Improve your content marketing efforts with these six simple actions.

1. 6 SIMPLE ACTIONSTO IMPROVE YOUR CONTENT MARKETING
Increase Engagement • Shorten the Sales Cycle • Win More Customers • Build Brand Loyalty

2. Customers seek out knowledge to make the best decisions for
their professional and personal lives.
Brands that deliver this knowledge will win more customers,
shorten sales cycles, wall off competitors and secure the
coveted thought leadership position.
Your content marketing efforts will drive higher engagement
when you commit to showing, not just telling, how your
offering positively impacts a customer’s bottom-line and
performance.
You have an amazing story to tell - and your customers actively
seek out your expertise.
Use these six Content Marketing Strategies to drive meaningful
customer engagement by sharing your knowledge and drive
more prospects into a more efficient sales funnel.
Give Your Customers the Knowledge to
Make Great Decisions

3. Your Brand is no longer in control.
Customers no longer start their search for information at your
company website. In most cases, customers begin their search
on third party sites, trusted blogs and among peer groups.
As a result, brands must alter their approach to introducing
products, solutions and services to the marketplace – and this
means seeding content wherever target audiences already turn
for their informational needs.
There are new channels that should be considered ‘core’ to any
launch or on-going campaign to support products, solutions
and services in market.
• Did you know that YouTube is the #2 Search Engine – behind
Google and bigger than Bing?
• Did you know that relevant LinkedIn Groups deliver higher
engagement rates than social display ads?
• Did you know that customers starting their search for
information on Slideshare is on the rise?
In short, not everyone starts at Google. And even fewer start at
your company website.
A simple strategy to gain visibility with the right audiences is
to publish your core content – from whitepapers, product and
solution briefs to product demos and customer case studies –
on Slideshare, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social ecosystems.
Your customers turn to these sources for information. You
must meet them there with a point of view - and then share
your knowledge - exactly what they need to make great
business decisions.
1 Reach Audiences Where They
Already Seek Out Information
SOCIAL CONTENT ECOSYSTEM
PEER AND COMMUNITY ECOSYSTEM
YOUR BRAND ECOSYSTEM
LOOKING TO
SOLVE A
BUSINESS
NEED
VALIDATING
SOLUTION
SETS
QUALIFYING
YOUR
SOLUTION

4. Develop additional information assets that speak to industry
Mega Trends to give interested customers the ability to
instantly relate your key product or solution value propositions
to specific business and technology issues customer’s face.
But don’t do this if you aren’t sharing thoughtful knowledge.
Simply echoing Mega Trend statements isn’t knowledge.
Pair your point of view of Mega Trends with the traditional
sales content to make those presentations inherently more
valuable to the audience, to drive deeper discussions when in
front of customers and to make the content more applicable to
challenges or opportunities customers presently face in their
organization.
Establish an editorial calendar so that Mega Trend stories are
delivered into the marketplace with a consistent cadence that
customers can expect over a period of time. This approach
will reinforce your thought leadership – and give customers
the unique, practical knowledge they need to make confident
technology purchase decisions.
Deliver Mega Trend content into the marketplace in multiple
formats so that it can be seeded on third party sites, leveraged
across social and mobile properties and readily shared by field
sales, partners and community/peer groups.
2
FOCUSED
BUSINESS
SOLUTION
FOCUSED
BUSINESS
SOLUTION
FOCUSED
BUSINESS
SOLUTION
EBOOK BLOG
INFO-
GRAPHIC VIDEO
MEGA TREND TOPICS
ACTIONABLE
BUSINESS NEEDS
Leverage Mega Trends

5. Companies tend to create consistent content forms to support
products in market – from Whitepapers, Data Sheets and Case
Studies to Product Briefs, Solution Briefs and Product Demos.
These information assets tend to be content-heavy and are
typically found buried with your company website. These
content-heavy assets are even sparingly used by your own
sales teams, partners and internal stakeholders.
To increase engagement and usage levels – and to provide
more opportunities to seed this valuable content outside of
a Brand’s traditional ecosystem – companies should develop
short-form, consumable lead-in assets like Infographics and
videos.
These short-form assets will help companies cast a wider net
to draw more customers into the sales funnel – and they will
provide a natural pathway for customers to discover more
in-depth knowledge and information on your website or from
your field sales and partner channels.
These short-form assets – highlighting key messages, data
points and unique selling points – will capture the attention of
interested prospects and draw them in to engage with deeper,
more content-rich assets.
When companies pair their core content assets with these
simple lead-in tactics (I.e. an Infographic) views, clicks and
traffic increase by 100-300%.
Lead-in assets are also voraciously consumed by field sales
and channel partners – leading to more customer interactions,
more views of your core content and more sales opportunities.
3 Lure Audiences to Your Core
Content Assets
MEGA TRENDS
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
EBOOK INFOGRAPHIC VIDEO
YOUR
DEEP BRAND
CONTENT

6. Every asset published should provide viewers with a natural
pathway to continue their discovery of more relevant, deeper
content that builds upon the story. This will draw them farther
into the information and sales funnels.
To accomplish this goal, companies should interlink all product
assets. For example, a solution brief should include link to
videos and product briefs, and videos should include pathways
to get to the briefs – both as clickable links when viable and, at
a minimum, in the descriptive copy for each asset.
This strategic linking aids SEO and encourages audiences to
consume multiple content assets, regardless of entry point.
For all your content on YouTube, be sure to include your URL in
the description, and add an interactive link with the annotation
tool to the last 20 seconds of the video. Also, improve your
SEO rankings by uploading a transcript of your audio content.
4
White Paper
Case StudyProduct Brief
Product Demo Solution Brief
Video
Ebook
Infographic
Utilize Interlinking

7. When your customers have successfully implemented your
products and solutions into their business – and are reaping
the benefits – make that work for your brand. Identifying these
stories and sharing them in PDF or video formats – and then
propagate those assets throughout your website and, most
importantly, among your field sales and partners.
For longevity, we recommend that companies continue
this approach on an on-going basis to firmly establish their
voice and leadership position in the marketplace. Launching
a themed series of ‘talk sessions’, ‘customer successes’ or
‘narrated animations’ will help companies build upon the story
started at product launch – and give the company a platform to
continue sharing knowledge to interested customers.
Video is a highly valuable medium, but doing it with a sense of
consistency in theme and rhythm will strengthen your fan base
and engagement.
• Customer Success Stories: Interview customers about the
business challenges they faced – and how your technology,
product or service helped them unlock an opportunity or to
address a business challenge.
• Future Talk Sessions: Interview customers about their
business opportunities looking forward, and what
technology solutions they need to unlock that opportunity.
Then, incorporate your company SMEs to show how your
solution fills the gap.
• Narrated Animations: Show prospects and customers how
your solution works. Demonstrate the benefits and how it
will help to drive and deliver positive business results.
Rolling these out as a branded series will maintain the interest
of customers – and they will strategically position and solidify
your brand as a go-to partner for knowledge.
5
KNOWLEDGE / EXPERTISE
Q1SUBJECT
MATTER
Q2SUBJECT
MATTER
Q3SUBJECT
MATTER
Q4SUBJECT
MATTER
STORY 1 STORY 4STORY 3STORY 2
CONSISTENT THEME / BRAND
Maintain Momentum with
Serialized Content

8. Most brands simply say things to customers – telling them how
their product or solution can help solve business challenges or
unlock business opportunities.
However, showing customers how your product or solution
will accomplish these objectives for their unique needs delivers
more impact. It provides customers with an opportunity to ‘see
for themselves’ – converting skeptics into buyers.
Give your customers a more participatory experience to
explore your products and services by creating simple
interactive tools that personalize the solutions and content you
offer.
Ask customers and prospects to input their data to definitively
demonstrate how your product impacts their business. Then,
based on their input, match your unique selling points and
information assets to meet their specific and unique needs.
This approach will inherently bring more prospects into the
sales funnel, will further qualify prospects and will give your
sales team rich information about customer needs and sales
opportunities.
6 Give Customers an Opportunity
to Participate
SALES ENABLEMENT TOOLS

9. KNOWLEDGE FOR
GREAT DECISIONS
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