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Content Marketing Support Resource

I've just completed reading Rebecca Lieb's new book, Content Marketing:Think Like a Publisher - How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media. I'm immediately buying copies for my people and to use with customers. It's a terrific introduction and summary of the principles and top level practices.

This is book for people who want or need an initial understanding of Content Marketing. 

I read it in a couple of hours on a plane ride. This makes it a good book to share with senior executives and others to help explain "why we're taking this approach to marketing". We all need that. We're all working with a few who "get it," surrounded by far too many who don't. 

Given the significant mind, strategy and budget shifts required for organizations to pursue this course, making the case for content marketing is the first challenge proponents usually face. 

Given the "dabbling" approaches and under performance organizations experience, having the plan and discipline to execute effectively is the next challenge.  

To quote Lieb, 

"IBM recently published research finding that about 80% of those who begin a corporate blog never post more than five entries. They stop. Give up. Leave it abandoned by the side of what was once called the information super-highway. And that's just blogging.  The internet is littered with never-updated websites … and no-one-home YouTube channels. In the rush to adopt content marketing as a tactic, too many marketers forget that if you're continually publishing, you have to think like … a publisher." 

Given the collaborative nature of content marketing, if the people we work with and require to provide key inputs (subject exerts) don't understand, the velocity, effectiveness and outcomes of this approach are significantly reduced. This book can help.

Ready or Not, Here's Your Content Challenge

To capture attention and deliver value, your content must be relevant to your buyers and readers. 

It might be cliché to say buyers are inundated with information, but I don't see organizations really committing to strategies that deal with this reality. 

While many have changed the way they market over the last three to five years, I don't see corresponding changes in the way they create content. 

I call the traditional approach a "point production" method. Sometimes this is referred to as "one and done." I put the emphasis on "one" -- one blog, article, webinar, whitepaper, video, etc. 

If we are committed to creating relevant content that works for our organization and our readers, it must be created to speak to a specific individual, specific interest or issue, buying stage, industry, competitive context and other relevance factors. Not all of them together. 

 
If we believe it's important to make our content convenient for buyers to really consume, we must deliver content in different formats: long form documents, articles, blogs, video, visual diagrams and infographics (among others) that meet their consumption preferences. 

If we want buyers to share our content we must deliver compelling, engaging formats that motivate or prompt sharing with colleagues. Video. 

Inevitably this drives up the volume of work required to create different relevant versions and formats. The traditional, "point production" method that creates content one at a time, won't scale affordably to accomplish this in a timely enough -- or affordable -- manner. 

You know you have this kind of thinking in your organization if you hear: "First, we'll build our … blogs, articles, whitepaper, webinar, video -- then, we'll repurpose this into other formats, or edit for other purposes or personas." 

Can you hear "sequential," more effort, more dollars -- will never happen? 

What's required is a process that designs for multi-purpose and formats in the first place. 

IDG Connect suggests organizations must capture and create "core essence" of content from which other content can be created through re-purposing. This is the right idea -- IF you have the right source insights and content in the first place. 

Unfortunately, using "finished programs" for core essence is the wrong tactic. 

In my next blog I'll discuss an approach that works -- for large or small organizations and budgets. It's practical and highly scalable. In fact, publishers have used this approach for decades. It means going beyond "thinking like a publisher" to creating like a publisher.

What "Job" Do You Want Content to Do?

Marketing professionals who are trying to understand the principle behind content marketing can take a lesson from Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School and his "jobs-to-be-done" marketing ideas.

 

This core Christensen idea is presented in a recent HBS Working Knowledge article, Milkshake Marketing. The article describes a fascinating study his team conducted on behalf of a fast food chain that wanted to improve milkshake sales. The company initially applied a typical market research approach before it engaged "one of Christensen's fellow researchers, who approached the situation by trying to deduce the 'job' that customers were 'hiring' a milkshake to do." 

 

Parallels Between Product Design and Content Strategy

 

Consider this comparison between product design and content strategy. Both product design and content share similar problems. Product design challenges are revealed in the low success rate of new product introductions. Marketing content issues are revealed in the low usefulness to sales and customers. 

"When planning new products, companies often start by segmenting their markets and positioning their merchandise accordingly. This segmentation involves either dividing the market into product categories, such as function or price, or dividing the customer base into target demographics, such as age, gender, education, or income level.

 

Unfortunately, neither way works very well, according to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who notes that each year 30,000 new consumer products are launched—and 95 percent of them fail."

Clayton Christensen

 

With business content, the American Marketing Association has found that 80% of content created by marketing is never used by sales. IDG reports IT buyers find relevant content only 42% of the time. "The lack of relevancy for the prospect reduced the vendor�s chance of closing a sale by 45 percent."  

 

The "Jobs-to-be-done View"

 

Christensen's prescription is to look at the important difference between determining a product's function and its job.

 

"Looking at the market from the function of a product really originates from your competitors or your own employees deciding what you need.

Whereas the jobs-to-be-done point of view causes you to crawl into the skin of your customer and go with her as she goes about her day, always asking the question as she does something: Why did she do it that way?"

This is directly related to the principle behind the content marketing movement.

Three good questions marketers can ask to get at "the job" they want their content to do:

1. What impact do we want content to have on the buyer? 
2. What do we want content to tell us about the viewer (Digital Body Language)?
3. What does the buyer want to learn from viewing each piece of content?

From a company's perspective we might want content to capture and hold attention, to educate, to prove or persuade, to motivate sharing of content, and to cause behavior change or action.  We might want content to identify the viewer's areas of interest, functional role, industry, company size, stage of investigation, or degree of urgency.

A viewer or buyer will typically be researching a specific question or area of focus. Their interest will vary based upon their role, buying stage, role in the decision process, beliefs and values, and numerous other factors.

To accomplish its "job", we know content must be relevant to each viewer. This means we must know:

• Who, specifically, we are creating each piece of content to serve,
• What their specific issues could be,
• Where they are in their evaluation or buying process for each content piece,
• What alternatives they are considering,
• And a host of other elements.

We know that only late in their buying process will buyers be seriously interested in learning about specific elements of a company, its products and services.

Even here, understanding the "jobs-to-be-done" view, together with the skills marketing develops to create more relevant marketing content, can improve the current void in sales content that support the  "closing business job" of sales and sales content.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Create Content Like a Publisher?

We are told, "think and create like a publisher." (Pulizi, Meerman Scott, Albee) What does this really mean? Why is this necessary?

Traditionally, business content creation occurred in a centralized, marketing directed, professional creation organization and process. Today, creation has disbursed to front line creators in the executive ranks, marketing, sales, and even channel and partner organizations. This creates new challenges and requirements. To make this a positive, efficient, contributing effort with positive results, these "new producers" require support.

Failure to provide support could result in haphazard creation efforts of poor quality content, frustrated constituents, reduced productivity, hidden costs -- in fact the risks can be significant.

Framing Questions

Here are questions that will help your team, and your management, understand what's at stake by continuing to pursue a process of "random acts of content." (IDG)

• How do people throughout your organization know what content to build next? Why it should be created? How it will be use? Does the reason meet a set of defined criteria?
• How do you enable anyone to create content without becoming a domain expert, having to figure out what to say, or how to say it (right down to desired phrases or glossary terms)?
• How do you avoid turning your subject experts into content creators?
• How do you preserve message, brand and quality standards while enabling messages to be quickly converted into effective content?
• How to you insure efficient and optimum acquisition of subject expert insights as source input to content creation efforts?
• How do you lower the cost (time, effort and dollars) of content creation, especially over time, as requirements drive up content volumes?

Marketing and Sales Content Strategy

Most people embrace the notion we need to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time, in their preferred format.

This begs the question, how do we create the right content, so it is available the instant it is needed and can be made relevant to all the people we address? How do we deploy content so anyone in the organization's "communication ecosystem" can access, tailor and deliver content at the right time, in audience preferred formats?

Without a defined and documented plan of action, organizations risk inaction, or worse, chaotic efforts that create serious un-intended consequences due to "random acts of content."

Organizations need a content strategy, not only for the web, (Halvorson) but for broader marketing and sales purposes.

This strategy should make clear the content creation priorities needed to fill key marketing and sales content gaps. It should inform and guide acquisition of insights from important subject experts who provide source content. The result would be a defined plan for sanctioned content priorities, supported by an acquisition and creation calendar.

Total Cost of Content Model

We need to move beyond justifying the direct costs of a "point production" project. We need a model that illuminates the "total cost of content" across the organization, and measures the "total value of content" from each project.

This thinking will lead to a new process that yields:

• Lower development time and effort --especially on subject experts -- and faster content time to market
• Content created for multiple (not single) purposes
• Source content assets that can be used for other content creation purposes, as well as re-usable, modular content
• Content that can be tailored for different audiences, purposes, sub-issues, buying stages, consumption lengths (scan and read)

Questions that Guide Your Organization

Has your organization embraced content marketing principles that encourage relevant, customer education oriented over vendor, product and service oriented content?

Have you developed a marketing and sales content strategy, defined your customer's buying process and the questions they must answer to buy your products or services?

Have you conducted a content inventory, assessed how well your content supports your new requirements and made sure it is in the customer voice not the vendor voice?

Have you mapped your content to your customer's buying process by persona, sub-issue, stage, alternative solutions (your competition) as well as to your sales processes -- and identified critical content gaps?

I agree, this can be a daunting task, especially without a good, defined and documented strategy that clarifies specific plans, priorities, policies, processes, procedures and standards. Leaving it up to individuals or groups is both inefficient and ineffective.

Perhaps this is a good point to invoke Albert Einstein's famous quotation:

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Additional Thoughts on 10 Rainmaker Principles

As we all plan for a new year and for changes that will make a difference, a good place to start is with core principles and practices. Mike Schultz gives us a useful checklist in his recent blog 10 Rainmaker Principles and Keys to Sales Motivation, which I highly recommend.

Given my commitment to focusing on "being the best" I found this list especially helpful. Like all good points this post stimulated additional thoughts that I'd like to share.

Principle #1 -- Play to win-win. One of the challenges many of us have given our years of experience is to view principles like this through a mindset of "yes, this is a good one, I understand." I will be challenging my organization to re-think and re-apply this principle in ways that break through our "thinking as usual."

We will re-define what it means to deliver in the best interests of clients and prospects -- specifically and in detail. What does it mean to be "top performers"? How committed are we -- really? We will use this to set new levels of expectation.

Principle #4 -- Think buying first, selling second. I think this is a key principle to achieving our objective of being the best and taking our business to the next level. Again, we're re-thinking what it means to "think buying first." Aligning with the customer's buying process is an important starting point, and one we baked into our process well in 2010.

For this year, it means to start with a buying vs. selling mindset. This will drive our entire approach to prospects. Rather than thinking about "what can we sell them?" our approach will be based upon how well we can service them uniquely, and how our buying criteria fit with the prospect, i.e. we're "buying" a new customer.

Among our criteria will be "fit." We will work with customers where we are truly the best fit with their needs, values and beliefs. They will value the best, and be appreciative of our "secret sauce," the things that make us best. This is important because too many buyers do not meet this criteria. Either through ignorance, indifference, or the belief of commoditization of services, they refuse to appreciate our capabilities that provide real value.

Three important buying questions from our perspective: 1) can the customer be helped best by us? 2) will they allow us to help them? 3) will they value our help sufficiently to make them an ideal customer?

This will show up in the conversations we have with customers. They will sound like a journey of discovery and alignment, rather than directed questioning, pitching of value propositions, or even traditional discovery.

Principle #5 -- Be a fluent expert. Everyone in our organization must know, appreciate and be able to communicate our unique expertise -- where and how we are the best -- and how this provides value to customers. This must be delivered not in a pedantic or typical competitive sense, but to gain alignment and verify appreciation.

Principles #6 & 7 -- Create new conversations - Lead masterful conversations. Of course, it's all about conversations. But conversations about what? Not about us and our ideas and services (as tempting as that is). Leading conversations is about leading the buyer to better understand their current situation, their business and personal objectives, to notice symptoms that indicate problems they might not appreciate, to understand what's possible, necessary and required to resolve their problems. The quality of conversations dictates how well we execute on our vision and plan.

Our conversations will focus first on becoming related, on sharing our vision and values, on establishing trust and a common view. Like good buyers, we will discuss shared criteria to making the best mutual decision.

Each of the principles in this post bear reflection and serious application. How we interpret and apply the principles is the real challenge and opportunity. What insights can you share as you reflect on the original principles or my observation and application of them?

New year, new kidney, renewed energy, marketing and sales insights

Over the past three weeks I have had what can only be described as a transformative life experience. Through the incomparable gift of organ donation by my brother Steve, and the courageous, loving faith of his wife Kate, I have received a kidney that has given me new life -- and with it, an interesting perspective on my businesses and customers.

I'd like to share my story with you, and I look forward to connecting with you soon to make 2011 an incredibly successful year for all of us, for our customers and our businesses.

Background and Condition

In 1999 I was diagnosed with an elevated creatinine level that indicated possible kidney troubles. An ultrasound of my kidneys showed that I had a genetic disease called Polycystic Kidney Disease, or PKD. My kidneys were growing cysts that reduced kidney function as they became larger.

PKD affects about 1 in 500 people, and devastates many families as it is inherited generation to generation. Years ago it was a silent killer as most died from stroke, caused by the disease. (PKD Cure National Kidney Foundation)

My primary symptoms were fatigue, low energy levels due to low oxygen levels, muscle aches, and difficulty concentrating. Essentially my head was in a fog, like a pretty serious hangover that got progressively worse, especially this year.

The gene had muted in me, so no other members of my family were afflicted. At the beginning of 2010 my brothers agreed to be tested for organ donation. My brother Steve ended up being a perfect match, a willing and courageous donor, and we began to prepare for a December transplant surgery.

The surgery was performed at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (Brigham or BWH) in Boston. The Brigham was where the first kidney transplant occurred in 1954. Today, the Brigham regularly ranks in the top of lists for the best hospitals for kidney transplantation in the country. (Celebrating 50 Years of Kidney Transplantation)

Outcomes and Appreciations

The impact of the transplant on me was immediate. It was as though a switch was thrown and I was clear, energized and feeling normal. My creatinine level moved from 3.7 pre-surgery to 1.5 on Friday, 1.0 on Saturday, and .94 on Sunday!

I immediately realized the degree of mental compromise I had been experiencing for probably the last three years, although I was unaware of the full effect during that period.

I am so grateful for the support of so many people, but especially for the patience and support of my family over the last few years. My business partners have really covered and supported me incredibly well in the past year. I am very grateful for their support and eager to jump fully back in the game with them.

I cannot say enough about the surgeons, the supporting staff, and especially the nursing staff at the Brigham. They are, quite simply the best! (Picture of two of my four awesome primary caregivers.)

Starting Friday, three weeks ago, I am no longer sick. I have another week of basic recovery from the surgery itself, but I have no food or travel restrictions. I have a medication regimen that, over the next six months, will taper to the lowest level of immune suppression drugs of any transplant recipient. Assuming adherence to the discipline of daily medication, my risks are extremely low and prognosis very high. I am eager to move forward with my life, my family, my business and my friends.

Business Implications and Insights

But the experience and my story goes far beyond the obvious. As a result of the inevitable reflections during such a period I have gained a new perspective on how we will conduct our marketing and sales operations, and how we will work with select customers who share our values, vision and commitments.

I have had the opportunity to experience and watch "the best" during this period when my renewed senses were especially heightened.

The Brigham and Womens Hospital regularly shares the top spot on lists for the best hospitals for kidney transplant in the country.

But it was more than the hospital quality and process, the top shelf surgical staff. I experienced this quality in care delivery from everyone who touched us. The nurses who cared for us were unique in their skills, personality and approach. But each was absolutely the best. It was impossible to place one ahead of another. As a care delivery team the result over five days was incredible.

This got me thinking: why would I go for this type of procedure to a hospital, surgeon, or medical team that was not the best?

My brother Stephen is among the very best classical trumpet players in the world. This also involves being a music arranger. He has extended that ability on a broader scale by establishing the Fulcrum Point New Music Project in Chicago. Watching him for many years, and especially dealing with the challenges of this surgery (it's much tougher on the donor), I realize it's not just that he is the best, he knows how to be the best.

During my hospital stay I had the opportunity to watch the New England Patriots play the Chicago Bears in Chicago. With an 11-2 record so far this year, and impressive wins over the Jets and the Bears, New England are the best at what they do. And they succeed 80% of the time! But they believe they are capable of succeeding 100% of the time. They've developed a process to accomplish this. And that process is embraced by everyone in the organization. When they don't embrace this operating philosophy, they are released (good by Randy Moss).

The Patriot organization is full of people who know how to be the best, from Robert Kraft, Coach Bill Belichek, and quarterback Tom Brady on down.

Over the past few years I have been working with two businesses -- Avitage and PrivateSalesCoach. Each company provides different but related services to improve the quality and level of outcomes of business-to-business marketing and sales organizations.

Most sales organizations win about 10-15% of all the deals they work. The CSO Insights study of sales opportunities that are worked all the way to completion (i.e. sales person thinks they should win the business the night before they learn of the results) indicate only a 50% success rate. The few "best" organizations hit about 65% regularly. And this is considered "normal".

Now, every game has its unique averages (in baseball, the best lifetime batters have averages from 320 to 366 (Ty Cobb). But as I Googled to find these stats I noticed this quotation:

"I don't like to sound egotistical, but every time I stepped up to the plate with a bat in my hands, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the pitcher." - Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby

I suspect our best sales professionals have a similar, if more positive, thinking pattern as they engage new customers.

But are 10%-15% (or 50% depending on your measure) really what our "batting averages" should be? I suspect if these "players" and "managers" were in professional sports they would be unemployed pretty quickly! (A nod to Sharon Drew Morgen who has been leading this cry for a long time!)

This got me thinking about these questions and ideas that I will be writing about over the next few weeks:

• Why would our customers want to buy from us if we aren't "the best"?
• What are we the best at? What does it mean to be "the best"?
• What impact would it have on us and our business if we regularly won 50% - 80% of the business we chased?
• What would we have to do differently to make this a reality?

Please join me in this discussion, online and within your organization. This is key to creating personal and organizational breakthoughs this year.

Content and Social Media Marketing Predictions for 2011

I’ve just read this compilation of insights and predictions published by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Two strategic insights I found especially helpful:

• Must have a real-time mindset (David Meerman Scott)
• The “consumerization” of B2B marketing (Tom Pisello)

 

This summary of especially salient points looks like a pretty good content checklist:

• Content will get shorter (Doug Kessler)
• Relevance will become the new standard (Sandra Zoratti)
• Must become better storytellers - Some brands will understand that they are nothing
• more than a story and brands that tell their story will win (Simon Kelly)
• Create original high value content (think unique) (Valeria Maltoni)
• Education oriented better than humor (Russ Henneberry)
• Frequency, quality and relevancy not only matter, but will be essential to maintaining a competitive edge (Barbara Rozgonyi)

 

• Ability to generate content that engages audiences and motivates them to take action (Paul Roetzer)
• Quality over quantity
• Content strategy and planning -By the end of 2011, a marketer not having a content-related marketing strategy will be more the exception than the rule ( Russell Sparkman)
• Alignment with internet fueled buying cycles (Tom Pisello
• Allow customers to engage and consume content on their own terms (
• Customized (personalized) content delivery
• Attention spans are diminishing … alleviate information overload (Ambal S. Balakrishnan)
• Content rules when it shares or solves, and doesn’t shill (Ann Handley)

 

• Facebook will rule (Leslie Lindeman)
• Track audience preferred devices
• Challenge of standing out within the cacophony of content
• Focus on syndication
• Content curation
• Get webinars "right" - viewers won’t accept mediocrity anymore - (Shelley Ryan)
• Micro sites
• Leverage mobile
• Video will be the most significant development (Marc Laplante)

My (SalesVPI) addition:

The business front line (sales, sales support, inside sales, customer service, account managers) will become more active selecting, tailoring and proactively delivering content to target audiences. The front line can best understand the specific interests, timing, relevance factors, and convenience considerations of those audiences.

Content Strategy for the Web

If you're accountable for creating content for marketing and sales I encourage you to immediately get copies of Kristina Halvorson's Content Strategy for the Web for everyone on your team.

There are many parallels and insights that apply to building non-website content. The core premise, that organizations must take a strategic approach to building content and think of content as important business assets, applies to content created for lead generation and nurturing programs, sales enablement and customer communications.

The following are a few key excerpts from the book:

"Only when we embrace our identities as publishers will we be able to commit to the necessary infrastructure to care for our content as a strategic business asset.

For years, we've been spending millions of dollars on strategy and research, user experience design, visual design, and technical platforms. In other words, we've invested in everything we need to build the online vehicles for our content.

And yet, strangely, it's the content that gets left until the last minute. It's the main reason projects are delayed or even abandoned. It's an afterthought, a nuisance.

Why? Because most of us haven't yet realized that we're actually in the publishing business.

Publishers plan far in advance which content they will create. They have established, measurable processes in place. They invest in teams of professionals to create and care for content.

Creating useful, usable content requires user research, strategic planning, meaningful metadata, web writing skills, and editorial oversight. It requires people. With experience. And insights. And judgment. It requires planning. And input. And time. And money.

It will not happen automatically.

Content strategy is the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. A strategy is a carefully considered, well-articulated plan of action, achievable and executable. It's a roadmap that gets us from where we are now to where we want to be.

Until we commit to treating content as a critical asset worthy of strategic planning and meaningful spend, we'll continue to churn out worthless content in reaction to unmeasured requests. We'll keep signing up for online content initiatives without pausing to ask why. Our customers still won't find what they're looking for. And we'll keep failing to deliver useful, usable content that people actually care about.

Content strategy will help you deliver content that inspires trust. Drives action. Builds loyalty. On time. On budget."

Elements of strategy include:

• Online messaging and branding
• Information architecture
• Editorial strategy
• Web writing
• Search engine optimization
• Metadata strategy
• Content management strategy
• Content channel distribution strategy

Three steps to content strategy

1. Content audit
2. Analysis
3. Strategy

Content Strategy Deliverables

• Message map
• Content inventory
• Gap analysis
• Site map
• Page tables
• Content template map
• Editorial strategy
• Content style guide
• Editorial workflow diagram
• Content management system architecture
• Metadata framework
• Taxonomy
• Content flow schematic
• Content model
• Content quality assurance tools
• Content production schedule
• Competitor content audit
• Content migration plan
• Content licensing evaluation report

My company, Avitage, is developing content strategy for content marketing initiatives, especially for rich media and video content.

Over the next few week's I'll delve into the application of a strategic framework for publishing content that is not targeted for website delivery.

Focus on the Conversation

Scott Santucci of Forrester's Technology Sales Enablement Group has an important blog post regarding sales conversations. (The Key To Sales Enablement Success Is To Focus On The Conversation)

"A B2B sale is really the synthesis of many discrete conversations, and value is best communicated when they are focused on a common goal: solving the client's problem. What most organizations fail to address is how complex a task it is to corral many discrete conversations into a consistent value communications strategy.

To make matters even more complex, most companies have solutions that can address multiple different problems, so this set of questions must be answered for each opportunity. We all know that good conversations are dynamic, reciprocal and most effective where there is trust between the people involved in the dialog.

To accomplish this, the salesperson must communicate information that is:

• Relevant: to the specific circumstances and realities of a given company


• In context: to the roles and responsibilities of the individual with whom you are having the conversation


• Timely: in concert with where the customer is in its problem-solving process and to the relative importance of that issue to others that could gain investment."

Key Role for Marketing

If you're in marketing, where is "helping to drive better sales conversations" on your priority list?

As important as lead generation and lead nurturing are -- they're a key component of sales enablement -- sales needs marketing to help them design the selling conversation.

For any organization that is involved in, or desiring to move to, a complex, consultative or "solution oriented" sale, this has always been a requirement.

Fortunately for those of us in sales, this requirement now aligns with the newly discovered marketing requirement of creating "relevant" content to support lead nurturing initiatives.

My observation is, marketing organizations lack methodologies and frameworks to simplify and support the task of designing customer relevant conversations at different stages of the buying/selling process.

In much the way sales organizations have struggled to define, implement and embrace a formal sales process, marketing organizations continue to employ an ad hoc, almost artistic approach, to messaging and content development.

If you don't have a documented messaging and content strategy and creation process, that is accepted by all message and content creators, and managed as a formal process, it doesn't really exist.

Help Sales Become Thought Leaders to Customers

Adding to the complexity is the fact that MOST conversations don't take place face-to-face anymore, especially in the critical early stages of the customer engagement. Telephone and email are relatively weak conversation tools.

I'd like to see marketing organizations deploy more content through sales people rather than in direct campaigns to customers. Help us become "thought leaders" in our customer's eyes. Give us something of value to talk about -- and to deliver.

Marketing sends blasts to customers -- despite new technologies. Sales people, if they know their customer, are in the best position to define relevance, create context and select the right timing for delivering valuable information to customers.

But they are not the creators and originators of the information. Communication (conversation) is a function of message, content and delivery. Companies need to rethink their marketing and sales communication and content strategies.

e-Marketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

When we look back at the past decade, I believe we will see a significant inflection point in the transformation of B2B marketing and selling. The rhetoric of the internet has become the reality of the internet. The web, along with digital media, web 20 technologies, and the proliferation of wireless and mobile computing have resulted in the long-awaited convergence. Even user adoption rates, traditionally the regulator on the velocity of technology impact, are accelerating noticeably.

Of course, not all is perfect. We tend to implement new technologies using old processes and methodologies. True breakthrough occurs when we re-engineer these processes based upon the new technologies.

To paraphrase an old line, to ask, "given my business, how should I use these new technologies?" is fundamentally the wrong question. A more helpful question is, "given the capabilities provided by new technologies, how should I design and run my business?"

Ardath Albee helps answer this question for marketers and business executives in her new book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. For marketing practitioners and executives who are looking to innovate their revenue engine, this is indeed a must read.

The motivation is considerable. When "marketing has taken charge of propelling prospects farther through their buying process, salespeople are selling to more qualified buyers. This means shorter time to revenue and optimized results from your sales force. "

Starting with the well accepted premise that business-to-business (B2B) buyers begin their buying process online with searches for a rich array of available information, Albee lays out the business implications along with a cogent framework for content strategy and execution.

Most organizations lack a content strategy, and many lack a marketing strategy. "Event thinking" pervades our approach to marketing, lead generation, content creation and sales support. Albee makes the case for a "mind shift" required to capitalize on the potential of emarketing and marketing automation.

"It's time to shift your thinking. Think of today's marketing department as a publisher with a variety of content channels at its fingertips that can provide you with a larger communications reach than you've ever had before. Even though 80% of companies say that they "found" their vendors rather than their vendors finding them, chance are high that their initial discovery was somewhere other than your corporate Web site. "

With her guidance, readers will begin to develop not only effective strategies, but new processes and procedures to create the volume and kinds of "contagious content" buyers demand.

"The buying process for a B2B complex sale has shifted in recent years. This shift means that much of the time that was previously spent with salespeople is now spent reviewing online resources. For this reason, it's imperative to be found in the places where your prospects are looking. Now more than ever, your company must be recognized as a source of relevant knowledge that pulls prospects into the sales pipeline. Well-executed content will play a bigger role in building trusted relationships that get salespeople invited into the process more efficiently."

Content -- buyer relevant, edu-focused, convenient, compelling, story-based content -- is indeed the fuel for today's revenue engine. It is the "bait" that attracts prospective buyers to find you on the web, and to be found by you, long before they are ready to speak with your sales people.

For most organizations, "Content development is seen as an overwhelming task that takes too much time, effort and money from an already stretched-thin budget and overworked marketing staff. The reality is that a well-structured content-development plan can supercharge marketing and sales results. A well-designed, integrated content strategy will give you more content with less effort."

Albee fulfills on this promise with practical, actionable prescriptions and recommendations.

I found the following concepts especially valuable:

• Begin the process by thinking from a "problem-to-solution-scenario" perspective


• How to create content for specific "personas" -- because "relevance is king"


• Create a "buyer synopsis" to direct the creation process


• Create content for multiple purposes, buying stages, issues related to the topic, and stakeholders -- in one creation process


• Create content also for sales "conversational resources" and "conversation starters"


• Create content for both "scan" and "read" value


• Numerous ideas for creating content as compelling stories so "people to step into your stories and envision their future with you"


• Create content to support "persistent progression" through the buyers journey


• How "listening" is the marketers "secret sauce"


• Create content to support buyer "step backs"


• Five content "catch factors" that impact viewer attention


• Five content "amplifiers" that guide content creation