End of periodic marketing campaigns

The great era of periodic campaigns is over as the timing is out of sync with the buyers. Instead people want to find information on demand. This is where Content marketing comes into play as it is always available for people craving for information and knowledge for getting insight in their problems or solving their problems.
Content marketing is available 24 x 7 from anywhere on the Internet, whereas push marketing was only available during the campaigns.

The evolution from limited to multiple publishers

We have seen the evolution from an era where a limited number of publishers controlled the information creation, flows and streams to a world where almost anyone with an Internet connection can have a voice: creation of information and publishing it almost worldwide has become easy and feasible without the need for money and man power.

The hard sell is no longer effective

The hard sell has become less effective whereas the brand ‘voice’ takes the lead in creating interest which eventually becomes lead generation.
Buyers are no longer mainly influenced by marketing campaigns like advertising or direct mailings as they are put more value on the information they find on the Internet: web sites, forums and social media.
They want to learn themselves from their peers or from well written articles that give advice instead of being lured by pushy advertising.

The advice for content marketing

The conclusion is:
- Don’ sell but add value allowing to earn credibility
- Give free advice on subjects that matter to your potential customers
- Let them use your information or free advice for their own benefit as in the long run it will be beneficial to your company
- Learn from forums and social media what are the points of interest of your potential customers
- Publish clear understandable informative messages in order to leave a lasting impression and possible goodwill
- The goal is to become a trusted party where they can reference to during purchase cycle
- Build relationships with your content and the resulting conversations instead of customer relations pushed by marketing campaigns and selling

How effective is your content marketing ?

Content Marketing issue

For the almighty Content Marketing much content is needed. Creating original content is a challenge hence instead of creating all new content why not mix your created content with that of others. It keeps the attention and lowers the pressure of creating new content each time.

A prerequisite is that you are able to create original content which then you will be able to mix with existing content.

Original Content

Your original content can be:
- Original timeless content: like an evergreen
- Trending content: jumping on the bandwagon of trending content or subjects
- Reworked existing content: it is allowed to steal from your own original content but updated

External Content

The content of others can be:
- Curated content is generated by amassing content from other sources delivering it in an original fashion
- News: there is nothing wrong to inform your readers with news related with the matters of the blog or website.
- Crowdsourcing: this can be from your customers by interviewing them or encouraging customers or potential customers to send in content.

How do you manage your content marketing ?

Content marketing is the hype and results shows that is really effective. It has become one of the core marketing techniques or many companies in B2B. The currency of marketing instead of money.

However as all marketing actions content marketing requires a plan as deploying content marketing is a significant undertaking. Not just a bunch of content published on your website or the Internet.

The main topics your content marketing strategy must define:
1. What are the issues and resources that are relevant for potential customers and current clients ? Not all content is suited for your products or services.
2. Who will create the content ? In house or outsourced or both ?
3. How to achieve the content will be entertaining ?
4. What are the digital (website, eBook, press releases, webinar, white papers syndication,…) and physical (book, white paper, leaflet, …) formats for the content ?
5. What are the distribution channels for the content (Internet, website, partners, …)?
6. How will the content be distributed for the digital and physical channels ?
7. How will the content be promoted ? Great content still needs to be found.
8. Gating or not gating for your content ?
9. How will the link between the published content and the products of the company be made ?

Write down your strategy and start creating your content.

Massive content creation

A few years ago the hype of content marketing started. At first it proved to be really successful. Meanwhile most marketers create or let create ever more content hoping to catch the attention of the potential customers. This massive content creation will only increase adding on to the large volumes of content already present on the Internet which is content overflow.

As content is the hype, the word content is used in all possible contexts in order to sell marketing services.
Marketing agencies have shifted their business services from SEO, copy writing and advertising to content creation and social media influencers.

Quality content ?

Not all content has the same quality and value. It is utmost necessary to create quality content as lesser quality content can harm more than bring additional sales. However it is hard to define what is quality content and create quality content as it not only requires creativity and skills like writing or imaging, but also knowing what to write matching the interests of the target market segment. In the end the content produced needs to be consumed by the potential customers and preferably ‘liked’ on social media or forwarded to peers.

Crap content

As new concepts, creativity and producing quality content are not standard services you can order or self-produce easily, it is likely much of the content created has and will have a lower value due to:
- Copy content
- One or two concepts or ideas are being spread over many pages
- The same concept or solution is repackaged many times over
- Nothing new but old stuff
- Not unique
- Avoiding the innovation as it is too disruptive

The end of content marketing hype

In the end we will be flooded mostly by average or even crappy content that nobody takes interest in.
This might lead to the end of the content marketing hype as too much content and especially non-quality content will tun people off.

If you can only publish you quality content as it will increase the perception of your company or brand.

How would you describe and evaluate your content ?

The hidden persuaders

As the brain uses only 2 percent of its’ energy on conscious activity, the rest is devoted largely to unconscious processing. Neuro Marketing is a new field of marketing research that claims surveys and user groups are inaccurate because the unconscious impressions can never be revealed. Instead it studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. The hidden persuaders in ads, publications or content which influence unconscious desires amongst potential buyers.

Neuro Marketing requirements

Appeal to pain
The marketing content and website need to explain how the solutions or products are going to relief the pain of the potential buyer.

Be brief
All day people are overwhelmed with messages and information. Hence brains will respond better to short and clear messages.
If they don’t understand it they will forget about it immediately as so many other messages are received.

Be visual
A picture can paint a thousand words and will be remembered even better.

Be clear
The language and the content should be clearly explaining the use and the benefits. If not people will not spend time on decrypting what you are actually trying to sell or why they should buy it.

Create emotion
Emotion will make the message more memorable. Hence you will need to tell more than just the facts, figures and features. A soul in your message is required.

Generate passion
One step beyond emotion is passion. If you can ignite passion for your products or solutions by your content you will have won an advocate.
Of course this is the hardest to achieve and only few – if any – in your market will obtain this.

Neuro Marketing – hype or not – it is the new kid on the block.

Did you use Neuro Marketing previously without knowing ?

Paid Media

Paid media is advertising, banner ads, paid search, paid content (editorials), paid content distribution (white papers), paid press releases, …
The impact lasts as long and reaches as far as is paid for. As the exposure is mainly a function of the amount paid, the more money spend the more exposure obtained.
The influence can last and reach beyond the the campaign depending on the quality and impression it made.
Due to the investment for distribution and exposure, paid media is limited in time and reach.

The disadvantage is that it is a short-lived investment requiring a fast ROI.

The advantage is that it mainly requires money and hardly any creativity.

Owned Media

Owned media is the company website, the company blog, profiles on public, generic or social websites, free press releases, free white paper distributions, published content on social media, newsletters, printed newsletters, …
The impact lasts as long as the content is available for people to find and consume (read, view) it. The impact and reach depends on the quality of the content, the initial controlled distribution and the uncontrolled distribution (if your content is passed on to others or copied in different media and communication channels).
Hence owned media can almost last forever.

The disadvantage is that anyone can create quality content. Creativity is a gift and not completely related to money. Although much time, effort and money is invested in trying to create quality content, the resulting content might not have become quality content.

The advantage is that instead of money, creativity is required. Wealthy companies can pay for creating content. Small companies and start-ups can also create quality content which opens up the competition.

Earned Media

Earned media is Word of Mouth: both physically (verbally or written) and virtual (digital on social media). The impact and reach of the word of mouth can almost be infinite larger than the initial distribution. Leverage will go far beyond the original reach with the benefit of people remembering or remaining findable for almost forever.

The disadvantage is that content needs to be picked up by many and shared, recommended, replicated or forwarded to many which is a gamble creating a risk for engaging in creating content.

The advantage is that nor the size of the company, nor the amount of money of a company can significantly influence the Word of Mouth. If the audience likes the content then the origin doesn’t matter. Moreover the ‘Underdog’ can have a slight advantage over the major player in a market.

The Three Stooges Of Media

In most cases companies have a media mix of Paid, Owned and Earned media as each feeds content to the other media.
Paid media will feed to the Owned media and Owned media will feed to the paid as both help the findability of each other on the Internet.
Earned Media will enhance the Paid and the Owned media, which on their turn will feed the Earned media with new content.
This results in the Three Stooges of media.

What is your media mix Paid, Owned and Earned ?

Content is King

You can create content as much as you want and as much as you are able to. Your content should be informative, valuable, trustworthy and entertaining.
However without a distribution your content has no value as nobody knows or hears about it. Just like in chess a King can only move one square at a time, your content won’t reach far without a distributor or amplifier.

Social Media is Queen

As searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing will only bring the basic traffic level, your great content needs to be distributed through a channel.
In order to exceed the average traffic through searches and have a significant amount of visitors for your content you will need Social Media as distributor and amplifier. Social Media is the channel promoting your content.

Only Social Media is capable of generating lots of interest for your content as people will post the link to your web page in Social Media. The more people participate the more traffic it will generate. Additionally Google, Yahoo and Bing will increase the importance of your web page as they find many links on different pages in Social Media which will increase the traffic through searches too.
Social Media will significantly amplify your content and increase its’ reach.

The couple King Content and Queen Social Media

If Content is King, then you better marry it with Social Media Queen for maximizing its’ exposure.
In order to get picked up by people your content should not only be interesting but also entertaining as this will increase the posting by people on Social Media.

Did you already have married Content King with Social Media Queen ?

Problem

Your Content Marketing receives no interest ?
Lead generation gets no results from Content Marketing ?
Your content is not being read ?

Content Marketing Mistakes

Maybe you are making one or more of these Content Marketing mistakes:
1. Creating content irrelevant for your target market
2. Writing about yourself or your product neglecting to focus on the buyer instead
3. Not solving a problem that your potential customer encounter
4. Pitching your products instead of describing the solution
5. Content lacking substance will not generate interest
6. Content marketing is not similar to interruption marketing
7. Boring the reader whereas being entertaining is the first requisite
8. Amateurish writing and spelling errors don’t sell
9. No authenticity – copy/paste is not the way to go
10. Lack of authority make sure you show authority on the matters discussed
11. Quality of content should rule over quantity of content
12. No call to action at the end of the content will generate less replies or inquiries

Too simple to be true ? Too obvious ? Have you actually tried this yet ?

Buyer persona

In order to optimize and rationalize your content marketing, your content should match the buyer persona of your customers.
In order to do so you should list out the buyer persona of the people involved in the buying process of your customers. Each buyer persona should contain type of business, job/function, role in buying process, business objectives, job responsibilities, strategies to achieve the objectives, major issues and concerns, specific personal attributes. Then based on all the data buyer persona several profiles can be made. For each profile specific content needs to be created.

Information issues

This is all great and interesting in case you have enough customers in the same industry or type of business. However the average company in B2B hasn’t got enough customers that there is not sufficient data available for setting up typical profiles of buyers. Moreover there are many uncertainties as you will never know very well all the people involved in a purchase process. Additionally it is a lot of work and is time consuming.

Imagine profiles

Still you should try to imagine and design the profiles of the people involved in the purchase process for your products. Even you website can help giving you additional information on buyer persona as most – if not all – have visited your website before and during the purchase process while revealing what each company was searching and what interested them most.

Based on the little information you have a picture should be painted in order to allow creating content for each of the specific profiles. This will allow you to create content that will match as good as possible your typical customers interest.

Based upon what information do you create content ?

From Content to Converting

Getting found on the Internet is the start.
Having interesting content is good for traffic.
Having much traffic is quite an achievement.
Converting visitors into leads is the main goal.
Converting more visitors into leads is the challenge which requires Conversion Rate Optimization (also called CRO).

The 12 keys for Conversion Rate Optimization

1. Fast loading pages in order to show the message
2. Avoid redirects, this consumes too much time of the 3 second attention span
3. The subject of the page should match the reason why the visitors landed there
4. The title should closely resemble the key phrase used to drive traffic
5. One page = One simple easy to understand message
6. Relevant images, which people understand an remember, supporting your message
7. A clear proposition
8. Information that is useful and will be remembered
9. Create content beyond your products or services
10. Generate trust with badges, certifications or references
11. One call to action per page, don’t confuse the visitors
12. Short forms with minimal fields to complete

Test and re-test on a regular basis as drivers and reasons to buy change over time.

How efficient is your conversion rate ?