As part of a marketing evaluation we delivered to a client this week, we covered Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and in particular how the volume of indexed content plays a major role in the success of any SEO effort. The situation was simple: one of this company’s biggest competitors showed hundreds of indexed content pieces, and our client showed around ten. Game, set, match to the competitor, right?

Not so fast, my content marketing friends.

First, think about the sales funnel:

While there’s no universally accepted set of steps in the sales funnel, I typically use the following:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Evaluation
• Commitment
• Referral

While volume of content is important, in the B2B world in particular, churning out content generates traffic that typically fills the top of the sales funnel—the awareness phase. So what’s a marketer to do about the middle and bottom of the sales funnel?

Create better content, not necessarily more content.

Thinking in particular about the Interest, Evaluation, and Commitment steps, here are a few tips on creating better content for the middle of the sales funnel

1. Get Sp­­­ecific

Not all buyers are created equal. They occupy different roles. They work for different types of organizations. They have different budgets. They have different needs.

You can’t necessarily create content for each individual, but what you can do is create content for groups, whether it be by buyer persona, type of organization, or size of company. Most importantly, write about specific situations that groups of your prospective customers are dealing with.

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Andrea Goldstein is a member of the Towson University Class of 2012 who interned with us this fall. We wanted to give her a chance to share some of what she learned on our blog. Below are her words of newfound wisdom—beginners and veterans alike, we hope you can learn from this post as Andrea learned from her experience with us.

Stepping in to a new company is always quite the adventure.  Even though I knew what Right Source Marketing did before I started, I was excited to be able to get some hands on learning experience in a marketing field that is becoming more important every day—content marketing. While working at Right Source, I was not only introduced to content marketing, but also effective team dynamics, and the wild world of social media when before, I was normally on the other side of the table as a consumer.  Overall, what I learned goes far beyond teachers and books.

Here’s a few top takeaways:

1. The importance of  personal branding. Originally I met Will Davis, Right Source’s Managing Partner, when he came to Towson University to speak on the importance of blogging – little did I know he would be my future employer.  At the time, he inspired me to start my personal blog, and to take more seriously how I was viewed online. Slowly, I began to brand myself and the next time I saw Will at a Towson job fair, he seemed excited to know I had started blogging. One thing led to another, and here I am sitting in Right Source’s office today writing this blog post. Will said a large reason why I got the internship is what and how I wrote on my blog.  It will be hard to forget the first few times I met the Right Source team, somehow they took a complicated concept and made it seem so simple: write online, brand and market yourself, and you’ll get attention from the right people.

2. A small business can do big things. Working at Right Source is definitely not what I am used to after interning at 200+ employee companies.  The work that comes out of the smaller RSM team is astounding.  Everyone has their specialties, and they all complement each other.  We have everything from the business savvy, social network savvy, copywriting savvy, and project managing savvy—and a large network of specialist partners. Right Source works with national companies – because they can.

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As you probably know by now from recent blog posts and Twitter streams, a number of our Right Source team members spent last week fully immersed in the Content Marketing World conference.  Kudos to Joe Pulizzi and his team for putting on a fantastic event – it ran so smoothly you never would have guessed this was the conference’s first year.

One session that really stood out to me was Thursday morning’s panel on “Content Marketing Metrics: Justifying Content Marketing Spending.”  The panelists addressed a topic I am passionate about – planning your content to align with buying cycles and buyer objections.   Two major points made by one of the panelists, social media and content strategist Jay Baer, were of particular interest:

Everyone’s a Publisher – and Collectively We Create Mass Amounts of Content

Jay hit the nail on the head by reminding everyone that “All companies now find themselves in two industries: the business they are actually in, and the publishing business.”  Jay just talked about this today on his own blog.  I see marketers and brands picking up on this, and agree that it’s a trend that will continue to accelerate.

Think about how much content you engage with on a daily basis and how much that has grown in the past quarter, 6 months and year.  We frequently cite a quote from Google’s Eric Schmidt that “Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003” – which is still astonishing to me every time I say it.

Where the problem lies is all too often companies don’t spend much time planning their content so that it is mapped to buyer personas, needs and objections. Instead (to borrow from a South Park inspired internet meme) they take the approach of:

Step 1 – Create Content

Step 2 – ?

Step 3 – Profit

As nice as that would be, content marketing simply does not work that way.

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“If B2C marketing is the 100 meter dash, then B2B marketing is a lot more like the steeplechase.” This quote came out in a meeting with a new client last week. And if it rings true for B2B marketing in general, the analogy is even more relevant when you talk about B2B content marketing.

With long sales cycles, objections, and hurdles in your way, B2B marketing can often make you feel like you are running a steeplechase. But before we go too far down that track, here’s a quick summary of this Olympic event for those who have been away from track and field since high school gym class:

What is the steeplechase?
From About.com:

“The 3000-meter event includes 28 hurdle jumps and seven water jumps. The jumps begin after the runners pass the finish line for the first time. There are five jumps in each of the final seven laps, with the water jump as the fourth. The jumps are evenly distributed throughout the track. Each runner must go over or through the water pit and must jump each hurdle.”

As you can see, it’s a complicated race, with a lot of obstacles and potential pitfalls to maneuver around — just like B2B content marketing.

B2B buyers now have the tools to control the sales process

The ideas behind content marketing are not new (nor is the steeplechase, which dates back to at least 1860). But the value of this discipline is higher than ever, particularly as B2B buyers are now armed with tools to research your industry and services before even thinking of engaging a sales representative. Buyers want to educate themselves and be in control of the process. But this shift in the traditional buyer/seller roles threatens to take away a key part of the sales process — your ability to overcome objections.

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The following post was initially published on the Content Marketing Institute Blog (June 23, 2011).

An organized, well-attended kickoff meeting is essential to starting a successful content marketing program.  This is true whether you are handling your content marketing in house or hiring an agency or consultant. Yet keeping this meeting on track is difficult, especially when it includes people from multiple departments who have different perspectives and communication styles.

Here are 13 tips you can follow before and during the meeting to make it more productive. This will result in immediate enthusiasm and participation from marketing and non-marketing employees alike – a promising start to your long-term content marketing strategy.

Before the meeting

Identify the right participants

Getting the right people involved is one of the trickiest aspects of the entire content marketing process. Generally speaking, you want this meeting to include people who are enthusiastic about the concept, who are well-respected within the organization and who have a penchant for both listening and participating. The domineering, like-to-hear-themselves-talk types should never get the meeting invitation. In my experience, kickoff meetings may include as many as 10 – 20 participants.

Give participants detailed information about the meeting

The program’s point person should send a note out at least a week before the meeting. The meeting request should include:

• A detailed agenda: I usually schedule 2 hours for the meeting with the first hour focused on selling the idea of content marketing and going through general procedures; the second hour is spent on brainstorming.
• Reasons for the meeting: Sell the meeting to attendees by anticipating questions and preparing accurate and compelling responses.
• A “thinking” assignment: For instance, ask participants to come up with a few questions or blog post topic ideas, as opposed to a “doing” assignment. Read the rest of this entry »