Content is a powerful tool for B2B marketers to attract, educate, and persuade prospects throughout the buyer's journey. But creating content without a clear strategy can result in wasted time, resources, and opportunities. How can you create a content framework that supports your sales team and aligns with your business goals? Here are some steps to follow.
Before you create any content, you need to know who you are writing for and what they care about. Research your ideal buyer personas, their pain points, challenges, goals, and motivations. Use surveys, interviews, analytics, and social media to gather insights and feedback. Segment your audience based on their industry, role, company size, stage of awareness, and other relevant criteria.
crafting a content framework that empowers your sales team is akin to composing a symphony - it requires careful orchestration. Start by understanding the buyer's journey and segmenting content accordingly. This is like tailoring the notes to resonate with specific audiences. Ensure content is easily accessible and organized, acting as a well-arranged sheet music for your sales team to follow. Provide a mix of resources, from informative blog posts to engaging case studies, catering to different stages of the sales process.Encourage collaboration between marketing and sales, ensuring they're in perfect harmony. Regularly update& refine the content framework based on feedback and performance metrics, like fine-tuning a melody for perfection.
Remember that your audience rarely makes a buying decision alone. When developing an ideal client profile (ICP), consider all the people who contribute to a buying decision. Your content strategy to reach those buying groups needs to be inherently helpful to decision-making, speeding the process and (hopefully) skewing it in your favor. You must give, give, give to this group - without a sales pitch and without expecting anything in return - for this strategy to work. But when it works, it really works.
Co-create content with your target customers informed by your Ideal Customer Profile and common pain points. Not only does this ensure relevancy of content to your target audience but provides your sales team with a 'soft in', creating a value exchange between your organisation and your prospects.
Your audience's preferences and the effectiveness of your content are not static. Regularly monitor data on content performance and audience engagement.
Understand the sales process: Gain a deep understanding of your sales process, including the different stages, buyer personas, and key touchpoints. Identify the content needs at each stage and the challenges faced by your sales team. Define buyer personas: Develop detailed buyer personas that represent your target customers. Understand their pain points, motivations, and information needs at each stage of the buying journey. This will help you create content that resonates with their specific needs. Map content to the sales funnel: Align your content with the different stages of the sales funnel.
Once you have a clear picture of your target audience, you need to understand how they move from awareness to consideration to decision. What are the key questions, objections, and triggers that influence their decision-making process? What are the best channels, formats, and types of content to reach them at each stage? Create a content map that aligns your content with your buyer's journey and your sales funnel.
B2B buyers simply do not wake up one day and buy something. The journey is usually gradual, as challenges and pains build up over time. And then eventually there is a tipping of the scales for a variety of reasons, and the search for a solution is prioritized. I've audited hundreds of buying journeys and this process can take weeks, months, or even years. And the information that buyers need at each stage of intent can be different, especially if different stakeholders are involved in the purchasing process. One key thing to remember: Sale calls are a helpful source of information but only unlock insights for part of the journey. So much happens in a buyer's world, to influence their decisions, BEFORE talking to sales.
And understand that the buyer’s journey ≠ the funnel. And it’s not linear. People move through the buyer’s journey at their own pace, and often don’t fit neatly into your stages. Your content needs to meet them where they are, regardless.
It is also helpful to have standard definitions of the buying stages for the sake of understanding your content gaps. These aren't foolproof, but they do help ("All models are wrong, some are useful," right?). - Brand: Content not related to one of the other buying stages, for example event recaps, employee highlights etc - Awareness: Content that presents the problem(s) we are here to solve - Consideration: Content that discusses broad solutions -Decision: Content that presents your company/product as THE solution - Customer: Content specifically for customers
To truly understand the impact of your content on the buyer's journey, employ multi-touchpoint attribution analysis. Don't just focus on the last interaction that led to a conversion; consider all the touchpoints a prospect encountered on their journey.
Also keep in mind when developing the buyers journey for most industries the buyers in control of 70%-80% of the journey. So to hack the attention of your audience make sure you create educational lead magnet offers that will help your prospect get up to speed on there own terms. The signed up for a demo CTA are long gone. Provide valuable information without gating and find unique ways to get lead capturing during the consideration phase and not the awareness stage.
Your content framework should also have a clear purpose and direction. What are the main goals and objectives of your content marketing strategy? How will you measure and evaluate your content performance and impact? Choose SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals and metrics that align with your sales and business goals. For example, you might want to increase website traffic, generate leads, nurture prospects, or close deals.
In B2B content marketing, we often forget to assign a specific goal to each piece of content. Randomly written blog articles, ebooks, and whitepapers don't contribute much. Neither the targeted customer segment nor our company benefits from random content production. Let's conduct thorough buyer persona research and understand how our customers make decisions along their journey. Afterward, our only job is to serve these segments and guide them throughout the buyer's journey. Simple? Yes. Easy? Not at all. This is what makes B2B content marketing beautiful.
Efficiency is paramount in content marketing. To make the most of your efforts, explore repurposing and content multiplication. Transform high-performing content pieces into various formats.
Setting clear content goals and metrics is paramount in any content marketing strategy. During my tenure at Seagate Technology, I consistently emphasized the importance of aligning our content objectives with our broader business goals. We ensured that our goals were SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Whether it was about boosting website traffic, lead generation, prospect nurturing, or closing deals, having well-defined metrics allowed us to track our performance effectively. This data-driven approach not only helped us refine our content but also demonstrated the tangible value of our content marketing efforts to the wider organization.
Content frameworks are such a unique and crucial part of executing on content development. And they can come in many ways -- start with your objective. What are you trying to achieve and for whom. I like to use a two by two where you can map the type of content you need and the impact you intend it to have and then start to layer on the formats etc.
Another way of setting up a goal is Horizon goals. SMART goals often ignore the fact that there are many uncontrollable factors involved in the process. Hence, Horizon goals allow us flexibility and agility. And you know what works the best these days, Right? IT'S AGILITY.
Before you create new content, you need to assess what you already have and what you need. Conduct a content audit to inventory and evaluate your existing content assets. Identify what is working well, what needs improvement, and what is missing or outdated. Use a content gap analysis to find the gaps between your current content and your audience's needs and expectations. Prioritize the topics, keywords, and formats that will fill those gaps and add value to your audience.
Evaluate your existing educational content and think about the opportunities you have to Repurpose, Reuse, Reframe, Rehome that content. For so many businesses you already have the content that is ripe for distribution but it could use small tweaks here and there. Think about this existing content before setting out to develop something new. And as you develop new content developing content with a Modular mindset will allow future content to be repurposed much more easily.
1?? Sales analytic tools, when integrated with marketing automation systems, provide marketing teams with insight into ???????? ?????????? ???????? ???? ???????? ?????????? ??????????????. ?? You can see what collateral reps use most frequently – and the content they’re not using at all – and find out why. Is it because the content isn’t helpful, or because they don’t know it’s there? 2?? Sales engagement analytics also reveal ?????? ?????????????????? ???????????????? ???????? ???????? ??????????????. ?? You can track what attachments are downloaded, what pages are viewed, and for how long. This visibility gives you understanding into what messaging resonates most with prospects – so you can refine future content.
When conducting your content audit to find the gaps the easiest way is to keep content into 3 areas. 1. Awareness 2. Consideration 3. Decision In most audits a major of clients have much more content in decision bucket. The key is to have as close as possible to being equal. And fill your content buckets with a variety of content like video (long and short format), white papers, ebooks, events (live and online).
Most of the things are already said and done. So the best way to do the content audit and gap analysis is to have content relevance. Repurpose the existing content and try to share it with useful additions and you will get how content relevance can change quality.
Absolutely, during my tenure at previous organizations, I consistently executed these practices to ensure our content remained relevant and effective. By taking stock of our existing content, we could identify what was resonating with our audience and what needed enhancement or replacement. The gap analysis helped pinpoint areas where our content fell short in meeting our audience's needs. This data-driven approach allowed us to strategically prioritize our content creation efforts, ensuring that we consistently provided value to our readers, while also optimizing our resource allocation.
To execute your content framework, you need to plan and manage your content production and distribution. Create a content calendar that outlines the topics, titles, formats, channels, deadlines, and responsibilities for each piece of content. Use a content management system or a project management tool to streamline your content workflow and collaboration. Communicate with your sales team regularly to align your content efforts and share feedback.
This is a huge step! You have to have a content calendar to be successful along with being able to scale and grow inbound leads. I would recommend trying to be at least 30 days ahead but with flexible in your plans. I would also highly recommended using social posting tools to schedule specific posts so you can be more automated and more successful.
Creating a structured content calendar and workflow is essential to maintaining an organized and efficient content marketing strategy. In my prior roles, I've observed that a well-planned content calendar ensures that content is consistently published, aligning with the overarching strategy. This not only keeps the team on track but also helps in coordinating content across various channels and platforms. Additionally, integrating a content management system simplifies the workflow and enables better collaboration among team members, making content creation and distribution a more seamless process.
The key to this is consistency. Implementing a content calendar is a fundamental necessity. Lately, there has been a surge in low CAC (acquisition cost) plays - but they rely on leveraging first-party data stories. Identify what resources and skills you have available and lean into a plan that supports you in that way.
Organization is key. In a past project, our team developed a detailed content calendar that outlined not only the content topics but also the responsible team members, deadlines, and distribution channels. This level of organization ensured that we consistently produced and distributed high-quality content on schedule.
A content calendar is a plan that outlines what content you will create, when you will create it, and who will create it. A content workflow is a process that outlines how content will be created, reviewed, and approved.
Finally, you need to optimize and repurpose your content to maximize its reach, relevance, and results. Optimize your content for SEO, readability, and conversion. Use keywords, headings, links, calls to action, and other elements to improve your content visibility and performance. Repurpose your content into different formats and channels to extend its lifespan and appeal to different audiences. For example, you can turn a blog post into a video, a podcast, or a social media post.
Content should not only be repurposed. It should be revisited every year or two if you plan on keeping it in circulation. Remove out of date information. Add new learnings and references. Make sure it fits current sensibilities. Not only will this make the content better, it'll help your SEO. Because no B2B content is truly evergreen.
Optimization is ongoing. I've always believed in the power of repurposing content. On one occasion, we transformed a series of well-received blog posts into an e-book, which became one of our top lead magnets. This not only extended the lifespan of our content but also allowed us to reach a new segment of our audience.
Have you written a book? Great, turn it into LinkedIn carousels, articles, and videos. Have a presentation for a conference? Great, post it on LinkedIn. Have happy customers? Great, showcase them and their success.
We often take the key points from webinars and splice them into bite-sized videos that can be distributed across social media channels. It helps build authority and the 'know-like-trust' factor with your audience.
Once you have created your content, it is important to optimize it for search engines and repurpose it into different formats, such as blog posts, infographics, and videos. This will help you reach a wider audience and get more mileage out of your content.
Establishing a Feedback Loop: An ongoing dialogue with your sales and CS teams is essential, not just for initial content creation, but for its continuous refinement. A feedback loop ensures that content remains responsive to real-world sales scenarios and customer issues. As the market evolves or new challenges emerge, this loop allows the sales and marketing teams to stay aligned, updating content promptly to address emerging needs.
I think key here is that you shouldn't be creating content to help your sales team. You should be creating content to help your customers and prospects, that your sales team can leverage. Content should be created with purpose and offer genuine added value - not just something for sales to use as a tool. Great content creates inbound opportunities for sales.
Actually Involve Sales One of the biggest issues I see is Marketing charging ahead creating content that they think would best serve the sales team. While their intentions are good, the content they produce often falls flat. Sales sees the content as "disconnected" with the needs of their prospect/client base and they get frustrated w/ Marketing. Marketing, gets frustrated w/ Sales b/c their hard work is not appreciated and used. The result, mutual animosity, and wasted energy. Align Marketing with Sales to created informed content that both parties have authorship over. This method results in... - a cohesive Marketing & Sales team - content that actually resonates the intended audience
Develop a content framework that focuses on 'sales-enablement storytelling.' Instead of typical product-centric content, create narratives around real customer challenges and how your solution solved them. Craft case studies, testimonials, and whitepapers that offer a deep dive into these success stories, making it easier for the sales team to relate these stories to potential client's pain points. This human-centered approach helps build trust, engage prospects, and equip your sales team with powerful, relatable narratives to drive conversions.
Content frameworks that support sales should be part of ABX (Account-based experience) campaigns. Marketing, Sales, and Rev Operations should first agree on the target accounts and goals for the campaign. The content framework (topics, type and format) and activation plan (what marketing channels and sales actions) should be based on the accounts and goals for the campaign.