Marketing Interactions

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? 

Product is Not the Hero of a B2B Company's Story

Despite the shift in the B2B buyer landscape that puts them squarely in the power position, I still hear marketers insist that the product is the hero of the story. Well, I'll just rip the bandaid off and say it straight up - You Are Wrong.

As a level set for this post:

The hero of the story is the protagonist or main character. The protagonist has a goal; is impeded by the antagonist/villain in achieving the goal; seeks knowledge along the way from a mentor to vanquish the villain; and achieves victory to accomplish his goal successfully at the end.

Does this description of the hero represent your product? Nope.

Instead, B2B marketers need to make their buyers and customers the hero of the stories they tell.

Try this:

The buyer has a business objective (goal), is impeded by problems or issues (villain) that get in the way of achieving it. The buyer seeks knowledge along the way aided by vendor expertise (mentor) and achieves his objective with the help of your product to enable him to resolve the problems and issues keeping him from achieving his goal.

Nowhere in here is the product playing the starring role in the story.

Now try this:

A CTO and founder of a startup SaaS company that's the subsidiary of a global enterprise is building a new application with a business model dependent upon low price, high volume sales. He knows that, at launch, the delivery and support of his application must be rock solid, the site unwaverable - regardless of how much traffic hits it. This is a key product launch for the parent company with a lot riding on it - including his career.

He's formed a great core team focused on the development of this leading-edge application. He is trying to decide how to support taking the application to market.

He can:

• Build the infrastructure in house - hire the team, buy the hardware, develop the network, co-locate the servers, etc.
• Build it in house and spin up the servers from Google or AWS to host it in the cloud - but this also means hiring the team to build and support it
• Outsource the infrastructure to a managed services provider and keep his team's focus solely on core product development, delivery and service
• Employ the services of his parent company's IT division to support roll out - which is what his parent company would prefer and his board is pushing for
• Use the vendors his parent company uses to try and find economies of scale - which could be easier for his parent company to swallow than new, unproven vendors

Some of his concerns include:

• A move up of launch date that means he has to get the infrastructure up faster than he'd planned
• Concern about security and compliance in the cloud - his customers will be all over this
• A reluctance to split his or his team's time between innovations for the new product and managing the infrastructure
• Scaling the infrastructure if volume grows faster than forecast
• He's been burned by managed services vendors in the past and has low trust that they'll do what they say they will after the contract is signed
• Controlling costs to keep slim margins in the acceptable range for the board - they're already slim in the best of scenario forecasts
• Minimizing any perceptions that will get in the way of his potential customers embracing this new application

If you are a managed cloud services provider, how will you build the story for this buyer?

Will you tell him that the cloud will save the day because you're the leading provider of cloud services?

Or will you:

• Share deep insights about the challenges of taking a new SaaS product to market and how cloud compares to an on premise deployment for scale, uptime, responsiveness and rolling out product updates?
• Produce content that talks about the role a managed services team plays in collaborating with the core team to make sure the infrastructure supports new product developments and customer demands?
• Help him to understand how the security and compliance measures you can provide will be a selling point for his customers - and his executive board?
• Show him how a pay for what you use model will help him keep margins where they need to be?
• Share your insights about how the future trends you see for the industry will be easier to address with a cloud infrastructure and why this is important for his app and his customers?

There are many angles your story can take and a number of chapters to unfold that will be integral to helping the buyer build the trust and credibility he needs to take the risk of choosing to use an outside vendor, let alone the cloud. There will be a lot of information he'll need to build the business case and drive consensus with his board and parent company. But only if you can convince him first.

None of the stories this buyer needs revolve around your product or solution as the hero. Your solution is simply one component of the business the buyer is building. The story you need to tell is one that builds the buyer's confidence that he's making the best, lowest risk choice that will lead to his SaaS app succeeding in the marketplace and help to elevate his career.

Do you see the difference?

Is Your B2B Content Just a Pit Stop?

B2B marketers have taken up the challenge to create great content. They're investing time, effort and money into content marketing. People are reading their content. But, effectiveness remains elusive.

Only 9% strongly agree with the statement: "I know our digital marketing is working."

That's only 92 of over 1,000 marketers. Yet, 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing.  Does this scare you? It should.

What's the problem?

Well, it would be easy to say that there's a lack of strategy,but let's narrow it down to something you can do right now that will help to improve your efforts. One of the biggest failings I see is a lack of orchestration for momentum.

You can write the best content in the world, but without a plan, it's only a pit stop for busy prospects who may read it but then quickly move on. Content must build interest that translates into intent.

In other words, your content must do more than appeal to buyers. I read a ton of content every day. Some of it is a waste of time, some of it is interesting, but very rarely does any of it make me want more. And, if it does, quite often getting more related content isn't easy to do.

If you want to get past your content being just a pit stop for buyers, here are a few things to think about:

Take a Serial Approach

Serial publishing is nothing new. In fact, Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers was serialized in 1836. The reason I bring this up is that short-form content is in demand. For B2B marketers with a complex solution, it's impossible to share all the expertise and guidance needed in short form. But unfolding the story a bit at a time can work very well, especially if you have a very long sales cycle and a number of people who must become engaged to reach consensus before a decision can be made.

Tell Your Audience What to Do Next

One of the things that drives me a bit crazy is when good content is produced without connecting to what comes before or after. It just sits there like an island. And it doesn't count if you have "sign up for a demo" or "contact a sales rep" as the only options for the audience. Marketers need to embrace a guidance approach. Prospects are busy. They aren't going to hunt or search for related content. It's up to you to tell them what to do next. Those who are interested will take action. Reading more than one piece of content on a topic should increment lead score and even trigger more to test the level of that interest.

But we tend to leave our prospects hanging because we don't think about "If they're interested in this subject, what else do they need to know?" We don't create content with follow-ons. Marketers still tend to create content as one-off ideas. This is a missed opportunity.

Provide Cross-Persona Perspectives

In B2B buying there are multiple people with a stake in the decision. Yet, I very rarely see content designed for, say, a Director of IT, that includes an offer of content that speaks to the VP of IT Operations as a "sharing" opportunity. Take a look at all the personas on your buying committee and figure out how to help get your ideas shared among them. This is really helpful in situations where you have problems reaching a persona online, such as those farther up the ranks who may not spend the amount of time on social media as their subordinates do, for example.

Have you thought about how you'll get them involved? Or are you using "hope" as a strategy and just publishing that content online into an audience void?

Go Deeper

Marketers are often told to go create awesome, helpful content. But, what does this mean? If we're going to create content that drives business, we need to speak to what our prospects must have, not to what they merely need.

While "grow your revenues" or "cut costs" are always objectives, the phrases don't mean anything. Take a look at your persona and see what it means in the context of his or her roles and responsibilities.

• A product manager who can get her product to market three months faster than they do now to gain first-mover advantage that could result in larger market share will pay attention to how that can be made to happen.
• A service desk manager who can equip his team with the tools to close out service tickets 20% faster at higher first-response resolution rates while working to reach higher levels of ITSM maturity will want to know how to make that happen.
• An oil field asset manager who can increase proven reserves with a tool that gives his geophysicists greater visibility to the subsurface will have visions of career advancement.
• A start-up CEO who needs to focus all his team's energy on developing enhancements for his SaaS application and onboarding customers who learns that managed services from a cloud provider can relieve the stress and cost of hiring an in-house IT staff while bringing additional expertise he could not afford otherwise.

You get the idea. Specificity wins hands down against ambiguity. The deeper you can get, the more closely your content matches the context for your prospect's situation and objectives, the more interest your content will generate.

You've got to move them beyond the "So what?" to "That was interesting" to "Tell me more!"

Easy Isn't Good Enough

Marketers must stop looking at isolated clicks and views for one content asset as the most important KPI for marketing programs. Our content must do more than appeal to buyers one time, it must spur them to action. While it's great to know that a specific content asset attracted an audience, if that's all it does, then it's not doing enough.

One view doesn't make an MQL. Three or four random views of content on assorted topics will also not produce a prospect intent on buyng.

Business buyers buy to solve a problem that has the potential to cause them to fail at something they're trying to achieve. So what is your content designed to do?

How are you orchestrating progression for your content marketing programs?

Are Your B2B Buyers More Evolved than Your Content?

The noise online is deafening. But there is also a lot of really great content available on nearly every subject imaginable - from addressing simple ideas to the highly complex. There's a lot of research that shows the first stop for B2B buyers with the need to solve a problem is search. With nearly unlimited search results for any query, your buyer is learning a lot as they browse around looking for ideas, education and opportunities to turn that problem into an opportunity for their company - and their career.

So, do you know what they know?

Most marketers do (or have someone) do keyword research to use to engage their target audiences.

I worked on a project recently where an "SEO specialist" provided a list of keywords for the marketing team to use. I went out and Googled them. Some of them produced results totally unrelated to what the buyers would be interested in, but they had good volume (so what?). Some produced results with competitor content and some of that content was pretty darned good. Some of it was totally off the mark.

The point being that I don't see a lot of marketers actually looking at what the keywords they're using produce for a search. It's strangely a bit like blind acceptance if the words make sense to them. But what's at the end is critical.

So what if you stepped into your buyer's shoes and went online to search for a solution to a problem your buyer might be experiencing by using your keywords? What could you easily learn from the content offered up in the search results? If you click on a link and read it, does it prompt you to search on a new term? (what was is?) And so on.

Or would you hit the back button and keep scrolling through the search results looking for a better option? How far do you get before you realize this keyword isn't giving you what you need and move on to the next one? Do you use a keyword from your list or did your brain come up with a new one.

Remember, you're in your buyer's shoes. Be discerning. Treat the exercise seriously. Heed time - they don't have all day. Look for the rabbit holes that start with the example I proposed in the previous paragraph.

Once you've done this several times, review what your buyer would have learned.

If you know your buyer uses a social platform in their buying process, go try searching on some of those - groups in LinkedIn they may belong to or hashtags on Twitter, for example. What can they learn about solving those problems in those environments?

Now go look at your content. Given what your buyer may have engaged with, is your content off the mark? Is it too advanced or too simplistic? Is it possible that any of the rabbit holes you followed could provide new insights for how your content might be positioned to enter the thread? This can be critical if the keyword isn't one that will allow you to quickly reach page 1 in the search results.

We often plan our content from start to finish as if our prospects will only interact with the story we're telling. Heck, I've been guilty of this at times, myself. But marketers need to recognize that this isn't reality for most of our buyers - if any - and start to figure out how we'll engage them based on what they may already have learned.

In the experiment you did, was what you learned on the mark? Or was it off track, given the thorough research I know you've done while building buyer personas?

If it was off track, can you develop content to set them straight? I don't necessarily mean dissing the other content, but gently guiding them to another perspective. Perhaps something along the lines of "Why X may not be the best choice if you need to do Y" And this isn't to be taken lightly. You better be able to show your expertise where your claim lies.

Buyers are smart. They're evolving quickly. We need to think about what that means for our marketing programs and how we'll evolve them to stay in step with what our buyers know - or think they know - as they navigate through all that online noise to find what matters to them.

You want it to be your content, right?

 

Your Marketing Bucket is Leaking

I saw a post the other day where the author recommended that marketers create a marketing persona and a social media persona - like these are two separate things.

I've heard marketing teams talk about social media as an aside.

I hear SEO bandied about in relation to getting found, but without a mention of the content that's being published.

I see people working on website redesigns without mention of either their buyers or the content they'll publish because, to them, it's all about the design.

I could go on for a while, but stop and think about this. When did marketing become a bunch of silos? When did all the parts start leaking out of the bucket and becoming separate initiatives?

I hate to say this, but I'm wondering if marketing has lost it's focus.

Here's the point:

Everything we do as marketers must be connected. If we consider each tactic as a lever or dial, then each one will have some impact on whatever else we're doing. And it all needs to make sense -- both for us and for our buyers.

Consider this example:

You create a feature article based on a buyer persona. (not a marketing persona or social media persona - a complete buyer persona that takes all channels into account)

You put it on your website with a link to it from your home page, perhaps a graphic.

From within the article, you link to an upcoming webinar on a related topic to connect the dots to what buyers can do next. Perhaps you also hyperlinked to a blog post that expands on a concept in the article.

You used keywords in your title and headers and a few strategic places when writing the article. The URL for the article also contains those keywords.

You developed a series of Tweets to share it with your network - also with keywords or even a hastag.

You wrote an email with a link back to the article and assigned it to go out to a segment of your database that is represented by the buyer persona.

You started a LinkedIn discussion about the topic in a group where it's relevant and included a link to the article.

You also set up a Google alert on the title and keywords so that you will be able to see if the article gains traction in any other channels, so that you can be sure to respond.

Did you do all of this separately as one-offs or was it all part of the plan from the start?

Or, perhaps you wrote the article and passed it off to the IT team to be published to the website and went on to the next thing on your list. But, because you didn't tell them what keywords to use they just publish it without any.

Maybe, if you're lucky, the social media team spots it and thinks - Yeah! Something new to Tweet about. Hmm. Let's see - what shall we say? Oh heck - grab the title and link and post it. And yeah, let's schedule it to auto tweet every 3 hours for the next 2 days.

A website visitor sees the article and posts it to a LinkedIn group starting a discussion that skews the premise and goes off in a direction you didn't anticipate. But, because monitoring LinkedIn isn't your job, you don't see it and the discussioin is gaining steam.

And on it goes. Random acts of marketing leaking out of the bucket.

This is not to say that you can control everything, but you've got to take a more holistic approach to your marketing efforts if you want to have a shot at guiding and participating in the conversation.

And it's all a conversation these days. Multiple channels with different expectations and people sharing their perspectives. The point is that everything we're doing is connected. Well, it should be. It all needs to work in concert to produce the best results. If your bucket is leaking this isn't happening.

But it does explain why I'm also hearing from marketers who are getting frustrated that they've "bought in" to content marketing but it's not doing much for them.

The problem I see is that the tactics available for marketing efforts have multiplied, but we haven't taken the time to create processes and strategies to help us optimize how we use them. We look at each thing separately and fail to connect the dots. But we're not just producing less than optimal marketing initiatives, we're failing our buyers. We're leaving them hanging without a complete story. We're presenting our company as having split personalities because efforts from one part don't complement another.

How much is leaking out of your marketing bucket?

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 Cost of Misaligned B2B Marketing

When alignment is discussed in marketing, the usual application is to sales and marketing alignment. This has been an ongoing conversation for nearly as long as I can remember. And I've been in the business environment for quite a while.

The issue that comes up for me is that there are some alignment issues before we can even get to sales and marketing alignment that could have major implications for brands, if they took stock.

What I'm talking about are two sources of fragmentation - the second driven by the first.

• marketing misalignment
• customer misalignment

But, first, let's start by defining what "alignment" really means. According to dictionary.com:

Alignment is a state of agreement or cooperation among persons, groups, etc. with a common cause or viewpoint.

Seems pretty straightforward, don't you think? Apparently it's not. So let's take a look at why...

Marketing Misalignment

Over the years, the marketing organization within enterprise companies has become sprawling and fragmented. In my work with clients, the group I work with is often labeled demand generation and is usually responsible for an industry vertical or for driving demand for a specific product division. We hit stumbling blocks quite often when trying to implement multi-channel programs due to siloed divisions of labor that can include separate teams representing specific areas of marketing, such as:

• Corporate marketing & communications
• Social media marketing
• Product marketing
• Marketing automation team
• Telemarketing
• Public Relations
• Website team
• Webinars and event management

And the list goes on...

The problem with this fragmentation is precisely the lack of cooperation or communication that would enable visibility across the marketing spectrum in play at an enterprise. Not to mention the disparate viewpoints.

In my experience, each of these silos has their own budget and turf and it's really hard to gain overlays that enable the creation of consistency for the brand and for the customer experience. In fact, some of these groups may not speak to the others - at least not regularly.

Not all enterprise companies have this level of fragmentation, but its still something I find to be quite common in some form. And it's a heck of a minefield to navigate. As marketers face more channels and challenges, as well as responsibility for proving the quantifiable impact of our programs, one would think a holistic perspective would be much more valuable than tunnel vision based on silos.

The issue really is that with the proliferation of digital channels, each of these marketing teams may be providing programs visible to customers that have no consistency of messaging or connection to the other initiatives also being presented.

What a waste of resources and the opportunity to have our customers see us as awesome.

Customer Misalignment:

The outcome of marketing misalignment is that we get out of step with our customers. I've worked with companies where each marketing organization has a different perspective on who their customers are and what they care about. They may be focusing on the same titles or departments, but the approaches taken to address what they've determined "their" customers care about are different enough to present a kind of Jekyll and Hyde experience for someone on the outside, looking in. Heck, even for those on the inside looking around!

The other thing that happens is that the potential increases exponentially for wasted resources and inflated costs and lower brand credibility. This is because there is no coordination in program development or content creation. If marketers from across the company would just step back and think about it, they would see huge opportunities for content re-use, creating connected pathways for their customers and consistency in experience delivery that could drive performance improvements across programs.

What to Do Now

• Create one storyboard for all groups to work from - Yes this will need to be summarized with roll downs for different programs, but it will help each marketing group determine how they can best contribute to building the same story based on their area of expertise.


• Weekly stand-up meetings to present program developments, engagement results, learning from execution and suggestions for refinements.


• Institute metrics that measure across groups and programs, not just individual team efforts. One program must feed another, each channel supports, enhances and leads to others, etc. Look for ways that successful programs can inform other initiatives.


• Consider how marketing efforts can be integrated to create better overall outcomes that serve the customer and the company, not just the department or group. For example, if your social media team is posting wins but your white paper downloads have fallen off, something is out of whack.

This may not be an easy thing to contemplate, but a consolidated marketing approach is necessary if a brand wants to establish and sustain market advantages. Customer expectations are higher than ever and they're not going to lessen...ever. In my opinion, before marketing and sales can align, the marketing organization needs to align.

The cost of not doing so is just too high.

The Power of Positioning in B2B Content Strategy

Brand positioning is becoming critical as more B2B marketers turn to content marketing across a range of channels to cultivate standoffish, self-service buyers. Your corporate positioning should be used as the backbone for your content strategy. This is what will hold it all together to ensure consistency and keep your storylines on track—no matter the channel in use.

The problem is that corporate positioning has traditionally been seen as a way to differentiate a company from its competition. In today's market environment it should be designed around the intersection of your company's strengths in relation to your customers' needs. Quite a different proposition, but one that can truly serve to help prospects become predisposed in your favor.

Every company has a distinct value they provide that their customers need and want. If not, they wouldn't be in business. Unfortunately, most companies mimick the leaders in their space, thinking that will help them "measure up" in their prospect's eyes. But, instead it makes the companies that do so appear less than unique.

This becomes obvious when you look at the "about" statements for companies in a specific niche and each of them leads off with "the leading provider of.." type of posturing. I've said this so many times it makes my head spin, but how many "leaders" can there actually be? Wouldn't you rather use those words to set your company apart? Seriously, you're starting a key piece of positioning messaging with the equivalent of "blah, blah, blah."

If you go look at your About paragraph, how many words are self-serving, self-focused blather that make you feel good about working there but don't do a thing to make you memorable to potential customers? Which words/phrases are not used by your competitors? How many words are you now left with? Probably not many.

But back to the topic at hand.

Positioning:

The art of sharing your company's unique value in ways that resonate with your buyers, compelling them to engage, trust, and—ultimately—buy from you.

Let's say that your company's unique value is to:

Simplify project planning and portfolio management with process automation designed to create the highest ROI from human resources and equipment assets.

[Yes, you should be able to sum up the overall value your company provides in one sentence. Get above the feeds and speeds minutia. If you do this well, all the other stuff will roll up to this statement.]

In this example, you're ideal prospects are:

Helen in Human Resources who's objective is to maximize the productivity of a 500 person staff of varying skill levels across a 3-shift schedule for an auto manufacturing plant.

Larry in Logistics who's objective is to ensure the specialized equipment is operated by the people most skilled in using it to reduce the risk of bottlenecks that slow or disrupt the line.

If you message to Helen, she may be most interested in content about how your solution will help her to streamline the effort it takes her to create a resilient workforce that's less susceptible to fatigue.

Larry won't care as much about that as he will about how your solution can match the best-suited workers to each machine for each shift, removing hours of effort from his planning process.

Even though these two content assets will have completely different orientations, by using the "unique value" as an underlay in their development, they will both align nicely with your positioning backbone and solidify your brand.

Multi-channel Advantages with Positioning

Obviously, as more channels entice new voices in your company to share about the work they do, the need to help them stay on track in aligning it to the value your company provides to customers is paramount. Providing them with a positioning story and guideline can be an invaluable resource for helping them to amplify the story.

Different channels require different modes of communication. With value kept front and center, your company's messaging can be consistent across any channel as long as the backbone - the unique value - is represented.

Think about Joe in your development bullpen who really wants to blog about the new features he's creating for customers. What about Frank, in sales, who wants to get prospects into conversation faster and is participating in groups on LinkedIn? How about your VP of Business Development who's giving a keynote speech at an industry conference?

Give people the freedom to share their expertise in the context of the company's brand without stiffling their participation. Diversity in presentation can be a good thing. Just as long as the underlying thread is always focused on the position you've established (are establishing) in the market place. After all, different prospects relate to different perspectives and styles. And it serves to showcase your company's expertise with richness and depth.

If it's not obvious by now, communicating with prospects is no longer just the realm of marketing. But, as marketers, we need to facilitate how the brand is represented and positioned in the marketplace. It's not about products, it's about the unique value they provide to your customers that they couldn't get from the vendor down the street.

We need to make sure that everyone in the company can articluate the value in relation to customer needs and wants. How many folks at your company can do so today?

When your story is based on relevant value and consistently shared across all the channels where your prospects will find it, you're creating a definite competitive advantage.You know why? Because you've focused your positioning on your customers, not your competitors.

Big difference!

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...