 It is an easy content marketing virus to catch. Your new widget is awesome. It is faster than a turbo-charged drone, it takes less space than a bedbug in your suitcase and sleeker than any i-gizmo. You whip up the standard marketing content including:
• Web pages that are optimized for phrases like “Fast Widget”, “Small Widget” and “Sleek Widget” • Data Sheets which detail every technical spec you can find • White Papers that describes how to use your widget • “Case Studies” (which are fictional) because you don’t have a customer ready in the wings to rave about your widget • Video demos of your widget in action • Webcasts of your VP of Sales talking about your widget Next, You push email campaigns at target customers with catchy subject lines like “The Fastest Widget on the Market”. You post about your widget on all the social networks. And then you wait. And wait. You have been the victim of one of the most common content marketing viruses in the business; the “It's all About Me” virus. You forgot that in the customer doesn’t care about widgets. Customers are busy. They aren’t looking for faster, smaller, sleeker widgets. If they were, they would find your website and order widgets galore. Customers are looking to solve problems and if you can help, they will come. It is easy to get overly zealous about creating marketing content all about your widget. You still need your marketing content, but you need to shift your perspective to center on the problems your widget solves for customers. Listen to your customers. Maybe your target customers spend too much time on something your widget can do in a snap. Or maybe they are challenged to by big clunky alternatives to your widget. Your content marketing strategy needs to look more like: • Web pages that are optimized for phrases how to fix a problem (with your widget) • Data Sheets that describe use cases (and a few specs) • White Papers about solving problems (which your widget can do) • Authentic Case Studies featuring beta-customers • Video demos of your how customers get value from widgets more quickly. • Webcasts starring happy customers who are willing to share their success story The bottom line is that your customer doesn’t want to hear about your widgets. Your content marketing strategy needs to focus on the “It’s all about Me” Customer not the “It’s All about Me” Widget.
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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. I have been designing an awesome info graphic that shows how marketing has changed over the past decades. Fortunately, I found this "History of Marketing" info graphic which does a great job of telling the story. This saved me at least a week of work!
The Bad News: Marketing is much more complicated as the number of ways to engage customers has ballooned. Talking at your customers is no longer effective. They are adept at tuning out unwanted messaging. The Really Good News: Your ability to engage with customers is no longer a function the size of your wallet. Inbound marketing (attracting the shoppers to you) utilizing a solid Inbound Marketing Plan utilizing SEO and Content Marketing delivers leads to your sales team. The Best News Inbound marketing can be integrated across all outbound marketing campaigns (email, content syndication, events) to maximize impact of your marketing spend. 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? |
AuthorPhyllis Stewart- Archives
April 2015
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