How to Develop a B2B Content Strategy

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Today’s consumers are like proverbial husbands who refuse to pull over and ask for directions. Folks simply want the instant satisfaction of finding their own way to their destination. Your business is the destination. But can you be found?

This phenomenon has put huge marketing emphasis on the notion of discovery. It’s all the more important because consumers are also increasingly eschewing interruption marketing. No wonder 40% of marketing dollars have been shifted to inbound marketing techniques.

It’s critical that marketers embrace content initiatives and blend them with traditional methods. It’s not a question of whether to move in this direction. It’s a matter of survival.

Getting Started With Creative Content Marketing

1. Get Clear About Your Goals

What do you want to happen as a result of mobilizing a content initiative? Do you need to build awareness for your organization? Are you educating consumers? Or do you want to sell a product or service? If the latter, do you want to incorporate a lead generation component that will deliver prospects into your deal funnel? Setting crystal clear goals will best inform your content strategy.

2. Assess Internal Sources for Content

Most businesses don’t think like media companies unless there is a printing press in the basement or an antenna on the roof. Oftentimes, marketers are surprised to find great raw material sources within the organization. Take inventory. Do you produce or commission proprietary research or industry data? Who within your company has specific expertise, industry cache, or public speaking ability and can they serve as a thought leader for your efforts? These assets are often found right under your nose.

3. Identify External Content Sources

Feeding the content machine requires ready access to external raw material. Assess what is already available from industry associations, co-owned companies, partner organizations, even trade media or publications.

4. Get Help From Content Creation Experts

A medical professional would not all of a sudden feel the need to fix their own car. Likewise a licensed mechanic would never offer a triple bypass with an oil change. Executing a creative content strategy depends on your ability to create engaging, compelling, SEO-optimized… even entertaining content on a regular basis. It’s essential to call on experienced media people who are also marketers in order to deploy content that delivers on all of the above.

5. Develop a Plan and Execute

More than article marketing, web content, or public relations, your content marketing strategy will need to be a highly integrated series of blog posts, audio podcasts, video, white papers, and ebooks – the ultimate mix, of course, will depend on the particular goals of your organization.

Get Started With Content Marketing

A stellar content strategy will flow directly from your goals and will take into consideration all the obstacles that face your business as well as capitalize on specific opportunities in your sector. An optimized approach will facilitate discovery on the part of consumers and imbue your business with credibility as a thought leader in your field.

Businesses that employ inbound marketing and content creation initiatives find it much easier to attract pre-qualified prospects that are predisposed to buy. Finally, as any sales professional will tell you, once value has been established price becomes a secondary or even a non-issue.

Let’s Develop A Content Strategy

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Creating Direct Communication With Potential Investors

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The New Rules For Reaching Retail And Institutional Investors

The key factor behind the bottom-line of any investor relations professional is valuation. The art of effective communication to achieve the highest possible valuation for your company or client is the driving force behind successful, profitable investor relations campaigns.

The internet has fundamentally changed the way in which investor communication is disseminated to investors and potential investors. Early on, the IR section of your company website was a “nice to have” but not a necessary feature. However, in today’s market not only is it expected that your organization maintain an in-depth IR section on your website, governing regulatory bodies now provide guidelines on requirements for those web pages. Communication with investors via your website and the industry standard email subscription newsletter may feel like an effective means for getting out your message but are you effectively harnessing all available channels?

The exponential growth and relatively fast adoption of various social platforms on today’s internet provides IR professionals with an even deeper set of tools to tell their story. You only need to take a look at IR Web Report’s current social media section (click here >) to understand the importance these tools now play in the marketplace. Publicly traded companies are harnessing social channels to communicate with potential investors and shape their brand message. The key to utilizing these essential social channels is a cohesive brand message across all platforms with the understanding that this is a direct connection to your audience; a connection that well exceeds the usual email newsletter approach.

With this direct connection comes a new set of considerations:

1. Cohesion Across Platforms

Across all social platforms, your investors, both retail and institutional need to be viewed as one audience. Retail or institutional, both require the same information. Just as social cannot be the only means for disseminating timely investor information no longer can your website and newsletter be relied upon as the sole means of communication.

2. The Benefits Of Immediacy

Social content pushed through the appropriate channels now places higher than the most meticulously crafted SEO optimized content when searching on Google. Why? Many searches are now based on relevancy and how timely the indexed information is that is being searched for.

3. Shaping Your Message

Monitoring and tracking what is being said about your brand online provides your organization with the ability to engage in conversations that previously occurred beyond your reach. The effective shaping of your corporate message and the governance of a cohesive rules of engagement plan assists in mitigating the inherent risks.

Social media, on all platforms, is no longer a tool solely intended for consumer communication. B2B, HR and now some of the most innovative IR professionals are beginning to appreciate the value in social. We are seeing the emergence of fully socialized businesses in all sectors including those that are publicly traded.

Want to Harness Social For IR?

We can help evolve your social strategy, right now. We begin every client engagement with a Marketing Assessment. And that process begins with a simple conversation.

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Is Your Business About To Get Disrupted?

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And you just don’t see it coming?

The evidence is all around us. The “era of disruption” has arrived. Is your business about to get disrupted?

Change Agents

Apple disrupted the music industry with the invention of the iPod and iTunes store. Amazon disrupted the book business. Legal Zoom disrupted the legal services business. Netflix disrupted the video business. And so on. And so on.

Indeed, disruption is all around us, hiding, lurking, ready to devour its next victim whole – that is, if the inattentive remain unaware.

The velocity of change in consumer consumption is driving evolution in every sector. And, forgive the platitude, but change does indeed breed opportunity.

As a marketing strategist and founder of a technology-driven hybrid-marketing agency, I find our best clients come to us when they begin to feel the very real pain these changes bring on. They see the writing on the wall, they recognize they need to change their perspective on their business, and they are motivated to look at new opportunities through a whole new prism and move forward. That means harnessing the powers of disruption for good, and disrupting their own undertaking before their competition does.

Often our first step is to undertake a comprehensive top-to-bottom brand review. We guide the client through a careful review of all the benefits that their product or service delivers to their customers. Then we ask them what additional services or products they should be delivering in response to specific targeted customer research results. Finally we brainstorm about what they “could” do for customers to solve their needs in a whole new way. Every idea goes on the table – the good, the bad, and downright ugly.

The especially important question we then ask of the client is: What “could” you do for the customers that your competitors simply cannot do because of cost, infrastructure, technology, corporate policy, or just plain lack of imagination.

We invite members from all the functional areas and all levels from within the organization to participate. It is surprising where the best game-changing ideas often come from.

Often, the most simple, revolutionary, and truly disruptive idea is often first met with an overwhelming chorus of “We can’t do that! It’s never been done before.” However, when prompted to view it from the customer’s perspective and assuming all things are equal, the team begins to see the light.

However the road from idea to implementation is often a rocky one and inevitably the business owner must summon the guts, gumption and green to make it happen. But when truly disruptive methods find their mark, competitors are often too far behind the game, too stuck in “that’s-the-way-it’s-always-been” to react before it’s too late. In the meantime, the disruptor has won customer after customer and deal after deal, sometimes recreating the business model within the category.

An example of disruption in practice can be found in the telecom business in our own city of Vancouver. Like most large cities, the local legacy cable company, whom we’ll call “Company A” offers a bundled service of cable television, internet, and home phone delivered via co-axial cable, at a price point of approximately $150 per month. The customer of Company A is responsible for purchasing their own HD receiver/PVR(s) (ranging from $250-$450 per unit). Additional terminal connections are extra. All other equipment, including digital television receiver is available on a monthly rental. The customer agrees to return the rented agreement upon cancellation of the account. There are no contracts.

Meanwhile, “Company B,” a telephone telecommunications company entered the marketplace in just the past few years with a broadband television technology –and the same bundle of services – but with a whole new disruptive philosophy.

Company B asked themselves, “What can we do that Company A cannot, will not, or is unable to do?” The answer was to leverage their technology and provide an array of solutions that had never been offered before, at a compelling price point (around $120 per month), and addressing key issues that have driven Company A’s customers absolutely crazy for years.

Company B turned the existing game rules upside down by:

  • Building their offering on the technical advantage that their bandwidth does not peak and crater like coaxial cable-delivered internet.
  • Providing as many additional components at no cost or with no cash outlay: Not one but two free set-top receiver/PVR boxes, both of which can be controlled and accessed from the other. Providing free phone and internet modem.
  • Including free installation from top to bottom, and basic home network computer and routing set-up and troubleshooting. Eureka!
  • No caps on internet usage (a real issue in Canada)
  • Enacting a customer service policy where the answer is always “yes.”

And finally when the value of the total package and discount incentives were just too good for any right-minded prospective customer to refuse, Company B asked what used to be a dirty question in the industry:

“Given this incredible package value we are delivering for you, will you sign for us for three years under very favorable terms, so that we can justify underwriting the value of all of this equipment and service to you?”

The answer nine times out of ten is an absolute “yes!”

Company B disrupted the local industry. They changed the rules of what was doable and they did it. Now, every day, Company A is losing hundreds of customers to Company B. But Company A is too big, too bureaucratic, and has too much invested in its existing technical infrastructure to want or be able to react to the disruption. And their market leadership is ebbing away day-by-day.

Disruption. It’s the new name of the competitive game.

Are you bold enough to be disruptive too? Or will your business be disrupted by another?

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Sales and Marketing. Why It’s Getting Harder To Sell

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(And what you can do about it)

It’s not your imagination. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are struggling to meet their sales numbers. Something has changed. That something is everything.

You may have noticed by using relationship tools such as LinkedIn that a high percentage of your contacts and acquaintances have changed jobs in the past 24 months.

This unprecedented churn should present opportunity, shouldn’t it? People we know moving to new positions usually opens up new conversations. However, in the post-economic collapse era, these folks are stepping into new roles at diminished salaries with increased responsibilities and fewer monetary resources than ever to get the job done. They are stretched thin. And from a sales perspective this repeat business and referral network is likely underperforming as compared to the past.

Furthermore, in the corner offices, baby boomers are retiring out of senior decision-making roles in growing numbers, ceding that authority to a whole new generation of incumbents who have an entirely different way of cultivating relationships.

The problem is that most consumers are tuning out traditional, interruption-based marketing methods. In fact, cold calls are regarded with utter disdain. The reaction translated is: “How dare you interrupt me with an extraneous sales communication. Do you not understand that my time is precious and I do not have bandwidth to do what I need to do let alone accommodate your need to sell me too?

In short this is why the old sales methods are gone forever. Prospective customers are now choosing to interact with the solution providers they choose, when they want, and on their own terms.

The reason you may be feeling a chilling effect on sales now more than ever is because we have just now reached a tipping point; the point at which a critical mass of customers seem to be exhibiting these traits.

The old way is gone. Now is the time to evolve your sales and marketing processes or continue to feel the increasing pain and isolation of diminishing sales opportunities and new business conversations.

It is time to invest in an inbound marketing approach so you can begin receiving and responding to the needs of qualified prospect’s rather than trying to “smile and dial” or “spray and pray” to little or no avail.

This means developing a plan that exploits the latest and evolving marketing methodologies, including content, search, web, PR, digital, social, advertorial, lead generation, and e-mail marketing. It also means reassessing cold calls, print, mail and other less than desirable practices that are falling on deaf ears and blind eyes.

It may be a rude awakening. But once you have a strong plan in place, the results can be seen quite quickly.

Get expert help to evolve your sales and marketing strategies and watch your numbers rise.

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7 Ways To Better Investor Relations

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With Improved Inbound Marketing

Here are some steps that with the help of a good marketing firm you can implement right away to dramatically improve the quantity and quality of inbound investment leads.

1. Generate More Web Traffic – Investor relations professionals constantly tell us that their single biggest challenge is getting more potential investors to visit their website. By developing an inbound marketing strategy, you will be able to attract qualified prospects to your company.

2. Create Custom Content – With the help of media marketing experts, you can publish your press stories, blog posts… even audio and video as compelling, searchable editorial content that can easily be deployed across multiple channels, exponentially increasing opportunities for investors to find you.

3. Utilize every social channel – Whether Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or others, consumers increasingly rely on social mediums to connect and discover information. Furthermore, 81% of US consumers consider blogs to be a reliable source of advice and product information.

4. Optimize every communication – Using highly developed inbound marketing software, it is possible to determine the best possible keywords and phrases that will best appeal to your target and incorporate them into all the content, to aid in search and discovery.

5. Generate Leads – It is highly desirable to collect, monitor, and chart all your prospective investors activity on your site, to build a relationship, and pre-qualify them with a series of on-site initiatives.

6. Nurture Those Leads – Consumers will be drawn to your site to read/consume general industry information, learn about social and green initiatives, or to pre-qualify themselves on the investment potential of your business. You must harness these leads and nurture them to fruition.

7. Measure. Refine & Repeat – These essential cutting-edge must be tracked and measured. Based on the results every campaign must be tweaked for optimum performance.

Social Media Is A Valuable IR Tool

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The Rebirth of the Living Room Screen = Christmas for Content Providers

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Industry publications love predicting the decline of the living room screen. Sure network television channels suffer from declining viewership, but the living room flat panel has never been more popular with audiences and, especially, advertisers. Even despite the proliferation of a myriad of media content playing devices.

Declines for Networks

Since the arrival of television sixty years ago, the networks have controlled the living room set and enjoyed a monopoly over the advertising shown on it. However, things are changing fast.

When an advertiser buys airtime on a television network, the sole way to measure the effectiveness of the campaign is to rely on Nielsen ratings.

Nielsen ratings are based on a representative sample that is composed of just 25,000 homes (5,000 for national programming and 20,000 for local stations). Collectively they reflect the viewing habits of over 106 million U.S. households in 210 markets. Because TV ratings are based on samples, it’s possible for shows to get a 0.0 rating, despite having an audience (Example: CNBC’s talk show McEnroe). No matter how the sample is selected and how the habits are representative of the population, sample based ratings always are approximations.

Combine these statistical imperfections with the availability of more choices in the living room, and no wonder network is struggling.

Boon for Content Providers

Meanwhile bleeding edge content companies and ad agencies are utilizing the same techniques that have made web advertising a force with which to be reckoned to take over advertising on living room screens.

These content providers have leveraged the smart screen to become an advertising platform that can better target demos and deliver a more reliable set of analytics when it comes to measuring success.

For instance, there are over 27 million Xbox Live subscribers who provided a wide array of information when signing up for the service (name, age, location, etc.). By using their Xbox, and services attached to it, they are constantly providing more data regarding their interests, spending habits, etc.

The way ad placement is sold on screen is not by length of airtime, but per impression, the same way ads are sold online. In the same way that BBC Kids Television can accurately target moms aged 25-54 on Facebook, Nike can target men 25-35 interested in soccer on Xbox Live.

And they have done it! In June 2012, when the NHL Stanley Cup and the UEFA Euro 2012 were overlapping, Nike maximized the efficiency of its ad budget by directly targeting potential customers using Xbox Live. Soccer fans only saw ads relevant to them, and hockey fans weren’t bothered by soccer ads.

In March 2012, The LA Times reported that the amount of time Xbox Live subscribers spent streaming media surpassed the amount of time playing games. Furthermore, Xbox Live media streaming usage was growing 30% yearly, with users spending 84 hours per month connected to the system. This has grown very quickly and now represents more than half the 150 monthly hours the average American family spends watching television networks (according to Nielsen).

Penny Arcade reported that, according to Microsoft, a single ad placement on its console dashboard receives an average 9 million impressions on a weekday and over 15 million on a weekend. Furthermore, their advertising business has grown 142% yearly since 2010.

Lessons for the Networks

Some of the most forward thinking television companies are beginning to see that in order to compete they have to change their ways of targeting and selling advertising.

Tivo’s recent purchase of TRA, a research company that has found success in recent years with a system that matches up television viewing with consumer buying habits, is a clear indication of where things are moving: increasing ad effectiveness.

Evolving Model

The influence of set-top boxes is helping to shape the new business model. Marketing directly to the audience and the harnessing the way in which consumers interact with their televisions is a top priority for agencies and content producers.

Contemplate the opportunity for a moment. Netflix claims that its subscribers viewed over a billion hours of content in the month of June. HBO GO, the streaming video-on-demand app, has achieved success so overwhelming that the premium network is considering offering a streaming only subscription.

Bottom line? The living room screen is new again. It presents a whole new opportunity to connect directly with individuals within the context of the content they choose at the moment they want it with an engagement or offer that’s unique to them. That’s revolutionary.

The living room screen is not only alive and well… it’s where the action is!

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B2B Marketing Has Never Been More Difficult… or More Fun.

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No matter the industry, it has never been tougher to engage prospects in a sales conversation than it is right now.

Let’s face it. No one – you and me included – wants to be “sold.” Most people avoid incoming cold calls like the plague. With texting, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so many other ways to communicate, most desk phones are starting to sprout cobwebs!

Professionals still buy the products and services they need every day. But the impetus now begins with buyer. They seek out the information they need – usually via the internet – and they reach out to those that they perceive have the expertise, solutions, or goods they want and are prepared to acquire.

The challenge of B2B marketers is to:

1) Be easy to find – everywhere

2) Communicate a clear and consistent value proposition

3) Demonstrate industry-leading expertise (in your niche)

4) Allow easy sharing of your collateral and online sales assets

5) Be absolutely approachable and instantly responsive

No one wants to be sold. When they have pain, they want to connect with a trusted expert who can deliver real solutions that solve their problems. Someone who can help them move their business forward. It’s even better if the service or product comes recommended from within their known network.

If your sales approach is limited to cold calling and old school interruptive marketing techniques, you are missing a huge opportunity to connect with buyers on a whole new level.

Content marketing, advertorial campaigns, social media activity, and other relationship-building initiatives are all tools you can use, in tandem with traditional techniques, to establish expertise, make connections, and start conversations with prequalified prospects almost immediately.

Producing sales is more difficult and the old way is dead.

The great news is that, although it can be daunting at first, the new way is a lot more fun!

Two Super Hero Approaches to Social Engagement

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When comic book legend Stan Lee wrote, “With great power comes great responsibility,” he most likely did not imagine that in a mutant-free future this quote would perfectly summarize a phenomenon known as social engagement.

Engagement through social media is a powerful way to reach an audience. And when your brand is armed with a strong cohesive strategy, it can be a super hero. But without that “s” for strategy on emblazoned on your chest your brand is less like Superman and more like a guy dressed in tights holding a chunk of kryptonite awaiting a smack down from the dark side.

To avoid such a doomsday scenario let’s look to super heroes as role models when developing an online brand. There are two ways to represent a brand on social networks:

1) As a lone super hero a la Green Lantern, or
2) As a poster-child supported by a team like the Avengers

Green Lantern

The first is to choose a single voice to speak for the brand and make sure that any person writing on the behalf of the brand respects its value and its identity. This is much like the Green Lantern in that every person wearing the ring has to take the oath to respect the values of the Green Lantern.

You must define the social voice of the brand and how it interacts with the audience. Let’s compare two superheroes that have a lot in common: Ironman and Batman. Both are eccentric philanthropist billionaires who wear costumes to fight crime. If you gave them a Twitter account to share you could easily recognize each of the characters by the styles in which they write. Batman would be more introverted and humble. Ironman would be extraverted and at times arrogant.

In this approach you must use a cohesive voice and never let the audience become aware that there may actually be more than one individual interacting with them. Otherwise you would make your audience feel like they are dealing with split personalities, never knowing what to expect. The latter might be a good idea of the brand is the unpredictable Incredible Hulk.

The Avengers

The second approach is for a strong team of social advocates to drive the brand. In the case of The Avengers, Nick Fury is the voice of the group. He deals with the corporate aspect of things and the generic public relations but when it comes to action it’s Ironman, Captain America, Thor, and the others who do the heavy lifting.

In this scenario your main character (Nick Fury) only post news about the overall brand and rarely interacts directly with the audience. That’s a job left to the associates.

This way every member of the audience feels like the brand is dedicating one of its super heroes to them and doesn’t mind the potential difference in tone between the brand identity and the person representing the brand.

But which route to choose?

In social engagement the right way is always the way your audience is expecting you to engage with them.

What’s the Value of a Facebook “Like?”

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The answer on Facebook is $0 if you don’t have a strategic plan to monetize it or otherwise leverage social media in a way that creates revenue.

Internet coffee shops are rife with “social media experts” who sip lattes and brandish the word “engagement” about as if business were as simple as chatting with friends. Engagement for engagement’s sake often results in a whole lot of yakking with little or no regard to whether or not the conversation is consistent, on brand, on target, or, most importantly, leading somewhere. In short, these “experts” can do a lot of talking and not much for the bottom line.

Almost every brand can benefit from unique and specific marketing initiatives that can be employed to drive revenue using social media.

However, if your social media strategy begins and ends with the word “engagement,” or worse, you have no strategy at all, you are missing out on the huge and essential opportunity to drive your business forward in a quantifiable way.

The truth about employing social media marketing is that it is challenging work. It requires great focus and skill. But when it’s done properly, social media will establish credibility for your brand, expose you to a social reach far beyond your current network of followers, and allow you to significantly impact the bottom line

This requires a unique and comprehensive brand strategy that is informed by specific goals for the brand, deployed with proven tactics and creative that is in-line with the strategy, and validated with a variety of simple measurement tools to ensure a worthwhile return on investment.

And most importantly, there are a variety of specific metrics that will determine the value of a “Like.” You will know and you will like it!

How to Get Your Social Media on Track

• Restart with a solid strategy.
• Avoid BS. Get qualified help.
• Develop a unique plan that addresses revenue.
• Formally define rules for social deployment.
• Monitor all activity for consistency.
• Measure. Adjust. Repeat.

What’s The Value Of A Like?

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