Marketing Profs Content Best Practices Final 040910 (1)

Unleash the Power of Content to Engage Your Prospects May 5, 2010

Agenda Content Marketing The Drive to Deliver Relevant Content 8 Steps to a Solid Content Strategy Stephanie Tilton and Michele Linn How BreakingPoint Used Content to Increase New Customer Acquisition by 240%Pam O’Neal How Kadient Built a Content Library that Maps to the Sales CycleAmy Black

It’s the End of the (B2B) World As We Know It Photo credit: zachwass2000 on flickr

The Disconnect…and the Implication Buyers only find relevant content 42% of the time. The lack of relevant content as perceived by buyers is responsible for reducing the vendor's chance of closing the sale by 45%. Source: IDG Communications

The Opportunity… Almost 95% of recent purchasers said the solution provider they chose “provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.” 66% of respondents indicated the “consistent and relevant communication provided by both the sales and marketing organizations” was a key influence in choosing that company as their solution provider. Source: DemandGen and Genius.com - Inside the Mind of the B2B Buyer

…to Beat the Competition “…vendors that get the right mix of content at the right time for influencers and decisions makers will significantly increase their chances of making a sale.” - Bob Johnson, Vice President, Engagement Optimization at IDG Communications

What Does that Mean to You? Photo credit: HansKristian on flickr

Deliver Valuable, Relevant Content “Create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to.” ,[object Object], Author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Content Marketing is the Secret "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” - Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett, Authors of Get Content. Get Customers.

It Starts with Strategy Photo credit: KF 红相机 on flickr

It Starts with Strategy Source: Joe Pulizzi

Creating a Content Strategy Listen Develop buyer personas Map content to the buying cycle Think like a publisher Commit to remarkable content Extract maximum value from every asset Make your content easy to find, access, and share Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Google Blog Search 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Understand Your Audience Base: North American and European technology decision-makers at firms with 100 or more employees Forrester: For B2B Tech Companies, Demographics Shape Adoption 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Understand Your Audience CIO Archetypes and Focus Function head – Achieving IT operational excellence Transformational leader – Creating enterprise-wide change Business strategist – Driving business strategy 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2 CIO Magazine: State of the CIO 2009

Develop Buyer Personas "a short biography of the typical customer, not just a job description but a person description.” “The buyer persona profile gives you a chance to truly empathize with target buyers, to step out of your role as someone who wants to promote a product and see, through your buyers' eyes, the circumstances that drive their decision process.” 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Bring Your Prospects to Life CIO Joe, CIO Transformational Leader 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Sample Persona 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Map to the Buying Process 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Understand Content Preferences Best-in-class companies are: 5X more likely to maintain a library of collateral, copy, and messages that map to prospects' buying stages Better able to map content buying cycle stages based on prospect behavior Source: Aberdeen 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Understand Content Preferences 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Understand Content Preferences Source: Aberdeen Source: TechTarget 2009 Media Consumption Report: Mindset of the IT Pro During the Recession 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Map to the Buying Cycle 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Think Like a Publisher “We tend to think of intimacy as being personal—something for the salespeople. But we can do it by reliably delivering valuable content. Magazines have been doing it for years. Consistency, relevance, and quality create a very intimate relationship with readers.” - Chris Koch, ITSMA 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Create an Editorial Calendar 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Keys for the Editorial Calendar Be consistent DO: Deliver content on a regular basis DON’T: Publish only when you have something new Commit to your content DO: Think about the content your audience prefers DON’T: Try a lot of things but don’t do anything well Map out content DO: Move people through the buying cycle DON’T: String random pieces of content together 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Craft Valuable, Relevant Content 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Example: Competitive Comparisons 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Example: Shake Up Your Case Studies 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Extract Maximum Value from Every Asset 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Repurposing Content Don’t . . . Do . . . ,[object Object]

Ask “How can give my readers a new way of understanding a key issue?“

Include a plan to reuse content from the start

Customize your content for a certain audience, vertical or place in the buying cycle

Simply put the same content in different channels

Ask “What more can I create?”

Consider content reuse as an afterthought

Recycle the same content again and again3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Make Content Easy to Find, Access, and Share 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Make Content Easy to Find 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Increasing Visibility of White Papers Strategy 1: Create more content available to be indexed by search engines Tactic: Creation of individual white paper landing pages to unlock long-tail keyword phrases Added hyperlinks that connected users (and search engines) to each applicable White Paper Executive Summary Page 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2 Source: KoMarketing Associates

Increasing Visibility of White Papers (cont.) Strategy 2: Enhance landing pages so there is both PPC and SEO value Simplified the conversion process by adding a request form to each landing page. RESULTS Organic search engine traffic increased by 225% from Q1 to Q4 of that year 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Increasing Visibility of Case Studies Approximately 100 case studies broken down into individual landing pagesTo aid lead generation efforts, we added an additional call-to-action and cross-links at the bottom of the page 33% growth in unique keywords sending traffic during the second month of the program 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Make Content Easy to Access 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Make Content Easy to Share Source: Ecollo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Make Content Easy to Share 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

Measure the Impact Photo credit: Tyrone Shum on flickr 3 6 8 7 5 4 1 2

How BreakingPoint Leveraged Technical Content to Increase New Customer Acquisition by 240% Case Study Pam O’Neal Vice President of Marketing BreakingPoint Systems, Inc.

“Do not interrupt what people are interested in; be what people are interested in.” Jeff Lanctot Avenue A | razorfish

Monitoring, Engaging, Prioritizing Mine for topics and opportunities (key influencers) Capture the conversation Analyze SEO keyword volume Monitor analytics to ID popular topics Identify and create content for buyer needs, issues Prioritize content by effort Identify opportunities

Speak to Your Buyers ,[object Object]

Maintain with fresh valuable information ,[object Object]

Spread the Word Key Messages and Thought Leadership Content Monthly Webcast Promotions Use Case Targeted Sales Presentations Membership in BreakingPont Group and Other Key Groups

Marketing Profs Content Best Practices Final 040910 (1)

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