UNLEASH THE POWER OF CONTENT TO ENGAGE YOUR PROSPECTS

May 5, 2010

Agenda

• Content Marketing The Drive to Deliver Relevant Content

8 Steps to a Solid Content Strategy

Stephanie Tilton and Michele Linn

• How BreakingPoint Used Content to Increase New Customer Acquisition by 240% Pam O’Neal

• How Kadient Built a Content Library that Maps to the Sales Cycle Amy Black

It’s the End of the (B2B) World As We Know It

Photo credit: zachwass2000 on flickr

The Disconnect…and the Implication

Buyers only find relevant content

42% of the time.

Source: IDG Communications

The lack of relevant content as perceived by buyers is

responsible for reducing the vendor's

chance of closing the sale by 45%.

Almost 95% of recent purchasers said the solution provider they chose “provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.”

The Opportunity…

Source: DemandGen and Genius.com - Inside the Mind of the B2B Buyer

66% of respondents indicated the “consistent and

relevant communication provided by both the sales and marketing organizations” was a key influence in choosing that company as their solution provider.

…to Beat the Competition

“…vendors that get the right mix of content

at the right time for influencers and decisions

makers will significantly increase their chances

of making a sale.” - Bob Johnson, Vice President, Engagement Optimization at IDG Communications

What Does that Mean to You?

Photo credit: HansKristian on flickr

Deliver Valuable, Relevant Content

“Create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to.”

- David Meerman Scott

Author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Content Marketing is the Secret

"Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing

relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly

defined and understood target

audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” - Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett, Authors of Get Content. Get Customers.

It Starts with Strategy

Photo credit: KF on flickr

It Starts with Strategy

Source: Joe Pulizzi

Creating a Content Strategy

Listen

Develop buyer personas

Map content to the buying cycle

Think like a publisher

Commit to remarkable content

Extract maximum value from every asset

Make your content easy to find, access, and share

Measure

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Google Alerts

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Twitter

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Google Blog Search

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Understand Your Audience

Forrester: For B2B Tech Companies, Demographics Shape Adoption

Top 5 influences, application developer Top 5 influences, enterprise architect

Peers and colleagues (word of mouth) Peers and colleagues (word of mouth)

Vendor, industry trade, or professional

Web sites

Your direct vendor salesperson

Technology or business publications,

magazines

Consultants, value-added resellers, or

systems integrators

Consultants, value-added resellers,

systems integrators

Vendor, industry trade, or professional

Web sites

Your direct vendor sales person Technology or business publications,

magazines

Base: North American and European technology decision-makers at firms with 100 or more employees

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Understand Your Audience

CIO Archetypes and Focus

1. Function head – Achieving IT operational excellence

2. Transformational leader – Creating enterprise-wide change

3. Business strategist – Driving business strategy

CIO Magazine: State of the CIO 2009

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"a short biography of the typical customer, not just a

job description but a person description.”

Develop Buyer Personas

“The buyer persona profile gives you a chance to

truly empathize with target buyers, to step out of your role as someone who wants to promote a product and see, through your buyers' eyes, the circumstances that drive their decision process.”

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Bring Your Prospects to Life

CIO Joe, CIO

Transformational Leader

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Sample Persona

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Map to the Buying Process

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Understand Content Preferences

Best-in-class companies are:

• 5X more likely to maintain a library of collateral, copy, and messages that map to prospects' buying stages

• Better able to map content buying cycle stages based on prospect behavior

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Understand Content Preferences

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Understand Content Preferences

Source: Aberdeen Source: TechTarget 2009 Media Consumption Report:

Mindset of the IT Pro During the Recession

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Map to the Buying Cycle

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Map Content

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“We tend to think of intimacy as being

personal—something for the salespeople. But

we can do it by reliably delivering valuable content. Magazines have been doing it for

years. Consistency, relevance, and quality

create a very intimate relationship with

readers.” - Chris Koch, ITSMA

Think Like a Publisher

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Create an Editorial Calendar

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Keys for the Editorial Calendar

• Be consistent

DO: Deliver content on a regular basis

DON’T: Publish only when you have something new

• Commit to your content

DO: Think about the content your audience prefers

DON’T: Try a lot of things but don’t do anything well

• Map out content

DO: Move people through the buying cycle

DON’T: String random pieces of content together

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Craft Valuable, Relevant Content

Variables Considerations

Target buyer Who is this for?

Stage in buying cycle Where are they in the cycle?

Topic What are the buyer’s concerns?

Key message How can we address these concerns?

Content source Who can provide information – employees, partners, customers, analysts?

Call to action What do we want the prospect to do next?

Remarkable traits What will make this worth sharing?

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Example: Competitive Comparisons

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Example: Shake Up Your Case Studies

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Extract Maximum Value from Every Asset

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Click to edit Master title style

Don’t . . .

• Customize content based on the channel (e.g. mobile)

• Ask “How can give my readers a new way of understanding a key issue?“

• Include a plan to reuse content from the start

• Customize your content for a

certain audience, vertical or place in the buying cycle

Do . . .

• Simply put the same content in different channels

• Ask “What more can I create?”

• Consider content reuse as an afterthought

• Recycle the same content

again and again

Repurposing Content

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Make Content Easy to Find, Access, and Share

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Make Content Easy to Find

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Make Content Easy to Find

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Increasing Visibility of White Papers

Strategy 1: Create more content

available to be indexed by search engines

Tactic: Creation of individual

white paper landing pages to unlock long-tail keyword phrases

Added hyperlinks that connected

users (and search engines) to each applicable White Paper Executive

Summary Page

Source: KoMarketing Associates

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Increasing Visibility of White Papers (cont.)

Strategy 2: Enhance landing

pages so there is both PPC and SEO value

Simplified the conversion process by adding a request form to

each landing page.

RESULTS

Organic search engine traffic

increased by 225% from Q1 to

Q4 of that year

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Increasing Visibility of Case Studies

Approximately 100 case studies

broken down into individual landing pages

To aid lead generation efforts, we added an additional call-to-action and cross-links at the bottom of the page

33% growth in unique keywords

sending traffic during the second month of the program

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Make Content Easy to Access

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Source: Ecollo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report 3 6 87541 2

Make Content Easy to Share

Make Content Easy to Share

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Measure the Impact

Photo credit: Tyrone Shum on flickr 3 6 87541 2

How BreakingPoint Leveraged Technical Content

to Increase New Customer Acquisition by 240%

Case Study

Pam O’Neal

Vice President of Marketing

BreakingPoint Systems, Inc.

“Do not interrupt what people

are interested in; be what people

are interested in.”

Jeff Lanctot

Avenue A | razorfish

Becoming Interesting

Ask Customers

Understand Buyers

Monitor and Engage

Influencers

Analyze Trends

Test Content & Copy

Measure Results

Developing Buyer Personae

Monitoring, Engaging, Prioritizing

• Mine for topics and opportunities (key influencers)

• Capture the conversation

• Analyze SEO keyword volume

• Monitor analytics to ID popular topics

• Identify and create content for buyer needs, issues

• Prioritize content by effort

• Identify opportunities

Blog

Web Page

Video

Webinar

White Paper

Methodology/Download

Speak to Your Buyers

• Create blog, forum, community

• Deliver role-based content

• Optimize for search

• Build community of interest

• Pull with “conversation”

• Pull with SEO, viral content

• Push with SEM, email

• Monitor popular content

• Maintain with fresh valuable information

Content

Aggregation Content

Distribution

“Forget about your home page. Google is the new home

page.”

Seek to be Found - SEO

Spread the Word

Use Case Targeted Sales Presentations Membership in

BreakingPont Group

and Other Key Groups

Monthly Webcast Promotions

Key Messages and Thought Leadership Content

• LinkedIn Q&A on SRX

Opportunity Captured

• firewall testing Search Term

• Download Firewall Testing Methodology

Email Offer

• 5 Easy Ways to

Test Firewalls Webcast

Invite . . . .

Integrate with Drip Marketing

M-12 J-12 J-12 A-12 S-12 O-12 N-12 D-12 J-13 F-13 M-13 A-13 M-13 J-13 J-13 A-13 S-13

New and Return Web Visitors and Leads

LAUNCH PHASE LEADERSHIP PHASE

Return Visitor Growth

Sustained Growth in

Inbound Leads Content

Testing

*

Measure and Optimize Results

Building a Content Library that Maps to the

Sales Cycle

Case Study

Amy Black

Senior Marketing Communications Manager

Kadient

A Little Background

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1997 2007

2009

Cha-cha-cha-changes

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Mapping Content to the Sales Cycle

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• What’s your key objective for the piece?

• How else can you use it?

Kadient’s Content Library – A Sampling

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Content Library: Top of Funnel /Lead Gen

• “How to” – Impart practical knowledge

• Provocative – Challenge and introduce a new way to think

• Fresh format – eBook, conversation style, images, video

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Content Library: Nurturing

Entertain with relevant, attention-grabbing humor

(also great for viral program)

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• Harness customer voices

• Highlight third party validation

Content Library: Nurturing

Content Library: Lead to Opportunity

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• Connect prospects with internal expertise

Content Library: Sales – Opportunity to Close

• Making the iron clad case

• Showing how Kadient is different and better

• Getting over the hurdles

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A Few Parting Thoughts

• Remember who you are “talking” to

• Keep your key objective front and center

• Break through the clutter – stand out! Entertainment

Provocative POVs

Video – short, sweet and interesting

• Create content you can repurpose

• Listen to your sales team

• Pay attention to what is & isn’t working

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Staying Connected

Michele Linn, B2B Content Strategist, Linn Communications

Connect: www.linkedin.com/in/michelelinn

Follow: @MicheleLinn Contact: michele@linncommunications.com

Stephanie Tilton, Content Marketing Consultant, Ten Ton Marketing

Connect: www.linkedin.com/in/tentonmarketing

Follow: @StephanieTilton Contact: stilton@tentonmarketing.com

Pam O’Neal, Vice President of Marketing, BreakingPoint

Connect: www.linkedin.com/in/breakingpoint

Follow: @poneal Contact: poneal@breakingpoint.com

Amy Black, Senior Marketing Communications Manager, Kadient

Connect: http://www.linkedin.com/in/amyjblack

Follow: @amyblack Contact: ablack@kadient.com