Tactical Secrets of B2B Content Marketing
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What do today’s B2B marketers ultimately care about? Generating leads that their organization can actually turn into viable sales opportunities of course. This slideshare will show you how to set up a content marketing engine that actually works and generates leads, and how to be data-driven in order to continually learn and grow the volume, velocity and value of leads.
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Tactical Secrets of B2B Content Marketing
- 1. Tactical Secrets of B2B Content Marketing @amritamathur www.about.me/amritamathur 1
- 2. People are more connected, more discerning, and have more choice than ever before.
- 3. Customers are highly empowered Social Cloud Mobile
- 4. And so… purposeful and ongoing engagement is your last competitive advantage
- 5. Content Marketing is a great way to do that: build dialogue and rapport non-intrusively
- 6. Why Content Marketing Works #1 way: • Improve website traffic • Uniquely position/re-position yourself • Generate leads • Build trust, authority and brand …to ultimately drive sales 6
- 7. But wait, how does one get real leads from content? • No set path or formula • Many non-linear paths to conversion • Consistent experimentation and observation + common sense + leaning from other people’s mistakes 7
- 8. Content Marketing is like The Movie Business 8
- 9. 9 The Director AKA ‘Content Creator’ The ‘Producer’ AKA ‘Content Production’ The ‘Distributer’ AKA ‘Content Distribution/ Promotion’
- 10. 10 Content creation • Theme, Copy • Voice, Tone & Positioning • Design, Structure • Format Content Production • Campaign Management • Scheduling and Cadence • Working with influencers Content Distribution • Marketing Automation • Landing pages • Social media channels • Public/Media relations Content can be anything: Webinars, ebooks, Whitepapers, Blog posts, Videos, Slideshares, Infographics, Postcards, Funny memes, Articles, OpEds
- 11. Understanding your Audience • Know who your customer is • Know what your customer wants/ needs • Know what they do, where they live • Know their ‘language’ 11
- 12. Agreeing on your Customer Segments early on is important Customers Who Are A Certain Demographic Customers Who Buy Specific Products Customers Who Are In A Specific Job Role Customers Who Shop At Certain Locations
- 14. Traditional Sales & Mktg Funnel Marketing driven process • Thought leadership. • Themed messaging. • Targeted to identified sectors 14 Brand Awareness Information Gathering Evaluation Selection Sales Engagement Point Sales driven process • Targeted, solution focused messaging
- 15. Convert Leads to Pipe and Opps to Deals 15 Brand Awareness TOFU Lead Generation MOFU Conversion Deal Support Create and push out useful and targeted content, campaigns and events that helps loosen the status quo Inbound lead qualification engine that prioritizes, routes and responds and gets people to commit to change Sales enablement content that connects back to your value prop, and making a compelling case to advance deals
- 16. Campaign Strategy • Tell a cohesive story: find an umbrella theme – Hint: it could be a hot trend that you piggyback on • Know how the theme connects to your core value prop – In the event there are multiple connections, make sure they converge • Look at the funnel and build content for every stage of the funnel – You might need more new content in one stage compared to others – Some content will simply serve as traffic drivers 16
- 17. My E.g.: Campaign Design & Assets Traffic Drivers 17 Brand Awareness TOFU Lead Generation MOFU Conversion
- 18. E.g.: Sample Campaign Journey Promote Webinar Social, Email, Influencer’s Network, Product login Page, Blog Series, other traffic drivers Promote Follow-up Deal Accelerator Webinar Social, Email, Login Page, Blog Launch eBook Target: Attendees + New Social, Email, Influencer’s Network, Login Page, Blog Series Live Webinar Sales Enablement Cheat sheet, email template, Customer videos Launch Follow-Up and On-Demand Promo Email, Login Page, Website, Blog, Social Live Launch Follow-up with Contact Us CTA Deal Accelerator Webinar BRAND/ TOFU LEAD GEN. MOFU DEAL SUPPORT Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 ONGOING BUZZ
- 19. Getting eyeballs (the best part!) 19
- 20. Don’t underestimate the power of Email Marketing • Drip campaigns work really well • Leverage Autoresponders (63% conversion!) • Abandoned form fill or shopping cart • Nurture program (13% avg open rate WoW) • Go beyond best practices. Be unconventional. – Click-to-tweets within email body – Design-in quotes from the content you’re pushing – Switch up the format, don’t use the standard 2-3 templates – Copy should be easily digestible copy but not dumbed down – Emails consistently sent from a ‘person’ not a brand – Test every single email: subject line, send times, structure, photos, sender, CTA button placement, button color, wording of the CTA – Experiment with segments, don’t test across the board – unreliable – Specify the type of content i.e. [Webinar], [Slideshare] etc – Use Numbers: 5 ways to blah blah blah – Vague subject lines work too! Specificity only goes so far 20
- 21. Landing pages • Test a lot: Google Content Experiments, Optimizely, Unbounce • But don’t test ‘design’ too much. What really shows the variance in all the tests is: – actual copy (length immaterial) – explanation of the value prop – a compelling CTA • One size fits all doesn’t work. When promoting content, landing pages need to vary by channel. • Always-be-testing, because optimizations last for 12 wks tops • Get only crucial information from visitors • Responsive design is a MUST • Use Pop-ups: they work, but only for the returning visitor • Share buttons need to be front and center 21
- 22. Sharing of your content • Why people share: – Prestige – Authority – Likability – Consistency – Social Proof – Scarcity • Where to share (Go beyond Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn): – Slideshare, Quora, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, Craigstlist/ Kajiji, Trip Advisor, Github etc – Think outside the box! 22
- 23. Influencer Strategy, Endorsements & your Blog 23 DON’T ASSUME YOU CANT GET THEM! • Find thought leaders/ influencers whose message aligns with yours • When reaching out tell them W.I.I.F.T upfront • Do the heavy-lifting, arm them with content, tweets etc that they can use to promote • Get them to engage across multiple channels e.g. do a webinar with them, have them do a guest blog post, a book signing at an event…
- 24. Paid Search • Learn the language of your target audience quickly • Track which keywords convert the best, then adapt them into your language for better SEO • Apply remarketing/ retargeting code to your website from the beginning (even if your spend is small) • Test different types of paid. For example on Twitter test both sponsored tweets + twitter cards. On Facebook test sponsored ads + offers • Find what channel is working best for you – then dump your spend into that for a short period of time. Then test again the following week. 24
- 25. Knowing what to look for • Culture of experimentation • Question even your baseline assumptions • Look for the A-ha moment i.e. – how many touches does a prospect need before they convert to an opportunity – What kind of touches do they need – What worked best: content, demos, face to face and in what order and combination? 25
- 26. Lead Follow-up is the Holy Grail 26
- 27. Time Is Money Source: http://www.leadresponsemanagement.org/lrm_study
- 28. E.g.: Lead Flow and Triggers NEW • All leads would enter as ‘New’ lead. WORKING • Status would change the minute you get assigned the lead or pick up the lead from a queue, in order to reach out. QUALIFIED • Status would change if lead is ‘in- target’ and intro call = completed OR marketing qualified CONVERT (ACCEPTED) • Status would change once the disco call = completed and a viable opportunity is present. REJECT BAD DATA (Status can be changed only when lead is in NEW or WORKING) MARKETING NURTURE (Status can be changed at any time) NO POTENTIAL (Status can be changed at any time)
- 29. Content Marketing GLORY = Data, Common Sense and a good Gut feel
- 30. “Good execution is the ultimate differentiator” @amritamathur 30
Editor's Notes
- A little bit about me
- So first and foremost, I want to state the obvious…
- Customers are no longer passive observers in the sales cycle. They’ve become active participants, educating themselves about our products and our services before they ever engage with a vendor. According to research by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), customers are already 57% into their buying decision before they engage with a vendor. In the Age of the Customer, competitive advantage doesn’t begin with products, logistics or technology. Those have become table stakes. In order to compete, companies need to find a way to develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers in order to get the continuous, ongoing, on-demand feedback they need to meet customer’s ever-changing expectations.
- And that means rethinking how we listen to and connect with our customers — and the tools we use to facilitate those interactions.
- It is still the #1 way for people to discover you, know you, like you and trust you.
- Now there are many parts to content marketing. The best way to explain things is sorta like comparing it to the movie business… which is basically all about creating content and getting it front of people as well.
- - You have the Director aka Content Creator who is responsible for bringing the script and story to life. - You have the Producer aka Project Manager and Influencer who is basically responsible for making sure everything is moving, all the people show on time to set, they tend to be well connected and have some influence usually, so they’ll usually be the ones taking care of all the problems like when the lead actors flips out because she didn’t like the dress she was supposed to wear etc. - And then you have the Distributor, who basically takes the finished product and takes it to market and gets it in front of as many people as possible, via all the channels available to them and at a price point that makes them money. Now, of course you can have different people in your organization that are responsible for each of these things. Or if you’re a smaller marketing or growth team, you can have the same person or same team working on all of these things simultaneously. I’m very lucky. At the company that I work for at this time, which I just joing 6 months ago, we have quite a few people on our team and some are more design oriented than others, some are more technical and some write excellent copy (although, all marketers should be able to write good copy). But anyway, we’ve kind of divided our team into sort of these three broad pillars around content creation, production and distribution.
- Now there are many parts to content marketing. The best way to explain things is sorta like comparing it to the movie business… which is basically all about creating content and getting it front of people as well.
- This is a very simplistic campaign journey of course, but you get the idea…
- Most people think email maketing = email blast after email blast. Wrong. Email marketing if done in a way that is targetted with a high-degree of relevance can be very fruitful. Ultimately you want to build trust and engagement.
- How do we get best leads in hands of inside reps as quickly as possible
- Customers are no longer passive observers in the sales cycle. They’ve become active participants, educating themselves about our products and our services before they ever engage with a vendor. According to research by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), customers are already 57% into their buying decision before they engage with a vendor. In the Age of the Customer, competitive advantage doesn’t begin with products, logistics or technology. Those have become table stakes. In order to compete, companies need to find a way to develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers in order to get the continuous, ongoing, on-demand feedback they need to meet customer’s ever-changing expectations.