SalesVPI

Content Marketing Support Resource

2011-11-25T08:31:51-05:00

I've just completed reading Rebecca Lieb's new book, Content Marketing:Think Like a Publisher - How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media. I'm immediately buying copies for my people and to use with customers. It's a terrific introduction and summary of the principles and top level practices.

This is book for people who want or need an initial understanding of Content Marketing.

I read it in a couple of hours on a plane ride. This makes it a good book to share with senior executives and others to help explain "why we're taking this approach to marketing". We all need that. We're all working with a few who "get it," surrounded by far too many who don't.

Given the significant mind, strategy and budget shifts required for organizations to pursue this course, making the case for content marketing is the first challenge proponents usually face.

Given the "dabbling" approaches and under performance organizations experience, having the plan and discipline to execute effectively is the next challenge.

To quote Lieb,

"IBM recently published research finding that about 80% of those who begin a corporate blog never post more than five entries. They stop. Give up. Leave it abandoned by the side of what was once called the information super-highway. And that's just blogging. The internet is littered with never-updated websites … and no-one-home YouTube channels. In the rush to adopt content marketing as a tactic, too many marketers forget that if you're continually publishing, you have to think like … a publisher."

Given the collaborative nature of content marketing, if the people we work with and require to provide key inputs (subject exerts) don't understand, the velocity, effectiveness and outcomes of this approach are significantly reduced. This book can help.

Ready or Not, Here's Your Content Challenge

2011-09-24T07:01:56-04:00

To capture attention and deliver value, your content must be relevant to your buyers and readers.

It might be cliché to say buyers are inundated with information, but I don't see organizations really committing to strategies that deal with this reality.

While many have changed the way they market over the last three to five years, I don't see corresponding changes in the way they create content.

I call the traditional approach a "point production" method. Sometimes this is referred to as "one and done." I put the emphasis on "one" -- one blog, article, webinar, whitepaper, video, etc.

If we are committed to creating relevant content that works for our organization and our readers, it must be created to speak to a specific individual, specific interest or issue, buying stage, industry, competitive context and other relevance factors. Not all of them together.

If we believe it's important to make our content convenient for buyers to really consume, we must deliver content in different formats: long form documents, articles, blogs, video, visual diagrams and infographics (among others) that meet their consumption preferences.

If we want buyers to share our content we must deliver compelling, engaging formats that motivate or prompt sharing with colleagues. Video.

Inevitably this drives up the volume of work required to create different relevant versions and formats. The traditional, "point production" method that creates content one at a time, won't scale affordably to accomplish this in a timely enough -- or affordable -- manner.

You know you have this kind of thinking in your organization if you hear: "First, we'll build our … blogs, articles, whitepaper, webinar, video -- then, we'll repurpose this into other formats, or edit for other purposes or personas."

Can you hear "sequential," more effort, more dollars -- will never happen?

What's required is a process that designs for multi-purpose and formats in the first place.

IDG Connect suggests organizations must capture and create "core essence" of content from which other content can be created through re-purposing. This is the right idea -- IF you have the right source insights and content in the first place.

Unfortunately, using "finished programs" for core essence is the wrong tactic.

In my next blog I'll discuss an approach that works -- for large or small organizations and budgets. It's practical and highly scalable. In fact, publishers have used this approach for decades. It means going beyond "thinking like a publisher" to creating like a publisher.

Content Publishing vs. Traditional "Point Production" Process

2011-09-13T09:58:15-04:00

People regularly ask me to clarify the differences and reasons for adopting a content publishing process rather than the traditional “point production" process. Here is a simple list of reasons.

We believe organizations face new content requirements that a publishing oriented creation process best addresses because:

Content must be relevant to each buyer and their situation, vs. “one size fits all”
Content must educate, create a vision and inspire vs. pitch features and benefits
This means a dramatic increase in the volume of content to create which breaks down with traditional approaches
We must reduce the burden on subject experts (SMEs) and change their role in creating content
Content creation must become a planned asset development and maintenance process vs. an event driven, “one-and-done” approach
Content creation is moving from centralized, “professional” creators to “new producers” all over the organization and beyond who must be supported to realize quality, consistent and efficient results
Organizations must flatten the cost curve, especially if they apply traditional approaches to new requirements
Content must be created for sharing and re-use at the “modular” level, not just as finished programs
Content must be flexible enough to be used in multiple delivery channels.

There are undoubtedly many other reasons and benefits. These are my top candidates, what are yours?

For more on this topic: A short video and related blogs, articles, etc.

Content Governance in the Content Marketing Era

2011-07-20T17:09:16-04:00

Today’s content marketing requirements and opportunities are straining traditional corporate thinking, policies and processes.

How has your company adapted policies and procedures to accommodate the “democratization of content creation” with the shift from centralized, “professional” production processes, to a distributed or (hopefully) agile creation process?

A common occurrence we experience when creating video vignettes for companies provides a good example. This involves the internal review process that is based on traditional thinking, policies and procedures.

First, some context. We typically create content for our customers, to address their buyer’s journey: their issues, challenges, opportunities, options, etc. This content is educational in nature. Hopefully it delivers insights bordering on “thought leadership” with some degree of a “point-of-view.” Relatively little of this content presents an official corporate offer.

Our process begins by interviewing our customer’s subject experts to acquire the language they typically use when talking with customers about customer business issues. We expect these experts know the language that resonates with their buyers. Therefore, this is less an original creation effort on our part, than a structured interview and editing process.

The copy we produce – for text as well as video content – are reviewed and approved by subject experts and the primary sponsor group. No problem.

Now, often because this is a “vid-e-o,” the script must go through a corporate (marcom) review process, perhaps “brand” review, and legal. This process alone can take weeks, often with multiple iterations. Multiple people within our customer organization are tied up pouring over copy.

Rarely, except when we document the feedback in our customer’s Content Frameworks, are these insights captured and documented to guide future content creation efforts. No sharable learnings.

Meanwhile, every day across the organization, how many customer conversations are occurring without brand, marcom or legal review …

… blogs,

… webinars,

… email campaigns,

… proposals, etc.?

The issue isn’t removing the guidance of marcom, brand or legal. Obviously it is completely missing in the vast majority of customer communications that occur daily throughout every corporation – large or small.

Content creation has moved beyond formal, centralized, marketing controlled resources, to the periphery of the corporation – and beyond (business partners and resellers?).

One example of the implication of this shift, and the nature of content in the content marketing era, is volume. As content is personalized across industries, roles, and stages in the buying cycle, content volumes are exploding. Traditional review cycles were not designed for this volume.

How have your policy and governance teams adjusted their thinking, process and procedures to support your “new producers” – and the new requirements – in this digital age?

Content Marketing - A Personal Experience

2011-05-29T11:53:23-04:00

I'm in the Nemacolin Woodlands resort in Uniontown, PA attending a family wedding, and I've been catching up on my reading, reviewing an excellent edition of B2B Marketing magazine on Lead Generation. The importance of highly relevant content is frequently mentioned.

But I just received a personal contact marketing lesson.

Before we left we boarded our dog, Pepper, at a place called Best Friends. This morning my wife opened her email to discover a status email from the boarders. She was elated to receive the update, but it was the picture that evoked the tears.

Having a blast at Best Friends Sudbury...wish you were here! I'd love to tell you all about it, but since I can't talk my Best Friends agreed to send this photo along to you instead.

See you soon!

Love,

Pepper

P.S. Follow my Best Friends on Facebook

Content. The element that delivers value, creates impact, attacks emotion, and develops brand loyalty. It wasn't the words in the email that evoked this response. It was the image.

This is a simple but direct example of a small business thinking like a publisher and providing relevant, valuable content. Content creation doesn't have to be as hard as we often make it, if you have the right mindset. I see the process and procedures behind the result that as the lesson to be appreciated from this example.

Content marketing must occur automatically in the daily operation of our businesses. This must be operationalized so it happens regularly, automatically, almost effortlessly.

Content Marketing Best Practices from Joe Pulizzi

2011-04-15T13:44:19-04:00

Hubspot Inbound Now Video Interview also a Case Study In Creating Like a Publisher

Whether you are new to content marketing or an advanced practitioner you can learn something from the recent Hubspot Inbound Now interview with Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 and founder of the Content Marketing Institute.

Anytime I can hear or read Joe's insights it's a worthwhile time investment.

The Hubspot process is an excellent example of thinking and creating content like a publisher:

Be a resource for new ideas and insights
Acquire content by interviewing subject experts
Use audio and video as acquisition methods (more than just interview)
Transcribe the audio
Offer the content in multiple formats for consumption convenience: text, audio and video
Amplify -- in this case they blogged about the interview for another distribution method
Promote -- others will help you do this

Inbound Now #16 – Content Marketing Best Practices & Tips with Joe Pulizzi (@JuntaJoe) from Hubspot.

Interview Outline

To wet your appetite I'll provide a brief outline of the highlights, including specific quotes:

Definition of Content Marketing

Why Content Marketing

Key mistakes

"I think that overall it’s we’re very used to thinking like marketing people, which is we want to sell. With content marketing, we first have to think about the needs and the pain points of our customers and create content that answers those questions. If we do that right, they then pay attention to us. They then buy from us. They then talk about us. It’s easy to talk about. It’s hard to do."

"55 percent of brands outsource some part of the content marketing process. We know that’s going on right now, but it doesn’t matter if they do it themselves or they do it outside. Sometimes it’s easier to do a little bit of both. What we see in a lot of bigger brands is they have a content coordinator, or maybe it’s under social media, whoever that’s under. And then they work a lot of journalists or a lot of content agencies to get out that work."

Re-purposing

Acquisition and capture processes

" ...the processes probably are not set up to capture that content. So that’s what we need. How do we set up a process to capture that content?"

We have a lot of content

"I think that we have the content. There’s no shortage of it. It’s just how do we set up a process within our company so we can extract that story and figure out what are the really important things that we need to tell our customers and which channels should we use."

Content vs. Commercials

"You brought up the idea of commercial. I don’t have any problem with a company taking their commercials and putting it on YouTube, but don’t have any expectations that a lot of people are going to watch that. Use that as more of an archival resource.

I talked to a contractor the other day that had something like 40 or 50 commercials. I said, 'Great, put those on, but don’t think that people are going to rush to YouTube and search for all kinds of stuff and find you. You might get a couple. It might help in some part of the sales process, but probably not. What’s more effective is if you are answering your customers’ pain points through a piece of video content that you probably didn’t have before.'"

Use multiple channels

"We do a print magazine, but we also have six or seven different digital versions of that magazine. We have podcasts that are integrated with that magazine. We have white papers integrated with that. That’s all online. So even though one of the channels is print, there’s no such thing as a print magazine today. You’ve got so much digital wrapped up in the integration of that. You’ve just got to make sure you know what your objectives are.

So I would just say focus on what your objective is, and first of all, you can focus on some kind of a behavior. It doesn’t have to be a sales behavior. It would be nice if it is. But at the end of the day, what’s their behavior? Are they making actions, and then can you show that as some kind of an increase in some portion of your key performance indicators?"

Listen: Get input from customers, sales, customer service (everywhere)

"Talk to your salespeople. Talk to the front line. Most of the salespeople that I talk to, the marketing department is not going to them and getting their input about what the challenges are to the customers. Customer support, talk to them. You’ve got to have a process."

Relationships -- one person at a time

"Gary Vaynerchuk was quoted in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. He said, ‘We’ve done what so many companies don’t want to do because it’s so hard. Because we build relationships one person at a time.’ And that’s what we’re talking about with inbound marketing, with content marketing – we’re building relationships one at a time, and it’s fantastic and it works, but it’s hard work and it takes time."

It's a Marketing Evolution

"If you’re not thinking of yourself like a media company you’re doing yourself a disservice. I wouldn’t call it a revolution, I’m calling it an evolution of the marketing department into a publishing department.

Most companies are still not there yet. You see content spurts and you see content as part of campaigns.

Be like media companies and provide really helpful resources to customers on a consistent basis in video, text form, and iPad and everything else."

Advice for small businesses

"I would say figure out the content niche where you can be the leading expert in the world. That means you’ve got to get really small.

You can be the leading expert in that because we’re so nichified with media today. You’ve got to think of yourself in content."

Customer Interviews for Marketing and Selling Content

2011-04-01T06:45:00-04:00

At our recent SMEI breakfast we had an excellent conversation on customer -- and video -- interviews. As a result, I suspected that most B2B marketing professionals don't have a successful framework for thinking about, much less acquiring, effective customer interviews for marketing and selling content. Follow on conversations with organizations large and small confirmed my suspicions.

What do you call them? Success stories? Testimonials? Case studies? What is the "come from" behind your approach? What is your primary intent? To have your customer tell your prospects things about you that you can't (or shouldn't) tell yourself?

Or are you "coming from" a perspective of "helping buyers make effective buying decisions" by getting your customers to share insights that address specific buying questions -- by role, issue, buying stage, solution alternative?

What is the "job" recorded customer interviews are expected to do? How do these expectations differ when you ask marketing vs. sales?

There is a place for customers telling their (your) story. But it's limited in the grand plan of content requirements. Captured properly, customer insights can perform many "jobs" throughout the buying process.

Do you have a formal process for conducting customer interviews? Does it look like this one?

There is nothing wrong with this approach. It appears to be a universal approach. But it's also un-differentiated and not consistent with today's content marketing principles for creating relevant, educational content to help buyers make better buying decisions.

Customer Acquisition Framework

Here is a start at such a framework and interview process:

First, make a distinction between different communication objectives and approaches for customer interviews. Customer insights can help:
- Capture attention / generate interest -- with short provocative sound bites
- Explain -- important insights that educate a buyer
- Tell -- a story
- Advocate -- make a case
- Answer -- questions, objections
- Persuade or Prove -- deliver proof points
Use the frameworks you've established for the Customer Buying Process and the Questions Customers Must Answer to make their buying decisions. If you have these well documented it will lower your preparation time and improve your interview. Make sure you've aligned those questions to each stage of the buying process.

Make role-based distinctions in the questions, issues, value criteria that are important to your buyers.

Plan for later stage points that: influence buying and value criteria that are favorable to your company, address customer questions and objections (you will have to talk with sales to get these), and address "step backs" in the buyers process that stall or derail too many deals.

Recommended Interviewing Techniques

Here are specific recommendations:

Decide the important areas you want the customer to address, what specifically you want them to say. You really don't have much time with them. You must prioritize.
Align each customer and individual speaker to a specific set of questions -- not general -- ask yourself what customer questions they can best speak to?
Prepare multiple questions to elicit those points. You may have to ask the question in a variety of ways.
Provide preliminary input to your customer before the interview in the form of a checklist. Tell them you're hearing customers ask these questions. Ask if they are comfortable addressing them, allow them time to think and prepare.
Tell the customer you know people have a very short attention span, so you are looking for short, direct answers to specific questions, not long stories. Explain you will let them complete every point, but you may ask them to repeat their answer in a more succinct fashion. You need this, prepare them.
Don't be afraid to ask customers if they would be comfortable making a specific point (which you provide them) -- in their own words of course.
Keep it light, people will fatigue quickly, often as early as 20-30 minutes. You'll see fatigue showing up in bobbles and mistakes that require re-takes at the customer's request. At this point it's time to wrap up so as not to embarrass the customer.

This is just a start. Please help me refine an effective framework for capturing customer interviews for the various marketing and selling purposes our organization's require.

Here are links to helpful articles. Can you see the "come from" expressed in these articles? What distinctions are made between content suited to marketing's early/top of funnel and education purposes, versus proof point messages required by both buyers and sales in the latter stages of the buying process?

Customer Success Stories Speed the Sale

Best Practices for Customer Success Stories

25 Ways to Build Trust and Sales with Customer Success Stories

The Power of Testimonial Videos

Reflection Films Website

Visible Gains Website

What "Job" Do You Want Content to Do?

2011-03-08T06:50:00-05:00

Marketing professionals who are trying to understand the principle behind content marketing can take a lesson from Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School and his "jobs-to-be-done" marketing ideas.

This core Christensen idea is presented in a recent HBS Working Knowledge article, Milkshake Marketing. The article describes a fascinating study his team conducted on behalf of a fast food chain that wanted to improve milkshake sales. The company initially applied a typical market research approach before it engaged "one of Christensen's fellow researchers, who approached the situation by trying to deduce the 'job' that customers were 'hiring' a milkshake to do."

Parallels Between Product Design and Content Strategy

Consider this comparison between product design and content strategy. Both product design and content share similar problems. Product design challenges are revealed in the low success rate of new product introductions. Marketing content issues are revealed in the low usefulness to sales and customers.

"When planning new products, companies often start by segmenting their markets and positioning their merchandise accordingly. This segmentation involves either dividing the market into product categories, such as function or price, or dividing the customer base into target demographics, such as age, gender, education, or income level.

Unfortunately, neither way works very well, according to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who notes that each year 30,000 new consumer products are launched—and 95 percent of them fail."

Clayton Christensen

With business content, the American Marketing Association has found that 80% of content created by marketing is never used by sales. IDG reports IT buyers find relevant content only 42% of the time. "The lack of relevancy for the prospect reduced the vendor�s chance of closing a sale by 45 percent."

The "Jobs-to-be-done View"

Christensen's prescription is to look at the important difference between determining a product's function and its job.

"Looking at the market from the function of a product really originates from your competitors or your own employees deciding what you need.

Whereas the jobs-to-be-done point of view causes you to crawl into the skin of your customer and go with her as she goes about her day, always asking the question as she does something: Why did she do it that way?"

This is directly related to the principle behind the content marketing movement.

Three good questions marketers can ask to get at "the job" they want their content to do:

What impact do we want content to have on the buyer?
What do we want content to tell us about the viewer (Digital Body Language)?
What does the buyer want to learn from viewing each piece of content?

From a company's perspective we might want content to capture and hold attention, to educate, to prove or persuade, to motivate sharing of content, and to cause behavior change or action. We might want content to identify the viewer's areas of interest, functional role, industry, company size, stage of investigation, or degree of urgency.

A viewer or buyer will typically be researching a specific question or area of focus. Their interest will vary based upon their role, buying stage, role in the decision process, beliefs and values, and numerous other factors.

To accomplish its "job", we know content must be relevant to each viewer. This means we must know:

Who, specifically, we are creating each piece of content to serve,
What their specific issues could be,
Where they are in their evaluation or buying process for each content piece,
What alternatives they are considering,
And a host of other elements.

We know that only late in their buying process will buyers be seriously interested in learning about specific elements of a company, its products and services.

Even here, understanding the "jobs-to-be-done" view, together with the skills marketing develops to create more relevant marketing content, can improve the current void in sales content that support the "closing business job" of sales and sales content.

Are You Communicating Synchronously in an Asynchronous World?

2011-03-07T07:10:00-05:00

We live in a world that prefers to receive information asynchronously. But we tend to focus on using live, synchronous delivery methods. This is a key source of high costs and low results in every area of a business. I cannot overstate the importance of this idea and distinction, as well as the implication for individuals and organizations.

First, some simple definitions.

Synchronous communications happen at the same time with all participants. Synchronous communications tend to be traditional voice-based conversations to deliver intended messages. They can be conducted in person or over the phone or web.

Asynchronous communications do not occur in the same time. Communications experienced asynchronously are consumed "on demand" at a time of choosing by the recipient. Asynchronous communication rely on content to package and deliver core messages -- audio content such as voice mail, text content, or video.

Implications for Your Communications

As I consider the world of communications I am struck by the challenges and importance of aligning communication methods and timings with intended communication objectives and audience preferences.

I believe we live in an asynchronous communication world. People tend to overstate the use and importance of synchronous over asynchronous communications, in part because in-person conversations are so impactful.

But content-based, asynchronous communications, are more important for today's marketing and selling activities -- especially due to the impact of the internet. This implication puts the value of pre-produced content in a new and important perspective, far more important than typically considered.

According to Gerhard Gschwandtner from Selling Power magazine, only 17% of B2B sales conversations are conducted live and in person. Of course there are variations by industry and sales function. This information is also supported by other sales communication experts I have interviewed.

What percent of communications that you experience are conducted in the same time frame, what portion are asynchronous?
When do you think "same time" communication is the best method, and when are asynchronous methods preferred?
What distinctions in communication purposes do you make that might inform tool or delivery method selection?
How do you know what "tools" to use to accomplish your communication objectives: in person conversation, telephone call, third person delivery, text (all methods), graphics or images, recorded audio or video? When is a live meeting, text, recorded audio or a video best applied to specific communication objectives?
How do time factors impact the selection and use of synchronous and asynchronous tactics?
How well prepared are your people to appreciate these distinctions, to make these considerations, and to execute appropriately?

Whether you are in sales, marketing, customer service, or general business functions, or the executive ranks, these questions are critical. Modern communications, especially the internet and digital media, have greatly expanded our communication tool set. This also raises the risk of misuse of each tool.

As I raise this distinction between synchronous and asynchronous communication methods with customers, I find they help people re-consider their decisions for each communication situation. I hope it helps you as well.

Why Create Content Like a Publisher?

2011-02-22T10:07:24-05:00

We are told, "think and create like a publisher." (Pulizi, Meerman Scott, Albee) What does this really mean? Why is this necessary?

Traditionally, business content creation occurred in a centralized, marketing directed, professional creation organization and process. Today, creation has disbursed to front line creators in the executive ranks, marketing, sales, and even channel and partner organizations. This creates new challenges and requirements. To make this a positive, efficient, contributing effort with positive results, these "new producers" require support.

Failure to provide support could result in haphazard creation efforts of poor quality content, frustrated constituents, reduced productivity, hidden costs -- in fact the risks can be significant.

Framing Questions

Here are questions that will help your team, and your management, understand what's at stake by continuing to pursue a process of "random acts of content." (IDG)

How do people throughout your organization know what content to build next? Why it should be created? How it will be use? Does the reason meet a set of defined criteria?

How do you enable anyone to create content without becoming a domain expert, having to figure out what to say, or how to say it (right down to desired phrases or glossary terms)?

How do you avoid turning your subject experts into content creators?

How do you preserve message, brand and quality standards while enabling messages to be quickly converted into effective content?

How to you insure efficient and optimum acquisition of subject expert insights as source input to content creation efforts?

How do you lower the cost (time, effort and dollars) of content creation, especially over time, as requirements drive up content volumes?

Marketing and Sales Content Strategy

Most people embrace the notion we need to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time, in their preferred format.

This begs the question, how do we create the right content, so it is available the instant it is needed and can be made relevant to all the people we address? How do we deploy content so anyone in the organization's "communication ecosystem" can access, tailor and deliver content at the right time, in audience preferred formats?

Without a defined and documented plan of action, organizations risk inaction, or worse, chaotic efforts that create serious un-intended consequences due to "random acts of content."

Organizations need a content strategy, not only for the web, (Halvorson) but for broader marketing and sales purposes.

This strategy should make clear the content creation priorities needed to fill key marketing and sales content gaps. It should inform and guide acquisition of insights from important subject experts who provide source content. The result would be a defined plan for sanctioned content priorities, supported by an acquisition and creation calendar.

Total Cost of Content Model

We need to move beyond justifying the direct costs of a "point production" project. We need a model that illuminates the "total cost of content" across the organization, and measures the "total value of content" from each project.

This thinking will lead to a new process that yields:

Lower development time and effort --especially on subject experts -- and faster content time to market

Content created for multiple (not single) purposes

Source content assets that can be used for other content creation purposes, as well as re-usable, modular content

Content that can be tailored for different audiences, purposes, sub-issues, buying stages, consumption lengths (scan and read)

Questions that Guide Your Organization

Has your organization embraced content marketing principles that encourage relevant, customer education oriented over vendor, product and service oriented content?

Have you developed a marketing and sales content strategy, defined your customer's buying process and the questions they must answer to buy your products or services?

Have you conducted a content inventory, assessed how well your content supports your new requirements and made sure it is in the customer voice not the vendor voice?

Have you mapped your content to your customer's buying process by persona, sub-issue, stage, alternative solutions (your competition) as well as to your sales processes -- and identified critical content gaps?

I agree, this can be a daunting task, especially without a good, defined and documented strategy that clarifies specific plans, priorities, policies, processes, procedures and standards. Leaving it up to individuals or groups is both inefficient and ineffective.

Perhaps this is a good point to invoke Albert Einstein's famous quotation:

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."