With Marketing budgets being tight and ROI more important then ever, there’s a major focus to get the most bang for the buck.  Decisions to drop high expense/low return tactics such as paying for exhibitor booths or sponsorships are becoming more common in exchange for speaking at events and creating more content to be distributed online.  As companies in the B2B space look at social media and content marketing, there are many reasons to build a strong content marketing strategy.

Anywhere by anyone at any time

One of the top reasons content marketing is so effective is that it can be distributed anywhere by anyone at any time.  Great content has the potential to be shared by thousands of people over various networks when THEY need it.  It’s not a point-in-time experience shared by only a few.  Helpful content gets your customers’ attention.  Just a few well-connected customers can then share that information with their networks and word-of-mouth spreads overnight.  In addition, people trust information shared by someone they know much more then an unsolicited ad or brochure.

Thought Leadership

The more a company can educate and help customers and prospects, the better.  When speaking at events, take the time to upload your presentations online where people can go back to them and share them.  Address key pain points your customers face on your blog and provide useful advice that doesn’t include your product or service as the answer for everything.  Everyone knows the business decision process for B2B is much longer so building trust as a thought leader and advisor pays huge dividends when one of your followers is ready to make a buy decision.

Stronger Relationships

One of the biggest differences between B2B and B2C is that a B2C transaction tends to be a one-and-done experience.  In B2B, the relationships last longer and the parties turn into strong business partners when it’s done right.  Your customers don’t want to hear from your Sales people all of the time but they do want to learn from your expertise.  Providing great educational content via ebooks, webinars, blog posts and newsletters allows you to continue to build strong relationships with your customers without them feeling bothered or pressured.

Having a great content marketing strategy in place is key to creating new customers and building stronger relationships with current customers.  Taking the time to create helpful and timely content on a consistent basis on a variety of platforms can be an extremely effective and rewarding use of resources.  How is your company using and benefiting from content marketing?

We’re all used to going online and finding outside information in the form of ratings and reviews in the B2C world, however when it comes to B2B, service providers still tend to be the gatekeepers for prospects in terms of finding customer feedback before they decide to purchase.  It’s not that they intended to be the gatekeepers, it’s just that nobody else shared or organized the information with the exception of high-end analysts firms that sell their reports and evaluations for a fee that most small to mid-size businesses can’t justify.

However, with more people participating in social media for their professional lives, that’s changing fast.  People are creating and joining professional groups and networks to share information with one another relating to their jobs and responsibilities.  As this trend progresses, more professionals are starting to share their experience with business products and services and the companies that provide them just as they do in their consumer lives.

While your business will never be able to control or manage what’s discussed about your company and solutions, there are steps you can take to curate positive reviews and referrals in a way that helps them rise to the top of your prospects radar.

Create a referrals or customer comments page on your own site.

Something that is well within your control is to create your own customer comments and referrals page on your site.  Ask key customers to provide you with a recommendation that you can publish.  In addition to displaying those comments on your respective product pages, create a specific landing page for each one with a title like “[Product Name] Reviews” or “Customer Comments on [Product Name/Company Name]”.  Make sure you also include those terms in your page meta-data.  This will increase your chances of the positive reviews you’ve put together coming up at the top results when someone does a search.

Listen and participate in social discussions on your company and solutions

Use a listening service of your choice to closely monitor any mentions of your product/service or company.  Thank those that are positive and address the negative ones.  If someone’s had a bad experience and is making it public, do your best to resolve that mistake and/or apologize to the customer in the same medium.  Not only will this ensure that prospects that see the comment also see your resolution but there’s a good chance that you’ll turn that upset customer into a company advocate.

Ask key customers to provide a recommendation of your company on other sites

In addition to getting customers to provide you with a recommendation on your own site, it’s also worth it to get them to provide a recommendation on your company on other sites that prospects may go to in order to learn more about your company.  One key point here is to make sure that the review/recommendation is for your company and/or solution and NOT for a person on your team.  Why? People and companies take different paths and if that person leaves, it does you no good.

Taking these steps will allow smart businesses to curate comments about them or their solutions.  It won’t totally control the conversations and it isn’t a magic bullet for marketing but as the use of social media continues to grow for B2B companies, it’s a best effort to make sure the positive Word Of Mouth from your customers gets heard by as many people as possible.

When you think of a white paper, what comes to mind?  Is it a boring, descriptive, overly-professional document that you’ll struggle to get through in the hopes of learning something?  Would you ever voluntarily read a white paper with a boring title from a company you don’t know?  You’re not alone.

Hence, the ebook.  I’m not talking about books you can download on a Kindle.  I’m talking about short (5-20 pages) documents that have the goal of educating and enticing without all of the stuffiness.  Just as the use of social media is the cool and “in” marketing tactic to create content people are attracted to instead of interrupted by, the ebook is the new, hip document that people create with the goal of educating others via a document that they actually want to read.  The reasoning behind it is that people can learn something for their job and enjoy what they’re reading at the same time.  There is no longer the major dichotomy between Personal=fun/enjoyable to Work=buttoned up/boring.

A great example of an ebook that stepped away from the standard educational information of the industry and increased market awareness for the business is “Healthy Smile, Healthy Sex!:  How Your Oral Health Affects Your Sex Life” by Dr. Helaine Smith. 

Let’s start with the title.  Even when you’ve been sitting in your dentist’s waiting room for an hour with nothing to read, did you ever want to pick up an educational brochure?  Me neither.  And that’s when you’re a captive audience.  Yet, this ebook has been downloaded thousands of times by people nowhere near a dentist office and educated them on things they need to be concerned about regarding dental hygiene and how it can impact other parts of their lives…some may say the most important part of their lives.

Then there’s the content.  I have never read any dental white papers but I’m fairly confident none of them are aimed at me, the patient, and discuss sex, pot smoking, pregnancy, and aging all in a quick, entertaining, and informative manner on topics that matter to me.   I don’t need to know the deep, technical stuff.  That’s for the dentist.  I just need to know enough to educate me and help me understand what I can do on my own and why going to a dentist regularly is important.

Finally, a good ebook will have calls to action. In the ebook, Dr. Smith let’s people know her background and how to contact her for speaking engagements as well as sign up for her newsletter and blog.

The white paper is not dead and there are some out there that do it right, however those creating content for their marketing endeavors should probably go with writing an ebook.  They’re more enjoyable for everyone involved and have the ability to attract many more prospects.

Have you written an ebook for your business?  Please feel free to share how it went.

If you’re like me, you’re working out and eating healthy this week in preparation for Thanksgiving Day.  It’s a day to enjoy with family and friends where the full focus of the day is the turkey dinner…and a little football.  If you ask people what they really look forward to about the dinner, there are normally two camps; the turkey, or the side dishes.  Some people really look forward to the turkey; white meat, dark meat, fried turkey, turkey legs, etc. Others can’t wait for the mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, grandma’s special gravy and more.  While the focus is the turkey, the side dishes really make a difference in how fast they run to the table.

Taking a step back, the same can be said for your business social media strategy.  How so?  Think of the turkey as your product or service.  When it’s all said and done, that’s the focus of your business and why you’re there.  Where social media really helps is when you’ve got a product or service with many competitors and that prospects view as somewhat commoditized. To a lot of people, the turkey is pretty much the same.  Whether you have it at one person’s place or another, it’s basically still turkey.  There are some slight nuances and different sizes but nothing crazy.

That’s where social media (aka side dishes) comes into play.  Using social media to educate prospects and build your reputation as a thought leader really makes the difference.  What can help you get people running to the table?  Here are some great side dishes that can get people running to your table over the holidays and long thereafter.

Blogs

A great blog with helpful content makes a big difference.  Shift Communications helps themselves standout from the thousands of other PR firms out there with their PR Squared blog.

Videos

Fun and educational videos attract attention.  Check out Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” videos. Their iPhone video alone has almost 7.5 million views.  They’ve done a great job of making their blenders stand out.

Free Educational Content

Making your presentations, case studies, ebooks and other helpful content free and available for others to download and share online also brings in prospects.  The key thing here is not to hide them behind a registration.

Free Services

Free services can help attract people to your site and service as well as provide you with additional information in your area of expertise.  HubSpot does a great job offering free services such as Twitter grader and Website grader to help others out.  It also provides them with a ton of aggregate data that they can use to continue to improve their products.

There are many more but you can only digest so much at once.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

My time with FYIndOut is coming to a close today, and I wanted to reach out and say goodbye. To all our readers – I appreciate every second of time you spend on our blog. I hope you enjoyed everything I’ve produced for you as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Although I will no longer be a weekly contributor to this blog, I will still be making my presence known. Look for my input in occasional guest posts and among the comment section. The FYIndOut team is incredible, and I will miss my place in the company very much.

As a final installment of what I hope you considered good rules to work by, I’m offering my top 6 takeaways from my time at FYIndOut:

1. It’s never about selling your company. It’s about building your relationships.
2. Everyone needs information, and giving means getting. Share any nugget of knowledge you can for the benefit of the masses.
3. Nothing beats great content with an automatic takeaway.
4. Be as viral as possible. Marketing doesn’t require deep pockets. Be creative, be innovative, and be web 2.0 savvy.
5. Connect with the people your audience already trusts. They are the ones who will offer dynamite input for your company that will be listened to and shared.
6. Social media is the bomb diggity.

In case we haven’t already connected on Twitter, lets do it now. Follow me @CAGarland.

Thanks for everything FYIndOut!

Keep reading everyone. I know I will.

(Roscoe with Dead End Sign by Zoomar)