.

Start with the idea. What topic and for whom? What will they get from it? What do you want to accomplish? How will it work within your storyline?

These are the questions to answer. Then you can define a suite of content to develop around the idea complete with a distribution plan and how you'll connect the dots across channels. Remember that the expectations in channels also vary. Instead of one content asset, start thinking in terms of content hubs.

If you don't want to lose your audience, you need to move format to the end of the list. It's not the most important element. The information is.

Social Does Not Mean Broadcast

I think we've forgotten how to actually "be" social. There's a big difference between broadcasting and engaging. The lazy way out is to post title and link...repeatedly. Or to post title and link when channels including LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ allow you to add much more narrative. Yet, we tend to treat every social channel with the brevity required by Twitter. Why?

What a missed opportunity. Although this would also mean we'd need to think about how to be meaningful - and who has time for that?

The Point

The point is that marketers are putting a lot of investment into channels they don't own, but they're not applying the effort to make them pay off. Buyers have a choice. It's often represented by the back button and then the ignore trigger that has them scan right past your post. Once they start avoiding you, will you be able to win them back? If their experience with your brand across channels is reminiscent of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you've got work to do.

The best approach is to think of everything you publish as a form of Natural Nurturing. I wrote about it in my book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, in 2009. This is not a new concept. Every time your content comes into contact with your audience you have an opportunity. Squander it and your funnel becomes a sieve.

 

B2B Marketers Must Stay In the Game to Prove Business Impact

I was reading an interview with Laura Ramos, VP and Principal Analyst with Forrester, and a couple of things she said caught my eye:

“The ideal model for understanding how B2B buyers buy is a life cycle, not a funnel.”

“When your sales involve multiple buyers in a complex, highly considered process, and when there is a distinct hand-off from marketing to sales—it can get a bit murky when figuring out where marketing’s influence ends and sales’ influence begins.”

The question that came up for me (and has for some time) is: Why is there a distinct handoff?

If you look at the first quote above (which I also agree with very strongly) there’s no stop and start for marketers. A life cycle indicates a continuum, not a campaign-type focus. There shouldn’t be any stopping. There shouldn’t be a pause.

What marketers should be doing is addressing each stage of the buyer to customer to advocate life cycle as it happens and in relation to what’s relevant at the time.

If marketers are to prove business impact, they must be able to show influence at every point and pivot.

This doesn’t mean that they need to own it as a “marketing” function, but that they empower the relationships held by buyers and customers with the company – no matter how or with whom they happen.

Marketing has a brilliant opportunity to become the support system for the customer experience lifecycle - across the organization.

Think about all the ways customers play in your business, including:

• Marketing to Sales
• Customer support, service and training
• Product development
• Branding, reputation, credibility
• Advocacy and referrals

Marketing, as the organization responsible for attracting, engaging and initiating relationships, must expand beyond that early role to sustaining and growing those relationships over the entire continuum of the life cycle.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Marketing collects a lot of data about customers and the marketplace their companies serve. They are the ones positioned to provide the most value by integrating other sources of data and feedback from other departments to evolve the big-picture view used to drive business.
• Marketing is on the front lines;, they are often the first “face” presented for the company. If they stop there the story stops with them. Then the organization has to count on whatever story sales shares is complementary and that the story also makes the transition through to customer service and support. Good luck – did I mention that “hope is not a strategy?”
• Buyers and customers are clamoring for higher relevance and vendors who can help them set the vision, realize it and move gracefully forward into the future. This requires consistency in experience and the story that’s started to continue to develop and expand over time. Marketing is in the best position to facilitate this.
• Social media has shoved everyone into a marketing and potentially customer-facing role. Someone needs to provide some orchestration for how the story is shared from those differing perspectives in a way that honors both the brand and the customer.

By staying in the game, marketers can enable every touch point with customers with the parts of the story needed to build a longer-term relationship. With the technology available today, all the points and pivots can be tracked. Proving business impact doesn’t mean marketing must close deals, it means they must be able to show influence across the continuum of the customer life cycle and relate it to business-driving metrics.

It will take time. But I firmly believe a continuum approach is what’s next given the changes we’ve seen so far…

B2B Marketers Need to Understand Technology

I attended a webinar this morning, What Marketers Need To Know To Achieve Content Marketing Success, with Robert Rose and Steve Walker. It was a good session focused on the technology needed to empower content marketing. You should go listen to it.

At the end of the session, this question was asked:

If I'm mostly focused on content writing, why do I need to know about technology?

If I'd been sipping my coffee at that moment, I've no doubt that it would have hit my screen.

Robert answered the question with the notion of awareness. He used a car analogy; Although he doesn't know enough about cars to change the oil in his own vehicle, he does understand the landscape and the difference between a VW and a BMW.

I agree that a general awareness of the technology landscape is definitely something all marketers should have, but I'd push it a bit farther than this.

Functional Knowledge

Marketers need to understand how specific technology works, its purpose and ultimate objective. Why is it in use? How does it fit into the overall marketing plan? What will the marketing team achieve by using it? And, if applicable, what should content used in the technology accomplish? What are the options?

An easy example - email vs. PPC. Arguably both need content, but the content that's effective will be different. The parameters are different. The expectation of the people who experience it will be different. The functionality for each works differently. Best outcomes will be achieved differently.

Presentation

Related to the above points, how content renders in different technology platforms varies based on channel. Easy example is mobile vs. PC based on screen size.

It's always important to realize that the way content looks in a Word doc is not the way it will look on a website or blog - or anywhere else for that matter. It won't look the same based on production format, either. How does the text wrap? Are there orphaned words? Is the main point lost in a paragraph that runs too long given less width on the web page template than in the Word doc? Is the scrolling required to read the piece too much for the attention span you're able to capture from an audience?

Experience

The points above all roll up into the experience for your audience. What I find interesting is that when I ask marketers how many of them have experienced their content marketing just as their audience will, most haven't. They've only seen the word docs or the preview before publish or the after-the-fact metrics. This is crazy.

Given that most marketing today is digitally executed, marketers need to be present from the outside, as well as the inside. I can't figure out how they hope to improve engagement if they don't have the same experience as their target audiences. How would you know what to change or if you should change anything?

Easy example here is your Twitter profile. How many of us use an app to manage our Twitter streams? Probably most of us. When's the last time you looked at your timeline? Is it interesting? Or is it a repetitious list of title + link posts to your own stuff repeated over and over every few hours?

On your blog, do you hyperlink to product pages every chance you get? When you're constructing the post in a Word doc, it may feel appropriate, but when you review the last five blog posts and see the same links trying to push product information on your audience, your perspective may change.

Analytics that Lead to Insights

While analytics applications don't present content, they report on its use. If you don't understand what to look for or how to interpret the success or failure of your content, how will you continue to improve? How will you know that what you're writing is doing its job?

Extracting numbers is one thing. Interpreting them is quite another. Marketers need to know how to do both. And I'm not just talking about clicks and views. What can you learn about your prospects and customers? What interests is their behavior validating? How is this interest helping them make progress toward sales conversations? What copy is Sales using to further the conversation? What combination of the content you created is most successfully contributing to customer acquisition and revenue growth?

Technology is the Backbone

Steve made the point that CRM, the website, or web content management platforms, marketing automation and eCommerce platforms make up the core for marketing technology. This graphic of nearly 1,000 marketing technologies produced by Scott Brinker was used by both Robert and Steve. It's enough to make your eyes roll back.

But the point is that if you don't have a working understanding of the technology, what it's meant to accomplish and how your audience experiences what you put into it, then using the tools to build engagement that results in profitable customer relationships is going to be a tough road to travel.

I'd also argue that you need to understand the integration of point solutions into the core stack. What they enable, why you're using them and what they contribute to the overall customer and prospect experience.

And lets not put all the strain on marketers about understanding the technololgy. Let's also place it on the IT team. It's just as important that they understand what you're trying to accomplish in order to get the technology working well in support of those goals.

As a final point in this post - as channel evolution pushes marketers closer to real-time execution, I'd argue that they're going to need to be able to evolve understanding their technology into using at least some of it competently. Have you thought about what will change when waiting in the queue is no longer good enough?

Better get started now...

 

B2B Buyers Choose Their Own Adventures

I was reading this blog post interview with Paul Greenberg over on Hubspot's blog about defining customer engagement and one of his examples stuck out to me. The essence of it was "don't make decisions for your buyers." Instead, let them choose.

Regardless of how much research you've done, the number of personas you've created, you can only know so much. Each buyer is an individual, a human. While your content marketing programs lay down the bread crumbs they can choose to follow, it's what happens next that's critical.

Paul Greenberg defines customer engagement as:

“the ongoing interactions between company and customer, offered by the company, chosen by the customer”

The point is choice.

While marketers plan out their content strategies and map content to buying stages - which they must do - they need to also realize that these are starting points...that flexibility and agile response are the keys to becoming truly relevant.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from marketers today is that content isn't necessarily resulting in prospects choosing to "do" something. Most of the time it's because the choice of what to do next isn't obvious, or if it is, it's not relevant given how they interpreted what they just viewed based on where they are in the buying process.

So your audience either clicks around trying to find something that extends the dialogue they embarked upon, or they move on.

The problem I see is is caused by the way marketers have decided to align content to buying stages. Rather than introducing flexibility that more than one choice could exist, we've ended up trying to dictate what's next by offering content that we think is a logical and linear progression.

Marketers remain under the illusion that they control the informational exchange.

This is a big misconception. In an informational environment now driven by choice, why do we think limiting choice is the way to go?

I get that marketers have budgets and that developing content has its limits, but we need to make decisions about how we'll offer our audience options. We also need to pay careful attention to what their choices in relation to those options can tell us.

There are a variety of ways in which choice can manifest. Here are a few examples.

Option 1:

• Prospect engages with an article about a topic
• The "see also" options include a video, a link to register for a webinar, and an infographic

Offering choices based on format can help you discern which type of content the prospect prefers and how much more time and attention the person is willing to invest, should all three be versions of the next topic on your list. Sometimes it's the format that matters.

If this prospect only looks at infographics, then how serious are they about learning what they need to know to buy? Most infographics are lightweight data presentations that lack context and depth.

However, if this prospect registers for the webinar and attends, the behavior can tell you something quite different.

Option 2:

• Prospect engages with a blog post
• The hyperlinks in the blog post offer three different perspectives related to the topic in the post - all the links are to articles displayed on web pages, removing format as a factor in selection

In this case, the topic they select to click on can provide insights to the person's view on the topic and what the situation they are facing may look like (if you've written content based on depth of persona knowledge)

If they click on more than one, this could indicate they have a higher urgency for learning more about how to solve the problem or meet the objective that's the focus.

Choice is Also Insight for Marketers

It may seem like allowing buyers to "choose their own adventures" is a lot of work, but what you can learn by analyzing their choices can become input to improve the way your content addresses the buying process across stages. Offering more options can also result in speeding up the learning process, hence the decision cycle.

If marketers want to build higher engagement with buyers, letting them lead the way through how they use your content can transform your marketing performance.

It's definitely worth thinking about.

 

Curiosity and Context: Keys to Engagement for B2B Buyers

Many B2B marketers have jumped on the bandwagon about answering their buyers and customers' questions. There's a bit more strategy involved to do so in a way that drives momentum, but what I'm not seeing is marketers attempting to promote the curiosity that motivates their buyers to ask the questions they haven't thought of yet.

Campaigns are dead. Even Forrester says so.

Curiosity and Context are the fuel for engagement. And in B2B, you're going for the long-term - not the one-off. Consistency and longevity critical. The story must build across stages, pulling buyers forward by building anticipation for what's next - for them to understand how they get the outcome they want with your help.

So what drives engagement?

Curiosity. A desire to know more. Ideas that reshape the way people think about a concept, inviting them to ask new questions in exploration.

Context that uses stories based on how problems and priorities might be playing out for prospects and customers.

Perception of low effort that makes it stupid simple and appealing to create a dialogue with you.

A sense of empowerment that comes when buyers feel they are driving the conversation, not your agenda.

Anticipation to get what's next because your story (content) has motivated them to "turn the page."

Simply making a list of questions and answering them is not the solution to creating lasting engagement that drives revenues for complex sales. Why not? Because there are hidden questions, subconscious needs that buyers don't think to ask until their curiosity is aroused.

Reasons why content doesn't create curiosity:

There's no Open End.

Much of this has to do with corporations thinking that they need to be the definitive answer to prove their expertise. There's no room left for discussion without the risk of the buyer looking stupid or presenting an outright challenge. Let's just admit that we don't know everything - never will - and get it over with already.

It's not Novel.

A lot of content is a restatement of stuff other people have said so many times that there's nothing new. If this is a constant, these are the responses you can expect. People will either scan and see they've read the same stuff before and leave. Or they'll finally reach their breaking point and either mark your brand off their resources list or post a comment expressing their irritation. Either way, your value to them has diminished.

It's trying to talk to Too Many People at once.

When you don't know your audience well enough or you have limited resources, you try to do too much with one content asset. This usually means that it's so high level that it doesn't speak with meaning to anyone.

The Context is Skewed.

You are still using gut instinct to tell you what your audience cares about. But you've missed the points that matter to them. Perhaps you nailed the topic, but the angle you've taken tells them you really don't understand their situation or what they care about. In this scenario, there's just no motivation to engage because the buyer knows you don't "get" them.

It sounds Too Good To Be True.

You know your Whizz Bang solution is the next best thing to sliced bread. But you've emphasized so many upsides without the details, struggles or whatever else it takes to get them that the outcomes sound too good to be true. This immediately arouses disbelief about all the stuff that's been omitted or the veracity of what you're saying and results in diminished credibility - even if what you say is true!

I could go on, but I think I've made the point. What it comes down to is being human and highly relevant. But it's also a sense of mirroring - or being seen as a peer. No one likes to be lectured to by someone who thinks they're the smartest person in the room. If you want to create engagement with an upside, you have to be curious, too.

Buyers are looking for expertise, certainly. But they're also sure that their situation is unique - which it is. And they want to know that you're flexible and agile enough to adjust to it while still delivering what you promise.

B2B marketers need to tread the line between using their expertise to mentor buyers and curiosity that shows you're interested in them and what they need and want. Sometimes this means showing them that you didn't have all the answers when you started helping a customer, but that you helped them figure it out and overcome the unforseen challenges encountered along the way. In other words, revealing your humanity.

B2B complex sales have inherent risk - both for the company and the buyer. In many of the interviews I do for persona projects, what I hear repeatedly is that buyers want to work with people/companies who they feel care the most about them. I've heard many customers say the equivalent of "They just seemed to "get" us."

When I probe deeper it comes back to an alignment with context and the quality of interactions that the buying team had with the vendor they chose to solve their problem.

What are you doing to show your buyers that you "GET" them?

 

Cut Through the Red Tape of Consensus for B2B Buying Decisions

This headline caught my eye - 53 Percent of B2B Fortune 500 Companies Use Marketing Automation - so I clicked through to read it. Mathew Sweezey wrote the post based on his research into the State of Demand Generation. Mathew presents three reasons for why this increase in the use of marketing automation foretells good things for the industry and his first one got me thinking.

Reason #1: Lots of Red Tape

Mathew makes the point that these enterprise companies are not light in the wallet, but that the process of getting through all of the red tape to get a deal done is exhausting. The fact that this obstacle is being removed bodes well for giving marketing automation the visibility it needs to gain more market share.

I agree. Even though I find it curious that only 53% are using it so far.

But what it made me think about is how many companies I work with where the sales team is convinced that losing deals is about price. We've all heard this argument, but we've also heard the repetitive push back that value overrules price considerations. Both marketing and sales are told to go prove the value.

And I agree with value playing an important role in the decision - perhaps a critical role.

But what if we haven't looked far enough?

When I think of red tape, what I think about immediately for a B2B complex sale - and marketing automation is definitely complex - I think about consensus.

Consensus is hard to get. With the growing number of people (43% increase in stakeholders per IDC) involved in a B2B buying decision, 34% say it's so, getting all of them to buy-in to a decision is requiring more effort.

But are B2B marketers tackling this? Or are they leaving it up to sales? It appears that neither are doing a stellar job as Sales Benchmark Index finds that 58% of typical pipelines are stalled or end up as no decision.

Here are a few reasons marketing needs to get the jump on this:

• 58% of buyers say they spend more time researching
• 53% rely more on peer recommendations
• 34% say purchases were initially unbudgeted
• 65% said the winning vendor's content had a significant impact
• Non-executives view more content than executives

B2B marketers are very concerned about reaching decision makers. This is primarily because this is who salespeople want to speak with. But we need to start thinking about consensus. For without it, we have no deal.

If your marketing content is focused on engaging the decision maker and/or economic buyer, what about the other 3 - 7 (or more) people who can argue against the decision and stop it cold?

What are we doing to convince them that making the decision is the best answer to their problem, issue or achieving their objective?

Context and Conversations

One-size-fits-all content won't get this done. The context, care abouts and decision criteria are different for every influencer involved. In order to promote consensus, marketers need to figure out what the "overlay" conversations are amongst the stakeholders and provide ideas and insights that can be used to aid in their discussions about solving the problem. The key here is that you want them to use your ideas.

By addressing the context of each of them, we can help them to understand the opportunity that exists for them, specifically, as well as how these all culminate to be the best way to solve the problem for the company as a whole.

Establishing value is of course important, but relevance will determine its impact and this means it needs to be "personalized" and based on context.

The shift required here is for marketers to think beyond trying to getting their salespeople into the conversation. By working to facilitate conversations among the stakeholders based on our ideas, we'll find that getting invited into these conversations follows more easily.

What are you doing to ensure your content and nurturing programs are stimulating conversations among stakeholders that build consensus?

Shameless Plug - Mathew and I will be co-presenting a charged-up session on Advanced Nurturing at Content Marketing World in September. I hope we'll see you there.