the future of content marketing: 5 beyonds

Five BeyondsThe Future of B2B Content Marketing

Doug KesslerVelocity Partners

I gave a shorter version of this presentation at a recent #B2BHuddle.

Instead of just dumping the slides here, I thought I’d summarise the ‘talk track’ for you in these clunky grey boxes.

Cool event!

Do NOT tell Jim and Joel, who designed the slides before I did this terrible thing to them.

And these annoying little red side notes.

Wherever you are on this crazy, mixed-up B2B content marketing learning curve, it’s a great time to pause and think about where the whole thing is headed.

Why? Wayne Gretzky, said it best…

Skate where the puck is going to be.

In content marketing, it’s good to know where things are headed so you can meet them there.

In short, don’t be that guy running down the hall in 18 months saying “Eureka! I’ve invented the white paper!”

White Papers died (of abuse) in 2007

The mother trend

The Elephant-in-the-Room trend that all the other trends cower below is that content marketing itself has become a juggernaut.

Google searches: “Content Marketing”

It’s a juggernaut because EVERYONE is getting into it in a big way.

We wrote about this Content Marketing Deluge (and what you can do about it) in a recent Slideshare called Crap.

Embarrassingly brazen plug.

Sorry.

When that puppy went ‘B2B viral’ on us, we thought about what works in content marketing….

Not real, “Charlie Bit My Finger” viral but still…

A timely issue

Some attitude & energy

A naughty word in the title

A story created for the medium

A huge dollop of luckReally strong design that

serves the content

—ONE—

Whatyou say

—TWO—

How yousay it

Timely insights about your market’s killer issues. Style, yes, but also the

medium you use when you tell your stories.

And that made us think there are two main ways to stand out:

Useful x Entertaining = Effective

The key to this formula is the multiplication sign.

It says that if either of these two values is zero… so is your impact.

Which can be translated into a simple formula…

So how you tell your stories can be as important as what stories you choose to tell…

That’s why it pays to think about where content marketing storytelling is going…

And that brings us to the trends…

About bloody time, right?

Five Beyonds

1. Beyond Gutenberg

Our world is digital but we’re still stuck in the print paradigm.

We make ‘eBooks’ and ‘white papers’ and PDFs…

We need to start making dynamic screen experiences not just digitized pamphlets.

Like ’Every Last Drop’, a wonderful scrolling site from WaterWise

Or this engaging, immersive tablet app from the World Wildlife Fund

2. Beyond Search

We can’t rely on Google to deliver our audiences. (Soon, even some great content will only make it to page three).

We need to build communities around our brands.

Like SEOmoz has done.

A typical moz post gets thousands of shares in days.

Rand Fishkin and his team earned that the hard way.

And it has nothing to do with Google.

Building a community around your brand will make your content fly even when Google drops you.

We need to be self-sufficient marketers not Search Lackeys

3. Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Content

We know lots about each prospect.But we still serve up the same content to everyone.

The B2C marketers are getting on to personalization in a big way. Don’t let them embarrass us.

What manufacturers should know about vehicle leasing.

ManufacturersBig PharmaEnergy companies

vehiclecar

Can our content be dynamically assembled on demand for each visitor?

The better ad servers do this for web banner campaigns. Why not for your next video or microsite?

4. Beyond Teaching

Today, our content tells people stuff.What if it helped them actually do things?

Get ready for the rise of Content Tools.

Like Project Accelerator from Citrix.

It helps IT people plan, design, size and deliver their desktop virtualization environments.

(Will this guy ever stop pimping?)

We tried this kind of thing with our own Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist.

5. Beyond the Faceless Brand

No one ever knew the people behind the brands. Social media is here. Now we do. And it’s cool.

The rise of the B2B rock star

If you’re interested in marketing automation, you probably know at least one of these handsome dudes*.

That would never have been true four years ago.

*Miller, Marketo; Volpe, Hubspot; Chernov, ex-Eloqua;

Watton, Silverpop

Smart guy.

The Google Gods reward you when you expose the people behind your brand.

This is part of a bigger trend, away from bullshit and towards...

Doing great things for customers not just saying great things to them.

These trends and many others are adding up to a major challenge for B2B companies.

Drum roll….

Cymbal crash!

Uhh.. Turn page.

Beyond yesterday’s

culture

Beyond yesterday’s

culture

Here’s the big one, boys & girls.All this is about change.And change needs catalysts.And marketers are ideally placed to be the catalysts our companies need right now.

But to do that you need to stand up.You need to get out of your cubicle, march down to the cafeteria, climb up on to a table and shout,

“Hey! There’s a huge opportunity out there and it’s called content marketing and we need to be great at it and I can take us there. Who’s with me?”

Or you could do it in a memo, I guess.

So there you go.Five trends in content marketing that you probably should be planning for.

Better still, instead of waiting for them to happen, you could be one of the content marketers that makes them happen…

Which brings us to an even greater role model than Wayne Gretzky…

“The bestway to predict

the future isto create it.”Abraham Lincoln

Those are the slides I covered at the #B2BHuddle.

But wait. Here’s a BONUS for web viewers who were deprived the delight, nay ecstasy, of my personal presence on the day…

Thanks for the invitation, Abigail

Five bonus trends for B2B masochists…

Beyond one-offs

We’re moving from ‘fire & forget’ content marketing to sustained, continuous library marketing.

Resource LibraryWe’ve got some great content for every stage of your journey:

We’ll help you ask theright questions and identify the key issues.

More advanced thinking,‘How To’ content and insights on the finer points.

The essential information and checklists to consider before you make a decision.

I’m digging deeperI’m exploringI’m getting ready

to buy

Like finding new ways to let prospects declare their own stage in the purchase journey so we can serve up the right content for them…

Beyond Inbound

It’s not good enough any more to create content and let it get discovered.

Outbound is back: email, advertising, shouting from rooftops…

But this time we’ll be marketing content not products.

Think about this:Who sends out more emails than Hubspot, the pioneer of Inbound Marketing?.

Beyond Content Islands

Content teams are springing up all over big companies. That means duplication, confusion, waste and inconsistency.

Here comes the Center of Content Excellence to help all those teams get it right (and coordinate their efforts).

Blog post about this on VelocityPartners.com

CMS

CRM

Lead Nurturing

Analytics MarketingAutomation

Beyond Platform Silos

It sucks to have so many different tools and platforms for content marketing

CMS

CRM

Marketing Automation/Email

Analytics

Social Monitoring Search

The Mother of All Platforms

The Consolidation is on its way…

Who will do this for us? Salesforce?Adobe?Oracle?We’re waiting!

Beyond Plumbing

With the drive to lead nurturing, content is often seen as that colorless, flavorless liquid that we pump into our persona/buying stage matrix.

And that leads to crap.

Time

Goo

dies

Time

Great content marketing is powered by great content.

The breakthrough pieces that deliver all the goodies.

1. Beyond Print >>>>>>>>> to screen experiences

2. Beyond Search >>>>>>>>>> to community

3. Beyond One-Size-Fits-All >>>>>>>>> to personalized content

4. Beyond Teaching >>>>>>>>>>>>> to content tools

5. Beyond Faceless Brands >>>>>>>>> to rock stars & authenticity

6. Beyond One-Offs >>>>>>>>>>> to sustained library marketing

7. Beyond Inbound >>>>>>> to intelligent, content-led outbound too

8. Beyond Content Islands >>>>> to the Center of Content Excellence

9. Beyond Platform Silos >>>>>>>>>> to the Daddy of all Platforms

10. Beyond Plumbing >>>>>>> to great content

Go beyond

We’re Velocity Partners.We help B2B companies discover their most compelling stories and take them to market in cool new ways.

So it’s all ‘take, take, take’ is it?.We slave all day over a hot Powerpoint to make great content for you.

The very least you could do is visit our website and check some of it out.

That way, you’ll grow as a person and our metrics will spike like a punk’s Mohican. Win-Win.