Shifts in B2B buying patterns call for a new, soft-selling approach. This section highlights the rapidly evolving need to demonstrate value propositions via content marketing and educate prospects more effectively.
Solution Snapshot:
Curata by HiveFire, Inc. helps marketers more effectively manage content curation, the process of finding, organizing and sharing online content. By combining these tasks in one easy-to-use platform, marketers save time on content marketing while simultaneously increasing brand visibility, boosting SEO, nurturing leads and establishing thought leadership.
By Roger Bottum, VP Marketing, SpringCM
What is content marketing? Content marketing is the art and science of engaging your potential buyers in a conversation long before they say “hello,” so they’re more likely to buy from you.
With marketers now seeing such a clear connection between content and demand generation, new research revealed a growing interest in the ability to measure the impact specific content pieces are having on engagement and revenue.
The survey, conducted by DemandGen Report (DGR), and sponsored by marketing automation provider Manticore Technology, found a growing interest in measuring the impact of specific content pieces on various phases of the sales funnel, with 31% of respondents indicating they currently measure and attribute the impact of specific content; and 59% indicating and interest in tools that can help measure the impact.
By Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing, HubSpot
You publish content to generate demand. You don’t generate demand to publish content. One sign that content marketing may be failing is if you first need to market your content.
With content marketing emerging as a key part of demand generation programs and strategy, marketers are challenged to develop a deeper understanding of how to effectively engage prospects and encourage content sharing.
Given the popularity of Farmville-type gaming, and the increasingly critical need to create more interactive BtoB brand experiences, “gamification” has become a hot topic of discussion to drive engagement and quality leads. During Custom Media Day, hosted by the Custom Content Council and Content Marketing Institute July 27 in New York City, the sessions focused on extending the life of your content collateral. Chris Sullivan, Regional VP of Sales at gaming platform provider Bunchball, shared key insights into how gamification is helping brands integrate game dynamics into their web sites, services, community, content or campaigns to drive participation.
Grabbing market share requires BtoB marketers to develop and maintain a sound understanding of their target customers. Marketers are challenged to cater to customers’ priorities, worries, business challenges and needs more so than ever before.
By Jeff Walcoff, Content Development Director with Demand Creation Specialists
Simply acknowledging the importance of content marketing and actually using it effectively to drive thought leadership and inbound leads are proving for many marketers to be two very different things.
DemandGen Report Editor Andrew Gaffney caught up with Tom Pisello, Founder of Alinean and Author of the ROI Guy Blog at the SiriusDecisions Summit May 4-6, 2011 in San Francisco, which drew a crowd of more than 1,000 sales and marketing professionals. Pisello shared some of the key takeaways from the Summit, including the increased focus on sales enablement solutions and strategies.
Noting the critical need for BtoB marketing and sales team to nurture the problem of “frugalnomics,” or more empowered, skeptical buyers, Pisello shared details about Alinean’s interactive tools designed to move buyers through the buying cycle. To speak to the new breed of BtoB buyers, Alinean offers interactive white papers, diagnostic assessment tools and ROI benefit calculators to help organizations deliver relevant, engagement offers throughout the buying cycle.
The new technologies and processes being implemented by leading BtoB companies means marketing and sales are more reliant than ever on content. However, in one of the closing keynote sessions at the recent SiriusDecisions Summit, Jay Gaines, Service Director for Demand Creation Strategies at SiriusDecisions, pointed out that most BtoB companies are lacking accountability, strategy and measurement when it comes to content.
“If content is king, then people treat that king pretty badly,” Gaines said during a session titled, Content: The Heart of Effective Demand Creation. Illustrating his point, Gaines conducted a poll of the audience that found 76% of attendees cited content as critical to their demand creation efforts. However, responding to a follow-up question, 41% of attendees said lack of budget and resources or the lack of a content strategy provided significant hurdles to their efforts.
