Content Marketing Exposed: What Everybody Ought to Know about Creating Luxuriously B2B Content

Content-Marketing-Exposed

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Spot the difference?

It’s not what you sell, but, what you stand for.

It’s not about coupons, discounts, giveaways or competitions. The difference is helping people (although a bonus gift is nice).

UPDATED NOTE: February 2021, This post was updated for content, readability, speling, gramer, syntext, context and the continuous updating and understanding of Digital Marketing.

Don’t worry, this is Urban Renström, there is always science and research involved in everything I talk about, teach, and demonstrate.

Marketing (in the Mad Man days) was about creating a myth and telling everyone about it. Now it’s about telling a truth and sharing it. –

Marc Mathieu, Uniliver

Content Marketing Exposed and B2B content marketing is about being authentic, honest and real. The type of marketing which builds trust.

Helping, educating and informing people is the new marketing.

Content marketing is being nice because nice is good. Being nice and good touches hearts and earns trust. And trust is the basis of relationships.

Content marketing lights the way to trust.

So what do you stand for?

Content Marketing Exposed Master your Destiny – Earn the Trust of People and Melt Hearts

(I am not altruistic. Cash and profit keeps the wheels of commerce moving. You can sell, but, in a ‘nice just because I’m nice way’).

ZMOT Growth of Info sources.jpg
ZMOT – Content is Needed Because Buyers Want More Content

People value authenticity and want to be heard that is content marketing exposed!

Megaphoning “what you sell” was the Mad Men days of the ’90. Outbound, cold calling, double Martini lunches, schmoozing and the ABC, ‘always be closing’ era. Companies held all the power in the Mad Men days because companies were the knowledge gatekeeper.

The buyer wanted knowledge and the gatekeeper of said knowledge was the salesman.

Times marches on and now the buyer now has the power – thank god for to the internet, and thank Tim Berners-Lee.

A Sheep in Wolfs Clothes – Exposing the Content Marketing Exposed

Content Marketing exposed is the idea that creating and sharing knowledge to pull and attract prospective customer. With the goal to convert prospects into customers, and enticing those customers into repeat purchases (building loyalty).

This is essentially inbound marketing.

Publishing content gives people a chance to know, like and trust you. Only when they trust will people buy from you.

Content Creation Audience Awareness
Create First Content Based On what the Audience Knows of You

Content performs a number of magic bullet business tricks all at the same time.

  1. Publishing blog post demonstrates your subject matter expertise
  2. Publishing content proves you have an understanding of the pain points of your prospects
  3. Publishing is a guarantee you are open and honest with knowledge
  4. Publishing is an unabashed way to help
  5. The best magic trick – content marketing builds trust

Write content that makes the world sing. Content is really about connecting with people.

Ardath Albee

Sheep or Wolf of Wall Street – Content Marketing vs. Online Marketing?

Content marketing exposed uses blog post, social media, video (can you say 3×3 video grid), to deliver magnetic headlines, persuasive landing pages, and conversion-driven emails. Content as owned media helps develop relationships and moves people down the funnel in ways paid media cannot.

The lucrative aspect of content marketing exposed is it supports the entire Eugene Schwarts 5 stages of the customer journey from an unaware prospect, to the customer, and ‘Guy Kawasaki’ type brand evangelist.

To qualify as owned media content marketing and blog post must:

  • Focus on attracting and retaining a specific audience
  • Sharing compelling, useful, and/or entertaining information
  • Be consistently delivered – weekly blog post
  • Speak to the pain point of an audience and or help solve a specific problem

Content Marketing Pushes all Media Forward

‘Media’, classically anyway, is pigeonholed into one of these three buckets – paid, owned or earned. View all blog post writing and coent marketing as either one of these channels.

Content Marketing essentials

Paid is paying to get your ‘message’ in front of an audience.

Owned media are the channels you own.

Earned media is people talking about you.

Content market drives all media.

POEM for Content Marketing

How long does Content Marketing take?

It depends. Lol. Yep, I said it and yes depends is a terrible answer. Most importantly marketing is not magic.

Content marketing is using SEO to generate traffic in your articles. And I tell clients the payoff of articles and blogging takes between 3-6 months. Think of a moving a large ship with a small electric motor. Starting to move the ship takes a long time. Whereas keeping the ship moving is easier.

Getting traction with your content marketing is analogous to moving that ship.

However, the more you publish the more opportunities your content has to get found and therefore at the end the more leads you generate.

Not having any blog post gives Google and people zero reasons to visit your website. How long time does it take to go from no traffic to *the first page of Google* depends entirely on your niche, the strength of the competition for your keywords, quality of your writing, size of your network, age of your website and dozen other factors.

Where do I begin with Content Marketing and Blog post writing?

The type of content you produce must relate closely to what you sell – naturally. Cat videos and cat memes help sell cat food.

This ‘Back to Basics’ content marketing strategy sequence is

Business Objectives > Marketing Objectives > Marketing Strategy > Content Objectives > Content KPIs & Metrics > Content Strategy > Content Tactics.

Distilled from this process will be:

  • List of competitors content
  • Gaps in your competitors content
  • Gaps in your content inventory
  • The pain points of your ideal client (Marketing Personas)
  • What competitive advantages the competition has and how strong it is fast, cheap and good
  • The engagement level of their community
  • Social network coverage gaps
  • Keywords and search engine ranking for your competition

Use a content audit if the ‘Start from Scratch Back to Basics’ content strategy sequence is too involved.

Do a content inventory using a quick win content audit, done on your business and your competition. Focus your audit on a) top of the funnel content, b) sales nurturing or 3) loyalty-based content.

Marketing Tip – If you are new to content marketing then create brand awareness type of content for your top of the funnel prospects. Choose nurturing sales content if you have leads. If you are losing customers rapidly then begin a content loyalty program.

Content Marketing Exposed – How much Content is Enough Content?

The short answer is more than you think you need to attract prospects. Converting said prospects into customers, and enticing customers into repeat purchase. How many pieces does that equal? Let us see.

Look at the buyers journey with questions and concerns at every step. Buyers follow a ‘buying process’ similar to John Dewey Buying Decision Process.

  1. Problem/Need recognition
  2. Information search
  3. Evaluation of alternatives
  4. Purchase decision
  5. Post-purchase behavior

Each stage has many question which need answers, (and sometimes multiple answers). So five answers for five questions per each avatar.

Remember content is consumed differently throughout the day by different people. Some prefer audio, some text. Producing  only written blog posts, limits your audience.

Pulling this luxurious idea string with our 5 questions, each one answered as text, graphic, video, audio, and a presentation totals 25 content pieces.
Every business has 3-4 ideal clients (Marketing Personas) so 25 pieces multiplied by 3 or 4 totals 75-100 pieces of content.

75-100 pieces of content per product. Hum that sound like a mountain to climb and will cost a fortune.

(Content Marketing Exposed) What Dosh does this Glamour cost?

The right question is what is the opportunity cost of not blogging to market your business? How much money are you losing to your competition today and this week?

Recall earlier the bar for ‘acceptable behaviour’ we expect from companies has risen. Simply spending money on advertisements is not enough to classify as successful marketing efforts. People ignoring ads with Sky+, TiVo, and Netflix, Adblocker and our multi-device, time-shifting attention deficit disorder lifestyle. Also, ads do not build trust.

So Make or Buy Blog post

Content marketing has many moving parts. Witing, editing, graphic design, video and audio production, email marketing, SEO, analytics, outreach and influencer marketing.

If you buy your content marketing goes like this:

  • Small to medium size business pay between €2-20K per month.
  • Larger organization and enterprise business is between €5-50K per month.

The make argument of content marketing:

A Community Manager is the beginning with the above skills would cost between €30-70K per annum.

Make and/or buy come with choice.

“Is it soup yet?” Make some and buy some

Do you have in-house skills? Labour available? and time you can allocate to content marketing. Using internal talents and skills and outsource the rest.

Content Marketing Exposed – Why Invest in Content Marketing?

For sustainable revenue and profits!

The power in the transaction has shifted from the seller to the buyer. This means your marketing has to evolve. Content marketing is the answer because a perfect storm of factors is converging:

  • More competition for customers
  • Knowledge and information are ‘free’
  • Sales cycles are opaque – B2B buyers wait longer before contacting sales (are ¾ along their internal process before they contact sales).
  • Stakeholders– the number of people in the ‘decision making loop’ is increasing.
  • Content Pieces – diversity and number of content pieces buyers need is increasing

That’s a Content Marketing Exposed Wrap

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Chinese Proverb

The proverb applies to content marketing and horticulture. Posts created a year ago are generating visitors and leads today. Blog post published yesterday will take weeks and months to generate results.

Social media and content marketing are not magic beans.

They are only helper monkeys supporting your awesome products and services. If your products are not awesome then no amount of social, email or content marketing will not fix it.

Therefore, fix your product first.

The leap into content marketing is exciting, scary, and rewarding all at the same time.

The BIG Content Marketing Exposed Takeaway – Content marketing is particularly good at melting hearts, developing relationships, and earning trust, moving people up the funnel and builds trust during the entire customer life cycle.

Content Marketing is not all roses and chocolates. Its is a long term strategy and difficult to find know what resonates with people.

Love to hear your comments. And if you like this post – share it with your friends!

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