High-Tech Communicator

How to Create Challenging Thought-Leadership Content

Most technology companies claim to have innovative products. And they use thought-leadership content at the beginning of the buying cycle to get the word out and build awareness. But often what they claim is thought leadership is simply a reverse engineering of their product capabilities. The product marketer looks at the product features, imagines what problem they’d be good at solving, and writes the content.

A more compelling approach to thought leadership is one that takes advantage of Challenger selling principles. In particular, these vendors use thought-leadership content to bring a unique (often provocative) perspective to the customer—something the customer likely hasn’t thought of before. This perspective often includes opportunities to make or save money that the customer hadn’t known existed.

One company that does a great job of this is Price Intelligently. The company provides pricing services for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. Its home page immediately hits you with the promise—“You’re missing out on 33% more revenue because of your price.” That’s enough to get anyone intrigued.

The company provides extensive thought- leadership content in the form of blog posts that challenge SaaS companies’ existing pricing strategies and promises that they can improve their top line significantly if they price their services correctly, following Price Intelligently advice. The company’s thought-leadership content hits various points in the Challenger selling methodology:

• The Warmer—Assesses the customer’s key challenges using real customer examples
• The Reframe—Introduces a new approach
• Rational Drowning—Provides in-depth proof points
• Emotional Impact—Makes sure customers see themselves in the story the vendor is telling
• A New Way and Your Way—describes the solution both in a generic manner and in a manner that specifically names the vendor’s solution

The Warmer—Building Credibility through Real Customer Examples

The Challenger selling approach starts by building credibility and demonstrating that the vendor knows the customers’ world by describing what the vendor is seeing and hearing as key challenges of similar companies.  Most of the blog posts on this site start with descriptions of what the company is seeing as it talks to hundreds of customers.

 

The Reframe and Rational Drowning—Challenging the Customer’s Current Approach

The Reframe is the central idea for Challenger Selling. Building off the challenges the customer acknowledged in the Warmer section of the pitch, a vendor introduces a new perspective that connects those challenges to either a bigger problem or a bigger opportunity than they realized. The goal is to present the customer with a perspective they never thought of before and why this matters. This, of course, is the very essence of thought leadership. Rational Drowning then provides the detailed argument to back up this new perspective.

The purpose of Price Intelligently’s entire website is to challenge SaaS companies’ thinking on how they price their services. Based on its experiences consulting with hundreds of SaaS Companies, Price Intelligently bloggers talk about how companies typically price their services today and why the right pricing approach is particularly critical for their target audience to stay in business.   

One post delivers a particularly strong challenge by pointing out that pricing is a topic that companies think little about (most companies think about it for six hours, not per year, but in the history of their business) and posits that they should be thinking about and adjusting pricing every six months.

It instills urgency by arguing that the right pricing is critical because SaaS vendors invest a lot upfront and must wait many months before they see a return on that investment. At the same time, SaaS customers face few barriers to switching so they can easily churn before the vendor sees a ROI. As a result, SaaS vendors very survival depends on getting pricing right. The post then describes a process that SaaS companies can follow to effectively evaluate their pricing on an ongoing basis—who should be involved, what they need to consider, and how often they need to consider it.

In another Challenging example, this post on SaaS discounting talks about problems that can arise when SaaS companies use the common strategy of discounting to acquire customers. The post challenges SaaS vendors to consider that while discounting provides short-term gain, it leads to long-term failure. Finally, it explains what companies should do instead of providing blanket discounts that will allow them to succeed long -term.

Emotional Impact

Customers won’t make a change unless they can see themselves in the story you’re telling. And that means making sure they have an emotional connection. The way to do that is by telling stories that paint a picture of how other companies went down a painful path by behaving in a way that the customer is behaving in their own company.

Price Intelligently provides a number of posts that deliver in-depth analysis of exactly what name-brand SaaS vendors are doing right and wrong when it comes to pricing their product.

Examples include:

• Apple’s music pricing strategy
• Tinder’s strategy for older users

The implication is that even the big boys are struggling with this issue, so chance are you’re having trouble too.

A New Way and Your Solution

Finally, the Challenger approach describes in detail how to address the problem outlined—and ultimately explains the vendor’s solution. Most of Price Intelligently’s posts provide a fairly detailed generic analysis of how to address the stated problem, which the customer will recognize as Price Intelligently’s solution.

For example, the Apple and Tinder posts do a great job of giving readers advice on how to address these issues—not to mention a feel for what it’s like to work with Price Intelligently. The post about Apple’s music- pricing strategy demonstrates their ability to provide in-depth analysis of the music market by talking about their strategy vis a vis the competition (e.g. Pandora and Spotify) and their knowledge of the industry’s buyer personas (more of them exist than in other industries), buyer preferences (they’re trained not to pay for music), cost structure (high royalties).

The piece goes on to compare and contrast Apple’s pricing strategy to that of a similar company (Netflix) that does a better job. Finally, they provide specific strategies that Apple should consider and the things that Apple is doing right.

Price Intelligently also provides plenty of useful “how to” content to help customers learn more about strategies for improving content.  Some of these posts include:

• 6 Common B2B Pricing Mistakes and How to Fix Them
• 3Ways Human Behavior Can Help Your SaaS Pricing Strategy
• Ride the Demand Curve: Skimming and Your Pricing Strategy

These posts provide useful information the customer can apply to their own operations, as well as additional fodder to demonstrate what it’s like to work with Price Intelligently.

Challenger Selling for all Manner of Content

While I’ve discussed how Price Intelligently uses this approach for its blogs, you can also use it for other types of content as well. For example, in a project for one of my clients, we used all elements of this approach in a single, definitive eBook that served as a repository for the story for one of the company’s key product areas.

The Challenger Approach for Content Marketing

The Challenger approach provides a powerful and effective framework not only for sales teams, but for content marketers. Price Intelligently provides a great example of how you can use this approach to encourage customers to think in a new way—which is the whole point of thought leadership.

 

How to Create Irresistibly Useful Content

Content marketing is all about wooing the customer. You draw them in with incredibly useful content that they can’t help but dive into. You make yourself so invaluable that you’re the first person they think of when they have a problem in your bailiwick. And then you effortlessly ease them into a purchase. Because you’ve built up so much goodwill and trust, the whole process is so natural that you need no overt selling.

This is content marketing nirvana. Something that content marketers aspire to, but few achieve.

So how do you create content that’s so useful you leave customers wanting more of your services? 

Here are three examples of terrific content. All three share the advantage of being incredibly hands-on. No vague tips and tricks here. It’s all solid, meaty, walk-you-through-the-process information.

 

How-To Content

“How-to” content is a standard go-to for content marketing. But many how-to pieces err in providing content that is too abstract. Often the idea is to demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about without giving away the store—so that people have to come to you.

But today, the best content marketers hold nothing back. The idea is that even though they tell customers how to do something, they still may not want to—or be able to—do it as well themselves. And if they’re confident that you can do it because you’ve provided such valuable information, they’ll hire you.

Salesforce.com’s eBook 5 Blueprints for Building Smarter Emails is a great example. It starts with a pressing customer problem.  Most marketers use emails. All of those marketers would like to make sure those emails perform at the top of their game.

 

Many articles that talk about email marketing either present lists of tips that readers can apply to any email or present research findings from A/B testing on, for example, what types of subject lines pull best (how long, placement of numbers, whether to include words like “free”).

This eBook takes the usefulness factor to a whole new level in two ways.

First, the eBook talks not about generic emails, but about emails in a context that makes more sense to marketers. It defines five specific types of emails and what they’re used for: welcome emails; promotional emails; event- registration emails; transactional emails; and cart-abandonment emails.

Second, for each email type, the eBook talks about how these types of emails can go wrong and specific tips on how you can make them better. Even better, the book provides specific examples of what each email in a welcome email series might look like.  

For example, for the promotional email, the eBook provides specific examples of elements you can include, such as highlighting your loyalty program, including personalized recommendations, and so on.

My only nit with this eBook is that it uses terms without fully explaining what they mean. For example, it talks about “defensive” design without defining the term.

 

Checklists and Cheat Sheets

Another useful type of content is a checklist or cheat sheet. These are often produced in conjunction with a report or eBook to help the reader implement the concepts on their own. Or they can be standalone documents.

Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling, does a great job of providing self-service materials with specific tips you can use. Not only does her book SNAP Selling provide thought leadership on how to sell to busy people. Her website contains many ancillary materials with even more in-depth information on how to implement the ideas she discusses in the book.

For example, the book touches on effective ways to reach busy prospects using email. Her website then provides even more in-depth information on how to craft the emails. And her Email Message Evaluator provides a checklist with a long list of questions you can use to evaluate your own emails to ensure they comply with Konrath’s vision.

 

Together these materials come as close as is humanly possible to having Konrath as your personal coach without Konrath being t here. And when you’re struggling with a gnarly sales issue, all the great information certainly makes you think that Konrath would be the perfect person to hire as a consultant to help solve sales problems.

 

Templates

Of course the ultimate in useful content is something that not only tells you how to do something, but that actually does it for you. That’s the idea behind HubSpot’s “PowerPoint Templates for SlideShare.”

While HubSpot has a lot of corporate clients, they also target small businesses with their content-marketing platform. As an entrepreneur doing content marketing (one of HubSpot’s sweet spots) for my own business, I’ve created content and then struggled to come up with a way to create a professional looking design for it. I love templates because they make my marketing content look good without the expense of hiring a professional designer.

HubSpot clearly recognizes that need with its templates. The material comes in two parts. One is a PowerPoint that explains design principles. The second provides actual templates you can use to present your own content, saving you the hassle of having to apply abstract design principles and saving you from your own lack of design sensibility. 

Conclusion

If you want to make your content as effective as possible, make it as hands-on and concrete as you can. Provide not only very specific tips, but also concrete examples, checklists that customers can use to evaluate how well they implement the tips, and even templates that do the heavy lifting for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forging an Emotional Connection with Customer Stories

 

The marketing pundit machine has been extolling the virtues of brand storytelling for some time now.  Media outlets across the web have touted the idea of using of storytelling techniques to improve marketing content’s ability to forge an emotional connection with readers and stick in their minds.

As I read these articles, I wondered what marketers meant when they spoke about using storytelling for technology marketing. So I posed the question to a number of marketers who, in their LinkedIn profiles, trumpeted their embrace of the concept. I got answers ranging from websites that provide content that solves customers’ problems to case studies that describe outcomes rather than features.

None of these examples incorporated any of the concepts that make stories memorable, as described in that bible of storytelling, Made to Stick.

But after much searching, I finally found an example of a technology marketer that uses storytelling techniques to tell customer success stories. These stories go far beyond your standard success story in forging an emotional connection with readers. That Marketer is Microsoft. It used a host of tried-and-true storytelling techniques to draw in the reader and linger in their mind long after they’d finished reading the stories.  

The following discusses the storytelling elements that Microsoft used in a profile it wrote about Steve Gleason, a former NFL star who is now struggling with ALS. If you want to follow along, you can find the story at:  https://news.microsoft.com/stories/people/steve-gleason.html

Protagonist

Most customer success stories for technology companies talk about how a customer company used the vendor’s products to solve a particular challenge. My views on using a company as a protagonist mirrors those of progressives’ views on the Citizen’s United supreme court ruling that said campaign spending is speech and  gives corporations the first amendment rights of a person. In a customer success story, a company is not a good stand-in for a person. A good story leads the reader to empathize with the protagonist. It’s about transmitting emotions. You simply can’t do that when you’re talking about a company. A company is an abstract entity, not a living, breathing human being. 

In contrast, the Microsoft story has a real, live protagonist—Steve Gleason. By featuring a real person, the Microsoft piece is able to use the storytelling techniques of “Show, don’t tell.” At the beginning of the piece, you see Gleason surrounded by childhood friends, close family members, and the mayor of Spokane—all of which tells you a lot about what kind of a person he is and what he values.

You also hear his words. “It’s all about camaraderie. It’s about friends and family and music.”  

Plot

Made to Stick lists a number of story plots that have been proven time and again to stick in people’s minds. The plot most commonly used in business storytelling is the so called “challenge” plot. In this story line, the protagonist overcomes a formidable obstacle and succeeds.

Most technology case studies follow this plot to the extent that the customer faces, and ultimately, triumphs over some obstacle—with the help of the vendor’s solution.

While these stories don’t necessarily have to be about life and death issues to be effective, the Steve Gleason story ratchets up the drama several orders of magnitude. Gleason isn’t facing the trauma of manually entering data into a spreadsheet. He’s literally fighting for his life. Gleason is battling ALS. And although no one has ever vanquished this disease, Gleason can and is fighting to help himself and others with the disease have as meaningful and productive a life as possible.

Storytelling Techniques

The way you tell a story is just as important as the plot.

Most technology case studies start in a formulaic way with a brief description of the customer’s business with an immediate deep dive into the challenge they faced that led them to search for the vendor’s solution.

The Gleason story draws the reader in with a number of techniques more commonly found in mainstream books, magazines or newspaper articles.

First, it starts in media res (in the middle of things). Rather than start by describing the challenge, the piece describes a scene.

“Spokane’s 3^rd annual Gleason Fest was billed as a ‘grassroots, indie music festival,’ but everyone there knew something more profound was afoot.

As I watched the sun set over the outdoor stage at Division and Main Street, Lukas Nelson (yes, Willy’s son) played to the crowd like a man possessed. He sweated out every note of his new songs and blues-tinged renditions of Paul Simon and Tom Petty classics.

Steve Gleason—the Spokane-born NFL cult hero and festival namesake—sat onstage in his wheelchair, a few feet to Nelson’s left.”

Additionally,  because it’s written in first person, you identify with the writer. You feel like you’re there at the festival.

Even more important, this lead incites curiosity. My immediate reaction was to ask myself, “Why was this festival with this big name performer named after Steve Gleason? Why is Gleason sitting in a wheelchair if he’s a NFL cult hero? What happened?

My one criticism of this lead is that could have included more sensory perceptions—how did things sound, smell, taste—to draw me in even more.

Emotion

While most technology customer success stories are strictly utilitarian, the writer here is not afraid to evoke emotion. In the same opening scene, the writer says, “I saw numerous parents introduce their toddlers to each other. I saw people who have been friends for over 30 years toast with Gleason-themed beer cans. I saw former Divison 1 football players cry.”

The Microsoft Connection

Of course, unlike most magazine articles, this one was designed to promote Microsoft. Like all other customer case studies for technology companies, this story explicitly discusses how Microsoft is helping Gleason meet his goal of improving life for people with ALS. Nonetheless, even in this, the story strives to connect with readers. The story uses several techniques to do this. It:

• Talks about the Microsoft connection in a very personal way. The article describes the person at Microsoft who first approached Gleason (Yvonne Thomas), the connection she had to Gleason (attended the same college), and what prompted her to contact him. (She knew that Gleason and Microsoft together could make a tangible difference for people with ALS).
• Increases the stakes. Microsoft worked with Gleason to develop products that would allow him to control his wheelchair with eye movements and thus gain greater independence. The story talks not only about the development process, but about how the development team entered this product into the Microsoft Hackathon contest. They competed against 3,000 other entrants, all trying to create something innovative using existing Microsoft products.
• Steps us through the development of the entry. A key storytelling technique is walking the reader through the steps the protagonist takes to overcome his or her challenge. This allows the reader to empathize with the protagonist and see themselves in that person’s shoes. This story thus walked us through the process of how the team developed the eye-controlled wheelchair.
• Ends in success.  The team won the contest, beating out thousands of other participants.

One Last Emotional Hurrah

Unlike a standard case story that ends by enumerating the successes the customer has achieved by using the vendor’s product to solve the problem, this one goes for one last emotional connection. 

“I wondered if I was also falling under the spell of Gleason. I thought about volunteering to write for Team Gleason and becoming part of this movement but this is so much more important than any one individual.

Ramirez (Gleason’s close friend) looked me I the eyes, “You don’t feel like you’re writing just any story, do you? I can tell, Steve’s gotten to you too.”

 

 

9 Reasons Your Content is Boring

 

I read a lot of B2B marketing content from technology companies. As a writer who creates content for these companies, I constantly peruse white papers, case studies, brochures, blogs and anything else I can get my hands on from my clients and their competitors. I evaluate how they define the market problem, what features and benefits they offer, what sources they’re using, and any other competitive insights I can glean.

But much of the time, I find myself having to read through the copy—one time, two times, three times. My eyes glaze over. I slap my face. I drink a sip of black coffee or green tea. I go back to the beginning and try yet again.

In short, the copy is boring.  

Despite all the buzz in the blogosphere and on social media about brand storytelling and the need to create “compelling” content, many vendors clearly haven’t gotten the memo.   

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that B2B technology solutions themselves are boring. Fields like predictive analytics are truly amazing, for example, with their ability to predict fraud before it ever happens.   

So if the products are interesting, why must I hold my eyelids open to get through most of this stuff?

I see several mistakes over and over. The copy is hard to follow. It’s hard to care about because it focuses on the vendor—not the customer. And it has the personality of a salamander. While great brand storytelling is clearly your ultimate goal, simply addressing these issues will go a long way toward giving your solutions the marketing content they deserve.

Hard to Follow

The most fundamental problem with B2B marketing content is that it’s confusing and hard to follow. Often, figuring out what the vendor meant to say requires the deductive genius of Sherlock Holmes. Do you really want your customers guessing about what you meant to say?   

So what specifically makes this copy difficult to understand? Common issues include:

1. Long and winding sentences. Sentences should be no longer than two lines. Preferably, much shorter. It’s hard to figure out where a sentence is going when it meanders in and out of subordinate clauses for three or four lines.
2. Wordiness. Boring content uses 10 words when 3 will do. Make sure each word does useful work—or  off with its head.
3. Repetitive and redundant. Boring writing often says the same thing over and over and over, whether it’s in the same paragraph or in multiple sections of the paper. This isn’t to say that you won’t ever repeat content. For example, white papers have an executive summary that summarizes what the paper is about and a conclusion that summarizes the main points. You may also repeat some content in captions and call-outs. These repetitions are deliberate and acceptable. Bad writing repeats concepts in different parts of the paper seemingly at random. You can consolidate these repetitive sections by making sure your paper has a logical flow.
4. Passive voice. You’ll have a much easier time following a sentence when you know who did what to whom. When the reader has to root around for the subject like a boar looking for truffles, your writing is in big trouble.
5. No logical flow or connective tissue. Some boring papers lack a logical argument. They seem like random pieces of information plopped on the page. Generally, you need good segues and other connective tissue to explain how one paragraph relates to the next and supports a cohesive argument.
6. Buzzwords/Jargon. Unfamiliar buzzwords and jargon can stop a reader dead in their tracks. While it’s true that many of your customers are well-versed in technology, they may not be an expert in your technology. Unless you’re positive that your readers are extremely familiar with a term, be sure to define it at first reference.

Who Cares?

Of course, it’s possible to have clear writing that’s still boring. This usually occurs because the paper has failed to address the topic from the reader’s perspective.

1. The writing touts the company. If a piece starts and ends by talking about your company, that’s boring. As a reader, I want something interesting to draw me in. It could be a human interest anecdote, or more likely a brief statement about some problem I’m likely to be experiencing.
2. Hype and puffery. Copy that jumps up and down talking about how great the company is boring. What’s interesting is what’s realistic.

Je Ne Sais Quoi

You can’t put your finger on it, but something’s just blah. What’s the cause?

1. No personality. Here you have to walk a fine line. You want copy to sound professional. But you also want it to sound like it’s written by a person, not some bot. Don’t remove every clever turn of phrase in an effort to sound professional.

There are many more rules that will make your writing better and draw your reader in even more. But putting out copy that doesn’t turn your reader off from the get-go is a good place to start. Make sure it’s clear. Make sure it talks to the reader, and doesn’t just puff up your company. And insert as much personality as you can will go a long way toward improving much of what’s out there.

 

 

Marketing to Crazy-Busy Customers? Why Quality Content Matters

 

5 hours of sleep. 150 new emails, 30 of which require immediate response. 6 a.m. call with freelancer. 10 web pages to be created by 6 p.m. 2 invitations to write for the upcoming conference. 11 a.m. call with graphic designer. 3 ill-defined projects due yesterday. Presentation due for the board meeting at 4 p.m.  Conduct training session about new project-planning software for 6 employees and 1 contractor. 10 minutes to catch up on social media. 4 meetings. 30 phone calls from vendors. 16-hour work days. 80-hour work weeks.

This is a typical day in the life of one of my customers, by the numbers. How close is it to your work life? To that of your customers? In fact, this is the reality facing most buyers at most companies, according to sales guru Jill Konrath, in her book SNAP Selling.

Konrath argues that this new normal has had a profound impact on the way buyers respond to vendors’ marketing and sales efforts. Because buyers are so frazzled, they’re hard-pressed to pay to attention to your solutions—no matter how beneficial those solutions might be. They’re resistant to change because they fear it will make their lives more complicated. They believe most of their options are the same and default to price as a key factor. The result: while people spend hours researching solutions, they’re ultimately afraid to make changes and buying decisions grind to a halt.

This isn’t to say that customers don’t want to solve their problems. It means that reaching these customers requires a new approach. Rather than focusing on your products, you become hyper-focused on customer needs. With every marketing and sales interaction, Konrath says, you need to be prepared to answer the following questions:

• How simple is it?
• Does the person or company provide value?
• Is it aligned with what we’re trying to accomplish?
• How big of a priority is it?

This article describes Konrath’s four principles for getting in the door with today’s frazzled customers and how high-quality content can help.

Simple

As buyers become more overloaded, simplicity becomes more important. People simply can’t stand to add more complexity to their lives. Even a small perceived complexity can squash their interest.

Konrath says that most sellers rarely, if ever, take this into account as they plan their strategies and interactions with customers. Yet failure to minimize customers’ effort sets you up for a major derailment. You need to constantly monitor everything you do to ensure simplicity.

This principle applies to content marketing.

Most technology marketers are aware that up to 70 percent of the sales cycle occurs before customers ever speak with a salesperson. In 2015, 93% of technology marketers turned to content to reach potential customers as they conduct their initial research, according to the latest Content Marketing Institute B2B trends report. This means content must do some heavy lifting until customers are ready to speak with a salesperson.

Yet, when I recently did a spot check of content assets on technology vendors’ websites, many failed the simplicity test. As I reviewed white papers, solution briefs, case studies, and other resources, I found myself reading the content two, three, four times to trying to follow what they were saying.

While each piece had different issues, many were plagued by complexity. In some, the copy was disorganized, which made it hard to follow. In some cases, redundancies that made copy confusing; when paragraphs in different sections of a single document say basically the same thing, using slightly different terminology, the reader is left wondering, which version is correct. Sentences in many assets were long. And many were in passive voice which made them extremely difficult to follow.

Go to any high-quality publication, say the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, and you’ll see how to do things right. The first paragraph makes it crystal clear what the article is about. The writing flows logically and seamlessly from one topic to the next. The writing is lean and clear and active. You’ll find a lot of stories and concrete examples to further clarify abstract concepts.   

Invaluable

Even if you succeed in making things simple, you must still differentiate yourself. Customers are well aware that they have many good choices. Even if your company has strong differentiators, they believe your lead will be short lived and that competitors will quickly close the gap.

Konrath argues that the only chance you have to truly differentiate yourself lies in the value you personally bring to the relationship. Customers want to work with smart, savvy people who bring them beneficial ideas, insights and information.

Content is a perfect way to demonstrate value to customers during the long dry summer before customers speak to a sales rep. But content is only valuable if the customer thinks it’s valuable.

Customers tune content out when it:

• Contains lots of hype. Words like mission-critical, industry-leading, cutting-edge and other superlatives are sure to put customers’ BS meter on high alert.
• Uses lots of jargon and unfamiliar terminology. I recently edited a datasheet describing the partnership between two technology behemoths. The initial draft touched on the other products from one of the partners that enhanced the collaboration. But the vendor simply listed the products, assuming that everyone knew what they were. The first thing I did was edit the draft to briefly explain what these products did and how they benefitted customers.
• Is self centered. Content that only talks about the wonders of your solution or methodology is sure to meet an untimely end at the hands of the delete key.
• Tries to be all things to all people. With solutions like databases, spreadsheets, business analytics, collaboration solutions, and so on that can benefit any business, there’s a temptation to create one document that applies to all customers. Big mistake. Don’t expect busy people to connect the dots for you. You need to pick specific target markets and describe exactly how the solution applies to them.

Content is valuable and will help you differentiate your when:

• It specifically addresses their concerns. The best marketers increasingly create personas to gain insights into specific buyer profiles. They then use these personas to determine how these buyers make their purchase decisions and what information they need to make those decisions along the way. These smart marketers are also taking into account buyer preferences when it comes to the format of the materials—some buyers prefer presentations, others longish white papers, others podcasts, videos, webinars, and so on.
• It answers particular questions or solves a particular problem that they face.  Content that customers will find useful include thought-leadership content that describes new solutions to old problems, answers to common questions, not to mention actionable information and tips.

One caveat. Valuable content alone isn’t enough. For example, in my survey of technology vendor resources, one vendor’s resource page was chock full of titles proven to garner interest, “10 ways to…” “How to…..” and so on. However, while the ideas were great, the papers themselves were poorly written, which meant they were difficult to read and understand. Customers won’t stick around and read content with a good headline if it’s poorly written.  

Aligned

Frazzled customers only care about content they deem relevant. If you don’t explain how your content aligns with customers’ business objectives, you run the risk of being eliminated from consideration before you have a chance to demonstrate your true value.

Konrath says that prospects will consider you irrelevant when you:

• Present information about your product, service or solution before you understand their business directions and challenges.
• Know little about your prospect’s business, industry or market trends—but try to sell them something anyway.
• Use proof points (case studies, testimonials, white papers) about customers whom the prospect believes are fundamentally different from them.

To demonstrate your alignment with your customers, you content needs to:

• Show that you understand the customer and their role or industry. Begin documents with a brief description of the problem that you solve. The idea is to get the customer nodding and saying to themselves “Yeah, that’s so true” as they read your copy.
• Carefully analyze your target markets and then create case studies or testimonials that match the key characteristics of that market. For example, I helped several healthcare IT vendors create case studies about physicians in every specialty imaginable, obstetrics, oncology, endocrinology, pediatrics, radiology, and so on.

Priority

Customers will always act on urgent priorities. But priorities change all the time. When they do, prospects shuffle things around and previously urgent projects lose steam.  

As a result, you’ll get the best results if you continually monitor the highest priority issues your customers face and be sure every communication you send blends your offering’s value with your customers’ priorities. Clearly this is easiest when you’re in a one-to-one sales situation with a large customer. Your sales reps will need to do their homework and identify the individual issues, so called “trigger events” these customers face that will lead them to take immediate action.

But marketers can apply this principal as well by continually incorporating feedback regarding typical customer priorities into their marketing materials.

SNAP to it

As customers put off talking to salespeople until late in the sales cycle, marketing efforts must extend deeper into the sales process. Yet selling to today’s crazy-busy customers is tough. Their time has become their most precious resource, and they guard it ferociously. They’re also less likely than ever to want to put in the time and effort required to make a change. Nonetheless, customers still want to solve problems. This means there’s a tremendous opportunity for marketers whose efforts are aligned with what customers are looking for—those who can create content that’s effortless for customers to understand, provides real value, is aligned with their concerns, and addresses their highest priority issues.  

A Grand Experiment in Marketing

During the Mad Men era, advertising was much more of an art than a science. When Don Draper tried to sell his clients on a new campaign, more often than not, he relied on his good looks and gift for storytelling to beguile clients. Sure Sterling Cooper occasionally threw in a few focus groups to test out concepts, but the dozen people they polled were hardly a representative sample.

In short, it was never truly possible to measure the impact of a campaign.

Today, art remains a critical component of marketing. But it’s married to hard science. Because much marketing is now online and online marketing is imminently trackable, marketers can easily measure results. In addition, analytics tools make it possible to look for deeper meanings and uncover hidden trends. 

The Advent of Agile Marketing

Marketers are using this ability to obtain accurate feedback on their campaigns to take a page from the software developer’s handbook. Software developers are increasingly using agile development techniques originally popularized for use in mobile app development. With agile development, programmers quickly create an app with a limited number of key features, deploy it to customers, solicit feedback, incorporate suggested changes, and then repeat the process—all in a short period of time.

Developers deploy applications much more quickly than with traditional “big bang” deployments that deliver hundreds of features at once. And, because developers revise their apps continually based on feedback from end users, the applications are much more likely to offer what customers are looking for.    

Similarly, marketers are increasingly using an agile marketing approach. They now try things, see what happens and change their marketing on the fly. For example, Maia Tihista, Vice President, Global Marketing for Flexera Software noted, “We try different tactics for our email campaigns to see if open rates improve. When we run nurturing campaigns, we use marketing analytics tools to see what’s generating pipeline and bookings and make adjustments accordingly. For example, we might find that one solution has a long buying process and buyers want to consume technical content. We can easily determine what papers work better for them.”

Course Corrections

Constant monitoring allows marketers to pinpoint necessary course corrections quickly. For example, Sowmya Murthy, Head of Marketing, Technology Product Group for Unisys is constantly testing whether her messaging hits the mark and makes changes as needed. “We monitor ferociously as we roll out campaigns. We talk to customers to determine whether a particular problem area cited in campaigns exists or matter as much as we think it does. If an issue turns out not to matter so much, we scrap that piece of the campaign and focus on areas where we’re hearing about problems. This allows us to course correct on a regular basis.”

In one example Murthy said, “One of our messages that we used in an email campaign wasn’t nuanced enough. Open rates improved dramatically when we made our messages sharper.”

Murthy rolled out the improved messaging not only within the original email but to other downstream elements of the campaign such telemarketing scripts. “We use our findings to influence not just one area of a campaign, we apply them where applicable along every point in the road to the sale.”

Mixing Art and Science

Of course, it can be easy to go too far and base campaigns on data alone. But the best campaigns retrain their spark of inspiration, using analytics to measure whether that spark translates into sales.  For example, Andrew Spoeth, Head of Social Media Marketing for CA, noted, “As a social marketer, it’s an exciting time because you can be creative and analytical at the same time.”

 

 

5 Ways to Create Quality Content in Bulk

When it comes to making your mark with content marketing, what’s more important—quality or quantity?

The answer is a resounding “Both.”

Today, everyone’s a content marketer. To get seen, you need to create enough content and promote it in enough locations. To get attention, the content had better be good.

What’s a marketer with a limited budget and a small staff to do?

Here are five ways marketers are creating content that’s both good and ubiquitous enough to get noticed and have an impact.

1.       Produce High-Quality Capstone Pieces 

 Marketers are strategically investing in high-quality pieces that I call Capstone pieces. “We’d much rather do a high-quality piece we can market in several different ways than 10 different white papers,” noted Alison Munn, Senior Social Media Marketing Manager at BMC.

This capstone piece might be white paper or eBook that offers thought leadership or handy “How to” information. Some of the best pieces I’ve seen combine useful information with whimsical artwork and a sense of humor. 

2.       Reuse Bigger Pieces Like Crazy

Marketers then reuse the content as many ways as they can. Based on their capstone content, they might produce a series of blog posts, videos, infographics, webinars, podcasts, tweets, and the like. Explained Greg White, Director of Product Marketing at CommVault. “Overall, we’re producing more content, but it’s coming from fewer pieces. Instead of standalone pieces, there’s a lot of cross pollination.” 

3.      Add Visual Elements

 Adding interesting visual elements can give whatever content you’re able to product much more of an impact.

Observed one marketer, “You rarely see any postings on Google+ without a photo. Twitter is getting more and more into that as well. We might embed a SlideShare or pictures into a tweet. When we want to share a link to a written case study, we share a picture to catch their eye. And our case studies with the most views are videos. We have innovation awards once a year and we did videos of all this year’s winners.”

4.       Support All Phases of the Buying Process

Marketers charged with creating content are becoming much more customer-focused about what they create. Instead of putting out a steady stream of content, they’re thinking about what their customers really need to help with their buying decision.

Commvault is a case in point. Not long ago, the company created lots of white papers for large numbers of topics.

But over the past year, White and his team have been focusing in on the buyer’s progression for each of his products’ top three buyer personas and what they need at each stage of the buying cycle. Said White, “We eliminate anything that doesn’t have a place in the natural progression.”

Once they determine what types of messages are necessary, White’s team creates a content map of the types of content they need to get there. They then determine what existing content they might be able to use. Said White, “We figure out what we can leverage so we don’t need to reinvent the wheel and then determine what gaps exist.”

White pays careful attention to how content can move the buyer from one stage to the next. One tactic CommVault uses to get the right content to the right person is a quiz designed to get the prospect into the content flow. Said White,  “A quiz is fun and it’s got value. Everyone wants to know what the end result is. Based on the answer to the quiz, we can then put the prospect into the appropriate lead-nurturing tracks.”

5.       Think about Themes

Another way of making content more strategic is by building a series of content all around a  single theme. For example, Martin Johnson, Senior Director of Marketing and Demand Generation at Elastica, defines a theme and then builds as many activities as possible around that construct. Johnson says, “In a recent campaign, we wanted to raise the visibility for one of our solutions and the application security market as a whole. So we did a white paper/eBook on the topic, did a related webcast with a contributing analyst, and promoted it over social media. Overall we do a set of proven activities that are broad enough to get exposure but not so many that we have to scramble to produce materials. Our campaign was quite successful. Our product promotion had 370 registrants for the webinar, 180 people attended. The eBook generated 500-600 leads—all of solid quality.”

Yes, you do need a lot of high quality content to make an impact on the market. And the way to do that is to create content in a strategic manner so that each piece is as effective as possible, and then repurpose your content like crazy.

 

 

 

 

Print: Down, But Not Out

Pity the poor print publication. The popularity of print of all types appears to be in freefall. 

Only 11 percent of marketers expect to increase their print ad budget over the next 12 months, while 32 percent expect to cut print ad budgets, according to the Association of Business Information & Media Companies. Many companies that once put out print publications for thought leadership and customer retention have moved to digital only versions. For example, CA cancelled the print version of its externally facing Smart Enterprise publication and has moved to a strictly online publication in partnership with Wired Magazine.

The reasons for this move are clear. Physically publishing a print magazine and sending it out using the postal service is far more expensive than digital distribution. It’s also harder to determine ROI. While you may be able to track circulation figures and response to individual ads —tracking print results will never be as sophisticated as the simplest online tracking capabilities that instantly show you how many people read an article, liked it, and passed it on.

Nonetheless, print publications are not without their advocates. The Association of Business Information & Media Company’s Research found that 96 percent of readers peruse both print magazines and websites. And while readers turn to online publications more frequently—73 percent use websites at least weekly and 67 percent read e-newsletters at least weekly—print publications still made it into the top three channels. Indeed, 45 percent of respondents report that they consult magazines at least once a week.

The savviest marketers then are not abandoning print. Rather, they’re using it strategically. As Michael DiLeva, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bentley Systems noted, “Print is still important. The key is knowing your audience. We’re seeing mass customization. Different people consume content in different ways. We produce engineering software. Engineers may look at video, but they also want written long-form content that’s more outcome oriented.”

When companies publish their own print publications, they reap numerous qualitative benefits that nonetheless directly support sales.

Providing an Entrée to Decision Makers

Articles, particularly those in a company’s print publication can serve as a way to get sales reps in front of high-level executives. Loni Frazita, a marketing manager based in Long Island, New York, found hat, when working with a previous client, the company’s sales force would have a relationship at a manager and director level, but might have trouble getting in to see the VP or CIO level of decision maker. Sending a reporter to interview that high- level decision maker for a trend article could open doors.

 “Once the article came out, we had a relationship with them,” said Frazita, “The article acted as an icebreaker and allowed us to start a conversation. The sales rep could call and ask if they could drop off the magazine. By then, the customer was often more willing to listen.”

Lining Up Customer References

Most companies find that customer success stories are among the most valuable pieces of content they can produce. But it’s not uncommon for the sales reps handling the accounts to fiercely guard access to their customers. Reps typically fear that asking the customer to participate in a success story will compromise their ability to renew the customer’s contract or upsell them on additional products or services.   

Esri, the geomapping company, has used print publications to help line up elusive customer success stories. 

“There can be trepidation,” said Jesse Theodore, Communications Manager at Esri. “One of the greatest ways I can get buy in from the sales team to allow us to approach contacts for customer success stories is to show them an example in a print publication. I can then say, this is what we want to do for your customers. The printed stories are very compelling. The light goes on in their eyes. It does a lot to build bridges and assuage concerns. This happens much more with a print article than a PDF. People just get it.”

Building Strong Relationships with Prospects and Customers

Esri still publishes several publications that have both print and online versions. One magazine, Arcnews, reaches more than 750,000 people and talks about the what and why of geomapping. Another publication, ArcUser, maintains a circulation of 500,000 people and talks about the company’s products and how to get the most out of them. They also publish 8-12 page newsletters for various industries.

The company is convinced that the print publications provide that special something that helps cement relationships  with customers and prospects.  Said Theodore, “Our marketing and sales people love print publication leave-behinds. There’s something visceral about seeing a story in print versus seeing it in digital.”

While the response may not be as measurable as the clicks and likes in the online world, Theodore says, “Anecdotally, we get a lot of positive response. Our editors get emails. People come up to me all the time on the road.”

 “We promote digital but we’re not excluding print,” said Theodore, “People want their print pieces. There’ll always be a place for print.”

 

 

The Ivy League of Content Marketing

A generation ago, getting straight As and 800s on the SATs could assure a student a spot at an Ivy League university.

Today, judging from my vantage point of having completed dozens of alumnae interviews for my Ivy League alma mater,  those credentials are barely enough to get you to the starting gate. To win the golden ticket, you’ll need to lard on additional uber-impressive accomplishments. Winning a national debate championship. Dancing at a prestigious NYC dance conservatory. Having a parent who’s a movie star. In recent years, these are the strategies that I’ve seen win people their spots at the nation’s top schools.

The same is true of content marketing. Producing a white paper along with a few articles, case studies and blog posts is simply no longer enough to make an impression with admissions officers—namely, your potential customers. You need to not only up the quality of your core content, but also lard on the bells and whistles.

I recently spoke with several marketers who gave me tips for how they’re  bringing content to the Ivy League level. Regardless of content type, it should meet one or more of the following criteria:

Educational

The content should teach the reader something. Greg White, Director of Product Marketing at Commvault practices this method of improving content. “We’ve changed from the traditional types of content to more advisory white papers. We’ll do things like “The Top 10 Things You Need to Think about X Topic. We also create more thought- leadership content.”

 Engaging

Many marketers are concerned with creating engaging content. But what does this concept really mean? For Stacey Sayer, Global Manager, Social Media Marketing at Level 3, engaging content is content that invites an implicit or explicit response. For example, it could be controversial or it could ask for direct feedback.

Emotive

Even in B2B marketing, Sayer suggests that marketers not be afraid to go for an emotional response.  For example, Sayer says, “Try making people laugh. The worst thing is apathy. If people shrug their shoulders or yawn then it’s time to rethink your content.”

Exclusive

Create content specifically for each of your audiences. Sayer recommends, for example, that you, “have short form content for Twitter that only people on Twitter will see. Make the audience on each platform feel it was worth their time to hit the Like or Follow button by giving them access to something that they wouldn’t get anywhere else. Make them feel like they’re part of an exclusive club.”

Visual

When dealing with any medium, but particularly social media, it’s increasingly important for content to be visual. Think infographics, photos, podcasts, videos, SlideShares, and interactive experiences. Promote them over social media. Said Sayer, “The Internet is primarily a visual medium. My analytics tell me that if something is pretty to look at, it performs really well.”

Paid Social—Hype or Help?

When marketers first started selling bottled water, they competed with free tap water by evoking images  of pristine mountain streams. Over time, it became clear that bottled water was simply municipal tap water polluted with BPA from the plastic packaging. People were better off switching back to the tap.

Is the same true for paid social media? Is paid social any better than the stuff you can get for free? Or is it simply marketing hype?

The Benefits and Shortcomings of Organic Social

The answer lies in the benefits and drawbacks of organic social.

When marketers first adopted social media, one of the biggest advantages was that it was a wide open frontier. You didn’t have to compete for attention. Better yet, once you developed an engaged following, you owned that audience. If you created content people loved, you could reach your followers directly, without fees and middlemen.

Social continues to offer free access. But now it’s horribly overcrowded. As a result, response rates for organic social have plummeted, with average conversion rates for Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest standing at 2.3%, according to eMarketer.  

Some marketers can continue to profit from an all organic strategy—if they provide unique value. For example, Interactive Intelligence’s research found that it was unique among its closest competitors in providing educational content, while competitors mostly delivered promotional content. Because of the unique value of its offering, Interactive Intelligence has been able to achieve success with an all-organic strategy. Nonetheless, the company takes special care as it develops its content. As Denise Meyer, Social Media Strategist, Interactive Intelligence says, “An all organic strategy forces us to be more creative with timing, placement, images, and copywriting.”  

The Benefits of Adding Paid Social to the Mix

But many other B2B marketers are finding that a paid strategy is an essential complement to their organic social strategy. Paid social delivers three types of benefits:

1.       Greater reach.

Paid brings your message outside your network. It puts your message in front of people even if they’re not following you so you can expand your audience and reach. Then, if they find your content valuable, they have the opportunity to become more engaged.

2.       Better targeting.

Paid search channels offer more flexible targeting. On Twitter, promoted tweets let you target followers of accounts similar to those of your company’s competitors. You can also target campaigns using keywords based on known customer pain points. LinkedIn’s sponsored updates options provide  a number of options, such as the ability to target sponsored updates to your customer’s key decision makers, based on, say, job function and seniority. The Skill keyword option pinpoints individuals who list particular skills in their LinkedIn profile.  

3.       Better Conversion.

Marketers are coming to the consensus that paid in combination with organic yields much higher conversion rates than organic alone. A recent study found that conversion rates for paid Twitter advertising are twice as high as for organic Twitter ads (3.9% versus 1.5%).  

Paid social—hype or help? The answer is clear. Paid social does provide real advantages. But the key with paid social, as in every other type of marketing is to know your markets, create the right content, test, and measure results.