High-Tech Communicator

What’s Your Philosophy of Writing?

The other day, I was talking to a marketing manager at a large technology company about a potential writing project. Usually, in an initial get-to-know-you phone meeting, marketing people will ask what types of projects I do and how I work—all  very tactical questions. But this woman asked instead, “What’s your philosophy?”

“Wow! That’s refreshing,” I thought. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”

Her question gets to people’s perception of writers. Often, people look at writing as a tactical task where the writer strings together sentences and polishes up the grammar. But when that’s all a writer does, marketers are invariably unhappy with the results and become distrustful of all writers. As one content expert recently noted, “Many writers seem to just not understand the topics, so while they may be grammatical experts, they destroy the message.”

By asking me my philosophy, this woman was saying that she understood that writing is a complex and strategic function that goes beyond stringing together sentences.

So What’s My Philosophy?

My writing philosophy centers around the type of writing I do and the process of writing.

Writing Types

With the idea of content marketing spreading like wildfire, marketers are actively looking to create content that describes how their solution helps people operate their businesses or do their jobs more effectively. The idea is that customers are actively looking for solutions for problems on the web and it behooves marketers who want to attract customers to give them what they’re looking for.

I come from a background of service journalism. In other words, I started out writing articles for niche publications that in some way, shape, or form provided information that helped people operate their businesses or do their jobs better. Whether it was a case study that showed how one business solved a particular problem, a comparative review of multiple products in a single category, or a trend piece that described changes an organization needed to be aware of, all of the articles I wrote always had a service bent. The white papers, case studies and other materials I write typically reflect that focus.

Writing Process

To create the type of materials I focus on, the writing process comes down to gaining a true understanding of the message the client wants to disseminate and then translating that into a piece that has meaning to the customer. The process is sort of like translating poetry from one language to another. This is more complex than it looks. After all, think about what would happen if you ran a poem through translation software. You’d get gibberish.

Why?  

Most poems are chock full of obscure references. If you don’t understand the references, you don’t understand the poem. But when you get a good professor to explain the poem, a whole new world opens up.

Similarly, pieces about technology contain all sorts of jargon, acronyms, and obscure references.

So for papers where the content is well defined, such as a white paper based on a sales presentation, the job of a writer is to be the poetry professor and translate the “poem” (in this case the technology) into language that students can understand. Since I’m not really an expert at any one technology, I do deep background research looking up obscure articles explaining the technology until I “get it” enough to explain to someone else.

But for many white papers, the client only has a 30,000-foot view of what they want to say. In that case, I need to come up with most of the content from scratch through interviews and research. I then shape it into something that meets the client’s criteria and that readers can understand.

So to summarize, what’s my philosophy to create value?

1. Create service-type pieces that help customers do their job or run their business better
2. Find out in a deep way what the client is really trying to say.
3. Make sure I get all the background I need to truly understand the message.
4. Learn what the customer wants to know and translate the message in such a way that the customer understands the value of my client’s message.

And that’s how writers add value to content during the writing process.

What’s your philosophy about producing marketing materials?

 

Looking for Ideas for Impactful Content for B2B Marketing?

One of the biggest challenges content marketers face is developing compelling content that will attract B2B buyers. Here’s one suggestion that few B2B content marketers consider.

Let me start with a story.

Years ago, when I was an editor for PC Magazine, I was assigned the task of developing, managing, and editing a special “blockbuster” issue about software applications that help investors select stocks. We enlisted trading experts and IT staff at several large brokerage firms to help us evaluate the software.

Although these people were used to making gobs of money in their day jobs and we paid relatively little for their efforts, they eagerly worked on this project. Part of the reason they participated in the project was that they liked the publicity of being featured in a large, well-known publication. But the more important reason was that they believed that they needed to explore every single one of their software options to make sure their firm knew which ones would give them a competitive advantage.   

As a result of this project (and discussions with many other IT buyers), the editors at PC Magazine ultimately redesigned the format of the publication. Instead of writing general interest articles about personal computing, the magazine ultimately concentrated on product evaluations. Not only did product evaluations become their sole focus, they also made a point to review every single product they could find in a category, rather than just the top five to 10 products.  

Today, the market has consolidated and IT buyers no longer have a choice of dozens of IT solutions to every problem. Nonetheless, IT buyers are voracious consumers of solid information about how to address their challenges—particularly since fewer trade publications are available to talk about these issues.

Marketers can provide a valuable service by developing white papers that compare and contrast the various options available for solving specific problems. While a vendor may not be able to get away with a white paper that actually ranks competitive products the way PC Magazine does, it can provide frank discussions of the types of technology options available in a particular category and their pros and cons for different applications.  

So consider white papers that compare technologies as part of your content mix. This information is sure to be of great interest to your buyers and will allow you to position yourself as a company that provides true value to your customers.

How have you used technology evaluations in your marketing efforts?

What B2B Content Marketers Can Learn from Niche Publications

When the personal computer industry burst onto the scene, so did a raft of new trade publications. And IT buyers scoured their pages for help with their purchase decisions.

Today, many of these publications are struggling, not because IT buyers don’t see incredible value in their pages, but because they’ve failed to find ways to monetize their services in the Internet age. Yet, buyers remain as hungry for content as always. And marketers that provide valuable content —especially when they do so for free—are reaping the benefits.

According to a recent study by ITSMA, “How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2010: The New Buyer Paradox,” nearly 60% of respondents said that idea-based content plays an important or critical role in determining which providers make it into their short lists. And if providers go farther and use thought leadership to help companies clarify their business needs and suggest solutions, 30% of this group said they would consider sole-sourcing the deal.

Since marketing departments are new to content creation, they can learn valuable lessons from the pros of content creation—those niche publishers. Here are some tips from the pros:

Find out what readers are looking for.

Publications are obsessed with what their readers think.  When I was at PC Magazine in the late 80s, our mission was to help companies make purchase decisions—so we could sell ads to the companies trying to reach those decision makers. We did extensive surveys of readers to determine how they made purchase decisions, and we made sure that each page helped with that process. As a result, the editors shifted the focus of the magazine away from general interest articles about the new (at the time) technology and began doing hard-core comparative product reviews that would directly help companies make their decisions. Other publications surveyed readers on their interest level in various topics. At still others, we conducted extensive focus groups on readers’ interest in various types of articles.

Draw the reader in.

Publications understand that if a piece doesn’t immediately pique a reader’s interest, the reader simply won’t read further. Therefore, they always work to make sure each article has an enticing headline, subhead, and lead paragraph that would pull the reader in. For more information on what makes a headline enticing, see our six-part series on headlines.

Make sure your content is easy to read.

At PC Magazine, we had vast armies of writers and editors intent on making sure all the copy was conversational, easy to understand and error-free. Once a writer turned in an article, a so-called “line editor” often completely rewrote the copy to ensure it made sense and flowed logically. An executive editor then reviewed the text. Next, several “copy editors” looked at each individual line of copy for clarity, style consistency, spelling, and so on. Finally, at least two proofreaders would review each article for typos.

Write for scan ability.

Each article in publications always contain attractive elements that help the headline, subhead, and lead paragraph pull the reader in. These include interesting pull quotes, lots of charts and graphs, and captions. At PC Magazine we also created fact files about each product, which were short summaries of our reviews. These elements allowed readers to skim the article as they quickly flipped through it and still come away with the main points. If readers were intrigued by any of these elements, they would read the article to learn more.

By stealing these techniques from trade publications, marketers can better fulfill the information needs of their customers. And as research shows, by giving customers vital information, companies are more likely to land on the short list when it comes time for customers to purchase a product.

Has your company adopted publishing techniques?

Developing a B2B White Paper Strategy

From time to time, someone will call and say, “I need a white paper. We don’t have any and I have nothing to give people.”

Unfortunately, simply creating a white paper for the sake of having one isn’t an effective use of the time, effort and money. To get the greatest bang for your buck, it’s best to develop a strategy that matches the papers you create to the information requirements your customers have at different stages of their buying cycle. (Of course, other types of content will also be appropriate at different stages of the sales cycle, but I want to focus on white papers here).

The following are four commonly used types of papers that will help your customers through their buying cycle:

Generate awareness

Today, potential B2B customers start their purchase process by doing a web search for information that will educate them about possible solutions to business problems they may face. As a result, it’s a good idea to create a white paper designed to meet this customer need for information. These white papers are typically thought-leadership pieces that describe the particular customer problem and the benefits of solving it using a specific type of solution. 

Because companies may target the same product to different industries or different roles within a particular company and each of these target markets may have different concerns, companies often create different variations of papers for the same product targeting these different audiences. The key is to carefully define these key audiences and their business challenges that you can address, and then educate these audiences about the benefits of the type of solution you offer to their particular role or industry at a business (not technical) level.

Another way to educate your readers at the awareness stage of the buying cycle is to perform primary research and publish the results. Such research often documents the magnitude of a particular business problem, why customers are having difficulties addressing the problem, describing best practices for solving the problem and finding out how many companies follow these best practices.

Often complex products, such as ERP software, address multiple customer problems. In this case, you might want to address key problems one at a time rather than describe all the problems the solution addresses at once. For example, an ERP software vendor might do a series of educational papers talking about how ERP solutions can address different business issues—such as how it improves productivity, enhances business intelligence, improves financial returns and increases collaboration.

Describe the product

Once the customer becomes interested in your particular solution and is comparing yours to other solutions, you’ll need a white paper that describes your actual product. Such a paper should briefly summarize the problem the product addresses, possibly describe the pros and cons of alternative solutions and technologies, then describe your specific differentiators, key benefits and the key features that provide those benefits. Generally, because companies generally provide data sheets to describe the features and benefits of a particular product at a high level, a white paper will tend to describe more technical details for a more technical audience or describe the product in greater depth than a brochure.

Address common questions

During the sales process, certain questions will arise repeatedly. You can create white papers to address these frequently asked questions. For example, one common issue that companies address with white papers is how the product addresses compliance with a particular new regulation or how it fits in with a new technology category. Again, these white papers are typically used when the potential customer is actively involved with the salesforce.

Validation white papers

Finally, toward the end of the sales process, you’ll want papers to reassure your customers that your products actually do what they say they’re going to do and that give customers quantifiable information they can take to their boss as they make their final decision. Papers that are useful support for this part of the sales process might document the total cost of ownership, especially for products like virtualization hardware that promise to dramatically reduce a company’s operational costs. Another variation on this theme is a paper that describes how a customer can measure the return on investment. Such papers look not only costs but also the top line benefits of implementing the solution. Often these papers can be paired with an ROI tool that companies can use to measure the ROI they can expect from implementing the solution in their own environment. Still another variation gives three to five examples of how customers have benefitted from the solution.

These four categories of white papers form the basis of a white paper strategy that will enable you to start meeting potential customers’ information requirements throughout all phases of the sales cycle.

What’s your white paper strategy?

Increase Your White Paper ROI

There’s no doubt about it, white papers take considerable time, effort, and money to produce. Luckily, you can get a significant return on that investment if you know how to make the most of your white papers by repurposing them.  

Here are a few ways you can use the white papers themselves or repurpose the content in them:

• Email campaigns—Many B2B companies use white papers as a valuable “offer” for email marketing campaigns. These campaigns might be designed to either generate awareness or nurture leads that are not quite ready to make a purchase. Many B2B buyers are interested in downloading these white-paper offers because they provide valuable information.
• Webinars—Organizations often either base their webinar on the content in their white paper and/or they will provide a white paper as a “Thank You,” providing attendees with a takeaway after the webinar is over.
• Newsletters—Companies often use email newsletters as a way to keep in touch with existing customers to generate add-on sales or to nurture new leads. White papers can be the source of content for newsletter articles. For example, you can condense all or part of the white paper to create a newsletter article and then provide a link to the original.
• Trade journal articles—You can also shorten thought-leadership white papers into articles that can be published in a trade magazine. While the number of these magazines (and often the space in them) is smaller than it has been in years past, trade magazines still exist and continue to provide third-party validation and credibility for your ideas.
• Sales leave-behind—White papers that contain thought leadership or educational content make good leave-behinds for the sales force.
• Website—Because potential customers see white papers as providing valuable information, they’re often willing to register for them on your website, providing you with valuable contact information. (When using this technique, however, it’s advisable to use as short a registration form as possible to avoid annoying people.) 
• Aggregation networks—Many content-aggregation networks, such as the Tech Target Network, provide white papers on specific topics from a large number of vendors. Many potential customers go to these sites during the research stage of their purchase process to gain more information about solutions to their problems. If you want to be found, it would behoove you to go where people actively look for information.
• Blog posts—Use findings from your white paper as the basis for one or more blog posts and then provide links to them.

While white papers can be a substantial investment of time, effort and money, they also pay big dividends in terms of the myriad ways their information can be used and reused.

How do you repurpose your white papers?

How Do You Define Thought Leadership?

Clients ask me to write thought-leadership articles and white papers all the time. The majority of these pieces define a business challenge and talk about a solution to that challenge that’s basically a generic description of the vendors’ current solution. But recently, I ran into an exception.

I was asked to write about an emerging market segment for a technology vendor. This particular segment is undergoing major, rapid change as a result of new federal guidelines and regulations—as well as a general perception that this industry needs to improve quality and reduce costs.

President Obama’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste—and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could before.” IT vendors in this space are certainly taking this advice to heart.

A number of vendors are racing to introduce technology solutions to address the issues in the aforementioned industry. However, it takes time to build brand new solutions. The vendor faced the dilemma of whether to write about the capabilities of existing solutions vs. writing about what a long term solution should look like (and keep its fingers crossed that the solution it brings to market matches somewhat with its early thought leadership).

Ultimately, my client decided to produce true thought leadership, a future-looking view of what a solution should look like, rather than sticking to a description of their current solutions. In this way, this company is helping their customers make their decisions based on a long-term view of what could be, rather than limiting their solutions simply to “what is” and what they can sell customers today. To this I say, “Bravo!”

How have you defined thought leadership?

Why Does It Take So Long to Write a White Paper?

A while back, I was looking for ways to partner with other writers and asked several potential candidates how long it takes them to write a white paper. I was shocked when they said it would take a couple of days to produce a full-fledged first draft. After all, I have more than 25 years of experience writing articles and white papers, and it still takes me 40 to 60 hours. My process works for me and I’m not about to change it, but this did get me thinking what goes into writing a successful white paper—and why it can take so long.    

There are two parts to the answer, which I’ll cover in this blog post and the next. The first is that a good paper requires considerable research (or deep subject matter expertise) to provide context and the second is that the writer must tells a cohesive story.

The Need for Research

Whenever I start a white paper, I interview the client to get basic information, including the audience, the goals of the project, the one key message the client wants readers to remember, and the key supporting messages (which usually relate to the benefits of the solution being described).    

My job as the writer is to flesh out these high-level messages into something that leads the reader to understand why the problem is important and what steps can be taken to solve it. This involves the following:

Providing context. People don’t know what they don’t know. To get them to read more, you need to start where they are. Describe some issue that they can relate to, and then lead them into a discussion of something they hadn’t considered related to that issue.

For a white paper, this usually means starting with a description of a key strategic issue that the target audience faces. For the past several years, for example, technology companies have addressed the Great Recession and subsequent shaky recovery their customers face. Other papers might address a new regulation that has an industry quaking in its boots.

For example, I recently wrote a white paper for a company that helps hospitals comply with audits from Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance companies. Targeting hospital audit managers, operations managers and CFOs, this paper documented the prospect of an exponentially increasing number of audits that are arising due to the success of Medicaid Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) audits. This particular paper quoted the rising number of audits faced by one medical center. In many other cases, I use quotes from high-profile industry analysis, such as the Gartner Group or Forrester Research to document a trend.  

Opening the knowledge gap. Once you’ve described a problem the reader already knows they have, you can describe a new area where they have a gap in their knowledge. In a white paper that talks about a technology solution, this often means describing what’s missing in existing solutions that customers/readers may already be using. Again, this can require considerable research to adequately describe these problems.

Providing context around the solutions. Once you give people a clear idea of the problems they face and why existing solutions don’t truly address those problems, you can then begin to introduce your take on the solution. And yet, as you discuss different aspects of the solution, you still need to provide enough context so they can understand you.

For example, if I’m writing a white paper on how an ERP solution improves productivity, I might discuss how it centralizes data from throughout the organization and how it automates business processes. I would need to provide the additional context to explain how data was not stored centrally before and what problems that caused (i.e. the need to constantly rekey information into multiple systems, which is a time-consuming and error-prone process).

Providing context is time consuming. Even though I have an extensive background in many types of hardware and application software, it’s important to include the most up-to-date information, including the very latest trends as they apply to a particular industry, role or buyer persona. That can take considerable time sifting through trade-industry articles and interviews to understand the full story. Finding proof points from industry analysis can be time consuming—again because not only must the research be on topic, it also must be timely.  

Even providing context about the individual benefits of a relatively generic solution can take a fair amount of effort. I like to find several sources to ensure that I understand each issue completely and can describe it fully to my readers.

When someone tells me it takes just a few days to write a white paper, it means one of several things. Either they’re an analyst that writes about a very narrow area that they study day in or day out. In this case, it’s easily possible to write a paper quickly. Alternatively, they’re relying on the client to provide all the background, which can be burdensome to the client. Or they’re writing a white paper that does not provide any context—and without context, it’s difficult for readers to know enough to care about your paper.

What do you think it takes to create a good white paper?

Plan for White Paper Success

Developing a white paper is a massive undertaking. It involves gathering tremendous amounts of background about customer challenges and industry trends, interviewing content experts about the vendor’s solutions, and then weaving all of this information into a coherent story that compels potential customers to investigate further. With all of the information required, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Creating an outline can help you stay in control of the white paper-development process. 

How does it work?

An outline serves as a starting point.

I start with a high level “30,000 foot” outline that describes the direction the paper needs to take. This outline, which consists simply of a few bullet points, serves as a guide for the type of information that needs to be gathered during the research phase.

For example, a recent high level outline for a project on tape consolidation hardware included the following:   

• Business problem—the need to reduce costs
• Why that’s moving companies toward virtualization and consolidation in general
• Tie in tape consolidation
• Describe cases where tape consolidation provides value
• Detail the ROI of tape consolidation

It keeps the project on track.

A high level outline—approved by all stakeholders—will help keep the project from derailing midstream. For example, if you send the high-level outline to content experts involved in the project before an interview, you can help them prepare and keep them from going off on tangents.   

It serves as a checkpoint.

Once the bulk of the research is completed, you can create a detailed outline. This outline can serve as a checkpoint mid-project to make sure you’re in sync with the writer on the direction the paper is taking and that it includes all the major points required. The benefit of using an outline rather than a rough draft is that reviewers often get hung up on word usage and grammar at an early stage when they really need to make sure the paper captures the big picture. An outline mid-project leads people to look at what’s important.

To recap, if you want to be sure your white paper project stays on track from beginning to end, create an outline.

How have you used outlines?

How Much of a Thought Leader Must You Be?

Most technology companies understand the value of thought leadership. Developing innovative solutions to problems is a great way to achieve competitive differentiation. And communicating these new ideas to the marketplace is a great way to establish credibility and trust. So it’s not surprising that companies all want to claim to be thought leaders.

But is it realistic to think that every company can be a thought leader? Isn’t that like Lake Wobegone, where all of the children are above average? And if you’re not a thought leader, are you doomed to the dust heap?

The Traditional Take on Thought Leadership

Britton Manasco, is a thought leader about thought leadership. In Manasco’s view, it’s thought leadership or die.

“It's probably clear by now that your growth potential is tied to what sets you apart. You won't succeed in this marketplace if you don't specialize and offer something that is truly distinctive. But it's not enough to provide distinctive value. You also have to communicate that value to the prospects you are trying to reach and the influencers that influence them. But believe it or not, that’s still not enough.You win by being the one that owns an issue.”

But What if You’re Not Unique?

At the same time, there’s also a sizeable minority of technologies that simply aren’t any different from their competitors. I work with one very large company whose resellers are consistently unable to come up with anything unique about its products. And yet, this company does differentiate itself in the market.

How?

Through content marketing.

For example, when presenting its admittedly plain-vanilla offering to a target market of healthcare providers, we did considerable research, speaking with many resellers and customers and reading a wide range of analyst reports and articles about this market, to see what problems customers typically encounter. With the help of resellers who solve problems for customers day in and day out, we then zeroed in on the problems that the company’s products help the audience solve.

In this case, a key challenge was how to tie revenues to costs to determine actual profitability for various services offered. Based on this research, we developed information resources describing this problem in the context of key healthcare issues and trends and how to use technology to address this problem.

In this way, even though the product itself is not unique, this vendor was able to provide something of unique value to its customers. Namely, a description of how to solve a pressing customer problem. 

Is this thought leadership? Not in the traditional sense. In some ways, it’s like creating differentiation for a brand of peanut butter. Most peanut butters are the same, but vendors create a unique differentiator by pointing out something that other vendors don’t—even though their product may have the same capability. But it goes beyond creating a unique selling proposition; it’s about creating unique value for the customer in the form of unique content.  And this unique content provides just the differentiation the company needs.

How have you used content marketing to differentiate your products?  

 

 

 

A Unified Theory of Marketing Communications, Marketing, Sales, Service—and Customer Success

In his thought-provoking recent post, Mastering the Customer Success Cycle, Britton Manasco suggests that companies extend their conception of the sales cycle/buying process into a more expansive view that he calls the Customer Success Cycle. Instead of ending the sales and marketing process when the customer purchases the product, B2B sales and marketing departments should remain involved with the customer until customer is able to demonstrate success.

The idea is to blur sales and service to achieve greater customer success. And marketing expands its role from simply generating awareness/leads and supporting sales upfront to capturing the stories of exceptionally pleased customers, who then become advocates.

For example:

·  SAP works with its consultative services before the sale to develop a compelling business strategy and business case that fully leverages SAP’s technology solutions.

· InfusionSoft teams sales professionals and reselling partners into business coaches that become responsible for continuing success and support. Sales professionals remain actively engaged with customers in the post-sales period.

I’d like to summarize how Manasco describes the Customer Success Cycle and then expand on this vision to incorporate an expanded role for marketing and marketing communications within that cycle to further enhance the benefits.   

Manasco’s Customer Success Cycle

The customer success cycle is as follows:

· Awareness. During branding and marketing, companies must become thought leaders and trusted authorities. By staking out a compelling perspective on key issues that are relevant to prospects, B2B vendors raise their profile with them, build trust and draw them into their orbit. B2B companies are also able to frame the way their target audiences think about existing problems.

· Engagement. Having attracted prospects and generated leads, B2B companies must nurture them with relevant resources and hand them off to sales, which must further diagnose the situation and identify possible solutions.

· Commitment. B2B vendors must establish the business case, justify it, refine it, and drive consensus among members of the customers’ decision-making team. Consultative services teams may even be drawn in to discuss the process of change and help guide the prospect through the implications of competing approaches.

· Implementation. One of the main hurdles to success in information technology is inadequate customer adoption. Working with customers to ensure successful adoption is a key factor in driving customer success.

· Performance. Companies are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the value they’ve delivered to their clients. By helping customers quantify and confirm their results, B2B vendors gain access to the data they need to demonstrate that they achieve the results they claim in their pre-sales business cases.

· Advocacy. When companies are truly delivering, they can turn their customers into advocates who can help drive new business.  Marketing can then take the lead by identifying success stories and giving customers the platform on which to share their success, thereby more easily winning the confidence of prospects and driving marketing and sales performance to new levels.

Embedding Marketing into the Customer Success Cycle

As sales, marketing and consulting work together in this version of Customer Success Cycle, the customer benefits from a more closely tailored solution and a better implementation. And the vendor benefits from having a strong customer advocate to help with the next sales cycle.

Now let’s look at what would happen if the company embeds marketing more fully into Manasco’s Customer Success Cycle—either by having marketing actually work with sales at each step, or by instituting a process where sales and service document their interactions with customers each step of the way and share that information with marketing.   

Better definition of customer challenges. Many marketers in technology companies have little first-hand knowledge of the challenges real customers face that their product might solve. I’ve worked with many marketers at large technology companies who go at this backward—starting with their product and tacking on what they think might possibly be the customer problem as an afterthought—if they talk about the customer at all.

By working closely with sales and customers on an ongoing and consistent basis, marketing can obtain a first-hand view of the challenges customers face. But I’m not suggesting that marketing limit its efforts to get to know its customer simply by tracking what happens on a few sales calls or talking to a few customers. I’ve worked with companies that think they understand their customers’ problems based on such discussions with a few customers—only to be sadly mistaken when they think their findings do not apply universally across their target market. However, marketing can use this first-hand knowledge to develop better theories that can form the basis for further research, such as market surveys.  With this deep customer insight, companies can then develop highly relevant thought leadership that addresses customer problems.

Moreover, because the thought leadership is based on discussions and insights with real customers, companies have access to the real-world details that will make their thought-leadership discussions more memorable and credible—and that lead to greater interest and awareness.  

More hard ROI figures. When sales goes in and helps customers analyze and document results, they cement relationships with existing customers and turn them into repeat customers and advocates. They also get the hard data they need for use in marketing communications for lead generation and nurturing.

This is the exact process the EMR company I spoke about in my previous post, How to Get ROI Results from Customer Success Stores, used with a high degree of success to obtain the detailed ROI figures it used in its case studies. The company then leveraged this information for all manner of lead generation activities including Webinars, speeches at conferences, case studies, and brief ROI “cheat sheets” that sales reps could use in customer presentations. This material significantly increased the company’s credibility with its risk-averse customers.

These case studies make a huge difference in the early stages of the sales cycle. A recent study by Eccolo Media found that collateral was most influential during the awareness stage of the sales cycle and that 79 percent of survey respondents found that case studies were influential in their purchase decision (up from 69 percent last year).

More relevant sales-support materials. When I worked on staff for a small software company, I regularly spoke with the sales managers and reps about the types of sales-support materials they needed to better do their jobs, and what messages resonated best with prospects. Even at small companies, sales can be reluctant or too busy to share insights with the people that produce the content. It’s only when I spoke with customers in creating case studies that I saw firsthand what messages best resonated with different types of customers.

By being closer to sales, the customers, and service during the engagement and commitment phases, marketing gets a first-hand look at what marketing communications they need to produce that can better support customer success each step on the way.  

Better products lead to better marketing and communications. A customer who’s a happy advocate working in tandem with a vendor that’s willing to listen can help the vendor better evolve the product into something that customers really want.  And when products are tailored to what customers want, any messages describing these products are more likely to resonate, resulting in greater marketing and sales success.  

Overall, taking a Customer Success Cycle approach creates a closed-loop from marketing to sales to service to the customer and back again—this loop becomes a self-reinforcing cycle of success for both customers and the B2B vendor.

What do you think about the Customer Success Cycle and the role of marketing in it?