I just finished reading this year’s latest marketing survey results over at the Junta42 site. It’s interesting to see the popularity of different marketing content pieces as part of the overall marketing strategy. You can download the report for yourself here.

Social media marketing (with the exception of blogs) is now in the number one spot. 72% of those polled have now incorporated social media into their marketing activities. What I’d be even more curious to know though, is have they seen and improvements? More hits to the website? More inquiries? Even more sales?

The next five things on the list are what I consider to be the new marketing sweet spot. They are the heart of content marketing. When done well, they cover the full spectrum of the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) marketing concept. Each piece can serve one or more AIDA goals, but the suite should include pieces that cover the complete AIDA spectrum.

From the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Research by Junta42

Each of these content terms mean different things to different marketers. Personally, I’ve seen each term over-used and under developed. Too many times, companies will label the content with a term below and not fully back it up with meaningful content. These are the way I see each piece

1. E-newsletters – Publish monthly and include product and company news, customer success stories, technical “how-to’s”, and business ideas. Combination of short (100 words or less) and longer (up to 1000 words) articles.
2. Blogs – Keep topics fresh, at least weekly, and relatively short (less than 500 words)
3. White Papers – Don’t fall for the short attention span, 2-pager. Do your topic justice by demonstrating a business problem and how it can be solved. Typically 6-10 pages.
4. Articles – These might be in your own publications or industry publications and are probably best as a deep dive on a topic at between 1000 and 2000 words.
5. Case Studies – These can be as short as two pages, but make sure you provide concrete information about the customer’s initial challenge, how it was solved, and lessons learned.

Effective marketers take the time to do it right. It’s not an area you want to hand off to your already busy product managers or the new marketing coordinator you just hired. Make sure the topics are well researched, the “story” told is coherent and professional, and that you accomplish your goal of what you want them to think and do after they’ve read it.

Content marketing is not an easy task and not every company has the resources in house to get the job done well. This is probably why the Junta42 survey also shows that smaller companies are spending twice the amount (as a percentage) on content marketing as their larger counterparts. Find yourself a content marketing professional you can trust and start building your content library, making sure you get the marketing assets you need to be successful.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Remember watching cartoons about Aladdin and the magic lamp? I always hoped I’d find a magic lamp on a beach somewhere and I’d be granted three wishes. Didn’t you wish you could have three wishes too?

Well today I’m setting aside my marketing hat, my BI hat, and my corporate sustainability hat. I’m putting on my customer hat and asking for three wishes I know  your marketing team can grant me.

Here are my three wishes:

1. I want a real relationship with you. I want to know that you are real people. I want to know that your company values align with mine. I want to know you are passionate about what you offer. I want to know you understand my needs and that you care about my success. I want to know how you give back to society. I will look for clues in your blog posts, Twitter tweets, forums, and other forms of social media.

2. I want you to help me be successful. I need to fully understand my challenge, including the business impacts. I need to learn better ways to do things, including best practices. I want to know how others have been able to overcome challenges and be successful. I need you to help educate me with credible and objective information. I need you to help me justify my business case. I will look for this in your white papers, case studies, data sheets, articles, webinars, e-books, and other educational content and tools.

3. I want to be able to find you when I need you. I want to easily find the information I need. I want my questions answered quickly. I want you to communicate in ways relevant to my needs. I want you to know who I am when I call. I will look for a well-designed, organized, and complete website, regular newsletters, targeted e-mails, trade show presence, search engine results, and most of all: contact information that leads me to a real person.

Rather than standing in the middle of the marketing department and looking out, I encourage you to walk over and stand in your customer’s office and look out. How do they see you and your company? Does your brand personality show through? Are you approachable? Do you offer a variety of content to help meet their educational needs?

If the magic genie could grant you three wishes (not necessarily marketing or business related), what would they be?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I came across some research done by IDG spread across two different posts that was pretty interesting. They interviewed over 100 information technology buyers about their content preferences from vendors. IDG noted there has been a 60% increase in content assets over the past five years. The rush is on to get in the content game and offer information prospective and current customers will find valuable and that will ultimately drive sales.

Only 39% of those interviewed said they find relevance in links offered to vendor content (though their expectation is only 50%). These same buyers say that if they find relevant content, it increases that vendor’s success rate.

The trouble may come when, in their haste, vendors don’t make the shift from promotional to educational content. Buyers want content that is relevant to their needs, and supports their decision making process. This means the content must have “meat” behind it and not just be considered marketing hype.

IDG asked IT buyers a series of questions about their content preferences from various social conversation channels. Here’s a brief recap of the top preferences by channels:

•             Blog – case studies, ads, tutorials, seminar material
•             Forums – tutorials, free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Live Chat – free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Microblog – ads, technical knowledge base, free event registration, white
•             Social networks – free event registration, ads, ROI calculator, white papers
•             Wikis – tutorials, white papers, case studies, knowledge base

To me, these seem more like expectations than preferences, and the study is really quite small. What I did like was their takeaway message.

Winners will be vendors that build a “relevant” content bridge to draw the conversation towards their own hosted platforms and insight.

This will motivate engagement, and build a sense of interest and reliance and credibility with buyers. The wrong content will damage vendor consideration within the ongoing conversation and beyond.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Is it just me or is most marketing content for B2B pretty dry? So much of our content says, “This is our software. It enables you to do this, so that you can do that.”

I’ve been thinking about the “dry and boring” problem for a long time. Longer than I’ve been a marcom writer and even going way back to the days when I was a marcom consumer, as an IT Director. I just keep thinking there has to be a better way.

The emergence of social media has helped changed the face of B2B marketing, an improvement in my opinion. It has a way of personalizing the relationship between vendor and customer. But something still seems to be missing. So, what if we could market using more storytelling?

Don’t you love a good story? Isn’t it more fun to listen to someone tell of an event and make the story come to life? Case studies are the closest we come to incorporating stories into our marketing content and I think even these could be improved. What I’m talking about is taking case studies and other marketing content to higher levels of storytelling. I’m talking more about creative non-fiction.

Creative non-fiction takes something that is true and writes it in a way that touches our senses. It creates a visual image and stirs up emotions using dramatic openings, realistic details, and expressive dialogue. These are just three ways to make a dry story compelling.

Dramatic openings – Capture your readers from the start. Use visual and exciting openings to compel them to read further.

Old: “Company ABC was spending 8 hours backing up their servers and when backups were running, everyone else had to be off the system.”

New: “The ringing phone interrupted the silence in the data room. On the other end was the CEO, hot that he was locked out of the system as he tried to get some last minute information for the board meeting in 30 minutes.”

Realistic details - Help the story come alive by providing details that touch the one or more of the five senses with detailed descriptions of the scene.

Old: “The vendor held a kickoff meeting to get everyone familiar with the project plan.”

New: “The blue dry marker squeaked across the white board as Joe, the project manager, highlighted the details of the project plan to the VP of Marketing, IT Director, and the project team.”

Expressive dialogue - I find customer quotes within case studies to be quite helpful. They offer a change in voice from the writer to the customer. However, most quotes end with the words “says” or states” such as “states Mr. Smith” which are really expressionless. What if we used more expressive dialogue tags?

Old: “We achieved a 50% improvement on our processing time,” says Mr. Smith, Operations Manager.

New: “We achieved a 50% improvement in our processing time,” the Operations Manager Mr. Smith boasted with a smile.

These are just a few tricks taken from the creative non-fiction world and I’m no fiction author. I’m sure every one of you could come up with even better examples.

It still may be a stretch to incorporate this style into our traditional marketing content and I’m probably treading on new ground here, but I throw it out there as a new, more personal direction for B2B marketing.  What do you think?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

My daughter, a college senior, dropped me a text message the other day that said, “I don’t know what to do with my life. Why didn’t I major in business?” 

Just so you know, she’s majoring in psychology but has always said she has no interest in becoming a psychologist. Of course, being the good parent, I supported and reassured her that she’d still be able to find a job.

Then today, while reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, I came across a section that explained how she felt. Stumbling on Happiness explores the psychology behind the emotions of happiness.

In particular, chapter seven speaks to the impact of time on happiness. What struck me was what Gilbert said about how we predict our future feelings based on how we feel in the present. 

The concept is that our predictions of the future are influenced by the present. Gilbert says, “Because time is such a slippery concept, we tend to imagine the future as the present with a twist, thus our imagined tomorrows inevitably look like slightly twisted versions of today.”

In its physical form, it’s the equivalent of going grocery shopping on an empty stomach. We’re hungry so in planning for future meals, everything sounds good! Conversely, if someone asks us what we want for dinner tomorrow, just after we’ve eaten a full meal, we can’t imagine being hungry anytime soon and are hard-pressed to come up with a suggestion.

He also makes the point that our future selves won’t see the world the way we see it now, in addition to our present selves not seeing the future accurately. So, in my daughter’s case, she can’t accurately imagine a career in business that would draw on her psychology knowledge because she only sees the world with what she knows today.

Now, think about this in a business setting. Your business customer is always looking and working toward the future. Guess what? They’re doing so within the framework of what they know today. You, as a marketer or vendor, have a different and likely broader image of what the future can be with your product, and it’s your job to shape your customer’s view.

One of the best ways to do that is with case studies, sometimes called success stories. Pay particular attention to the “story” part. Stories have a way of shaping what we think and case studies are especially helpful in this way. They remove the boundaries of our limited imagination and show us what is actually possible. They can replace preconceived notions about how your customer thinks the future may be, with what it really can be.

By the way, if you want a really good book on writing case studies, and really the ONLY book on writing case studies, get yourself a copy of Casey Hibbard’s Stories That Sell: Turn Satisfied Customers into Your Most Powerful Sales & Marketing Asset.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI