CONQUERING

B2Bcontent marketing

How to create a content marketing

battle plan

YOUR battle cry...Aka: the mission statementImagine that you’re in the field about to head into battle. You need to inspire the troops around you in order to keep them focused and motivated.

What is it that you tell your staff they need to achieve? Why are they working so hard? What will this content mean to your audience and you as a business? This is the sole reason behind all of their work and they have to believe in it as much as you do.

MAPPING OUT WHAT YOU KNOWNo business should ever initiate a content marketing battle plan without having a firm grasp of the marketplace and an understanding of what its overall mission statement is.

So before you unleash your army into the wild world of content marketing, there are a few things you need to know first.

1

What the

battlefield looks like

1) Content marketing isn’t new anymoreNewsflash – your competitors are already using content marketing as a successful marketing tactic. How will you be different?

2) It’s not just for B2C brandsB2B marketers are adopting content marketing at a rapid rate. It’s not just for the consumer audience anymore.

3) ‘Producing’ content is not enoughIncreased competition means you can’t just ‘produce’ content – you need to be strategic, know your audience and have a solid distribution plan.

4) You need a mission statementHow will the content you produce aid your overall business objectives? What is it that you want to offer your audience? How will you motivate your team?

5) It’s not as scary as you thinkWith proper preparation, strategic thinking and time dedicated to content production and distribution, content marketing isn’t as hard as you think it is – and can actually be fun!

Report from the fieldThe following potential challenges have been identified in the content marketing landscape:

1. B2B is generally slower to adopt content marketing than B2CIt’s believed this is because many B2C brands have a much clearer idea of who their customers are. B2C brands tend to live and breathe customer profiling, as they depend on their direct relationship with individual consumers. B2B brands, on the other hand, find it harder to identify their target audience as their customers are often a collection of people in any one business.

2. Some B2B brands struggle with the effectiveness of their content marketingMarketers in B2B industries tend to have similar objectives to those in B2C: improved brand awareness, increased lead generation and customer acquisition. And B2B marketers who have a documented content strategy are far more likely to consider themselves effective (66% vs. 11%).

However, the top metrics for measuring content marketing efforts tend to be web traffic (63%) and sales lead quality (54%), which indicates some disparity between the top objective (brand awareness). B2B brands need to map out their measurement tools against their objectives in order to understand how effective they really are.

THE TOP 3 OBSTACLES TO content marketing victory

For B2B brands:Lack of time – 69%Producing enough content – 55%Producing the kind of content that engages – 47%

For B2B enterprise marketers: Lack of integration across marketing – 60%Lack of time – 59%Producing the kind of content that engages – 59%

IDENTIFYING YOURWEAKNESSESThe next step of your B2B content marketing battle plan is to discover where your weaknesses as a business might lie. Determine this and you’ll be able to anticipate and prepare for challenges way ahead of time.

2

CONTENT AUDIT checklist

Website content Blog content External content deliveries

(e.g. emails and white papers) Social media content In-house content producers

You might be surprised how much you actually have. Many B2B brands are already using content marketing tactics like enewsletters and white papers. They just aren’t utilising them properly as part of an overarching content marketing strategy.

A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO YOUR

battle planOnly 44% of B2B marketers in North America have a documented content strategy. Yet 73% are producing more content than they were a year ago. As content production is growing, strategy seems to be getting left behind, which indicates that many B2B brands are missing out on vital marketing opportunities.

But don’t just take our word for it… 84% of marketers who say they’re ineffective at content marketing said they also have no documented strategy. It’s clear that ad-hoc content marketing efforts are ineffective and will not give businesses any real insight when it comes to their market.

mapping out your objectivesYour content marketing is a tactical and deliberate approach to content creation and distribution. It’s initiated by assessing where you stand as a business and taking a look at what you want to achieve.

First, you must think about the ‘big picture’ objectives and then drill down into how these will be achieved.

For example, if your number one objective is to improve awareness of your brand, you need to look at promoting your content on platforms where your target audience spends time, while also building up the content you’re producing on your own website and social media channels.

If your main objective is to turn website visitors into sales leads, you need to develop a plan to serve different types of content to prospects as they progress through different stages of the buying cycle.

ASSESSING YOURcontentArsenal

Think of a content audit as your headcount before battle commences. Before you initiate any plan of attack you need to know what you have to work with, as it will give you a much clearer understanding of what and who needs to go where.

A content audit should identify the content you already have, the availability of your content procurers and the capabilities of your content producers.

3

COMBAT THIS1. Assess your current client base – you may be

surprised to learn that you predominantly deal with the same job title in each business, even though the industries are different.

2. Start segmenting your client base to get a proper understanding of the spread of industries you’re dealing with.

3. Think of your clients as individuals and start thinking in terms of individual contacts (IT buyers, business owners etc).

4. Start researching the needs of these individual contacts – why do they need to use your business? What trigger points are there?

5. At what stage of the buying cycle do you want to start speaking to them?

6. Research your competition – what can you learn from them about your target audience?

7. Ask your clients what they want – it sounds simple, but you’ll only learn this from thorough research.

KNOWING YOURAudience It can take time to really understand your audience, especially in a business context.

B2B customers are people too!

Here’s what we’ve noticed with content marketing so far: businesses seem far more comfortable marketing to consumers than other businesses. But why?

Your B2B prospects are people, and they respond to the same things as any other person – they find the same things funny at work as they do at home, and they always want something of value. And this means your approach to B2B content marketing will have much in common with B2C content marketing.

The challenge for business leaders is to grasp that the focus is on the consumer within the business they’re targeting, not the opportunity of the sale. It sounds simple, but when faced with financial business objectives, this way of thinking is often lost.

Time for a shift of focusB2B business leaders who want to be successful at content marketing must take their attention off the financial value of the client and start understanding the value and needs of the client itself.

4

DISTRIBUTING YOUR CONTENT FOR

wider reachSocial media amplificationLinkedIn and Twitter have replaced Facebook as the most frequently used social media platforms for B2B Enterprise marketers, and are a great way to amplify your message to a wider audience.

Other distribution tactics• Paid distribution of your content on relevant third party sites popular with your target audience

• Taking an active part in forums and other online discussions

• Paid distribution of your content across search engines

EFFECTIVE DISTRIBUTION OF

Assets Having the most highly trained soldiers won’t help you at all if they’re not on the front line where you need them most. Similarly, producing amazing content doesn’t mean anything if it’s not being seen by the right people. The digital era has redefined the purchasing cycle of both consumers and businesses. Buying power is in the hands of the consumer and as such, buying decisions are based on extremely individual and personalised sets of criteria. If your content isn’t easily discoverable, don’t expect your customers to come searching for it – with so much choice at their fingertips, they have no reason to. And this is the same across B2B and B2C markets.

Content marketers must not only intimately understand the B2B buying process, but also where and how to speak to the individual.

Paid, owned & earned work

togetherEnsuring that your paid, owned and earned assets all work together (and that you’re not putting too much into one at the expense of the others) is a vital step to successful content distribution.

Cirrus Media offers a full B2B content marketing service, including content strategy and production, as well as more than 20 specialist mastheads – each boasting access to established, engaged audiences both on and offline.

WE CREATE CONTENT THAT MOVES.

5

IMPLEMENTING B2B CONTENT MARKETING

tactics Be strategic with your content marketing and plan your attack:

Stage 1• Ditch the ad hoc approach –

what are you trying to achieve?

• Assess your audience – who are you speaking to?

• Audit what you have – both resources and content

• What are you good at? Where does your business’s sweet spot lie?

• Monitor and inspire those around you

• Match metrics to objectives – know what you’re measuring

• Dedicate budget to content marketing

Stage 2• Develop a documented

content strategy

• Create a content calendar and accountability

• Be active online and get involved in conversation

• Always offer something of value

Stage 3• Produce relevant, useful and

engaging content

• Identify appropriate distribution channels – where does your audience spend time online?

• Use content as part of your lead generation strategy

• Manage your online assets and analyse feedback

• Measure and report – continually

6

SUNGARD’S

‘Zombie Apocalypse RECOVERY PLAN’

SunGard provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. From an outsider’s point of view, it’s not the most glamorous of industries.

In 2012 SunGard’s demand generation team aimed to develop a content marketing campaign that educated IT professionals on the benefits of cloud computing and how to use cloud services while fully protecting their data and applications.

They decided to create an infographic and eBook that thematically mapped out the process of moving to the cloud in a ‘survival guide’ format that mimicked a zombie attack. The content targeted IT leaders and demonstrated what businesses needed to do should data be lost or compromised in a disaster.

They had clearly anticipated that their audience would be familiar with and appreciate the pop-culture reference and would be both entertained and educated at the same time. They took readers through a three-phase plan: Prepare, Plan and Protect, which offered steps that identified weaknesses within disaster recovery plans and offered solutions for better data protection.

From the beginning they decided that their success would be measured on the number of times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites. In total, the campaign yielded more than triple the expected downloads, double the expected open and click-through rates, and was even featured prominently on the home pages of several influential niche cloud websites.

CISCO’S DEDICATED CONTENT PLATFORM:

TheNETWORK The best examples of content marketing come from businesses that create dedicated platforms from which to share stories that entertain and inspire their audience.

Cisco does this perfectly with their content platform – The Network. Cisco continuously publishes content that focuses on a range of subjects within the technology industry. The content is designed to educate, not sell product, and as such has built a loyal and engaged audience that enjoys consuming this content

Cisco has considered different mediums too, acknowledging that its audience engages in different ways. “The Network Effect” web documentary series is a great example, focusing on inventors who built the telecom network and their impact on the world. It’s inspiring and consistent, keeping the audience engaged and intrigued to come back again and again.

FOLLOW THEIR

LEad Take a seat – these B2Bs have some war stories to share…

7

CONTACT CIRRUS MEDIA02 8484 0946

contentmarketing@cirrusmedia.com.au

Do you want to know more ABOUT HOW YOU CAN APPLY THESE INSIGHTS TO YOUR BUSINESS AND START YOUR OWN CONTENT MARKETING

battle plan?