Buyers sit squarely in the drivers seat of the purchase process - with steering wheel in-hand and a foot on a pedal (brake OR accelerator).  They are busy and driven to distraction by information overload. What is a B2B marketer to do?  Four simple ways to improve the performance of your content marketing:

1.   Remember that B2B prospects are people too.  Your content needs to catch their attention; even entertain them.  Surprise them with a little humor, creativity, or something unexpected:
  a.   If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then consider an infographic or short-video clip instead of a traditional 14-page whitepaper. 

  b.   A little humor has the potential to increase the share-ability of your content.  I forwarded Eloqua’s Juan Eloqua series to many of my marketing peers. 

2.   Repurpose your content into different mediums and smaller “bites”.  For example, take sections of a webcast and publish them as short podcasts.  Prospects may not have an hour to invest in a webinar but they may give you 15 minutes for a podcast.

4.   Identify the next step for your prospects.  Don’t close the door on future engagement.  In other words, make sure to point your prospects to other marketing content, groups, and sources of information as they educate themselves.

The word “Lead” is tossed around in every sales and marketing organization.  Generally, there is agreement on what a lead looks like in terms of industry, business type, job title, company size and ideally – a big budget.  Demand Generation and Inbound Marketing teams work to generate a flow of new leads to feed the marketing funnel.  There are times when the sales team complains that they need new leads.  A common response to this issue is to buy a list of “leads”.   These “leads” are passed to the sales team for cold calling.  The results of these campaigns can usually be described as abysmal and a complete waste of time because:

1.     These lists do not include leads.  They are lists of contacts based on simple demographic (job titles) and firm-graphics (industry, company size, type-of-business).  A lead is much more than a job title at the right company. Simply stated – a lead is a hand raiser who has indicated they are seeking information to solve a problem that you can help with.
2.     Contact information is generally poor due to the economic downturn causing so much volatility in the workforce. 

The results from the above described investment in cold-calling a list often involve:
·      Finger pointing between marketing and sales
·      Wasted time
·      Wasted marketing budget
·      Frustration

Take 3 steps to avoid falling into this trap:
1.     Create consensus between marketing and sales on the definition of a lead.  At the highest level, it is important to define a marketing qualified lead by the types of solutions the lead is researching.  At some point in the purchase process, figure out what makes a lead “sales qualified” and ready for personal follow-up. Ultimately, a full lead scoring system can be developed to integrate both marketing automation and CRM systems. 
2.     Figure out the average number of sales touches (X) that were required to convert a lead to an opportunity for your business.   The average number of touches is likely to be higher than you think (easily 5-10 sales touches).  It will vary by company, product type, sales cycle, etc.  Task your sales team to reach out to every single lead at least X times before they bother with cold-calling contacts.
3.     Arm your sales team with educational content and recommend places to find real leads.  When they have time to cold-call – encourage them to engage with leads that are seeking solutions via forums, twitter, and online communities.  

This infographic is based on a B2B Benchmark study released by MECLABS shows how marketers are optimizing their marketing funnels.  

The biggest surprise is that a whopping 68% of organizations have not identified their marketing funnel!   Thus, as the infographic displays,  they are focused on the total lead volume and the closing rate of those leads.  This is a limited view of the business.   

Conversely, only 32% of businesses surveyed have identified their funnel to reveal its:   
1.  Strengths - what works at generating qualified leads and converting them to customers  
2.  Weaknesses (where leads are not converting or leaking out of the funnel). 

The logical question is - "How do you optimize a marketing funnel that you don't understand?"  This is an an expensive way to operate.  


Invest the time to understand your how your marketing funnel works at all levels.  Strive to improve funnel conversion rates and improve the the ROI of your marketing spend.  

I was struck by a discussion on the difference between Lead Generation and Demand Generation -  "Lead Generation is Crippling Demand Generation"  The two terms are often used interchangeably - but they are absolutely different.  I had this discussion just yesterday with a marketing leader.  

Before you build a launch plan, recommend specific marketing content and campaigns, you need to know what the organizations objectives are?  How will the ROI of this investment in marketing be measured?  Additionally, where is the marketing funnel working, and where are the "leaks", where your prospects are opting-out of the purchase process?

Lead Generation is characterized by offering up relevant content to prospects.  If a prospect fills out a form to download your white paper, case study, comparison guide, or archived webinar...they are characterized as a "lead".  There are all sorts of leads, however, in different stages of the purchase process.  The quality of the lead can be measured by the rate at which they convert to sales readiness.  A lead is not simply a job title at a specific type of business.  A lead is a hand-raiser - a prospect who has a problem that you can help them solve.  The quality of the content, how well the title and summary engage a prospect (who has a problem your solution can solve) is imperative.  

Demand Generation requires more broad distribution of content and messaging.  All of your content cannot be gated behind a registration form.  Building awareness with potential buyers (early in the purchase process) is important.  Snippets of your content and messaging must be integrated across your website and social media conversations.  Ensuring that your organization builds a reputation for leadership in your space will get you on the "shopping list" when prospects are ready to actively shop.  

Development of a comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy integrates content across both Demand Generation and Lead Generation.   Executing on both will accelerate the ROI of your marketing exponentially.  

I just viewed a fun infographic which does a great job of summarizing how  significantly the purchase process has changed for buyers/shoppers.  

Buyers sit squarely in the drivers seat of the purchase process - with  steering wheel in-hand with a foot on a pedal (brake OR accelerator).  Barraging target segments with emails, direct mail, and in-your-face online banner advertising is becoming increasingly ineffective at generating leads.  It can, however, be very effective at causing opt-outs and spam reports (prospects slamming on the break pedal). 

When prospects are ready to buy (use the accelerator)  - they will seek the information they need to make a decision.  They will download white papers, visit blogs, read expert reviews, and seek out comparison guides.  They are very likely to make their purchase decision BEFORE they every contact your sales team.  

This new way of shopping demands marketers focus on the buyer, the sales process,  and providing the types information they will need to make a purchase decision.  Marketers need to enable learning by creating good content and participating in prospect engagement and learning.  

Inbound marketing - creating relevant content  and making it available for prospects is the new marketing imperative for driving revenue.

infographic

I found this factoid to be amazing:  "82 percent of B2B marketers now employ content marketing as a strategy in their marketing programs. Coming in at a distant second place is search engine marketing at 70 percent." according to HiveFive B2B Marketing Survey Report.

Content Marketing is more than King it is exploding ....but why do so few marketers understand it?