Yes, You Still Need Product Content

Understanding what types of content will resonate with potential buyers is a core part of every content marketer's job, but a recent study by LinkedIn indicates that B2B marketers and salespeople don't always provide potential buyers the kinds of content they want and need. This research suggests that we may not understand our buyers' needs and preferences as well as we'd like to believe. Or does it?

The LinkedIn study consisted of a survey of 6,375 B2B buyers, marketers, and salespeople at mid-sized to enterprise companies. Survey respondents were from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and India. Almost nine out of ten respondents were manager level and above.

LinkedIn addressed several issues in this study, and I recommend that you read the full research report. In this post, I'm focusing on what types of marketing and sales content B2B buyers, marketers, and salespeople perceive to be most useful and effective.

In the LinkedIn survey, participants were provided a list of seven types of marketing/sales content and asked to choose the three types of content they thought are most effective. The following table shows the percentage of B2B buyers, salespeople, and marketers who included each type of content in their top three choices.

These results provide several important insights for B2B marketers. First, they indicate that B2B buyers have a strong preference for product-related content. When buyers identified the three types of content they preferred, the two most popular choices were product information, features, functions (35%) and demos (31%). There was a drop of eleven percentage points between the second most popular choice - demos - and the third most popular choice - best practices.

The LinkedIn study also reveals that B2B buyers and marketers don't agree on what types of content are most effective. For example, only 24% of marketers rated product information as effective, which is eleven percentage points lower than the opinion of buyers. And, there is a thirteen percentage point gap between buyers and marketers regarding the effectiveness of demos.

Do these findings indicate that thought leadership and educational content is less important than we have come to believe? I don't think so. In this survey, LinkedIn also asked buyers:  "What are the important factors in your willingness to engage with a vendor?" The top four answers were:

• Understands by company's business model
• Is a subject matter expert/thought leader
• Provides valuable consultation, education, or tools
• Knows my company's products/services

These choices strongly suggest that B2B buyers place a high value of receiving insights from their prospective vendors that will make them smarter and help them improve their business.

What the LinkedIn research really confirms is that B2B marketers and sales reps must have content that's relevant for every part of the buyer's journey. And, it serves as a reminder to marketers that product-related content still matters.

Top image courtesy of Andrea Balzano via Flickr CC.

Why a Little Uncertainty Makes Marketing Content More Persuasive

Developing content that will create meaningful engagement with potential buyers is a perennial challenge for most marketers. In all five of the annual content marketing surveys by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, respondents said that producing engaging content was one of their top three challenges.

Thanks to numerous research studies, we now know that most B2B buyers are turned off by content that is overly promotional. For example, in a recent survey by The Economist Group, business executives were asked to identify the main reason that a content resource does not make a positive impression. Seventy-one percent of the respondents said content that "seemed more like a sales pitch."

Creating content that does not "seem like a sales pitch" is unfamiliar territory for many marketers because the use of promotional content is deeply ingrained in the culture of marketing. For decades, marketers have been trained to use forceful, unequivocal, and/or dramatic language and images in order to make their content as persuasive as possible. A significant body of "persuasion research" supports the general principle that strong, forceful content is more persuasive that weak or tepid content.

In reality, however, forceful and unequivocal content is not always the most engaging and persuasive content. Research by Zakary Tormala, an associate professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Uma Karmarkar, now an assistant professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, has demonstrated that a small dose of uncertainty can actually make marketing content more engaging.

Tormala and Karmarkar conducted multiple experiments that tested the impact of three elements of a persuasive message - the strength of the arguments used in the message, the perceived expertise of the message source or provider, and the certainty with which recommendations in the message are expressed. One surprising finding of these experiments was that "experts" are more persuasive when they qualify their arguments or otherwise express some uncertainty about their opinions.

Professor Tormala says that incongruity between the source's perceived expertise and level of certainty makes a message more intriguing. He says, "Whether it's a person without established expertise in a given domain expressing very high certainty or a person with clearly established expertise in a domain expressing low certainty, the inconsistency is surprising. It draws people in. And as long as the arguments in the message are reasonably strong, being drawn in leads to more persuasion."

This research has important implications for B2B marketers. Most importantly, it means that your content will be more effective at creating engagement with potential buyers if it embodies a more reserved tone and minimizes the use of broad, absolute arguments and recommendations. This is particularly critical for content that's primarily designed for potential buyers who aren't familiar with your company. In this circumstance, understated content works better to create engagement because it's not what potential buyers expect from a vendor, and therefore it causes them to think about the arguments that your content makes.

The critical point is that marketing content must engage before it can persuade and that objective and balanced content if often more effective at creating engagement than content that makes unequivocal claims and recommendations.

Traditional Content Formats Still Dominate Consumption and Influence

Eccolo Media recently published its 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey Report. The 2014 report describes the findings of Eccolo Media's sixth annual survey of technology buyers. All of the respondents in the 2014 survey were responsible for influencing or making technology buying decisions in the six months prior to the survey.

As with the previous Eccolo Media surveys, the 2014 survey (conducted in the fall of 2013) focused on what types of content resources technology buyers used in making purchase decisions, which types of resources they considered most influential, and how they consumed content during the buying process.

The 2014 survey findings reveal the continuing importance of "traditional" content formats (white papers, case studies, etc.) and the growing use of newer formats such as webinars, social content, and web slideshows.

The five most frequently consumed types of content identified in the 2014 survey were:

• White papers (49% of respondents)
• Product brochures/data sheets (46%)
• Case studies/success stories (36%)
• Detailed technology guides/implementation scenarios (36%)
• Video/multimedia files (35%)

Eccolo Media also asked survey participants to describe the influence of various types of content on their decision making process. The five most influential types of content, based on the percentage of respondents who said the content is very or extremely influential, were:

• White papers (50%)
• Infographics (49%)
• Detailed technology guides/implementation scenarios (49%)
• Case studies/success stories (48%)
• Video/multimedia files (42%)

The 2014 survey report contained a couple of findings that, on the surface, seemed surprising. First, it revealed that the consumption of some very popular types of content resources has declined, as shown in the following table:

In my view, these statistics do not mean that white papers, brochures, case studies, and videos are becoming less critical to effective marketing. What's happening is that B2B companies are offering content in an ever-increasing number of formats, and buyers are taking advantage of the expanded options to consume content in the format they prefer. Therefore, the percentage of buyers consuming a particular type of content can decline, as buyers use a greater variety of content formats.

The second surprise in the Eccolo Media report was an apparent drop in the influence of content. The authors of the report noted that in the 2010 survey, 41% of respondents said that white papers were very or extremely influential. That percentage increased to 65% in 2011, then dropped to 57% in 2012, and fell to 50% in 2013. The report authors said they saw similar results in other content categories.

These findings do not indicate that content is becoming less influential. In fact, research by other firms has demonstrated that content is becoming more influential in the B2B buying process. What has occurred is that buyers have become more discriminating when it comes to content. The growing popularity of content marketing means that buyers have access to more content than ever before, and they are more willing than ever to distinguish between good content and bad content. Only content that provides real value will be viewed as influential.

The Eccolo Media survey also provides insights on this aspect of the influence issue. The survey asked respondents about their likes and dislikes in white papers, case studies, and videos. Here's how the report authors described what respondents dislike in white papers:

"Respondents are most disappointed by too much focus on vendor or product information. That's supported by recent findings from other studies. Technology buyers rate 'too much marketing hype,' 'lack of truly independent, unbiased information,' and 'information is too general' as their top three content problems, according to IDG Enterprise."

The most important takeaway from this report is that B2B companies must continue to produce compelling white papers, case studies, and other "traditional" forms of content, but that it's also critical to offer content in several of the "newer" formats.

You Still Need "Promotional" Content - As Long as It's Done Right

Numerous research studies have demonstrated that B2B companies should feature marketing content that is educational and insightful. Research has also repeatedly shown that promotional content is largely ineffective and can actually be a turn-off for potential buyers. For example:

• In a survey conducted last year by the CMO Council, participants were asked what characteristics they most dislike in B2B content. "Blatantly promotional and self-serving" was the second most disliked attribute identified by survey respondents, trailing only "too many requirements for download."
• In the 2012 Content Preferences Survey by DemandGen Report, participants were asked:  "What general recommendations would you make to solution providers who are creating content about business issues?" Seventy-four percent of survey respondents selected, "Curb the sales messages."
• In a 2012 survey by UBM TechWeb, participants were asked:  "What are the biggest mistakes technology vendors make when producing information?" Seventy-seven percent of respondents selected, "Too much marketing 'fluff.'"

The reality is, most business buyers simply don't like, trust, or value content that is overly promotional, which means that much of the content used by companies today is largely ineffective and a waste of precious marketing dollars.

I'm not contending that all forms of promotional content are useless or that promotional content should be completely eliminated from the content mix. What I am suggesting is that we need to change how we create promotional content if we want it to be effective.

Most promotional content is about a company or its products or services. When it's done well, company- and product-focused content provides value to potential buyers, and therefore this type of content is an important component of the content mix. In a recent survey of over 1,500 consumers by CEB, the most desirable and valued type of content identified by survey respondents was content that helped them learn about new products. It's also true, however, that company- and product-focused content can easily become the kind of promotional content that potential buyers dislike, distrust, and largely ignore.

So, how can marketers improve the effectiveness of company- and product-focused content? The most important step is to make this type of content primarily descriptive and explanatory. Take a close look at your brochures, product sheets, and similar content resources and remove most, if not all, of the flowery language and self-serving claims. It's fine to describe what your company does and to explain the capabilities of your products or services, but make those descriptions as factual and "objective" as possible. Style and tone really matter for these types of content resources.

When I review these kinds of content resources for clients, I use a simple process to help me determine if the materials pass the promotional "smell test." I ask myself this question:  If an independent and respected journalist were writing an article about this topic, would it be similar to this content resource?

Company- and product-focused content is still an essential component of the marketing communications mix. It's somewhat counterintuitive, but the key to making this kind of content effective is to avoid excessive promotion.

What the Pleasure Paradox Can Teach Us About Great Marketing

(With Christmas Day only a week away, I wanted to write a post with a holiday theme. Unfortunately, I lack the creativity to write a clever (and poetic) post based on "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" or something similar. This post does, however, make the point that marketers can achieve great success by truly serving their customers and prospects. That message fits the season. Happy Holidays!)

In life and in business, some of our most important goals are best pursued indirectly. All of us want to be happy, but the reality is, we can't achieve happiness by trying to be happy. In the disciplines of philosophy and ethics, this principle is usually called the paradox of hedonism or the pleasure paradox. The pleasure paradox is the idea that happiness can only be acquired indirectly. In his autobiography, the philosopher John Stuart Mill described this principle in the following terms:

"But I now thought that this end [happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness . . ."

Victor Frankl described the pleasure paradox even more succinctly:

"Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself . . ."

Business success is obviously different from personal happiness, but variations of the pleasure paradox also exist in the world of business. In Obliquity, John Kay called one of these variations the "profit-seeking paradox," which holds that the best way for a business to maximize profits is not to seek to maximize profits.

Although they never used the term, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras described the profit-seeking paradox in their best-selling book Built to Last. Collins and Porras compared the long-term performance of several pairs of companies in the same industry. In each pair, one of the companies (the "visionary" company) had achieved exceptional long-term financial performance, while the comparison company was just average. Collins and Porras found that profit-driven companies were less profitable than companies that were driven by other goals. The authors wrote:

"Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one - and not necessarily the primary one. Yes, they seek profits, but they're equally guided by a core ideology - core values and sense of purpose beyond just making money. Yet paradoxically, the visionary companies make more money than the purely profit driven companies."

By now, you're probably wondering what all this has to do with marketing. Most marketers would say that the ultimate goal of marketing is to drive revenue growth. But like profit, revenue growth is a goal that is best pursued indirectly. In today's marketing environment, there is a "revenue-seeking paradox," which holds that the best way for marketers to drive revenue growth is to stop focusing directly on revenue growth as the ultimate objective.

Jay Baer captures the essence of this paradox in his best-selling book Youtility. Baer argues that the key to successful marketing is to make marketing useful to the recipient. He defines "Youtility" as "massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long-term trust and kinship between your company and your customers." The underlying message of Youtility is that you will achieve greater long-term marketing success by intentionally promoting less at the point of customer interaction - that revenue growth is a by-product of the help and usefulness you provide.

The revenue-seeking paradox runs counter to the conventional wisdom of marketing that's existed for decades. So, it's not likely that most marketers or other business leaders will rush to embrace it. But those who can put helping above selling will achieve the greatest marketing success.

Can Your Marketing Content Meet the Burden of Proof?

The CMO Council recently published a white paper - Better Lead Yield in the Content Marketing Field - that contains both good news and bad news for B2B content marketers. The white paper is based on a survey of more than 400 B2B content consumers conducted by the CMO Council's Content ROI Center and NetLine Corporation. Forty-one percent of the respondents were from companies with more than $100 million in revenues, and half held titles of director and above.

First, the good news. Online content plays a big role in B2B purchase decisions. Eighty-seven percent of survey respondents said that online content had either a moderate or a major impact on vendor preference and selection. This finding demonstrates why good content has become essential to effective B2B marketing.

Now for the not-so-good news. When survey participants were asked what types of content they most value and trust, vendor-created content came in last. As the table below shows, B2B buyers value and trust professional association research reports and white papers, research reports and white papers created by industry groups, customer case studies, analyst reports and white papers, and independent product reviews more than vendor-created content.

 

While these survey findings should concern B2B marketers, they are also understandable, at least to some extent. Business buyers have been conditioned to treat the information they receive from vendors with a healthy degree of skepticism. They recognize that vendors have an agenda, and they perceive that this agenda can cause most vendor-supplied information to be somewhat less than completely objective. The survey findings show that B2B buyers believe they will get more objective information from professional associations, industry groups, and independent analysts and product reviewers.

In our criminal justice system, there is a presumption of innocence. An individual is presumed to be innocent until the state proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In the B2B marketing world, most business buyers presume that vendor content is usually biased, probably not always accurate, and therefore not completely trustworthy. The burden of proof is on B2B marketers to develop content that can overcome this presumption.

Meeting this burden of proof is particularly critical for content that is designed for early-stage buyers. That's because early-stage buyers will often form their first impression of your company based on your content. If you can establish credibility early, you'll take a big step forward with potential buyers.

Many adjectives can be used to describe content that will build credibility with early-stage buyers, but I contend that two stand out in importance. First, credible content is authoritative. Marketing content doesn't need to read like an academic journal or a legal brief, but the main points you make should be supported by sound evidence, preferably from third-party sources.

The second essential attribute of credible early-stage content is that it is non-promotional. For many early-stage buyers, even a hint of self-serving promotion will taint their view of the content. When I prepare a new early-stage content resource, I use a simple test to determine if it is sufficiently non-promotional. I ask myself this question:  If I created a version of the resource without any obvious brand identifiers and gave that version to a reader, would the reader be able to determine who prepared the resource? If the answer to this question is "yes," the resource may be too promotional.

 

Recent research by DemandGen Report has shown that B2B buyers are more reliant on content than ever. The same research also shows that buyers are becoming more selective when it comes to content. They will only spend their time with content that they deem to be valuable and trustworthy. Therefore, it's more important than ever to develop content that potential buyers will see as credible.

 

Why Content Marketing is the Best Way to Build the Brand

Howard Sewell with Spear Marketing recently published a blog post titled, "Has Content Marketing Made Branding Obsolete?" He argues that most B2B companies don't need "branding." Sewell writes, "If generating leads depended even in small part on how consumers felt about your company, branding might still have a role to play. But successful demand generation today has little to do with your company, and much more to do with your content."

I agree that content marketing is now an essential component of B2B marketing, perhaps the single most important component. However, I disagree with the argument that content marketing makes branding obsolete. Here's why.

Branding is one of those marketing terms that is used in a variety of ways. In one sense, branding refers to the process of creating the name and symbols (logos, etc.) that will be used to identify a company, product, or service offering. Branding can also refer to several kinds of advertising and marketing programs that are primarily intended to (a) raise public awareness of a company, product, or service, or (b) create and maintain a positive perception of a company, product, or service in the minds of prospective customers. When marketers engage in these types of advertising and marketing activities, they often say they are building the brand.

Building the brand is a marketing objective that can be pursued using a variety of marketing tactics and methods. Traditionally, the most prevalent brand building tactics were "mass advertising" activities such as TV/radio/print ads and various kinds of public relations activities.

In the B2B world, content marketing is a marketing tactic or method that emphasizes the use of educational and primarily non-promotional content to capture the attention and interest of prospective customers. Content marketing can be used to achieve multiple marketing objectives, including both lead generation and brand building.

The important point here is that a marketing tactic or method will never render a legitimate marketing objective obsolete. To say that content marketing makes brand building obsolete is like saying that charcoal grilling makes dinner obsolete.

Building the brand is still an essential marketing function for B2B companies. No sale will occur until the prospective buyer accepts and "believes in" both the relevance and credibility of your brand promise. What has changed is that traditional brand building methods and tactics are far less effective today than they once were. Business buyers are quick to tune out promotional marketing messages so what companies need is a more effective method for building the brand and communicating the brand promise. For most B2B companies, content marketing is now the best way to build the brand.

It's true, as Mr. Sewell writes, that most good demand generation content is not usually about a company or its products or services. Today, the best content focuses on business issues or challenges that are relevant and important to a company's potential buyers. But, even when a content resource is not about a company or its products or services, prospects will inevitably associate the content with the company that produced it. After all, the resource itself will be branded. If the resource is a white paper or an e-book or a case study, the company name and logo will almost certainly appear somewhere in the document. If the resource is a webinar, the company name and logo will probably be on every slide.

The point here is that your company, your brand, will be closely associated with the content you publish. The relevance and quality of that content (good or bad) will have a major impact on how prospects view and define your brand.

Closing the Credibility Gap in B2B Marketing

The dictionary definition of credibility is the quality or power of inspiring belief. Credibility with prospects and customers is critical to the success of any business. Credibility creates trust, and it is one of the attributes that elevates a B2B company from "potential vendor" to "trusted advisor."

It's now clear that marketing content plays a leading role in B2B demand generation. In many cases, a prospect's first impression of your company will be based on the content you publish. To be effective, marketing content must be relevant and credible to the intended audience.

The relevance of marketing content is primarily determined by what the content communicates. Does it discuss issues that are important to the intended audience? The credibility of a content resource is primarily determined by how the resource communicates the message.

All B2B marketers face a credibility challenge, at least to some extent. The reality is that business buyers have a built-in inclination to distrust marketing content. The credibility gap was clearly shown in recent research by DemandGen Report. In the 2012 Content Preferences Survey, participants were asked to identify the kind of content they gave more credence to.

• 52% of respondents said peer reviews/user generated content.
• 33% said content that is authored by a third-party publication or analyst and sponsored by a vendor.
• 12% said co-branded content.
• Only 4% chose content that is branded directly from a vendor.

How to Close the Credibility Gap

Credibility is important for all kinds of marketing content, but it's absolutely critical for content that is used to reach prospects who (a) are in the early stages of their buying process, and (b) are not familiar with your company. Content credibility is essential in this situation because many of these prospects will decide whether to begin or continue a relationship with your company based solely on the credibility of your content.

For these early-stage prospects, the most effective way to establish credibility is to use brand-agnostic content. Brand-agnostic content is content that does not directly or overtly promote your company or your products or services. To create engagement with early-stage prospects, the first requirement is to demonstrate that you are a reliable source of relevant, accurate, insightful, and (mostly) objective information. If your content overtly promotes your company or your products or services, many early-stage prospects will tune you out even if your content also provides valuable information.

Recent research shows just how widespread the dislike of promotional content is among business buyers. In the DemandGen Report survey mentioned earlier, 74% of respondents said that solution providers should "curb the sales messages" in their content resources. In a 2012 survey of technology buyers by UBM TechWeb, 77% of respondents said the biggest mistake technology vendors make is to include too much marketing "fluff" in their content resources.

When prospects enter the consideration/evaluation stage of their buying process, they will want and need to learn more about your company and about the specific features and capabilities of your products or services. That's where promotional content is both necessary and appropriate. Before that, however, promotional content may do more harm than good when it comes to creating engagement with potential customers.

Using brand-agnostic content will undoubtedly be counterintuitive for many B2B marketers. But in today's environment, the reality is that you can sell more by "selling" less.

What Makes Marketing Content Insightful?

For the past several months, the Corporate Executive Board has been advocating a new approach to selling, one that is based on the premise that what business buyers really want from potential vendors - and by extension their sales reps - is fresh insights about how to improve their business. The new approach was described in a book by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon titled The Challenger Sale that was published in the fall of 2011.

In a recent post at The Sales Challenger blog, Mashhood Beg outlined CEB's view of what constitutes insight, and more particularly commercial insight. To define these terms, Beg compared them to some of the other types of information that are used in sales messages. These various types of information are illustrated in the following diagram.

CEB defines five types of information.

• General Information - The full "universe" of information that is available to potential buyers. General Information may or may not be credible or relevant to a particular prospect.
• Accepted Information - Accepted Information is information that is both credible and relevant for a particular prospect. Accepted Information does not teach a prospect anything new - it just confirms what the prospect already knows.
• Thought Leadership - This type of information is credible and relevant, but in addition, it teaches prospects something new - something they would not have learned elsewhere.
• Insight - According to CEB, Insight is information that disrupts a prospect's status quo. Think of it as Thought Leadership with a kick. Insight introduces prospects to new ideas and simultaneously highlights the disadvantages (costs) of their status quo. The idea is to cause the prospect to feel a sense of urgency to act.
• Commercial Insight - CEB describes Commercial Insight as information that points a prospect to one specific potential supplier. In other words, Commercial Insight introduces new ideas to a prospect, highlights the disadvantages of the prospect's status quo, and argues (either expressly or by implication) that one specific supplier is better suited than others to help the prospect address the issue or problem.

In CEB's view, Commercial Insight is the most powerful kind of information for sales messaging because it emphasizes (again, either directly or implicitly) the unique or superior capabilities of your company.

From a marketing perspective, I have a couple of concerns about the emphasis that CEB places on Commercial Insight. First, marketing content that qualifies as Commercial Insight may also be fairly promotional. Promotional content can be appropriate for prospects who are in the later stages of the buying process, but the same content may well be a turn-off for early-stage buyers. Second, if it's not really well-crafted, marketing content that qualifies as Commercial Insight may come off as biased and, therefore, not completely trustworthy. It takes a good bit of skill to create a content resource that points to your company and retains an "objective" look and feel.

For these reasons, I contend that most marketing content should strive to qualify as Insight, but not necessarily Commercial Insight. Marketing content, particularly content that is intended for early-stage buyers, should provide new ideas and highlight the disadvantages associated with current practices, but it shouldn't try too hard to point to a single company.

Four Ways to Jumpstart Content Development

Successful B2B marketing depends largely on the quality of marketing content.  To break through the marketing clutter that fills the environment and create real engagement with potential buyers, you need relevant and compelling content that helps buyers address important business challenges.

Although this "new" approach to marketing is quickly becoming a competitive necessity, it's not an easy transition for many companies to make.  The volume of content needed can seem to be overwhelming.

For example, suppose that you sell to only one type of company.  Your buying group typically contains three individuals so you have three buyer personas to address.  Your buyers usually move through a four-stage buying process, and you believe you will need to interact with each buyer at least three times during each stage of the buying process.  This means you'll need at least 36 "pieces" of marketing content to fuel your marketing effort (3 personas X 4 buying stages X 3 interactions per buying stage).

The good news is that getting started with content marketing is usually the most difficult step.  Once your initial base of content is created, the job becomes more manageable.  So, is there any way to make getting started easier?  These four tactics will enable you to jumpstart your content development.

Narrow Your Focus

If you sell to more than one type of business, pick your largest, most profitable, or most attractive customer segment and start by developing a full set of content materials for that segment.  You can add content for other types of customers later.  When it comes to content marketing, you are better off having the content you need to take some of your prospects all the way through the buying cycle than having content that will take all of your prospects only part of the way through the buying cycle.

Use Existing Marketing Materials

OK, I'll admit that most of your existing marketing materials probably aren't suitable for the kind of customer-focused marketing you need to be doing today.  I include this tactic for two reasons.  First, at the right time in the buying cycle, your potential buyers will want and need to learn about your company and your products, and your existing marketing materials should be able to perform this function.  Second, even if your existing materials aren't suitable in their current form, you may be able to make some of them suitable by making relatively minor changes.  At least you won't be starting from scratch.

Follow the "Rule of Five"

The rule of five says that whenever you develop a significant content asset, you should try to create at least four "smaller" content pieces from the original asset.  For example, say you write a white paper.  You then use the content in the white paper to create one or two short articles and two or three blog posts.

Outsource the First Wave

Even if you follow the first three suggestions, you may still find that you don't have the time or internal resources to create the content you need as fast as you need it.  If that's the case, you should consider outsourcing some or all of the content development work.  Once the initial wave of content is developed, you may find that you can build on that foundation to create the additional content you need.

Yes, You Still Need "Promotional" Content

In two recent articles, MarketingSherpa described the results of research into how technology buyers view e-mail offer content.  The research was conducted by Bob Johnson with IDG Connect in partnership with MarketingSherpa, and it involved two surveys.  One survey was directed to technology buyers.  The second survey presented the same questions to B2B marketers.  The marketers were asked to answer the survey questions based on what they believed motivated buyers.

One of the survey questions was, "Do each of the following offer types increase the likelihood a prospective buyer will click on a link to additional information and insight?"

Here are the top five types of content offers identified by buyers - based on the percentage of surveyed buyers who answered "yes" to the above question:

• News and Articles - 84%
• Competitive Comparisons and Buying Guides - 73%
• Promotional Content - 70%
• Educational Content - 65%
• Free Research Reports - 64%

Here are the top five types of content offers identified by marketers:

• Educational Content - 92%
• Free Research Reports - 86%
• Peer Best Practices - 79%
• Competitive Comparisons and Buying Guides - 77%
• Interactive Peer Comparison Tool - 74%

Only 42% of marketers said that an offer of promotional content would motivate buyers to act.  Seems like we marketers may not know buyers as well as we would like to think.

Those of us who advocate content marketing stress the importance of using buyer-centric informational and educational content, and we argue that most marketing content should not be self-promotional (focused on my company or the features and attributes of my product or service).  This is the right approach, but the key word in the previous sentence is most.

Prospective buyers who reach a certain point in the buying cycle will want and need to learn about a prospective vendor's products or services.  Therefore, every company needs "promotional" marketing content that provides that information.  The problem with promotional content comes when you use it with prospects who aren't ready for it.

In my next post, I'll explain the importance of mapping content to all stages of the buying cycle.