5 Crazy Good B2B Takeaways from Content Marketing World 2016

If you and your entire company are not "all in" with your content marketing program, then your content efforts are going to fail. And who wants that?

Not I. And not you, if you're reading this.

In my never-ending quest to stay on top of the latest trends and best practices in content marketing, I attended Content Marketing World in Cleveland. What an exhilarating experience. It was nice to know I'm not alone in this crazy B2B marketing world. I walked away from the event not only with renewed energy and focus, but also with some key insights, especially for my fellow B2B marketers.

Take these bits of wisdom and run with them, starting today!

1. Content is your greatest sales asset

It's a fact that sales controls less than 30% of the sale today. That’s 70% left in marketing’s court. Not to mention, 90% of decision makers say they NEVER respond to cold outreach. That means the quality and relevance of your content is going to make the difference between a sale and a lead gone cold.

My favorite session of the entire conference was Marcus Sheridan's “How to Tear Down Sales and Marketing Silos: The Secret to Developing a Culture of Content Across the Entire Organization”. His presentation struck a chord in me and in all of the B2B marketers that were seated around me.

Today’s buyers have changed...and we’re screwed if we don’t. They are investigators who will spend the time to research before they make a decision. Make sure you’re providing content that educates them along their entire journey.

The “30 Page Rule”

Sheridan has found that, when somebody reads 30 pages of his River Pools website, they buy 80 percent of the time. The industry average for sales appointments is 10 percent. Get people to stick around and read your stuff, because the longer they stay on your site, the greater the chance they’re going to fall in love with your company.

Drip 30 pages of content to prospects after the initial lead comes into sales. These 30 pages should answer the questions a buyer will have on their first sales visit, so that by the time that visit happens, the sales rep just has to “not screw it up”!

2. Break free of campaign brain

Many of us suffer from “campaign brain” – that every piece of our content has a beginning and an end, and a ROI associated with it. Campaigns serve a valuable purpose and aren’t going anywhere, but our content should always be “on”. In other words, create content that addresses the questions and problems prospects face through content that will stand the test of time. Content that can keep giving long after a campaign is complete.

Robert Rose, Chief Strategist for the Content Marketing Institute, said in his session that all of your content should be treated as assets that keep providing value to your organization. Make sure that every piece you put out:

• Solves a problem
• Surprises the reader
• Shares a BIG IDEA that makes you think, aha! Duh! A few brainstorming tips: Find the perfect enemy / Make the problem harder / Give birth / Ask how can we get people to do (blank)?
• Always ties back to "always on" content that stands the test of time.

3. Quality over quantity, depth over speed

A recurring plea heard in every session was for the need to slow down and make sure we are creating content that is valuable to our audience. It is easy to lose sight of this painfully obvious concept when our business KPIs revolve around landing sales deals and completing last-minute flybys to please clients. But when we stop listening to what our readers and prospects want and focus on the bottom line, we lose big time. After all, if your content isn’t resonating with your audience, all you’re going to get is crickets and, in the long run, unhappy clients and lost sales. Focus on building your audience and writing for their needs, and the sales will inevitably come.

"Mediocre content will hurt your brand more than doing nothing at all." –Joe Pulizzi

We need to stop with the surface-level list posts and the like. Today’s readers want to be educated, challenged and entertained. Aim to be the WebMD of your space, and to address every question your readers could possibly have.

Publish content featuring hard numbers and strong opinions

According to Loren McDonald, who spoke on B2B thought leadership, a company must differentiate itself through expressing opinions alongside data. And this data doesn't lie:

Don’t shy away from taking a stand. Prospects are more likely to trust a new source that delivers both eye-opening hard facts and opinions than one that strictly offers up the numbers. Give your content a personality. Literally. One person should be your chief storyteller who is the face of the company.

Slow marketing is good marketing

Faster and more isn’t better… take the time to ask if you’re making content that will be helpful and interesting to your reader. The famous Ann Handley asserted in her keynote speech that there is such a thing as bad slow in marketing… but there is a critical need for a good slow.

Check your content using Ann Handley's technique:

1. Ask yourself, why are you creating this content? Answer “because” until all of your answers are exhausted. “So what?” is the shortcut to customer empathy.
2. Ask “Wait, what?” to see why this is important. What is our long term plan?
3. Ask “Does this sustain us?” What you do needs to feed your soul.

4. Subject Matter Experts are your greatest ally

As content marketers, we aren’t necessarily experts on the topics we cover, and we shouldn’t have to be. While we are tasked with putting together and disseminating content in a strategic way, we have to rely on our subject matter experts to create content that is valuable and interesting to our prospects and readers.

That’s all fine and great, but if you’re like me, sometimes the struggle is real to get these experts involved. I bet you've heard this...

I went to the Lunch & Learn session led by AJ Huisman called, "How to Turn Highly Billable Professionals into Extremely Productive Content Marketing Rock Stars That Get Bottom-Line Results". Sounds promising, right? I was not disappointed, especially with the “Reverse Jedi Trick", a technique you can use to convince any busy professional to take the time to create content.

Here's how it works. The next time you encounter resistance from an expert, ask them, “Who else has that really deep knowledge at the company and can write this?” Chances are, they won’t be able to think of anyone else and will get on it.

When an expert "has no time" to write content, ask them, "Who else has that really deep knowledge at the company and can write this?"

But, stop with the geek speak

Thought leaders seldom speak the language of your company’s buyers. They are immersed in their industry and familiar with the jargon… if they write in geek, they will scare off those who aren’t privy. Our challenge as content marketers is to take what the experts write and turn it into content that is easy to understand by the average reader. We must keep it simple because the average American reads at a 7th or 8th-grade level. And B2B marketers, don't think for one second that your prospects and clients are different; even highly literate people prefer copy that is easier to read according to a case study from Nielsen Norman Group.

Here are more tips for working with highly billable professionals:

• Don't make an appointment. Ask the expert when you run into them or when you catch them on Skype whether you can chat for a second.
• Say you have a unique way of tripling their hourly rate. All they have to do is spend an extra hour writing the most important points, and then you will turn it into content that will bring in more clients without any extra effort from them.
• If possible, include marketing in the business development process.
• When all else fails, beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. Be brave!

Differentiate your content

In his session, "How to Build a World-Class B2B Thought Leadership and Corporate Evangelism Program", marketing evangelist Loren McDonald covered how companies can produce more content, which is the issue all B2B marketers seem to face. But he also talked about how to stand out from the others in your industry when everyone is using the same strategies. His advice:

• Be thought-provoking.
• Provide actionable insights.
• Be counter-intuitive.
• Go deep, provide comprehensive information.
• Use the power of surprise to shock.
• Be timely.
• Take a stand.

Scale your content

Once you have thought leader content, you need to scale it for maximum impact. Use Loren's 4 Rs to scale your content:

1. Repackage - Change a title, add a few sentences, create a list article linking back to original pieces... share the same content multiple times. Have a repackaging plan.
2. Repeat - Create one report or other type of content you can create on an annual, seasonal, or monthly basis. For example, each year you can publish key trends in your industry featuring those trends a subject matter expert gives to you.
3. Research - Do a study on benchmarks, then repurpose it. This is the most powerful, scalable form of thought leadership content. Keep the above tip about sharing both hard facts and opinions in mind, and try to take a different angle than others in your space.
4. Reformat - Create multiple forms of content from one piece of thought leadership content, such as a report, webinar, Infographic, social media post, or download for lead generation ads.

5. Don't be afraid to be human in the B2B space

When you write content, think about the stories you can tell about the people in your company... including yourself. Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing, encouraged attendees to think beyond the buyer journey and always bring the theme back to people. This kind of content builds your brand and creates loyalty.

"People are interested in the emotional tissue between us. These personal stories aren't going to close the sale, but that's what creates differentiation and preference." –Matt Heinz

Jump at the opportunity for B2B brands in live video

Leading companies in the B2B arena including Hubspot, SAP, and CA Technologies are making a go of live video. Amisha Gandhi, Chelsea Hunersen and Andrew Spoeth talked about the power of live streaming, what's working and lessons learned.

Who should be featured? Anyone who has an opinion or something interesting or helpful to share with your audience! Of course, if you can have someone on that is a celebrity in your industry, all the better.

What to talk about, and how? Be real, have a conversation, and give viewers the feeling that they are eavesdropping on a really interesting, important conversation or moment. Ask questions and allow live commenting. Have someone whose only job is to monitor and respond. One great time to use live video is when teasing an event or webinar before it happens. 20 minutes is a good length. Remember to remind viewers every few minutes of what you're shooting because not everyone will start watching from the beginning.

How to avoid technical issues? The speakers had some great tips on this, including making sure you hook a microphone in when shooting on an iPhone or other mobile device and being aware of any background noise around you. But in the end, we are all human and something is bound to go wrong, so be prepared and roll with it. Your audience knows you are shooting live and they will let it go.

How to measure success? Live video is still relatively new, and metrics are still in their infancy. However the speakers mentioned the following key metrics: Followers, number of engagement seconds, video views, amplification (shares), and conversions.

Facebook offers incredible value to B2B marketers

B2B marketers tend to think of LinkedIn as the best social medium to reach their audiences. But if you're not advertising on Facebook, you should be. Why?

You might be able to ignore the fact that B2B marketers are using Facebook MORE than any other platform. (40% Facebook over 37% LinkedIn and 15% Twitter). You might even be able to justify the cost of using LinkedIn ads, especially when you're marketing a whitepaper (a type of content that does well on LinkedIn, but not on Facebook). But there is no disputing that Facebook lets you connect with your audience on a personal level in a way that sells like no other.

"If you want to have big content marketing impact, go for the heart." –Brian Carter

Brian Carter, CEO of The Brian Carter Group, made the case for Facebook advertising in his session on Facebook lead generation. He shared several case studies of B2B companies who are seeing major return on investment from their spend.

Why is 70% of the U.S. population over age 13 on Facebook? Brian says they’re BORED. Help them solve a problem, show them something eye-catching and helpful. But what is the ultimate key to winning over your clients and prospects? Use the type of selling that works best for your brand... or use all four!

The only way to find out what will work is to target and test. Brian emphasized that even testing just the image you use in a campaign can make a huge difference. Just take a look at these examples:

Know your audience... don't guess based on biases! Take PC versus Macintosh users and their style preferences:

Choose your ad type CAREFULLY.

Wrapping it all up...

That was just a snippet of the deep and forward-thinking knowledge that was shared at Content Marketing World 2016. If you're a B2B marketer seeking fresh perspectives and strategies you can take back to the office, I highly recommend you attend next year, and I'll see you there!

Did you go to Content Marketing World this year? What bits of wisdom have you taken back to work since the conference? I'd love to hear your thoughts and plans.

More resources on CMW16:

Thanks for reading! Be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter (@annabassham).