As content marketing becomes an increasingly critical tool for B2B companies, Content4Demand’s sister publication DemandGen Report (DGR) has announced the launch and preliminary agenda for the first annual Content2Conversion Conference. The show will take place April 23-24 at the Times Center in Manhattan.
DGR will host the educational conference in response to a growing need for progressive marketing — centered on using thought leadership as a connecting point for solution providers to effectively engage with prospective buyers.
“As these trends emerge, B2B marketers continue to struggle to kee
p pace with content development, content marketing strategies and how to utilize content to drive demand,” Andrew Gaffney, editor of DemandGen Report, said. “The Content2Conversion Conference is designed to address these challenges and help B2B marketers not just stay afloat in this sea of content, but also produce killer content that, in turn, produces killer results.”
Ardath Albee will deliver the keynote address, entitled “Starting From Scratch: 10 Steps To Launch a Content Marketing Strategy.” Albee is the author of E-Marketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, and owner of Marketing Interactions, Inc., which helps B2B companies generate more sales-ready leads with e-marketing and content strategies.
“With Content2Conversion, DemandGen Report is bringing us a conference designed to provide attendees with solid takeaways from each progressive session,” Albee said. “I’m excited to be presenting!”
Other industry leaders scheduled to take part include Jeanne Hopkins, director of marketing at HubSpot, a Cambridge, Mass.-based provider of integrated marketing solutions (also a sponsor of the event). Hopkins will present on the topic of using content for inbound discovery and nurturing existing prospects.
Also, as metrics become an increasingly critical part of marketing programs, Jim Lenskold, President of The Lenskold Group, will present a session examining the roles of data and measurement in content and demand generation strategies.
Other topical session highlights include:
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The Content Landscape
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Drawing Up A Content Marketing Blueprint
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Mapping Content To The B2B Buying Cycle
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Developing A Lead Nurture Strategy That Converts Prospects To Buyers
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Building A Data & Measurement Strategy to Support Your Content
Title: The Definitive Guide to Email and Social Media Marketing
Format: E-book
Objective: Nothing screams “we know what we’re talking about” than producing a guide that is pronounced to be “Definitive”. But despite the unabashed lack of modesty, “Definitive Guide”-style E-books have long been a successful way to take a pronounced stance in a space as a thought leader. If a potential customer is searching the web for information, nothing should sound as if it will better answer their questions than a “definitive guide”. Taking this type of stance was iContact’s goal with this piece. The E-book also is unique because nearly every page features live links that lead to more information on topics discussed within the piece. As content goes 100% digital, this is an aspect of E-books companies must utilize.
Summary of Content: Integrating email with social media channels is imperative for marketers today. By effectively blending the unique strengths of these two media channels, marketers gain actionable and relevant insights into their customer and prospect bases. This how-to guide provides a best-practices overview to help marketers tie the most effective medium for transactional messaging—email—with social media’s ability to drive more clicks and conversions by customers.
Download the E-book here.
"Hot Off The Presses" periodically highlights content recently created by Content4Demand. For info on content creation for your marketing initiatives, please contact us at jeff@content4demand.com.
Editor’s Note: Eloqua, a provider of marketing automation and Revenue Performance Management solutions, recently released a presentation called “10 Ways to ‘Solve’ Facebook for B2B.” The following article explores how the company breaks down “newsfeed optimization,” as well as the project objectives, production process, and ultimately, how it helped Eloqua garner real results on Facebook.
By Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing, Eloqua 
There is only one pure B2B company among Facebook’s top 100 brand pages: Intel. Great news for the ace team at Intel (and they certainly do have an ace team over there), but for the rest of us in B2B marketing, one indeed is the loneliest number. It would be easy for a B2B marketer to see Facebook as an insurmountably steep hill, climbable only by their consumer marketing counterparts.
In other words, it’s like something my friend Ann Handley said, “B2B on Facebook can feel like the guy wearing socks with sandals.”
This is why when it was time to focus on “solving” Eloqua’s Facebook presence, I brought on board a company that specialized in “newsfeed optimization” for consumer brands – BrandGlue. Although the term newsfeed optimization may sound like social media geek-speak, it’s really not. It simply means coming up with ways to make sure what your company shares on Facebook is seen by as many of your Fans as possible. You see, if your EdgeRank is low (EdgeRank is to Facebook what PageRank is to Google: a digital meritocracy that determines what should be seen … and what shouldn’t) few of those Fans you’ve worked so hard to earn will ever see the content you publish.
I know what you are thinking, “Maybe they don’t see the updates in their feed – that’s for friends’ statuses after all – but when they visit our company page, they see all of our latest posts, right?” Sure, that would be true if they ever returned to your page. But the harsh reality is that only about 1% of Fans ever return to the page of the brand they Liked. One percent. In other words, if you want to reach your community, it needs to happen in the newsfeed. That’s why Fan engagement is so important for Facebook marketing programs – it boosts EdgeRank, which, in turn, boosts the reach of your content.
So what exactly can B2B marketing pros learn from their consumer brand counterparts? A lot. We captured our 10 most important tactics in a recent presentation called, “10 Ways to ‘Solve’ Facebook for B2B,” but for those short on time, here are six essential insights:
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Sweepstakes may drive fan acquisition (during our BrandGlue program, sweepstakes accounted for 43% of our new Fans), but without engaging content, new Fans will churn.
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Fans engage with your content passively (via the newsfeed) but you acquire them through direct action (via search or entering sweepstakes or clicking ads).
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Fan behavior varies very little between B2B and B2C brands. For example the ratio of Comments to Likes for B2C brands is 28% to 72%, whereas for B2B brands its 23% to 77%.
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People like to be told what to do. For example, directing new visitors to a simple landing tab (versus showing them your full Wall) can increase new Fan conversions by as much as 71%).
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Business people, like all consumers, engage on weekends. Just because you sell a B2B product doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post on weekends. You should. In fact, Eloqua found we reached new audiences then.
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Everyone loves rich media. Posts containing videos were more engaging than those containing pictures; posts containing pictures were more engaging than those containing links. You get the idea.
I suppose, in the end, the biggest surprise shouldn’t have been surprising at all. Whether we are connecting with our favorite sports team, the makers of the energy drink that gets us through an early morning run, or Eloqua’s marketing automation platform, people are people. Need further proof, our most engaging post was a photo of our newest “employee”: our office manager’s golden retriever puppy. Consumer advertisers have long known that babies and puppies sell. It’s time we B2B guys figure that out.
Titles: Various
Formats: 2 E-books and 2 White papers
Objective: Acquia is a commercial open source software company providing products, services, and technical support for the open source Drupal social publishing system. The company had several successful webinars in its content library and, rather than start from scratch, wanted to take advantage of these existing resources to create new pieces in different formats. The company chose four webinars to convert into two E-books and two white papers.
Summary of Content: There are countless advantages to repurposing content. Aside from saving significantly on both budget and resources, it takes a proven content offer and converts it to a new format that could be preferable to a new pool of potential customers (if a prospect prefers E-books to webinars, now that person is more likely to digest the information). It also extends the life and value of the investment into the original piece and aids consistency across the brand’s messages. Content repurposing can not only be used to create a new format of a piece, but if the content is slightly adjusted, it also can be used to create an offer that expands upon a topic, and creates deliverables for other stages of the pipeline or other relevant verticals and buyer personas.
"Hot Off The Presses" periodically highlights content recently created by Content4Demand. For info on content creation for your marketing initiatives, please contact us at jeff@content4demand.com
If you hadn't noticed, the online protests surrounding the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress have spread full-scale today.
Wikipedia, one of the world's most highly-trafficked websites, shut itself down for the day, while major sites like Craigslist, WordPress, and Mozilla / FireFox are participating in a "virtual strike", posting messages on their site speaking out against the bills.
Not lost in this debate is a fine example of content marketing released by Google. This infographic displays "the groundswell of experts, organizations and people from all parts of America united in their opposition to SOPA and PIPA":
Infographics are popping up more and more as an fun, quick way to display a set of data or information. We only expect to see more as 2012 moves on.
Title: Marketing Matchmaking: The Strategies and Payoffs of Streamlining Webinar Data and Analyzing Within Marketing Automation Systems
Format: E-book
Objective: Citrix Online provides online solutions that enable people to work from anywhere with anyone: GoToAssist and GoToManage for remote support and IT management, GoToMeeting for online meetings, GoToMyPC for remote access, GoToTraining for interactive online training and GoToWebinar for larger web events. To drive thought leadership and generate leads for their GoToWebinar platform, Citrix wanted to display their continued knowledge and expertise over the webinar universe, and provide potential clients with useful information on how webinar data and be used in conjunction with ever-growing marketing automation systems.
Summary of Content: Webinars have become an increasingly critical component of the BtoB buying process, as 35% of BtoB buyers cited webinars as the most useful resource in the early stages of the buying process in the Inside the Mind of the BtoB Buyer Survey, conducted by DemandGen Report. This E-book highlights the potential for BtoB organizations to enhance prospect, customer and internal communication through the use of integrations and APIs. Additionally, the E-book spotlights the key benefits of capturing webinar data and saving it to marketing automation platforms, and explains how integrations can save time in marketing programs by providing centralized convenience.
Download the E-book here.
"Hot Off The Presses" periodically highlights content recently created by Content4Demand. For info on content creation for your marketing initiatives, please contact us at jeff@content4demand.com.
Since content creation is still a relatively new discipline, most marketers still spend a lot of time looking for models to apply for their own businesses. With that in mind, we pulled together a list of the most successful content campaigns we worked on with clients in 2011.
In addition to successfully engaging with their target audience and supporting demand generation goals, there are several traits that made these content campaigns worth reviewing, including:
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Presenting content in a variety of formats and platforms--We’ve discussed here frequently the growing trend that people consume content differently, requiring marketers to distribute their messaging beyond the traditional blog or PDF. Many of the case study examples below feature core content messaging, which was extended across a variety of mediums.
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Repurposing or refreshing existing content—The low-hanging fruit many companies miss in content creation is breathing new life into the content they already have on hand. The case studies below show how companies successfully converted webinar presentations into E-books or other formats to drive new leads or support lead nurturing efforts.
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Addressing Time & Attention Deficits--Long-form formats such as white papers are being repurposed into shorter video white papers or other interactive mediums.
These case studies not only demonstrate several options to help companies connect with prospects, they also extend the life of the content and helped these companies optimize the resources and bandwidth needed to research and create the campaign.
So let’s dive into Content4Demand’s Top 11 Content Campaigns of 2011 (in alphabetical order):
AisleBuyer
Title/Campaign Type:
Mobilizing The Store—Webinar & Research 
Details: In an effort to provide benchmarks around the massive trend to bring mobile devices and applications into the retail store environment, we worked with this solution provider on a research initiative that kicked off in mid-November and was tabulated and presented within a 4-week timeframe. By developing proprietary data around an area of massive interest, the company was able to engage with Top 100 retailers and also support its brand positioning at a major trade show.
LINK: SLIDE SHARE OF WEBINAR
Citrix
Title/Campaign Type:
The New Formula for Generating High Quality Leads in 2011 — E-book & Video White Paper
Details: Well known for their GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar platforms, Citrix been no stranger to content marketing of all types ranging many formats. Earlier this year, they debuted this E-book sharing best practices for generating qualified leads (sample), which was expanded into a full campaign, complete with an accompanying webinar (on their platform, of course) (sample), and a video white paper, which gave busy executives a quick overview.
LINK: E-BOOK
Eloqua
Title/Campaign Type:
Building the Business Case for Marketing Automation—E-book & Regional Event
Details: A pioneer in the areas of both marketing automation and content marketing, Eloqua went back to the basics in this E-book to help new clients and prospects clearly understand the value proposition this technology delivers. The piece was featured in the company’s online buying center, which helps prospects self-educate and self-navigate the research phase, and also became a core piece of sales enablement collateral. Building on the success of the E-book topic, Eloqua followed up with a series of successful regional events sharing research and best practices with new clients and topics in key markets.
LINK: E-BOOK
LINK: REGIONAL EVENT INVITE
Enkata
Title/Campaign Type:
A Clear View Of Healthcare Claims - E-Book 
Details: Enkata, a leader in cloud-based customer experience analytics and workforce optimization software, used this E-book to support its unique solution for the key vertical of healthcare providers. Helping to support the company’s new paradigm positioning and unique solution for optimizing health care claims management, the E-book helped bring-to-life the significant gaps in back-office processing and presenting business cases for how much these inefficiencies were costing insurance providers.
LINK: E-BOOK
GoodData
Title/Campaign Type:
Measuring Lead To Cash: Data To Dashboard In 30 Days -- E-Book, Webinar & Video
White Paper
Details: Much like the Citrix example, GoodData decided to take the time and resources they were dedicating to creating an E-book and extend that content for both lead generation and thought leadership. Before the E-book was even published, a webinar on the topic was presented, and then as a follow-up touch to the campaign the company offered a video white paper which summarized key points in a short interactive format, and then linked back to download the E-book.
LINK: E-BOOK
LINK: BRAINSHARK
Junction Solutions
Title/Campaign Type:
Shifting Shopper Preferences – White Paper & Infographic
Details: Junction Solutions, is a single-source provider of vertical-specific applications and consulting services, conducted custom B2C research to display how cross-channel shopping is changing shopper behavior, as well as customer expectations in retail. They presented these findings in a white paper, and then followed up by displaying the data in an informative infographic. By tapping into this fast-growing, fun way to display data surrounding a topic without demanding too much time from the reader, Junction Solutions maximized the visibility of the data via social media and other viral channels.
LINK: WHITE PAPER
LINK: INFOGRAPHIC
Manticore Technology
Title/Campaign Type:
Blueprint For Using Content To Connect With Buyers – White Paper & Custom Research
Details: Manticore partnered with DemandGen Report to survey early adopters of marketing automation and used the new data to highlight the growing relationship between content and success driving dialog with prospects. The white paper presented the findings with specific data supporting the importance of building buyer personas, conducting content audits, mapping content to specific buyer stages, creating assets that feed nurturing campaigns, and measuring the success of content campaigns.
LINK: WHITE PAPER
LINK: SLIDE SHARE OF WEBINAR
Oracle
Title/Campaign Type:
The Store: The Intersection Of All Channels — E-book Refresh 
Details: Revisiting one of the most successful content pieces in its library, Oracle’s retail division partnered with Retail TouchPoints to take a fresh look at the central role the store still plays with today’s cross channel consumers. After maximizing the lifespan of the original E-book, which drove thousands of leads and was translated into several different languages, Oracle revisited the topic with new data and a refresh on case studies and has seen similar success with the new piece.
LINK: E-BOOK
Qvidian
Title/Campaign Type: 
5 Steps to Increase Win Rates and Improve Pipeline Performance — Webinar and White Paper
Details: Presenting fresh strategies and approaches to help companies deal with current economic challenges, this webinar featuring a well-known author and expert on sales optimization techniques generated more than 1,500 registrants. The accompanying white paper shared case studies and insights into how leading companies are using playbooks and analytics to accelerate deal velocity.
LINK: WHITE PAPER
LINK: SLIDESHARE OF WEBINAR
Richardson
Title/Campaign Type:
The Roadmap to Scalable & Sustainable Sales Transformation — E-book, Use Cases & Brainshark 
Details: After driving more than 1,000 downloads of this groundbreaking E-book, the leader in sales training and coaching followed up with shorter case study snapshots presenting three use case scenarios from leading firms who were already embarking on transformation initiatives. To continue to build on the momentum, Richardson also used the content and key points from the Roadmap E-book to create an interactive video white paper, which has fueled further lead nurturing initiatives.
LINK: CASE STUDY
LINK: BRAINSHARK
Salesforce.com/Fujitsu
Title/Campaign Type:
Driving Customer Engagement and Loyalty With Social Clienteling — Ebook & Executive Brief
Details: Salesforce & Fujistu helped introduced the model for Social Clienteling in the retail and consumer products sectors with this E-book. The two companies then followed up on the piece with an Executive Brief offering a closer look at how the two partners were helping to implement this new strategy at major retailers around the globe.
LINK: E-BOOK
LINK: EXECUTIVE BRIEF
Obviously, these are just a few examples of the great content campaigns created in 2011. Please feel free to share any examples of powerful campaigns you’ve created or seen this year.
We look forward to another great year of content in 2012!
Title: The Roadmap to Scalable & Sustainable Sales Transformation
Format: Video White Paper, based off an E-book
Objective: Richardson is a global sales training and performance improvement company that helps leading organizations improve sales results. Their new E-book, “The Roadmap to Scalable & Sustainable Sales Transformation,” includes insights into how leading firms are reengineering their long-term sales strategies to respond to shifts in the buying process. In the E-book, fundamental changes in buyer behavior are analyzed, and the challenges these changes are presenting for organizations of all sizes and in all verticals are explored. Their goal was to create a secondary format for this deliverable that provided a multimedia option and didn't necessitate the same time commitment.
Summary of Content: The Video White Paper, created in the Brainshark format, is a 5-minute synopsis of the E-book. This format is a growing trend to appeal to targets that don’t have the time or attention span to invest in a full-length E-book or white paper. The quick presentation provides an overview of the major points of the more in-depth piece and offers it for download as well. If you have trouble getting your full-length white papers or E-books, webinars not only in the right hands but being digested to a satisfactory level, a Video White Paper version might be a good option.
Download the Video White Paper here or the E-book here.
"Hot Off The Presses" periodically highlights content recently created by Content4Demand. For info on content creation for your marketing initiatives, please contact us at jeff@content4demand.com.
By Chris Frank, Director of Marketing, Treehouse Interactive
Every phase of the buying process is now exposed online — from buyers attempting to fully understand their issues and how others have solved them — to deep commentary on solution alternatives. This has created great opportunities and challenges for marketers. One of the most important opportunities is that you can now get to potential buyers much earlier in the buying process with killer content, thereby securing a position in later buying phases. The greatest challenge, however, is that you need a new content marketing approach to be effective, which takes time, energy and focus.
So how do you get started? The first step to creating killer content is to map out the buying process for your potential buyers. While this article shows a typical B2B buying process, yours should be much more detailed. How do your buyers become aware of the issues you solve? Where do they look for and find relative information? Once you have a good understanding of that process, map the content you have to it. As you identify deficiencies, create a content creation plan to fill the gaps.
The table below shows different content and potential buying phases to consider using it in.
Simplified Buying Phases and Content Types
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Awareness
- Industry Articles
- Currated Content
- Webinars
- Quizzes/Surveys
- Infographics
- E-Books
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Consideration
- Whitepapers
- Buying Guides
- Analyst Reports
- E-Newsletters
- Demo Videos
- Data Sheets
- Testimonials
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Decision
- Press Releases
- Case Studies
- Live Events
- Feature Guides
- ROI Calculators
- Pricing Guides
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In all of these deliverables, there is a balancing game that goes on where you need to communicate both advice and product value. In the awareness phase, you should be firmly focused on providing good advice based on the issues your product solves. This means you have to know your industry, its trends and your buyers. As they progress through to the decision phase, you should communicate more and more of your product value while referencing customer issues.
Getting Your Content to Buyers
If you create good content—specifically in the awareness and early consideration phase — it doesn’t become “killer” until people widely have access to it. Social media is obviously one of the places to syndicate your content. Your blog is definitely another. Beyond these, you should know the bloggers, journalists and analysts in your market on a first name basis, and have built relationships that warrant them helping you syndicate content. In social media and blogging communities, you may get free pick-ups if you have established relationships, but don’t expect that from industry news sites and analysts. Work with those you think would be good partners for both content creation and syndication.
With all your content, you should also have nurturing paths clearly defined and automated. If people self identify and have interest in your content, progress them deeper into your buying cycle. They may have downloaded a webinar that leads to a buying guide that leads to an ROI calculator. Approach that progression from a buyer issue perspective, make logical suggestions for content and measure how effective those nurturing paths are in generating business.
Measurement Tactics and Technology
Traffic to the landing page is obviously the easiest thing to measure, along with the number of downloads. With marketing automation technology, even if you don’t gate the content, you can identify companies visiting the download page. Some marketing automation systems let you use this information to reach out to places like Data.com. There you can purchase contact information for people at identified companies that match your buyer profile. This is a way to grow your database based on interest. Just be sure you follow CAN-SPAM laws.
At the point you gate your content, even by just asking for an email address, you can do much more. Marketing automation systems can serve up whatever content you want after initial buyer information is provided. This means potential buyers can download other resources you place behind that initial gate without having to fill out or even see a form again. This marketing automation technology, however, lets you see all that content download behavior and enables you to target and nurture based on it.
Having a content gate also enables you to go beyond total traffic and conversions for a piece of content to identifying what syndication source is driving conversions, what content is converting better than others and what the big picture is in terms of aggregate content downloads.
Remember to start by detailing your buyer process, mapping your content to it, filling in the gaps and using the right technology and tactics to get the most out of your efforts.
Chris Frank has more than a decade of marketing experience at high-tech companies and regularly consults with companies on their marketing processes and technologies. Chris is currently the Marketing Director for TreeHouse Interactive, a company that provides both partner relationship management and marketing automation solutions. He can be reached at chris.frank@treehousei.com or @treehousei on Twitter.
Econsultancy, a global independent community-based publisher, recently released the B2B Content Marketing Best Practices Report, which highlights the various content formats that marketers are employing to enhance engagement and education, but ultimately to drive revenue.
In a Q&A with Content4Demand, report author James Gurd, Owner of e-Commerce and digital marketing consultancy, Digital Juggler, and guest blogger on Econsultancy, highlighted the “3 Pillars of Content Marketing,” how to effectively leverage social media and map content offers to the buyer’s journey.
Content 4 Demand: Can you speak to the "3 pillars of content marketing?" and how they relate to the overall success of content marketing tactics?
James Gurd: I suggest the three pillars are:
1. Content formats - This relates to the different types of content available in the marketing armory, including written, spoken & visual content.
2. Content distribution - This relates to the marketing channels at your disposal for publishing and distributing your content to secure maximum exposure.
3. Content measurement - This relates to the evaluation toolkit at your disposal to help identify the impact that your content is having upon ecommerce KPIs such as traffic and conversion and to then fine tune performance to improve those KPIs.
All of them combine to help make content marketing successful (with success depending on the desired outcomes of the business). It’s all comes back to fundamental marketing principles; you need to get the right products (content format) to the right people in the right place (content distribution) at the right time.
Content measurement then enables marketers to understand what customers are doing with the content when they receive it and how this content affects web site traffic and visitor behavior. This is critical because you can’t fine tune and improve content marketing activity if you don’t understand what is working and what is not. That’s a simplified explanation but I go into more detail in the report.
C4D: The report highlights a common barrier to content marketing-- the lack of knowledge of how to measure the impact of content and how it contributes to the sales funnel? What are the key considerations for marketers to more effectively understand this?
Gurd: To combat lack of knowledge you have two main options. Firstly, you can look to more experienced marketers to learn from them and this can be done internally within your own business or externally via professional associations, seminars, courses etc. Secondly, you dedicate an amount of time every week to research online and learn more about content marketing.
With regard to measuring the impact of content you first need to understand what you can measure. That means having an appreciation of the basics of web analytics. If you don’t know anything about this, then I suggest buying “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” by Avinash Kaushik – he’s one of the most widely respected analytics and optimization experts in the world and writes in an easy to grasp way. You can also follow his Occam’s Razor blog for regular insights.
Once you know how analytics tools work and how you can use them, then you need to dedicate time to getting used to the reporting suite and functionality. I’d advise starting with Google Analytics because it’s free and there is a lot of content written about it online by other users, so you’re already starting with a great, free knowledge base to quickly skill-up.
C4D: The report notes the role of social media in communication. How can marketers effectively subscribe to the community mindset to optimize the channel for messaging and brand awareness?
Gurd: Social media is just another communication tool, albeit with a distinct culture and etiquette that means the rules of engagement are slightly different.
To be successful with social media, you have to genuinely believe in becoming part of the community and contributing. You can’t just roll-up with the attitude that you want traffic, sales and content sharing, then push content at people, sit back and wait for results.
Intelligent social media campaigns involve building the community by listening and learning. There is no magic formula, no “do this” and they’ll love you forever. Start by defining what it is you hope to achieve from social media and what you have to offer that is relevant, then start talking to people and encouraging their feedback. Listening is as important as marketing. I would also caution against a focus on driving brand awareness – that can lead to push marketing instead of genuine communication. Brand awareness should be a byproduct with the focus on providing information that adds value to the people listening. Once you have built a trusting relationship with your audience, you then have a better platform from which to test direct selling messages – there are some retailers who have done this successfully. Honesty and transparency are key when looking to sell via social channels.
I think one of the most valuable elements of social media marketing is learning how to spot advocates. These are the people who are regular contributors to the community, who share your content and who are vocally positive about your company and/or brands. You can’t have a direct relationship with every community member, the resource demands are likely to be onerous, so advocates are the people to build proactive relationships with because they can help you influence the wider audience.
C4D: Targeting content to buyer stages has become an increasingly urgent part of the sales and marketing discussion, and as the report notes, is a complicated process. Can you describe how the buying cycle is broken down and how content should support each stage?
Gurd: Although this is too long a question to cover adequately in a blog, in short the B2B buying cycle can be segmented into six phases:
1. Needs identification
2. Requirements specification
3. Solution search & evaluation
4. Selection & due diligence
5. Purchase & implementation
6. Maintenance and support
To understand how content supports each stage, you need to define the needs of customers at each stage. Where are they in their buying process? What information will they need to make sensible commercial decisions? What information would influence them personally and professionally? Only when you have this clearly defined can you look at what content you can provide to address these questions. Each question represents a purchase barrier and content marketing is one of the tools you have to tackle the barriers.
There is no right answer because BtoB has such a wide variety of buying cycles depending on industry, company and product/solution. For example, the buying cycle for complex plant machinery will be far more detailed than that for replacement desktop PCs.
C4D: Can you speak to the different types of content and how organizations should best decide what suits their objectives?
Gurd: First you need to make sure that objectives and goals are clearly defined. Exactly what are you trying to achieve with your content marketing? Who are you trying to influence? What actions do you want them to take?
For example, consider a marketing team trying to increase the volume of new leads for their Sales Team. Their key audience is the Sales Director of target companies but this audience is notoriously hard to pinpoint as they are frequently away from the desk and have busy diaries. A mailshot might only get the attention of a small percentage of the audience.
However, the market data shows that business decision makers now see the mobile as their primary communication channel. So the first thing to consider is how to use the mobile channel to market to this audience. Then you can look at what content formats are most suitable for the mobile channel. Mobile devices are better suited to simple scroll and click functions, so this would suggest that video might be a good attention grabber.
This is a simplified explanation but it illustrates the mental process marketers need to go through in order to decide what content formats are suitable to their marketing campaigns. Whatever happens, this must be backed up with the web analytics because successful marketing is trial and error. Not everything will work as you want it too but if you have the data to back this up, you can quickly learn and adapt to survive.
James led a carefree existence until he discovered a nascent desire to embrace e-commerce in 1999 while working for the IBM Software Team in Portsmouth. He spent four years in business development at BCA learning how to integrate e-commerce with traditional DM. Two years as Head of Client Development followed at a UK e-commerce agency helping a range of leading retailers like The Conran Shop, Radley and New Look to evolve their online presence.
James has worked as a freelance e-commerce consultant since 2009 and has helped media organizations, high street retailers and Internet start-ups to manage their ITT process.