“The emergence of content marketing as a separate discipline has distracted marketers from their real job of communicating with customers and selling stuff.” – Mark Ritson, Marketing Week
It’s a bold person indeed who argues with Professor Ritson! Happily, we found two; Spotler Group CMO Ian Truscott, and VP of Customer Success at emailexpert UK Adeola Sole.
In an online session, Ian and Adeola laid out their own viewpoint; that content marketing doesn’t have to be “a separate discipline”, but can be deployed strategically to help businesses of all kinds attract, convert and retain customers.
Awareness, Revenue, Trust
“These are things that the C suite and managers, the CFO, and all those guys with the money care about” – Ian Truscott
The quickest way to kill your chances of success is to speak solely about metrics that no-one outside marketing cares about. By thinking about what your CEO or CFO will want to hear, you can design your activities with the right metrics in mind and earn their support.
Building for the long term
“Content marketing is similar to the argument for why we should invest in brand, right, we need to invest in brand for the long term.” – Ian
Famously, in the B2B world, only 5% of your audience is at or near the point of purchase at any given time. B2C is a little easier, at 20%. An effective content marketing strategy makes sure that you are still in the minds of the rest (“salience” if you like your marketing jargon). Then when they are looking to buy, you’re already established as a credible authority.
Ideas, not Products, Spread
“People aren’t necessarily going to talk about your products, people aren’t going to share about your products on social media unless they’re really, really real advocates and fans.” – Ian
If a potential customer isn’t in a buying mode, it’s a waste of time talking too much about your product. In the case of Spotler, we focus on content which has value regardless of what platform you are using. Our Subject Line testing tool is a prime example; we help marketers think about a critical component of their emails, without forcing them to sign up to anything. If they test their subject line, make some changes, and notice an improvement, they’ll come back.
All along the funnel
“There’s loads of stats about how many pieces of content somebody actually touches. You’ll find people, even once they’re in the buying journey with you and you’re on their shortlist, are going to touch a lot of content.” – Ian
It’s a huge mistake to see content as purely a way to capture initial interest. With the right strategy in place, you can build trust by supplying useful content at every stage of the journey. Case studies perform particularly well here, as you can talk in detail about the specific problem the specific customer is facing. You can also start getting into more technical issues “How do I use [product] to achieve [result]”.
The real B2b vs. B2c difference…
“At the stage that a customer is ready to buy in b2b. It’s been a journey, and you need to use that content to help with that decision purchase. With b2c, we’re finding that our customers as much as there is loyalty. There’s a little bit of fickleness in there. So being too pushy, too soon, can be a detriment to your sales.” – Adeola Sole
If B2b is characterised by the need to build up slowly to a sale, B2c’s challenge is retention in a marketplace crammed with alternatives.
Due to the costs and timelines associated with them, B2b purchases are often “stickier”; once made they are rarely unmade. With B2c purchases being quicker, switching to another ”supplier” is easier to do.
And the surprising similarity
“What is the same [between B2b and B2c] is that discovery phase, that awareness and consideration stage. So they will do their research, they will go off and look at your different social channels or look at reviews, all of those different parts of content will help. It’s just that the application will be slightly softer with b2c simply because the consideration stage is a lot shorter.” -Adeola
While the B2b/B2c divide does exist for a reason, the key thing to think about is that both are selling to humans. The human, emotional considerations may be less visible in B2b, but it’s still there.
Don’t overthink it
“Content doesn’t have to be difficult. It doesn’t have to be ground-breaking, you can be so simple and start with just alleviating customer pain points, but also showing your knowledge within the industry or within your space.” – Adeola
Talk of an over-arching content strategy can lead you to think that you have to go big and bold and expensive with the content you create. But this doesn’t have to be the case! If you’ve identified the things your customers care about, short blogs or social media posts are perfectly good vehicles for delivery.