Inbound Marketing Age

Great SEO copywriting is the key to thriving online.

But one of the biggest challenges for SEO copywriters is creating content that is favoured by online searchers and search engines.

The job of an SEO copywriter has demanded a variety of disciplines in previous years. Now, it's not enough to write for algorithms. You must write for people first.

This means your writing must speak to your audience's needs and desires, while, at the same time, targeting specific keywords and following SEO best practices.

Trade shows and exhibitions have long been a mainstay in traditional marketing. The word “exhibition” originates as early as 1649. It is a derivative of the Latin word "expositio", meaning "displaying" or "putting on a show" (Morrow, Sandra L.)

Despite advancements in technology and the internet changing the way customers buy, B2B trade shows remain an important part of the inbound marketing mix. But like all other marketing activities, they are only effective if they are properly planned and executed as a part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.

In reality, your buyers do not need to attend a trade show to learn about your products anymore, they can visit your website, social channels or read online reviews.

In the age of inbound marketing, blogging is the number one B2B marketing tactic. It helps B2B companies increase awareness, credibility, SEO rankings and leads.

But it’s not easy. To really make the most of your blogging efforts, you need to be publishing at least one blog post a week. And with a mountain of things on your to-do list all vying for attention, it can be difficult to find the time to dedicate to it.

This is why things like writer's block can be incredibly frustrating. You need to get another blog post out there but for some reason, you’re just unable get started, or reach the point where you’re happy to hit the publish button.

So, next time you find yourself facing writer's block, take inspiration from some of these tips to beat it.

Social media continues to be a driving force for marketing success.

And, thanks to its creative potential and ability to drive conversions, an increasing number of businesses are turning to video to fill their content marketing toolkit. Video is a highly desirable asset. According to HubSpot, the use of video increases share rates 10 times on social media.

If you are engaged in a video marketing campaign you may be wondering what type of video content performs best on social channels.

Here are 6 video formats that inbound marketers can fold into their social media marketing strategy.

SaaS products are conceived, programmed and built to provide a solution to a problem. A concept which also happens to permeate the entire inbound philosophy.

It’s for this reason that an inbound strategy lends itself so well to SaaS marketing. But for SaaS buyers in particular, the relationship with their vendors can be very sensitive.

A SaaS inbound strategy demands a high level of skill, education and consideration to devise the most successful approach. Each stage of the buyer’s journey is as crucial as the last, and there is no time for complacency in such a disruptive and competitive landscape. 

So, it’s only natural that in the commotion of trying to cover all bases and get everything right, sometimes things go very wrong.

Customers often opt to watch videos online rather than spend their time wading through written content. That said, the use of text can contribute hugely to the performance of marketing videos.

Your videos need more than stunning visuals. They also need carefully crafted text to keep your viewer engaged. 

According to this report on the use of video in social media, 39 percent of consumers are more likely to finish a video when it includes text. Used effectively, it will reinforce your point and help viewers recall more of the information you have shared with them.

Text can be introduced in the form of overlays, descriptions and titles. It can be highly stylised and immensely helpful. A sprinkling of captions will give context to your video and add detail to your story without detracting from the main message.

Here's how to get the best results from your video marketing campaign by using text in your videos.

A successful manufacturing marketing strategy relies on creating and publishing relevant content that appeals to your “buyer persona” through the different stages of their buyer’s journey. 

So what exactly is content marketing? And how can you use it to build your brand, nurture relationships with your prospects and convert those leads into customers?

If you’re using an inbound methodology you may have all the right strategies in place to get your buyer personas to your website. You might be using the right keywords, blogging regularly, and promoting your content on social media.

But how good a job is your homepage doing to convince your prospects that they’ve come to the right place?

Laura Ramos of Forrester once said, “Business buyers don’t buy into your product; they buy into your approach to solving their problems.”

And that is a stark truism in the technology space.

By producing content that is well-curated, well-researched and built around your buyer personas’ most pressing problems, you align your lead generation to your content marketing efforts. And in the process, position yourself as a thought leader. 

It’s nigh impossible to ignore the rise of video marketing.

However, you may not be lucky enough to have the talent (or equipment) in-house to produce video content that lives up to the mark. This is where an inbound marketing agency with specialist video experience can help.

In video production finding the right team is half the battle - you want to be selective with recruitment because successful brand videos require a high level of skill to produce.

Choosing a partner you trust makes collaboration and communication easier at every stage. A video marketing agency with a strong company culture should be able to give you an immediate sense of who they are and how they work.

Marketing of professional services differs from most marketing in a few fundamental ways. What they are, and how you can overcome them in a digital world is the focus of this article.

You don’t have a physical product you can package and sell

The biggest difference between professional services marketing and other marketing is the lack of a physical product. This is a key stumbling block for most professional services companies. After all, in order to sell something, you have to have something to sell.

It can be a challenge to deliver quality content across multiple social media channels consistently.

Your business can use video to bring a little variation to your social media marketing calendar. Visuals have been shown to reinforce marketing messages, which is no surprise considering 65 percent of us are visual learners.

Video is no longer optional: 87 percent of online marketers use video content and this trend is set to continue. Experts have predicted that video will account for 80 percent of online traffic by 2019.

Here are 8 undeniable reasons why you should be using video in your B2B social media campaigns.

While manufacturers are often pioneers when it comes to production, supply chain management, and new product development, many are laggards when it comes to marketing.

With the rise of the internet, global competition and technological advancements changing the way in which customers purchase goods and services, denial is no longer an option and those companies not willing to ditch the old school marketing methods risk getting left behind.

Manufacturing companies that have embraced inbound marketing are reaping the rewards. Here are some reasons why inbound and manufacturing are a good fit.

The troubling reality for today’s support teams is that customers are demanding faster, higher quality resolutions by the day - and for some businesses, this is becoming increasingly difficult to deliver. Research shared in this report demonstrates how teams are being asked to up the ante with outdated resources and limited time.

This can be problematic for businesses that rely on repeat business and customer retention, for example in the SaaS sector - particularly if they have a small party dedicated to customer support.

OK, so you’ve spent precious hours creating a rich resource of remarkable content for your manufacturing prospects.

You've shaped it to address the specific needs of your buyer personas and you've tailored it to suit the individual stages of their buyer’s journey.

But are you missing a crucial piece of the puzzle? These days it’s simply not enough to assume that, in amassing this wealth of fresh and high quality content, it will automatically find its way to your target audience.

In order to ensure that your content is seen by the right people, and as many of the right people as possible. you’ve also got to have a dedicated and consistent strategy for promoting it.

Inbound marketing is an effective way for professional services companies to generate traffic and leads and to position themselves as experts in their field.

A blog is fundamental to a successful inbound marketing strategy. But eBooks are the next part of the process - they are an excellent way to turn visitors into leads.

Research by the CMI consistently shows eBooks to be one of the most effective forms of content. And the bonus? They’re relatively inexpensive to produce.

Social listening is the act of analysing conversations that take place on social platforms involving a specific brand or industry.

Not to be confused with social media monitoring, social listening allows brands to hone in on their target audience’s most common frustrations, challenges and values, extracting key insights that help design a more appealing content offering.

Perfectly described by Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights, “Monitoring sees trees; listening sees the forest.”

Every piece of content you create is a gateway to conversion, and the best way to prompt viewers to engage with your company and move along the buyer journey is a clear and strong call to action.

Whether you intend to drive visitors to your website, share a brand message, increase subscriptions or prompt your audience to get in touch – your video call to action is the trigger.

To succeed at inbound marketing you need a constant stream of fresh content. And those who write content as part of their job will tell you the challenges they face continually coming up with new ideas, or angles to take.

But what if the answers are already in your content library, you're just not looking in the right places?

Repurposing content means reusing your existing content in a different way.

Here are some ideas.

Blogs into Vlogs

Turning your old posts into video blogs, or as they’re more commonly known, ‘vlogs’ are an informal, conversational way to get your message across to potential customers.

Most businesses now appreciate the importance of social media to promote content and to create engagement.

However, many take a reactive stance, just publishing content and then responding to any engagement that occurs.

Then you need to consider the many benefits of social monitoring and social listening.

Traffic and leads. The two are intrinsically linked. You can’t generate leads without traffic. And traffic means nothing if you can’t convert visitors to leads.

But just one in five companies are satisfied with their conversions, according to Hubspot.

If your company is invested in inbound marketing, optimising your website to maximise conversions should be a necessity. But with conversion rate optimisation such a changing landscape, what are the best practices you should be embracing in 2018?

Here are our top tips for increasing your conversions this year.

1. Prioritise personalisation

Personalisation is no longer a novelty - it’s expected. But how can B2B companies use personalisation to convert visitors to leads when at this stage, they know little about them?

The way that we search online is evolving. And for many manufacturers, there's a growing realisation that the traditional, keyword-centric, SEO methods that we’ve typically used to drive our content creation efforts may not be delivering the same results that they once did.

So what’s changed? One answer lies in the intent of our online search queries.

When we ask a search engine a question we’re looking to solve a problem. But these days we’re also being increasingly more specific about what it is we want to know.

A sales funnel is a visualisation of how many leads you need to convert into business. It helps you to look for areas of improvement in your sales process, forecast future production / resource requirements and ensure Sales are focusing their efforts on the right type of leads.

The first step in creating a sales funnel is to set a quantifiable goal, this will be based on the number of sales you need to achieve in a given period. Then work backwards through each step of your sales process and work out your conversion rate at each stage.

Working backwards from your sales goal, and factoring in your conversion rates enables you to estimate how many leads are required to generate the sales you need.

SEO can be a tricky discipline to master. It’s continually evolving, and what works for one business could have the opposite effect on another.

“Build content for algorithms, but also for people.”

“Make sure you use keywords, but not too many!”

Alt-tags, metadata and topic clusters - it can be a minefield.

And then, there’s the on-page, off-page conundrum. What’s the difference? And what should you be doing to make sure you have both of these covered?

Preparation is the key to success for any mission, and it won’t surprise you to read that this rings true for video marketing campaigns. Writing a video script is one of the best ways to clarify objectives and define your core message.

Video marketing scripts cement focal points, highlight project requirements and provide the entire video production team with something substantial to refer to.

If you are ready to knuckle down and start writing your script, here are some helpful video script goals to consider:

Before the digital age, it was tough to get an idea of what your competitors were up to. You might be able to glean some facts from their brochures, press releases, seminars, shareholder briefings, or by posing as a customer and get a handle on their pricing structure.

But if a company played its cards close to its chest, then their marketing strategy, strengths and weaknesses and business intentions would have been hard to fathom. This often meant that you could find yourself rapidly outmanoeuvred by their product launches and better pricing.

Planning your marketing strategy when you don’t have all the facts is, at best risky, and at worst disastrous.

Video content has the power to be one of the best assets on your website.

From new product demonstrations to animated explainer videos, facility tours or customer testimonials, it’s a vibrant and engaging form of content that can enhance the customer experience, build brand awareness, encourage retention and generate leads.

As discussed in a previous post, Instagram marketing is a real opportunity for B2B. In 2017, 70.7% of US Businesses Are Using Instagram, compared to 48.8% in 2016.

People follow businesses on Instagram to get a behind-the-scenes look at what they are up to. They want to be shown your products, but also want a glimpse into everyday life.

If you want to use Instagram for business but are unsure how to get the most from the channel here are some tips.

With all this talk of using video, podcasts and even voice interfaces like Alexa for content marketing, blogging may seem like an old idea.

But we haven’t reached the demise of the written word just yet. Blogging is very much alive and kicking in B2B marketing. And for a professional services company, a blog is one of the most valuable assets your website can have.

The more you blog, the more chances you have of capturing the attention of your buyer personas. But maintaining a healthy blog pipeline can be challenging. How can you consistently come up with interesting and relevant blog posts that will attract (and maintain) the attention of your prospects?

High-quality onboarding has been proven to improve renewal rates for businesses. This is particularly true for the SaaS industry, as well as companies that sell complicated (or hard to use) products. 

Customers who have been educated on how best to use their product are far more likely to enjoy success with it. To your customer, success equals value - and value inspires repeat business. This is why a better onboarding process is likely to lead to lower churn rates.

Efficient onboarding also drives conversion rates up by reassuring potential customers that you really care about their experience. So it makes good sense to perfect the process.

97 per cent of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service. Sharing a classic onboarding video is one simple and effective way to introduce new users to key product features, benefits, tips and tricks.

In an age of content fatigue, we’re becoming less tolerant of intrusive and interruptive marketing.

Cold calls, spam emails and TV ads can all be blocked at the click of a button, and the power is truly back in the hands of the consumer.

When we have a problem or a question, we set up our chosen device and begin the quest for content.

We flick from article to article, blog to blog, white paper to ebook, trying to find the answer we’re looking for.

We choose where to go next, and who to give our precious information to in exchange for more content. We're completely in control.

UX or User Experience is a crucial factor in the success or failure of your marketing efforts. But what is it? Why is it important? Why can you not afford to ignore it? Let’s start with an analogy, or two.

Suppose you were walking down the high street and you came across a shop selling something you were interested in, but for some strange reason they had a four-foot wall across their doorway. A few doors along is another shop with what you need in it with an open doorway. Which do you choose?

Or imagine you wanted to buy a coffee, but you had to fill in a long form before you could get served? Would you stay, or would you more than likely go somewhere else?

It is well documented that B2B Sales is changing. Buyers are more educated, not only about your products but also your competitors. They no longer need a salesperson to help them make informed decisions.

If you follow an inbound marketing approach, your sales team have access to information such as: which web pages prospects have viewed and what content they downloaded. This can tell you their life cycle stage and which of your buyer personas they identify with. The lead may have also been nurtured through workflows, at each step attracting negative or positive scoring which helps generate marketing qualified leads (MQL) that are ready for Sales qualification.

The role of Sales now is more advisory, and salespeople need to be cognisant of all the information the buyer has accessed, and adapt their approach accordingly.

Before you can expect to win the business of a prospective customer, you will need to prove your product or service can deliver on its promises. One of the most convincing ways to do so is a compelling case study.

A case study is more detailed and data-driven than a customer testimonial. Testimonials empower your customer to share their feelings and offer sincere praise, but a case study can more comfortably house the body of evidence surrounding your success story.

Social is something of an anomaly in that it is one of the few marketing tools that embraces both our personal and business lives. This could lull you into a false sense of knowledge and security by assuming your staff know how to ‘do social’, and therefore no formal social media training is required.

However, B2B social is very different to your personal social. And in an increasingly overcrowded space having a clear social strategy is crucial. Without a clear strategy, how can you measure your outcomes? And without formal social media training, how do your staff know how to behave?

Here is a guide to training your staff to use social media for business.

Making the switch from traditional marketing methods to an inbound marketing approach isn’t easy. There is a lot of work that needs to happen upfront to build your inbound strategy so you get the most from your investment.

The best brands represent everything the company stands for. Your brand is central to your value proposition. And to differentiate yourself from competitors, you need to build a strong consensus around your brand expression.

Depending on your mobile usage, your manual dexterity and your age, you may, or may not be using messenger apps such a Facebook Messenger, or Whatsapp.

Like them, or loathe them, what you can no longer do is ignore them. Messenger apps offer a real opportunity in B2B marketing and are an essential consideration as part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.

The rise of the chat app

Figures show that the growth in popularity and use of messenger apps has been huge in the past few years.

The top four messaging apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber) now have more monthly users than the top four social networking apps (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+).

Video content has become an essential tool in every inbound marketer’s toolkit.

Yet when you’re distributing video on social media, you can’t get away with a catch-all approach. Social media platforms have unique personalities and user-bases, which should be reflected in your marketing tactics.

Cornerstone content is high-value, next-step content that is core to your business goals, that establishes your authority within your industry, and that acts as a foundation for your brand.

Case studies are just one way to create compelling cornerstone content for your manufacturing company that can help you to earn trust, to generate new leads and to communicate to your prospects the value and usefulness of your product or service.

You'll likely know by now that inbound marketing comes down to four principles: attract, convert, close, delight.

It sounds simple, but unlike outbound marketing, inbound is a consistent process. It’s ongoing. It takes persistent planning, research, dedication and patience. 

The decision to move to inbound selling should be a considered one. It takes time, patience and expertise to build an effective and successful inbound strategy. But it's results driven, and inbound marketers need access to tangible and measurable results to prove their efforts are worthwhile. 

Luckily, there are a plethora of online tools available to streamline, smarten, and optimise your inbound delivery tenfold.

A comprehensive study by Edelman in association with LinkedIn has revealed the importance of thought leadership to B2B demand generation.

The research discovered that it actually has an impact on every stage of the buying process.

Significantly, they also found that creating poor thought leadership content has a negative impact.

The definition of thought leadership

What defines thought leadership content?

It’s generally considered to be writing about the bigger issues facing your audience. It could be forward-looking, or research-based. It looks beyond the day-to-day issues and considers the impact of the longer term, or the wider environment.

As the popularity of inbound marketing soars so does the competition for audience. In a crowded marketplace, it is getting harder to stand out, and it seems every month a new marketing tool or platform is being launched.

One platform that is rising in the ranks is Instagram.

It is quite staggering to think that in 2012, Instagram had 50 million monthly active users. Now, it has 700 million.

That’s an increase of 1,400% in just five years.

Why? Because it is visual. Language barriers are not an issue. Facebook owns it - and they know a thing or two about social, and it is almost exclusively a mobile platform.

The internet is full of blog posts and articles suggesting the ‘perfect’ blog length and frequency; ‘To reach number one on Google, you should post X times a month’, ‘The most read blog posts are XXXX words long.’ 

Creating evergreen content is a proven strategy for upping your search rankings and driving traffic to your site. But what exactly is it? Why is it so useful? And how do we go about creating it?

In this blog post we explore what makes certain content “evergreen”, why it’s so worthwhile, what differentiates it from other types of online content and how we can harness its benefits for our content writing efforts.

What makes content evergreen?

Evergreen content, as its name suggests, is any form of online content that is long-lasting (eternal or sustainable,) that is not time-sensitive, that offers tangible value and that addresses the needs of your audience.

Four times as many people would rather watch a video exploring the benefits of a product than read about them. So, what better way to share detailed information than by making a dazzling product demo video?

Product demos with the most resounding influence explore a typical buyer’s experience of a specific problem and then break down the ways your business can assist them.

Your prospects should learn things from your video marketing that they can’t find during a cursory online search: it’s time to get specific about your commodity and how it thrashes the competition.

So many posts this time of year talk about all those things you should be doing in 2018, with many of those being fairly obvious, or a continuation of what you are doing already. So I thought I’d take a look at some B2B marketing things you should stop doing in 2018.

Don’t favour quantity over quality

As content marketers, we’re getting better at measuring the effectiveness of our content.

57 per cent of bloggers now say they ‘usually’ or ‘always’ check their analytics, according to research by Orbit Media Studios.

But not all data is good data.

Ever heard the term 'vanity metrics'? Using them is easy, but determining their value to your business can be difficult.

In this blog post, we explain what vanity metrics are, and how you can make them more meaningful.

PDF as a format surfaced in the early 1990’s as a solution to a common problem. At the time there were so many computer programmes that you could use for creating documents and each of these used its own, proprietary format. This created problems when sending and receiving documents. Even if you had the same programme available, you might not see the images correctly (they may have been linked to files you didn’t have) and without the same fonts, the whole look of the document would change. If you wanted the receiver to see the document as it was originally created, often the only recourse was to print it out and send it by courier or post.

Inbound marketing relies on a steady stream of original content. But, just publishing content on your website, no matter how remarkable it is, and expecting it to get found is not an option.

‘Content shock’ is real. We are reaching a point where the volume of online content is outweighing our human capacity to consume it.

Before you put pen to paper, you need to define your B2B content distribution strategy. Here are some tips for setting out a content distribution strategy.

If this is the first time you’ve heard of pillar pages, might I suggest reading our previous posts: What are pillar pages and why do you need them and What a pillar page means for your SEO.

But, if you're chomping at the bit to get started with creating your own, this one might be for you. 

So, creating your first pillar page - where do you start?

Well, it’s not as daunting as you might think.

Yes, it takes extensive planning and naturally, an investment of time. But in essence, pillar pages are quite self-explanatory. You choose your pillar topic, and with diligent research and planning, define all of the supporting topics, links and resources that bolster this content and ultimately, your site's architecture.

If you’re a savvy marketer, it’s likely you’ve already invested in your video marketing strategy. However, with so many channels and site pages primed for distribution, you may be wondering what your next steps should be, and where you ought to place your video content to achieve the highest conversion rate.

The buyer’s journey and who your video’s target audience is will be major deciding factors in the end delivery of your content.

Strategy

Before you embarked on your project, it’s highly likely that you defined SMART goals for your video marketing strategy. Remind yourself, was your purpose to increase brand awareness, to celebrate a product, or rather to encourage prospects to purchase?

May 2017 marked my first foray into the exciting and challenging world of inbound marketing. I arrived with a background in journalism, creative writing and PR - but pretty much green to the world of inbound and excited to learn everything I could.

Suffice it to say, its been an incredible few months of listening, learning, reading (and reading) and immersing myself in a vast array of new topics.

On the one hand, marketing seems so much has changed since my first foray back in the 90s in New Zealand - and yet at its heart so much is still the same, with the time-honoured focus on building positive relationships and the solid value of providing audiences with “what they really want.”

This blog post summarises five key new topics that have particularly struck a chord over the past few months - and that look to be just as hot for inbound in 2018.

With massive thanks too, to the Equinet Content Team for their combined wealth of resources on the subjects.

For the past four years, Orbit Media Studios have been compiling statistics on B2B blogging trends. This year's findings make very interesting reading indeed:

• The length of time taken to write a post has increased.
• The debate about ideal length is, and probably forever will be, unresolved.
• If you want to stand out from the crowd include audio.
• The use of paid social and search is on the rise.
• One in four bloggers is now using influencer outreach to amplify their content.
• Despite the increase in paid promotion, only 32.2% are vigilant about checking analytics.

Let's look at each of these in turn.

The way we search online is becoming more nebulous and ambiguous. Voice searches, conversational language and typos are now the norm, but users still expect Google to quickly organise and list the most accurate, helpful and contextually relevant content.

As a result, search engine algorithms are adapting.

Google now favours topic-based content, which is why marketers and SEO experts have responded with a clear cut, definitive approach: pillar pages.

Customer testimonials are frequently used by marketers to increase conversion rates, yet they don’t necessarily have to be delivered in a written format.

Video customer testimonials are often much better received than their text-based counterparts and it has been stated that video enjoyment can increase a customer's purchase intent by ninety seven per cent. Furthermore, web pages that display video are shown to have superior time-spent-on-page metrics.

Buyer personas are known to inspect reviews before making an important purchase decision, and testimonials are particularly influential for those teetering on the edge of conversion, which is why customer testimonial videos are perfect for the consideration stage of the inbound sales funnel.

The best testimonials are ones that are credible, compelling accounts of a personal experience that somebody has had with your product or service.

They essentially take the form of a customer story, followed by branding and a call to action.

More and more companies are moving from traditional marketing methods to an inbound marketing approach.

And those short on time or lacking internal resource or expertise are looking to external agencies for help.

Sure you expect an agency to deliver great results, but you also have a vital role to play in achieving this.

So if you’re considering hiring an inbound agency, here are our top tips for making the most of your partnership.

You may have come across the two ways of pointing to a web page when designing your website or blog, but what are the differences, and why should you care?

Well basically, the main reason you should care is because getting it wrong may well affect your search engine ranking and therefore your customer’s ability to find you – which is pretty important.

What is a URL?

Let’s start at the beginning; URL stands for Uniform Resource Locater and it’s a way of pointing to a file on a computer network, and the way to handle that file. A URL can be used as a reference for web pages (http), file transfer (ftp) email (mailto) and many others.

In your browser you will see the URL in the address bar. The address of the blog on our web site for example is:http://www.equinetmedia.com/blog

This breaks down to a protocol – a way of handling the file: http, a hostname: www.equinetmedia.com and a file name: blog.

This is a basic URL. There are additional components that can be added, but this is the basis for all web addresses.

A thank you page is the web page that your prospects are directed to after they’ve filled out a form on a landing page. But while it’s the final stage of the conversion path it’s no means the end of the story.

At the heart of a thank you page is the simple act of saying “thanks." But beyond that it has the potential to do so much more - in creating a great first impression, enhancing your prospects' experience of your website and building on the trust that they’ve demonstrated in you.

Crucially too, your thank you pages can be invaluable in helping you to qualify your leads, to decrease your bounce rate and to improve engagement with your brand.

In this blog post we explore the 6 best practices of successful thank you pages that will enable you to further engage with your B2B prospects, improve your conversions and bolster your inbound marketing efforts.

Professional services firms have traditionally relied on referrals to grow their customer base. However, this method curbs your potential reach - your network is limited to your current clients and who they know.

And with 71 percent of B2B buyers starting their search online with no provider in mind, it's no wonder more and more professional services companies are moving to a content marketing approach in a bid to reach a wider audience.

The idea is simple: creating useful, informative and valuable content increases your likelihood of being discovered by potential clients looking for what you do.

But your content needs to be aimed at the right people - your target customers. It needs to attract (and maintain) their attention.

However vital writing B2B content is to your inbound marketing strategy, there are occasions when time is tight, and you could do with a blog that writes itself. Well marketing automation isn’t quite there yet – thank goodness – but here are some ideas for content that are relatively quick to produce, but are still very effective.

1. Talk to your frontline staff in sales and customer service and compile a list of all the questions that customers and prospects have asked over the years. Take the simpler questions that have quick and easy answers and create a “Top ten FAQs” style of post. Then take the more complex questions and write a post answering each one.

Outstanding video marketing campaigns create awareness, drive engagement and influence buyer decisions. Explainer videos are increasingly becoming the go-to solution for marketers seeking a way to get the best content in front of your company's target audience.

What is an explainer video?

Explainer videos are used to help people better understand your product, vision or service. Often, they include attractive graphics and audio - but no matter the ‘lookbook’, an explainer video’s main intention is to convey your business message in 60 - 90 seconds.

They are one of the most popular options available for commission by video marketing professionals - and with good reason.

‘Content shock’ is real. And it’s happening faster than we think.

We’re reaching a point where the volume of online content is outweighing our human capacity to consume it. The rate at which content is being produced and published is doubling every nine to 24 months. And as a result, organic visibility is suffering.

Allegedly, 60% of content is dull and irrelevant to readers. And every content marketer is at risk of suffering from content fatigue if they fail to produce sturdy, sustainable content.

So what can you do to future-proof your content?

Marketing is often seen as getting your message out to the maximum number of people, which seems logical. Surely, it follows that the more people you reach, the more prospects you should get, and therefore the more sales you will make?

Certainly in the B2C arena, this strategy can pay dividends with mass market products.

But there are a number of reasons why a different approach needs to be taken for B2B marketing. Products are more niche, so mass broadcast is not practical or cost effective. And the truth is, that in order for many small to mid-sized B2B companies to succeed, they don’t actually need thousands of leads; what they really need is a reasonable number of high value clients.

B2B Content marketing focuses on creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience online. If inbound marketing is the engine, then content is the fuel.

In a previous post, we discussed whether you should recruit internally or hire an inbound agency partner. If you do decide to go it alone it is likely you are still going to need a content writer. In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute’s (CMIs) research, over half (56 per cent) of B2B companies outsource at least part of their content marketing.

Implementing inbound is time consuming. B2B content writing is time consuming. Without someone dedicated to both, you will end up with excellent content but no marketing activity to share it, or excellent marketing activity but with the same tired, sparse content offers.

Landing pages, when done well, are highly effective conversion tools that enable you to transform your B2B marketing prospects into customers by capturing their information through a lead-capture form.

They are action-oriented, stand-alone web pages that serve a single and highly focused purpose - to move your potential customers through each stage of their buyer’s journey, from the top of the funnel (or the awareness stage) where they may be seeking out information to solve a problem, right through to the bottom of the sales funnel (or the decision stage) where they are ready to “buy.”

Well designed landing pages enable you to segment your prospects, to direct them to a specific product or service and, most crucially of all, to encourage them to take action.

So why are they so pivotal to the success of your inbound marketing strategy? And what are the key attributes of great B2B landing pages?

Crafting beautiful emails full of useful content and calls to action is not enough on its own. If your emails do not get opened, you are wasting your time.

Getting the recipient to make that first click and start reading is the key to a successful B2B inbound email marketing campaign.

You might think that the subject line is the main reason people open your emails, and indeed 47% of subscribers say this is the primary reason; however, a much larger percentage – 64% – say that who it is from is the biggest factor.

What this means is that the sender address and branding are very important. Make sure that the sending address includes your web domain so that recipients can recognise it. And as I wrote in an earlier post, make it a real person – research shows that this performs better than a generic email address.

With over a million blog posts written every day, it’s crucial your blogging strategy does nothing but propel you to the front of the crowd.

Silly mistakes can have a pernicious impact on your online visibility.

If you’re frustrated that your blogging efforts are having little discernible effect on conversion rates, it’s worth checking you haven’t fallen into the trap of committing some of the biggest blogging mistakes.

Video Marketing is a must for SaaS and other cloud-based software companies.

You know it’s time to incorporate video into your content marketing strategy; it has been under your nose for a long time and 87 percent of online marketers are using it already. But what exactly would corporate video look like for you?

Here are some ideas on how SaaS companies can use video marketing to their benefit.

Explainer video

One of the biggest challenges SaaS companies face while making video is taking dry technical content and turn it into something engaging and shareworthy. In a competitive B2B environment it’s necessary to provide solid context and detail.

Despite all the new digital channels, social networks and message systems that have emerged over the past ten years, good old-fashioned B2B email marketing still remains one of the most effective ways of engaging with your buyers, attracting new prospects and retaining customers. As a marketing tool B2B email returns an excellent ROI – which is readily measurable – unlike many other marketing channels. It’s usage is still growing with an estimated 3 billion users worldwide by 2020.

But like so many other things, it only works if it is done well. And with increasing competition within recipient’s inboxes, it increasingly needs to be done very well.

With General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) looming, compliance is also more important than ever.

In this article we look at some essential tips to help you optimise your email marketing, and ensure you are compliant.

You may well have heard of “inbound marketing” and “content marketing”.

But with the two terms so often used interchangeably, you'd be forgiven for not fully understanding what they mean, or the difference between them. 

Traditional marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to. As customers, we’ve become good at ignoring a lot of marketing noise. We filter out unwanted spam, we block cold calls, and we skip television ads.

As the marketer, you used to hold all the power. Now, the control is in the hands of your customers.

This power shift is the reason inbound marketing and content marketing are terms you need to get to grips with.

In a previous post, we discussed whether you should recruit internally, or hire an inbound agency to manage your marketing.

But, if you do hire an agency, how do you know they have the right skill sets or are the right fit for you?

In this post, we look at who makes up an inbound marketing agency dream team, and how to spot them.

Strategic Analyst

Attempting any marketing activity without a clear strategy is like watching young children learning to play football. The kids all chase after the ball without thinking about where the game will go next, and adjusting their positions accordingly. They lack the experience to develop a clear strategy and think beyond their next touch.

Social media can play a vital role in marketing for manufacturing, demonstrating your authority within your industry and connecting you with prospects who are looking to buy.

But how can you be sure that you're devoting your company's valuable time and resources to the social media platforms that are going to be the most beneficial for your business?

In this blog post, we debunk five myths that may be standing between you and your B2B social media success.

1) We need to have a presence on ALL social media platforms

Time is precious so don’t waste it focusing your efforts on social media platforms that aren’t connecting with your prospects and bringing you tangible returns. Far better is to find which channels your prospects are active on and focus your efforts on them.

Think about your buyer personas. What are their challenges or pain points? Where do they tend to search for information? And what sources of information are they likely to find most useful? Considering these key questions will help you to position yourself where you can achieve the most engaging presence.

Has your business gotten a taste for video yet? If not you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage: 93 percent of marketers are already integrating it into their current content strategy and for a good reason.

Video marketing campaigns can provide your business with better quality reach, higher levels of interaction and heightened ROI. In fact, according to 52 percent of marketers worldwide, video is heralded as the content type that delivers the best return on investment. 

When developing and optimising your video content, it pays to remember that no one size fits all. It might be the case that your inbound marketing strategy calls for the production of a bitesize video.

Just this week Stephen Hawking, warned that Artificial Intelligence could destroy civilisation, and yet it is regularly being touted as a useful technology as far as marketing is concerned. Indeed, it’s possibly the most hyped development within the marketing community at the moment. So what’s going on? What exactly is it? And can it improve B2B marketing?

What AI is, and what it isn't

In common with other new technology terms that become fashionable, artificial intelligence is talked about in many contexts, often applied to products and solutions that display very little intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Nearly half of marketers say artificial intelligence is an overhyped idea/term, according to recent research from Resulticks. And given the very casual way the term has been used, an outsider could be forgiven for struggling to understand the term or what exactly it is. Confusion also arises as the term can be used to describe two distinctly different things:

Technological and social changes have swept old methods of marketing away in every single industry and professional services marketing is no different. If you haven’t reviewed and changed your marketing strategy in the past decade, then you are getting left behind.

In this post, we look at some of the areas where professional services marketing has changed and what you can do to refocus your marketing efforts to remain competitive.

The new online generation

Clients are now savvy, short on time and keen on online tools that can make their working life easier and save them the effort. Your marketing strategy has to reflect this – old ways have changed, gone, and new approaches are the only ones with a chance of success.

Over the last few years, the Content Marketing Institute’s (CMIs) annual report on content marketing trends has become a go-to source for B2B marketers to see how their business is stacking up against others.

Last month saw the release of the eighth annual report. It presents the findings gathered from research with 870 for-profit organisations in North America who primarily sell products or services to businesses.

Here we highlight seven key learnings and what they mean for any business considering, or already engaging in, a content marketing approach.

Video can be a powerful asset for professional services marketing. The right approach for your campaign will depend heavily on your video marketing strategy. 

Whether your intention is to raise awareness of your company, simply convey complex information, or share customer endorsements, visual media will bring your message to life.

This post explores some of the styles that work best for professional services. 

About Us

Your website is where potential customers flock to find more information about your business and all that it has to offer, and it’s likely your homepage will be their entry point.

If you're in the early days of implementing inbound, or if you're still considering whether inbound is the right fit for your company, one of the first questions that comes to mind is bound to be: what is it all going to cost? That's not just monetary value, but also effort and resource.

Inbound marketing, when done right, takes time. It requires precision planning, execution and analysis, which gives even the most capable of marketers a burgeoning to-do-list. It also won’t necessarily replace the valuable work of your existing marketing team - exhibitions, merchandising, trade shows, internal communications, paid media etc. So in order to do it properly, it is likely you are going to need to call in the experts. In this blog, we outline two options - recruiting an Inbound Marketing Specialist, or Hiring an Inbound Agency. 

Research shows that 80 per cent of professional services buyers visit a company’s website to evaluate them as a potential provider.

So, if you're a professional services company your website needs to be giving off all the right messages.

Your website is a product of your business, and therefore a reflection of your work. A poorly designed website gives the impression you don’t care for your customers and are ok with mediocrity.

The point is, your website can make or break your business.

Take Apple for example. As one of the largest global technology companies, you’d expect them to have a well-designed and responsive website, right? Otherwise, how could anyone trust their products?

Content is evolving. This world gravitates towards multimedia content now more than ever, and according to reporting by Cisco, come 2020, over 82 per cent of all web traffic will come from video.

Cake. Yum.

Who doesn't love it? Sponge cake, fruit cake, gluten-free cake, chocolate cake. So many options!

You specialise in each area. And you make damn good cakes. But no one is eating them, because no one knows where you are. And now they’re out of date, and going stale...

What I'm trying to say is, it's all well and good creating remarkable content, but what’s the use if no one is going to see?

That’s exactly why some bloggers recommend spending as much time promoting your content as you do writing it.

Over the past two or three years, many manufacturing businesses made a commitment to a content marketing strategy. Whilst, there is still a small proportion of manufacturing businesses that don’t do any form of content marketing, most recognise that the most effective form of manufacturing marketing, for lead generation and conversion, is content marketing.

Manufacturers have the upper hand when it comes to video content marketing. On the shop floor there’s an abundance of innovative techniques and specialist material to film, and passionate employees who can come to life sharing their specialist knowledge in front of the camera.

Viewers remain curious about technical advances in the industry - just look at the enduring success of the documentary television series ‘How it’s made’.

Additionally, consumers have an unshakable interest in product quality and will perform search queries reflective of this. This will serve you well if you make video that aids their research;  90 per cent of user say that seeing a video about a product contributes to their purchase decision.

Video marketing is a creative way to showcase your high standards. This blog explores some of the most rewarding video content formats for manufacturing marketing teams to experiment with.

Creative. Challenging. Dynamic. Relentless. Exhausting...

Just some of the words you might use to describe your B2B marketing role.

And, as you know, a successful marketer is one who is willing to learn and adapt to satisfy the needs of both prospects and customers.

In 2017, we’re slap bang in the middle of a period of disruption. Skill sets that might’ve propelled you to the top ten years ago could be now obsolete. Equally, if you don’t invest and expand your knowledge, business will begin to suffer in the race against political, economical and digital advancements.

Below we outline the top three B2B marketing challenges in 2017 and how you can put a plan into action to prioritise, tackle and wipe these off the to-do list, leaving you free to sleep easy again.

Dedicated, targeted and consistent blogging can help immeasurably in building your company's authority and establishing you as a thought leader in your industry. But what’s the secret to coming up with consistently great ideas that will engage and delight your manufacturing prospects?

If your blogging for manufacturing is in a content creation rut, here’s a guide to 24 pain-free ways to generate a host of new blog post topics that will rejuvenate and enliven your efforts.

1) Consider the why

What’s the purpose of your blog? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Are you looking to drive conversions, increase subscribers, boost revenue, build authority, raise awareness or convey information? Or maybe it’s all of the above? Having a clearly defined goal will ensure your content creation efforts stay relevant and targeted.

Despite the hype around social media, messaging apps and other newer forms of marketing communications, email is still an effective marketing channel. Providing your prospects have signed up for it, email still has the power to engage with clients and prospects as well as any other medium.

But like any marketing channel, it’s only valid when you are doing it right. Get email marketing wrong, you run the risk of losing not only prospects, but also your existing customers. Email marketing has great potential to irritate and annoy if is unwanted or unhelpful. There are few things people loathe more than spam. And spam is not just unsolicited emails, it’s any email that wastes the recipient’s time.

Marketers who use video grow revenue 49 per cent faster than non-video users. And research shows one in four consumers lose interest in a company if they don't have video.

However, as with any inbound marketing strategy, success relies on you reaching the right audience at the right time.

The buyer’s journey will equip you with all the intel you need to do so. Knowing what kind of video to make, and where to incorporate it in your inbound marketing campaign, will ensure that you get a return on investment.

What is the buyer’s journey?

The buyer's journey is the process that a prospective customer goes through before making a purchase decision. 

Inbound marketing is driven by a consideration of your target audience and their likely mood, interests and expectations at each stage of their buyer's journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. For this reason, you might consider making different videos for each stage. 

A landing page is the gateway to your content offer. It is the web page someone lands on after clicking a call-to-action on your blog, email newsletter, or website.

It has one job - to convert visitors to leads.

A strong landing page will provide you with the top of the funnel information about prospects that you need to kick-start your lead nurturing activities. A weak landing page means visitors will bounce, and your chance of a blossoming relationship dwindles.

If you follow any of the leading content marketing blogs, you will have noticed ‘pillar pages’ or ‘pillar content’ is getting a lot of airtime lately. The phrase has been around a while, as long ago as 2013, (which in SEO terms is ancient)  but has come to the forefront recently, it seems, by HubSpot adopting the approach, along with the concept of ‘topic clusters’.  

What is a Pillar Page

If you’ve been doing inbound marketing a while, you may be wondering what the difference is between pillar content and cornerstone content. The good news is cornerstone content is virtually indistinguishable from Pillar content, they’re just branded differently.

Pillar page - as the name suggests are architectural, and involve structuring your website around key pages. Cornerstone content pieces are solid foundational content from which the rest of your content should branch from, and link to.

It is a tumultuous time for anyone involved in SaaS marketing – massive changes in the marketing landscape, the way customers buy and the channels available mean that SaaS marketing plans and strategy are having to be revised or even scrapped. SaaS companies, with their reliance on good marketing to gain customers and combat churn, will find themselves at the forefront of this change. They can either surf it and gain the benefits – or go under.

Google is the master of user experience.

Tirelessly working to update their algorithms, analyse user behaviour, study intent, goals, and gripes to ensure the best experience possible.

And, they do all of this while keeping their staff well-fed and well-kept with ball pits, slides, and free lunches. What gives?!

It’s no accident that Google has cemented its reputation as the internet leader, seeing us through an unforgiving digital revolution.

They don’t get complacent.

We’re highly adaptable creatures, and the way we access and consume content is constantly changing in line with advancements in technology. Equally, the volume of online information is growing, and algorithms have a responsibility to present us with what they deem the top portion of content in a sea of endless web pages.

Effective content is the key to inbound marketing, and crafting effective content relies on creativity. 

Creativity can transform a piece of writing into compelling content that captures people's hearts and minds; content that has the power to sway the decisions of prospects.

But equally important is having a solid structure in place for producing content.

In fact, structure enables creativity. Structure creates opportunities. Creativity allows those opportunities to evolve, and thrive.

A structured content creation process is the backbone of a successful content marketing strategy. 

Content creation should involve four distinct stages, according to HubSpot.

It’s completely natural to want to approach your web design 'desktop first' - when you plot out your best content ideas the instinct is to go big. You're itching to impress with a great looking website that promotes the heart of your business, and for that you want a big canvas.

However, though a striking desktop presence is important, focusing on achieving that rather than optimisation for mobile neglects the behaviour of a significant portion of your site visitors.

An astounding amount of traffic is generated by users on mobile devices: 65% of all digital media time is spent on them. Arguably, desktop use is now secondary. The affordability of smartphones and popularity of tablets suggests this percentage is unlikely to decrease.

Can you answer this question simple question?:

Why are you blogging?

• To increase brand awareness?
• To drive traffic to your site?
• Improve SEO?

Now think about that question again...how are you measuring this?

• Form submissions?
• Number of subscribers?
• Volume of downloaded content?

There's more to blogging that simply hitting the publish button and hoping for the best. To create a successful blog platform takes careful planning, consideration and strategy. But as content is the fuel of inbound marketing, it is essential you get it right. 

As Abraham Lincoln once said: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Look to B2C brands such as Innocent Drinks, Coca Cola, and Apple, and you’ll see tone of voice done right.

We know their voices like we know the unmistakable fonts and colours so akin to their identities.

Whether it’s with distinctive simplicity, phonetic vocabulary, or inspirational language, each has mastered the ability to connect with their audiences in a parallel voice that yields trust and brand loyalty.

Their values dictate every word choice, every message, and retains the recognisable personality that’s present in every packaging label, website page and social media post.  

Creating useful, timely content for your prospective clients and customers is essential in today’s inbound marketing landscape. Prospects are actively researching products and services and seeking information about problems and solutions. When you are composing emails for professional services there are some important principles to work to. Keep these in mind and you will create better, more effective content.

There truly is an art to creating readable web content.

And I’m sorry to say, it pretty much requires you to forget everything you learnt in school.

Okay, not everything.

(I'm yet to use Pythagoras' Theorum in my adult life, but maybe that's just me...) 

Evidence suggests we digest content online very differently. And this demands a new discipline of writing.

Ever heard of the F-shaped pattern? Clever eye tracking techniques have been used to measure the amount people actually read. And you’d be pretty peeved to find out that it’s actually only 20%.

Consider why you search for content online.

Video marketing metrics.

In order to conduct meaningful analysis of what is and isn’t working for your campaign, it’s important to understand the story behind how your stats are gathered.

Their interpretation isn't just a congratulatory game of numbers. In practice, metrics expose the way your content is being received, pinpoints audience concern and give you a precise idea of what will work for your content marketing.

It seems September hit us with a bang.

The heat from a couple of weeks ago is a distant memory, the kids are back at school and already talking about Halloween, and the realisation dawns that we’re only three paychecks away from Christmas (you’ll thank me later, promise!).

What that also means is it’s time to start thinking about how these changes in buyer thought patterns, interests and behaviour can affect your content marketing strategy. And what should you be doing right now to garner more customers in your business?

A common problem in content marketing is constantly coming up with new ideas to write about. And any content marketer knows how crushing it is when a post you have poured over, put your heart and soul into, doesn’t generate you any results.

Conversely, you will know the delight at when a post you wrote 1-2 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago is still generating traffic and leads. This evergreen content is the holy grail of content marketing; “It’s that article that consistently ranks well in search and drives 65 percent of your site traffic, even though it was written in 2011”.

With modern businesses investing heavily in their online presence, video represents more than the opportunity for creative venture – it’s an active response to the expectations of a web-savvy audience.

Hubspot research proved 69% of marketing, sales and business professionals had used video marketing before. A further 31% are planning to use it in the near future.

This steady rise in popularity has transformed video production from novelty to necessity for the most successful inbound marketing strategies. The upshot is, join in, get smart or get left behind.

So how do you fold it in to your overall inbound marketing strategy?

Many businesses spend the majority of their money and time on acquiring customers. As consumers, we see this all the time. Deals for new customers are everywhere, whether it’s a supermarket offering money off your first online shop, or a bank offering cashback for switching your current account. But what about those long-standing customers who consistently remain loyal to a brand?

Customer retention is one of the most critical challenges facing businesses today. So it makes good sense to keep your existing customers happy - you want them to continue to choose to do business with you. Studies show that it costs ten times more to attract a new customer than to keep one. And let’s face it, happy customers make great advocates.

The inbound marketing philosophy acknowledges the value of customer retention and advocacy. The four-step process - “attract, convert, close, delight” - works to turn strangers into not only customers but promoters of your business.

There are many reasons manufacturers are taking to blogging. It helps their company get found, creates customer engagement, demonstrates expertise, and enables them to build trust with prospective buyers.

But how can manufacturing companies make sure their blog posts capture and retain, the attention of their customers and prospects? 

Research shows that the average human attention span is just eight seconds. And it’s no wonder we struggle to hold our attention for long. In an always-connected world, we’re faced with an unprecedented amount of content. For B2B marketers, getting prospective buyers to pick out your content over competitors’ can be challenging, but is key to your inbound marketing success.

It wasn’t that long ago that link building was viewed as a mysterious dark art that involved various underhand “black hat” techniques to create backlinks to your site in order to influence search engines. At that time search engines worked on the basis that the more links you had – the more popular your site and therefore the better the content must be. As search engines have evolved and become more sophisticated, they’ve identified and discriminated against such dubious ploys.

Today, employing these types of deceptive techniques will get you demoted in search engine rankings, so doing more harm than good. That’s not to say that the search engines don’t take links into account – they do, but they have to be genuine, good quality links. Remember also that those false backlinks do nothing for your revenue – they don’t encourage prospects or convert leads, whereas quality links from good sources will; as well as increasing your standing with the search engines.

We’ve written about optimisation strategies and SEO before. And sure, they are some of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. But what happens after you’ve been found? The goal changes, right?

You need conversions.

Converting your visitors into leads, your leads into customers, and your customers into promoters takes time and investment. And perhaps one of the biggest investments is your microcopy.

We're talking about those small blocks of text in highly trafficked areas of your site, including CTA buttons, instructional copy and messages of reassurance. They tell users what to do (“Write your full name here”), alleviate concerns ("Don’t worry, we’ll only use your email address once”), and move them deeper into your site (“Learn more”).

Get these right, and your chances of converting can increase tenfold. 

In previous posts we’ve talked about how valuable content marketing is for manufacturing companies. And seemingly, manufacturers agree. According to research by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 85 per cent of manufacturing companies use content marketing.

However, only one in five (20 per cent) say their approach is extremely or very successful.

In SaaS marketing the aim of your content is to generate leads, convert prospects, reduce churn and upsell additional services. To do that effectively you need to create content that meets the needs of your audience. Your inbound marketing strategy should include developing buyer personas and targeting appropriate content at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

But what topics make for a great piece of content for SaaS? Here are four tried and tested types of content that are effective and enduring.

The best bloggers for professional services understand the need take a professional approach. Business in this sector depends on the level of trust and authority you can convey to your potential clients (and to your existing clients). So just casually throwing a few words together will simply not bring the results you are looking for.

In this post we are going to look at three essential elements that contribute to a polished and effective professional services blog.

On the 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the existing Data Protection Act (DPA). New regulations under the GDPR are intended to strengthen and unify data protection while protecting individuals residing in the EU. The GDPR expects companies to understand the risks they create when handling and using data while building a culture of privacy.

The good news is, if you’re already following principles stated within the DPA, transition should be easy.

In a recent post, we highlighted how crucial content marketing is for B2B tech firms. But to create the best possible content that will resonate with prospective buyers, you first need to define your buyer personas.

Earlier this year we wrote about the benefits of content marketing for manufacturing, following research published by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) at the end of 2016 which showed 85 per cent of manufacturing marketers use content marketing but only a third (33 per cent) say that their organisations have clarity on [what constitutes] content marketing success.

In this post we will give four examples of how your manufacturing company can use content marketing to your advantage.

In B2B marketing, content is king. It helps a company to attract new prospects, create new leads, and convert them to customers.

However research by Forrester indicates that almost 9 in 10 B2B marketers (87 per cent) struggle to produce content that truly engages their target buyers.

The problem, is many marketers fail to match content with each stage of the B2B buyer journey.

The information and solutions your prospects are searching for will vary according to where they are in the buying cycle. So to maximise your opportunity for success, you need to target your potential buyers with the right content, at the right time. 

Industry research shows that technology firms are increasingly adopting content marketing strategies to drive business results.

A report by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) published earlier this year found 95 per cent of tech marketers are using content marketing, and that almost 7 in 10 (69 percent) say their organisation is extremely or very committed to it. And the results are clear. 79 per cent said it has increased audience engagement, 77 per cent said it has increased the number of leads, and 59 per cent said it has increased their sales.

In fact, the report showed that tech marketers are focusing on content even more than B2B marketers in other industries.

So why is content marketing so well suited to the B2B technology industry?

Manufacturing is an incredibly innovative industry, accounting for more than three-quarters of all private-sector research and development (R&D) in the United States (National Association of Manufacturers).

But manufacturing is also incredibly competitive. Factors such as global competition and Industry 4.0  mean it is essential your sales process keeps pace with your R&D, or you risk leaving customers in the dark; especially considering the sales experience drives 53% of customers’ buying decisions (Colin Masson).

One area you may not have considered the use of technology in is your manufacturing sales process. Many manufacturing businesses have traditionally relied on a direct or distributor sales force to generate growth. This approach simply doesn’t work as well as it did.

As a B2B marketer in the professional services industry, pressure from partners to bring in new opportunities means you need to deliver. But referrals aren’t what they used to be, and you can’t afford to sit and wait for them to come in.

You may be able to craft the best B2B blog posts on the planet, but if nobody finds them, then all your effort won’t count for very much. In another post I’ve covered the more technical aspects of preparing a B2B blog post for SEO, in this post I am going look at the way you write, and how that affects the way search engines see and display your posts.

For any business using an inbound marketing approach, defining buyer personas is an essential first step. Buyer personas are in-depth representations of your ideal customers. They go beyond the demographics of your target audience, and represent their attitudes, behaviours, challenges and aspirations.

Buyer personas are vital for creating content that will resonate with your target audience. Meaning you have a better chance of attracting new prospects, creating new leads, and converting them to customers.

Your sales and marketing teams will know a lot about your customers; the types of roles they are in, what they want to achieve by investing in a product or service like yours, and what the common objections to purchasing are.

But the best way to really understand them, is to speak to them.

While this will require some extra time and resources, we put forward the case that interviewing customers is the key to creating insightful and actionable buyer personas.

It is easy for blog writers to either ignore the benefits of SEO or to get hung up on its supposed complexity. So, what’s the right approach? How can you reap the benefits of good SEO tactics without either falling foul of the hidden rules or spending ages working through a post?

There is no escaping the fact that there has been a seismic shift in the way customers buy, and the manufacturing industry is no exception. Research shows nearly 90 per cent of B2B buyers begin by doing their own research online.

Manufacturers can no longer rely on a direct or distributor sales force to generate growth. Traditional sales and marketing tactics, such as print advertising, trade shows and cold calling don’t work like they used to. It is also difficult to calculate the ROI of such methods for manufacturing companies with typically long sales cycles. The famous quote: “I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. My only problem is that I don’t know which half” rings very true. In an industry which relies heavily on measurability of processes and systems, this is something of a discord.

If you’ve used an inbound strategy to guide your website redesign, you’ll have focused on making it look fresh and modern, and telling a story through your content. You will have used appropriate keywords to drive traffic to your site, used your buyer personas to create engaging blog content, and added relevant CTA’s to convert visitors to leads.

But do you know what the end user experience is like? Is your website easy to use? Does it encourage visitors to engage with your brand and products?  

Whether you are giving your website a complete overhaul, or are making regular changes through growth-driven design - your core focus should be on the user experience. 

Getting real users to test your website means you can ensure it delivers a positive experience. But too often, this is overlooked. 

We explore why user testing can be a valuable part of the website redesign process, and outline ways you can go about it.

We know that the key to success as a SaaS business is to reduce churn by retaining existing customers. SaaS is different to many other products and services in that it has a closer relationship with its users, over a longer period of time. So, more so than for many companies, whose marketing revolves around understanding new customers in order to serve appropriate content and gain leads, SaaS is also about understanding existing customers.

This duality makes the job of the SaaS marketer both more difficult and yet at the same easier. More difficult, because there are potentially two sets of people to understand and market to. Easier, because the level of contact with customers/users over a period of time means there is more data on existing customers. This should allow for a greater understanding of their needs and therefore, by extension, potentially make it easier to predict what new customers are looking for too.

Last week we put forward the argument for using online qualitative methods in B2B research. But how do you go about doing it? 

Broadly speaking, basic qualitative research principles remain the same. Taking it online just makes it faster, easier to reach a widespread customer base, and more convenient for respondents. Your research still needs to be guided by your business case, you'll still need to define your objectives, and you'll need to develop a discussion guide of sorts.

In this post, we walk you through six steps for undertaking a qualitative B2B research project online.

The use of online qualitative methods in market research has exploded in recent years, as technology has become more sophisticated, and people have become more open with sharing information - and themselves - online.

In the world of consumer research; online groups, diaries and mobile ethnography are now key parts of the researcher's toolkit. 'In the moment' feedback is being captured all the time - through written self-completion tasks, and self-shot videos of consumers using a product, or talking about a brand. All this data is being used to find insights that help businesses inform their strategy, or product development.

The professional services industry has traditionally relied on referrals to fuel business growth. Trust and good relationships are created and built upon through hours of networking and recommendations from current clients. However, while word-of-mouth is still an effective tool, it is no longer enough on its own.

With 64% of the UK’s population of over 65 million active on social media spending an average of 108 minutes a day on one or more social networks, you can’t ignore social as an essential way to connect with people and businesses (Keith Herrington).

But, get social wrong, and it can cause more damage than good to your reputation and your business. Your strategy for social needs to cascade down from smart goals set out in your professional services marketing strategy. Here are some tips to maximise the potential of LinkedIn for your professional services firm:

Looking through this year’s State of Inbound 2017 report from HubSpot, what struck me is the massive contrast between the aspects of inbound marketing that have stayed the same, and the areas that are rapidly changing. So here are a few observations along those lines – three things that have not changed, and three things that are changing now.

3 things that have stayed the same

Establishing the ROI of marketing efforts is a continuing issue

Back in 2013, 25% of marketers stated their top challenge was proving the Return on Investment (ROI) of their inbound marketing efforts. In 2017, whilst 63% said that the top marketing challenge for companies is generating traffic and leads, 40% still said that proving the ROI of marketing activities was their top marketing challenge.

So why do companies find it difficult to measure inbound marketing ROI? Many companies struggle with defining metrics to track ROI, and others with the analysis of marketing data. Marketing success is often measured by how many prospects it produces, so to measure ROI you would compare the cost of your marketing to the value of those prospects to the company. However, establishing just how much a prospect is worth is far from easy, with a range of different approaches available, with different calculations and assumptions. 

If you are embarking on a B2B research project, you’re likely to have a good idea of what it is you want to explore, or learn. Perhaps you want to better understand your target audience, or identify industry trends. You may have a more specific question in mind, like ‘What are the biggest challenges faced by businesses seeking to become more digital?’

So, you know what the goal of your research is, but have you laid down the foundations that will help you to achieve this goal?

In this blog, we maintain that setting clear research objectives is a central part of the process, and highlight four reasons why they are critical to success.

For many companies, their reputation and standing within their industry and amongst their customers is the key to winning and retaining business. Establish a good reputation and the prospects will come to you.

In the past, you could establish a reputation by networking and through word of mouth, but in today’s ultra-competitive, online world it’s much harder. You need to cast a wider net and attract prospects you have never met – so you need those prospects to find you and to listen to you, allowing you to gain their trust and win their business. It makes sense then, that modern content marketing focusses in the initial stages, on brand awareness and establishing authority. The first helps you to be found and considered by prospects, and the second adds credence to your content and makes them take you seriously.

Social media is seen as a necessary evil by many marketers; with billions of users “live” on these networks worldwide, you need to participate to maintain and expand your audience. If you don’t, you are likely to get leapfrogged by your competition. Content Marketing Institute shows that 85% of manufacturers were using social media content as a marketing manufacturing tactic.

However, it is not enough to have a presence, in fact a neglected or poorly managed social channel can be more damaging than no social at all. Social media takes time and every business knows that time is money. But it also requires thought. If you do jump in without thinking through the consequences, not only will you waste precious time, but you
 may end up doing damage to your organisation’s reputation and bottom line.

Whether you have chosen to take a quantitative or qualitative approach, a fundamental part of B2B research is collecting data. But what do you do once you have this data? How do you interpret it to create something meaningful for your audience?

In this post we discuss how to make sense of your data and the power of finding the story within it.

Data analysis

So, you’ve run your online survey and have your data export. You have finished all your interviews and collated all your notes, transcripts, and outputs from any tasks. The next step is to analyse all this data.

Most professional services companies know that the best way to get more business is to get their best people in front of prospects – face to face. In such a situation, their expertise, knowledge and consultancy skills will go a long way towards making the sale. This is why networking events work so well for professional services – prospects can talk to your best people, and the benefits of a mutual relationship become obvious.

Unfortunately, you only have so many best people, and their time is in demand; the number of profitable networking events is usually small, and events require a physical presence that takes time out of the office.

Furthermore, time pressures on executives, managers and buyers have massively increased to the point where they are often unable or unwilling to spare the time for networking events, on travel, day-long conferences and so on.

A discussion guide is a list of topics, questions and tasks used in qualitative research. When conducting interviews or focus groups for your B2B research, whether capturing feedback on a product or carrying out buyer persona interviews, a discussion guide is a vital tool for ensuring you make the best use of your time and gain a greater level of insight.

In the B2C world, influencer marketing is a big deal, but B2B companies have not embraced it to the same extent. A study from Altimeter earlier this year tells us that while 55% of B2C companies are running ongoing influencers programs, only 15% of B2B companies are doing the same. Does that mean influencer marketing is not relevant to the B2B market, or just that B2B marketers are missing out?

Everyone loves to hate Salespeople. Recent research showed that Salespeople rank lower on the scale of trustworthiness than politicians - yes, less than Donald Trump.

Ask anyone what they think about Salespeople, and they will probably think used car salespeople ala Mr Wormwood. But as the power has shifted to the buyer the criteria for being a sales person has also changed.

Regardless of what business or industry you are in, the last thing your customers want is to be sold to. Instead, they want to be advised, counselled and coached through their buyer journey. It is salespeople that have the ability to establish rapport with their customers and create an atmosphere of trust that will succeed. Sales have changed, and you need to adapt.

Online surveys are a form of quantitative research and are used to collect data to measure trends in behaviours, attitudes, or preferences. In B2B research, online surveys can have a multitude of uses. They may be used to measure customer satisfaction, understand buyer’s purchasing behaviours, identify the ideal target market for a new product or service, or explore industry trends – just to name a few.

In this blog post we highlight seven things to think about when running an online survey for B2B.

For a SaaS company, reducing the number of customers who cut ties with your service during a given period – or ‘churn rate’ is essential to the survival and growth of the business. But there is a solution - Inbound marketing – and here’s seven reasons why.

Get the right customers in the first place

Inbound marketing helps you to attract more visitors to your website. But it is not enough to just attract more people; they need to be the right people. Inbound delivers quality, pre-qualified leads who are ready to do business. If you can find the right fit customers in the first place, then churn rate will drastically decrease.

Out of all the digital marketing channels available to you, social media is probably the most hyped yet least understood of them all. If well executed, with a solid strategy behind it, social can be a powerful marketing tool for a SaaS company. 

Social media is unlike other marketing channels in that it is not just for marketing; it is more of a two-way conversation and not just a means of distributing content. For SaaS companies, this is a strength and advantage over other channels.

But what can you use it for, and how can you make the most of it?

Qualitative research is used to gain insights into people’s attitudes and opinions and understand the reasons behind them. In other words, it’s about exploring not just what people think but why they think it.

Inbound marketing is a labour-intensive exercise. When done well that is. Success or failure lies in the marketing mix and your ability to pull the right levers at the right time. And the levers and the pressure you apply will always differ dependent on your particular circumstance. And, of course, the situations impacting your customers.

If you are in the SaaS industry, you might feel that it is sometimes difficult to write about your services and make them exciting or engaging to your audience. You may be so familiar with what you offer that you struggle to find new angles and walk in your prospects shoes. Maybe you have lost your motivation and find it hard to believe anyone finds what you write about interesting?

If this sounds familiar, here are three ways to make your content work and get you back on track.

In a recent post we talked about the value of research-based content and highlighted some convincing examples. Research can help demonstrate thought-leadership and position you as industry experts. But how do you go about it?

In this blog, we give you some ideas and tips for conducting research.

Inbound marketing can help manufacturers close leads to sales, but how do you attract visitors to your site in the first place? In a manufacturing context, where traditional sales and marketing methods are still the default, switching to an inbound mentality can feel like a leap of faith. One of the toughest challenges a marketing team can face is getting buy-in from the C-Suite where the norm can be to see marketing as an expense, rather than an investment.   

What if you could prove that inbound marketing will not only bring your manufacturing company more leads than traditional marketing methods, but they will be good quality – sales ready leads? Here are some ways in which inbound can help your manufacturing company with B2B lead generation.

“Content comes in all shapes and sizes. Helpful how-tos, news, guides, opinions, roundups and rants. But there is one type of content that stands above them all. Research.” (Andy Crestodina, Orbit Media Studios)

When done well, research-based content garners more shares and links than almost any other form of content. It is regularly hailed as the most effective form of content marketing, as proven in studies by CMI, Clutch and Ascend2, just to name a few.

It’s no surprise really. Research that provides answers to unanswered questions makes for a compelling story and attention grabbing headlines.

In a previous post, we discussed how an inbound approach enables your SaaS company to connect with the right people,in the right way, at the right time. Inbound allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise, answer your target audience's questions and, ultimately, help you to win their business (and keep it).

In modern marketing, buyer personas are integral to everything you create as a content marketer. Buyer personas are representations of your target customers based on real-world information and educated guesses. Their likes, dislikes, habits, behaviours, motivations and concerns, as well as their job function, where they spend time online, decision criteria, and more.

The trouble is, as with so many recent marketing developments, the subtler ideas around personas are often not fully understood. Getting your personas right, and keeping them current is not as easy as it sounds. Here are some tips to avoid some of the common pitfalls when defining your buyer personas.

Inbound is more than just a marketing strategy; Inbound is a philosophy that is engrained into your company's DNA. However, one of the toughest challenges Marketing can face is getting buy-in from the top.

Inbound takes time, resources and expertise to implement correctly. How do you get your C-Suite to not only sign off on the time and money required but also emotionally and professionally invest in Inbound?

Out of all the C-Suite, it is often hardest to convince the Chief Finance Officer (CFO). It can seem that the finance and the marketing departments exist in two entirely different worlds; finance views marketing as a monthly expense while marketing view finance as a money source (Jim Lenskold).

Here are some ideas on how to communicate the value of inbound to your CFO.

With 64% of the UK’s population of over 65 million active on social media – spending an average of 108 minutes a day on one or more social networks – you can’t ignore social as an essential way to connect with people and businesses.

Anyone who has been through a website redesign in the past decade or so will know it can be stressful and time-consuming, often running over time and budget. The website finally launches but is left for a year or two to gather dust. Unsurprisingly, it fails to deliver leads, so two years later you bite the bullet and do it all over again.

No professional services company can survive without new business, and securing those leads is the highest priority for most B2B marketers. With traditional methods proving less effective, companies are turning to inbound marketing – but what type of content should you produce? How should you go about it? And what’s the best way to deploy it to generate the most leads?

Whether you are in professional services, SaaS or manufacturing, at some point, you should consider creating educational content for your audience. 

Inbound marketing is about providing relevant useful content, and there is no more useful content than that which helps someone to achieve results or save time.

So how do you go about creating educational content?

In a previous post, we have discussed how traditional, interruptive sales and marketing tactics, such as cold calling, are not working as effectively anymore in the manufacturing sector. 

Inbound marketing offers manufacturers the chance to reach a wider audience. Unlike other marketing methods such as print ads and mailers that rely on outreach to customers' locations, inbound marketing, and more specifically content, can help bring in a steady stream of traffic from people actively looking for your services (HubSpot). 

In a previous post, we discussed how an inbound approach could help your software as a service (SaaS) company. We talked about the importance of SaaS organisations not only winning customers, but retaining them over the long term - a challenge inherent in the SaaS business model.

As a SaaS company, you will know that you have to wait a bit longer to enjoy the fruits of your labour than in other industries. When you win new business, the payoff doesn't come straight away. You need those customers to keep on buying your services and you also want to sell more services to them over time. 

In the same vein, when you first start out on an inbound marketing journey, you won't reach your destination immediately. Implementing inbound marketing is a commitment (with all the challenges that entails). 

However, in both instances, the potential rewards to be reaped are well worth the wait. So, let's explore why and consider how adopting inbound marketing for SaaS could help you to reach more of the right people and grow your business. 

If you are creating content for a software as a service (SaaS) company, from time to time you will probably struggle to find something relevant to talk about. So, here are 30 blog ideas you can use as they are, or modify for your own circumstances.

Bear in mind that you should always have one of your buyer personas in mind when choosing one of these, and when writing the detail, as is the case across all of your inbound marketing activity.

You also need to consider what part of the sales funnel your chosen persona is in. Some of these are introductory topics suitable for top of the funnel (TOFU) content, some are more detailed in scope suitable for middle of the funnel (MOFU) content.

According to Internet Live Stats, Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average - or over 3.5 billion searches per day. That's a lot of people looking for content and, while those searches will incorporate a huge range of questions, the sheer volume indicates that there is an audience hungry for content.

Many manufacturing businesses have traditionally relied on a direct or distributor sales force to generate growth. The founders, especially 50+ years ago, were essentially inventors – solving customers' pain through developing innovative solutions to problems in a way the competition couldn't. They did not need a marketing department to succeed, just pure guts and determination.

This traditional approach has continued through the decades with the role of marketing failing to evolve much beyond product brochures, maintaining the company website and tradeshows. It is not surprising, therefore, that many CEOs do not understand what marketing can do to help grow the business.

Across the spectrum, industries are facing change on an unprecedented scale – and the software as a service (SaaS) industry is no exception. In today's fast-moving and competitive environment, SaaS companies will live and die by their ability to acquire new customers and keep them on a long-term basis.

Therefore, it's important that you can reach the people that matter the most to your business. To do so, you need a targeted and effective marketing strategy that enables you to connect with and form relationships with the individuals and organisations that will benefit from purchasing your products and services.

Adopting an inbound approach can help you to achieve just that. In this post, we explore the current state of the SaaS industry and look at how implementing inbound marketing could help your company.

Writing for the B2B market is often challenging, and never more so than in the world of the software as a service (SaaS) industry. When such a detailed, intense focus on technology is required, it is easy to get caught up in the content itself and miss the bigger picture. That can lead to a number of bad habits.

Here's our list of some of the worst offenders so you can recognise and deal with them.

1. A lack of focus

Every piece of content you create should fit into an overall plan, and be specifically targeted and written. Each item of content should be aimed at one of your buyer personas, and focus on a specific step in the buyer's journey (awareness, consideration or decision). 

At its core, marketing is storytelling. Telling stories allows you to connect with your target audience; to create and build meaningful relationships. Stories paint a vivid picture of your brand, products and services; they show why you are the best choice.

In professional services marketing, telling stories enables you to garner trust in a digital landscape, where online capital counts for so much. From B2B case studies to blog posts and eBooks, there are various ways you can incorporate stories into your marketing efforts.

Being a good B2B content writer involves a diverse range of skills, knowledge and experience. Not all of which can be picked up on the job. There are so many different aspects to the role that it’s easy to miss out or overlook crucial techniques that can make the difference between a stream of barely coherent words and effective copy that attracts prospects and generates leads.

Inbound marketing is customer-centric: your target audience is at the heart of everything you do. Therefore, you need to understand that audience – and one of the best ways to do that is to create B2B buyer personas.

Buyer personas represent the people that matter to your business. HubSpot defines them as "fictional, generalised characters that encompass the various needs, goals, and observed behaviour patterns among your real and potential customers". 

Your buyer personas should inform your entire inbound marketing strategy. Without them, your campaigns and messaging could be completely missing the mark. So, how can you make certain that you're effectively prioritising your B2B buyer personas?

By now, many companies understand the vital role that content plays in attracting their target audience. According to HubSpot's 2016 State of Inbound report, 73 per cent of organisations have adopted inbound as their primary approach to marketing – and, of course, inbound is powered by content. The report surveyed more than 4,500 respondents from marketing backgrounds in B2B, B2C, small, and mid-sized businesses, which are based in over 132 countries – so the results are not to be sniffed at! 

However, it is no longer enough for businesses to simply create content. The competition is heating up and there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of content out there. In today's environment, mediocre content just won't cut it – and even good, unique content will struggle. So, we need to be creating extraordinary content.

In 2016, Rand Fishkin, the co-founder of Moz, coined the term "10x content". And, in doing so, he offered B2B content writers a solution to this very real problem.

Regular content creation is at the heart of modern marketing, but maintaining a constant stream of useful and engaging content can be challenging. This is especially true in professional services where you may feel interesting topics may be few and far between.

So how can you generate ideas for content? 

Firstly, look at how to find out what your clients want to read about. You can create as much content as you like, but it will only be truly effective if it satisfies a need – if it gives your clients the answers to the questions they are asking.

Secondly, look at types of content that work for professional services – starting with a type often makes creating the content for it much easier.

Are you struggling to maintain previous levels of sales, or having issues generating leads? If you are simply doing more of the same, it could be that your whole approach is the problem. The entire marketing and buyer landscape has changed – old methods no longer work. Unless you recognise this and change your strategy, your sales will suffer and problems will follow.

The evidence for the revolution

You may have heard the saying: "If you have been doing something the same way for a long period of time – it's probably wrong."

When Adobe carried out a survey in 2013, they found that 76 per cent of people felt that marketing had changed more in the past two years than in the previous 50, with a similar number saying that the old marketing model is no longer sufficient. There are a whole host of factors – technological, social, and more – that are accelerating this rate of change.

So, if you haven't changed your B2B marketing tactics in the past few years, you need to rethink - or lose potential sales.

Whether you are a manufacturer already on a content marketing journey, or one that is considering taking the plunge, it's always worth reiterating the benefits of content marketing for manufacturing.

According to research published by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) at the end of 2016, 85 per cent of manufacturing marketers use content marketing. However, well over three-quarters (79 per cent) of these describe their organisation's content marketing maturity level as "first steps", "young" or "adolescent", as opposed to "mature" or "sophisticated".  And only a third (33 per cent) say that their organisations have clarity on [what constitutes] content marketing success.

The early stages of a content marketing strategy can be hard. It takes time to lay down the foundations and results don't appear overnight – but, when they do, they're well worth the wait.

So, here are three top benefits of content marketing for manufacturing to keep in mind if you're in need of a boost or have just plain lost your mojo.

"Myth: a widely held but false belief or idea."

Oxford Dictionaries

B2B content writing is a topic ripe for discussion. There's tons of information and advice out there, which you could spend hours reading and digesting. But, you might still find yourself scratching your head over what denotes best practice. 

So, in the age of the "post-truth" society, it's time to put to bed a few lingering myths about creating B2B content. 

"We'll publish a blog post every day this month"; "this quarter, we'll create a top-of-the-funnel eBook and a middle-of-the-funnel whitepaper": it's easy to be ambitious about your B2B content strategy, but achieving your goals can often be a different story.

When there's so much to do and distractions at every turn, it can be difficult for B2B content writers to be as productive as they would like. However, successful content marketing relies on consistently creating useful and valuable content for your target audience.

So, here are five simple productivity techniques, to help you power through your to-do list and create the great content you have planned.

It seems in 2017 the one thing we can be certain of is change. Nowhere is this felt more than in the areas of your business that are reliant on, or intricately tied to, technology. Marketing, in particular, has become more centred around technology in recent years and has been undergoing radical change.

And perhaps the most changeable digital channel for marketing is social media, which is more relevant than ever to B2B businesses. A 2016 B2B Buyer’s Survey shows that more than half (53 percent) of B2B buyers are turning to social media to make buying decisions and more than a third (34 percent) say they are spending more time this year than last, using social media to research vendors and solutions.

"Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is set to revolutionise the manufacturing and production industry by integrating the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, data integration and other technological advances into the heart of production and manufacturing systems."

Salesforce

There's no doubt that Industry 4.0 is coming for the manufacturing industry – and with it, big changes. The ultimate goal of Industry 4.0 is the "smart" factory, in which "cyber-physical systems (CPS) will monitor the physical processes within modular structured factories, and a virtual copy of the physical world will be mined for data in real time, enabling decentralised decisions" (Source: The Manufacturer).

Simultaneously, there are changes afoot in the sales and marketing environment – the go-to methods simply don't work as well as they used to. Today, more and more business is conducted online and, to put it simply, no one wants to talk to your sales team – at least, not to start with. The power has passed into the hands of buyers, who want to ensure they are informed and educated about their needs before they speak to a sales person. In fact, according to a survey carried out by Forrester, 74 per cent of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase.

So, what to do?

January is traditionally a time when companies look to the year ahead, so what are the main B2B marketing issues they should be addressing in 2017?

Well, despite the many new technologies being bandied about and the cloud of hype surrounding them, it will be a focus on the fundamentals that will allow B2B businesses to succeed this year.

Integrated approach to business

Managing a business used to be easy – each function of the business – manufacturing, sales, marketing, customer service and management had their own departments – their own boxes if you like. Each reported to the board through a more-or-less vertical reporting and controlling system. It was always very clear what each area did, what is was responsible for and what their territory was.

"Writing is the painting of the voice" - Voltaire

We all have unique voices: deep and rich, breathy, high-pitched, soft and honeyed. And when we write, we also have unique voices. However, sometimes we stymie our voices, shackling our personalities to produce flat, impersonal writing. We resort to tired templates and worn-out clichés, jargon and meaninglessness.

This is all too easily done in the context of B2B content writing, where much of what is created is dismissed as "boring". After all, if what you're writing about is dull, then why bother to inject some individuality?

The answer is, because it matters. When you're writing for a business, your audience is still made up of real people, with real problems – and you might just be able to solve them. But first, you need to embrace your writing voice.

The future of manufacturing marketing lies in the production of good quality content that potential customers will find useful. Inbound marketing keeps you top of mind with prospects until the time is right for them to contact you - on ‘their’ terms. But in today’s competitive market, it’s not going to be enough just to be 'useful'; your content has to be well-written, comprehensive and attractive. And by attractive, we mean content that attracts an audience. This means being creative – coming up with content that is both informative AND entertaining.

The Christmas holidays are over and January (officially the longest month of the year) is stretching out ahead of us. Perhaps you're already planning to get away from it all – and if you were to wander an airport lounge, in search of a magazine to read on your flight, you would likely come face-to-face with all sorts of dramatic headlines: "New year, new you"; "Make this your year"; "2017: the year your dreams come true."

Having aspirations and ambitions is a great thing and the start of a new year is as good a time as any to work towards your goals – but these types of headlines play on our insecurities; they make us think that we're not good enough already. A more positive approach is to continue to build on what we've already achieved.

And that's exactly what your organisation can do by carrying out a content audit. Day-to-day, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture - a content audit enables you to take stock of all the content on your website, from page copy to blog posts. Having acquired this improved view of your content, you can develop a more informed and successful content strategy for the year ahead.

As 2016 draws to a close, it is the time for reflection and review, so we thought we would look back at another year in the world of inbound marketing and share some of our own key takeaways.

White papers remain cornerstone content heavyweights

It might seem surprising that long form content like white papers and eBooks are still popular, flying in the face of all that we read about increasingly short attention spans. However, while a Microsoft report from Spring 2016 grabbed the headlines by seeming to suggest the average human attention span is now less than a goldfish, not once does it propose you should plan your marketing around an eight second concentration period!

Indeed, Jason Miller, writing for LinkedIn, suggests: "human beings don’t have a shorter attention span than goldfish – and if our attention is changing, it’s changing in ways that makes it more intense, more demanding and more hungry for information, not less". 

"This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it's done. It's that easy, and that hard."

Neil Gaiman

Motivation isn't always easy to come by as we slide into Christmas. And, while the festive season provides a bit of an excuse, a lack of motivation is problematic for B2B content writers - whatever time of year it strikes. Successful content marketing is dependent on both quality and consistency, both of which require a degree of good, old-fashioned, nose-to-the-grindstone work.

There are various reasons behind a lack of motivation. Some are serious, but others are easier to address – for instance, feeling unmotivated because you are overwhelmed by a task and simply don't know where to start.

So, what can B2B content writers do when the muse proves elusive and doing almost anything else but writing seems appealing?

“You know what keeps most of our content from attaining epic status, don't you?

Fear.

Our fear of looking foolish. Of negative responses on social media. Or, worse, of getting hardly any visits, social shares, leads, or sales from our best efforts.”

Hunter Boyle, Content Marketing Institute (CMI)

It's that time of year when that dreaded word starts to do the rounds: "resolution". What do you plan to do (or not do) once the clock strikes midnight on 31 December?  It's all rather exhausting. But, when it comes to your content marketing plan for next year, there's one resolution that's well worth making: to let go of your fear.

Ask yourself: how many times have you shied away from creating a piece of content because you didn't think you could pull it off, or because it was a bit too "out there"? How many times have you delayed publishing your work because it's not quite polished enough? And how many times have you doubted your expertise – or even held back that expertise for worry of giving away too much?

In 2017, it's time to believe in your content marketing skills.

If you work in professional services or manufacturing, or any other industry where technology and complex processes are fundamental to the business, then at some point you will face the challenging task of explaining aspects of technical concepts to customers.

This is challenging because most buyers are managers with little time on their hands. So, while they are likely to be intelligent enough to understand these concepts, given enough time, they do not have that time to spare.

It is down to you to educate them and to make them want to care enough about the technical stuff, so that they learn and then use it to influence their decision-making.

For many B2B manufacturers, marketing is continuing to prove a bit of a sore spot – more specifically, content marketing. Whether because they struggle to know how to create meaningful content, or because they've had bad experiences in the past, manufacturers are often letting marketing fall by the wayside.

However, in today's climate, this is not advisable. Manufacturers exist in an increasingly competitive landscape: the Fourth Industrial Revolution is rearing its head, there is growing demand for mass customisation, and customers demand shorter and shorter lead times. To survive and thrive, organisations must reach out effectively to the people that matter most to their business.

Content marketing allows manufacturers to engage meaningfully with their potential customers - but that's of little use if they struggle to implement it. That's where an agile approach can help.

"It's a shift from terms to topics; a shift from longtail keywords, massive spreadsheets, down to just half a dozen topic areas that you as a business can own authoritatively."

Inbound 2016: Christopher O'Donnell, HubSpot Product Spotlight

Keywords: love them or hate them, they need to be factored into your content marketing strategy. But if you've ever pored over a keyword tool, trying to find the perfect combination of high search volume, low difficulty and, of course, relevance, you will know how frustrating this endeavour can be. If you work in a particularly content-saturated market, it can feel as though the chances of your organisation ranking in a Google search are slim to none.

But, with search engines becoming increasingly sophisticated in delivering results to their users' enquiries, should you be considering another approach to SEO? What if the secret to people finding your content online lay less in optimising around a specific word or phrase and more in focusing on writing around a topic or concept?

Anum Hussain, former senior growth marketer at HubSpot, describes "topics over keywords" as the magic formula. So, what does this all mean?

Historically, there has been little alignment between sales and marketing, resulting in a disgruntled marketing team wondering why sales aren't closing the leads they provide, and a sales team moaning that the leads are low quality.

Inbound marketing came about in response to changes in buyer behaviour - but sales have been slow to adapt. When buyers have a particular issue or point of pain to respond to they would rather conduct their own research online than speak to a salesperson (62 per cent of buyers use search engines and 48 per cent visit a company's website).

Inbound sales is emerging to address this. Unsurprisingly, the model is similar to inbound marketing - transitioning prospects through the stages of awareness, consideration, and decision, all the while working to support the buyer rather than the seller (Cox Business).

An alignment between marketing and sales is key throughout. Marketing need to be creating relevant content for sales at every stage, to drive prospects through the sales funnel and close them as customers.

Writing B2B content is hard – and often the most difficult part is repeatedly creating new content on a regular basis. Coming up with ideas, searching for new topics to cover; all the while ensuring that they are popular enough that your audience will be out there looking for them.

Once you have been blogging for a while it becomes a lot easier. Partly because you naturally become better at it, but partly because you can use the previous body of content you've created to produce new articles and to create content in other formats. You can even just publish it again – provided a few simple rules are followed.

"Copy is so pivotal to the success or failure of your landing page that it's easy to take it for granted. No matter how valuable your offer or beautiful your design, it's the actual words on the page that will ultimately persuade prospects to click, or drive them to bounce."

Dan Levy, Unbounce

As B2B marketers, we're probably all guilty of treating landing pages as a bit of an afterthought – an add-on to the main content creation process.

For example, we write an eBook and then want to share it with our target audience and acquire new leads. So, having set up our landing page, we swiftly write a couple of paragraphs of copy and send our content out into the world.

However, this is clearly not best practice. And that's because a landing page acts as the gateway to your content.

If a prospect doesn't enter through the gate, they won't ever reap the benefits of your carefully-crafted work. But to unlock the gate, prospects don't need a key – it's their contact details the gatekeeper is after. Therefore, it's vital to spend time honing copy for your B2B landing pages.

On Thursday 3 November, I was delighted to attend the first Cambridge HUG (HubSpot User Group), hosted by Equinet Media. There were many friendly faces, old and new, and it was a prized opportunity to meet with fellow HubSpot customers, inbound marketers and partners from surrounding areas.

Making connections

Between mouthfuls of blini, I enjoyed a lively conversation with Jamie Pennington - about cartography, of all things. I was very interested to learn of his experience in the field.

See, maps are curious things. Ultimately, their purpose is to describe the journey once made by another. A map captures the essence of travel and gives future wayfarers invaluable guidance in following that direction. They are vehicles for information; drawn to be read. They provide context and measurable checkpoints - landmarks, boundaries, paths and obstacles, all carefully observed - warning foreign feet of danger. The topology of the land is described, the scale is defined.

This thorough examination enables people to learn from a surveyor's experience. There are some parallels to be drawn between map-making and the activity we engaged in that night. HubSpot is our shared territory. HUGs give us the chance to map out (digital) landmarks together. Whether by verbal or visual means, arming our peers with knowledge, helps prepare them for challenges on the road ahead.

In an ever-crowded online space, it's vital to seek ways to get noticed by your target audience. First, you need to get people to your website in the first place. But, setting aside SEO and keywords for a minute, how can you keep people on your site once they arrive?

Research into what B2B buyers want from vendor websites (2015 B2B Web Usability Report) showed that credibility and trust are what make B2B buyers keep coming back to your site.

Charlotte Fitzgerald suggests “mak[ing] your homepage delve-worthy". Does your homepage encourage people to want to learn more? "Just as the cover of a good book draws you in, the homepage should be bright, clearly sectioned and enticing," she says.

Here are five ways in which to make your B2B website stand out, so that people keep coming back to you.

Change is the order of the day. Macro forces are combining to place intense pressure on organisations and entire industries. The manufacturing sector is no exception – most notably, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (and all that it entails) is looming large. Additionally, there is a growing demand for customised products, and an increased pressure to get products to market faster – while simultaneously staying one step ahead of the competition.

Against this backdrop, the way that customers interact with manufacturing companies (and, indeed, all companies) is also changing. To remain relevant in today's uncertain environment, it's vital to ensure that you can effectively reach the people that matter most to your business. Content marketing plays a key role in achieving this.

It's not uncommon for manufacturing companies to view marketing as little more than the "colouring-in department". And this view may not be entirely unfounded if they have had negative experiences in the past.

However, conventional sales and marketing simply don't work like they used to. So, let's explore why your manufacturing company needs a content marketing plan.

Mobile devices with limited screen sizes, such as tablets and smartphones, have gradually increased in popularity. Today, they comprise a significant proportion of Internet viewing statistics, with nearly one third of UK page views coming from a smartphone or tablet.

More proof of the rise of the mobile device comes when we look at time spent on desktops and laptops versus mobiles; today it's an average of 2.1 hours a day spent on desktops and laptops, versus 3.1 hours spent on mobiles (excluding phone calls).

All this has impacted B2B too – according to MediaPost, 42 per cent of researchers use a mobile device during the B2B purchasing process and mobile use for B2B purchase research has grown 91 per cent in the past two years. 49 per cent of B2B researchers who use their mobile devices for product research do so while at work. They're comparing prices, reading about products, comparing feature sets and contacting retailers. They're purchasing, too; purchase rates on mobile are up 22 per cent in the past two years.

So anyone in B2B marketing needs to factor in the mobile audience.

We're all acquainted with the phrase: "You get what you pay for." In many ways, it's a bit of a meaningless one. After all, you can pay over the odds for a sub-par product or service or, on the other hand, land a complete bargain.

So, when you're working with your inbound and content marketing agency, how do you know whether you're getting value? To draw on another idiom, what makes an agency worth their weight in gold? 

Hiring an inbound marketing agency to power up your marketing efforts is exciting. You've carried out your research, created a shortlist and, finally, found your perfect match. But your work doesn't stop there.

While you rightly expect your chosen agency to deliver great results, you also have a vital role to play in achieving this. The emphasis is on working in partnership, to ensure that you get the most out of your new relationship. Having entered into a contract with you, your agency has a vested interest in your business and they want it to succeed as much as you do. 

By knowing how to conduct this professional relationship from the start, you maximise your chances of success. So how should you work with your inbound marketing agency? 

Greater personalisation has become the holy grail for content marketing publishers across both B2C and B2B. Endless research has proven that greater personalisation brings greater engagement – which leads to more conversions and an increase in sales. This all makes sense, after all, the more relevant and useful content is, the more a potential buyer of your products or services will consume and interact with it.

Just recently AOL published the results of an impressive study into what drives engagement with content in social media. This study encompassed 32,000 respondents and an analysis of 55,000 consumer interactions across eight different markets – a pretty generous sampling that gives the survey some real validity. If you are a content writer, take note!

But this is consumer social media, you may be thinking, what can B2B marketers learn from this?

It is well-versed that buyer behaviour has changed significantly in recent years. Inbound marketing redresses the balance by adapting to customers’ needs, but is Sales in danger of being left behind?

Changes in customer behaviour are widening the gap between buyers’ expectations and sellers’ tactics. HubSpot research shows there is a disconnect between customers’ expectations and traditional sales tactics. Buyers are not going to change, so the onus is on Sales to adapt.

"Inbound means transforming how we do business to be more helpful, more human, more empathetic. It focuses on the whole process of turning a stranger into a delighted customer. Inbound is about matching the way you market and sell with the way people actually want to shop and buy."

HubSpot, State of Inbound 2016

It's that time of year again – HubSpot has just released its eighth annual State of Inbound report. And it's a meaty one – encompassing more than 4,500 respondents from marketing backgrounds in B2B, B2C, small, and mid-sized businesses, which are based in over 132 countries.

To really get to grips with the report, you'll probably want to make a cup of tea, get comfortable in your chair and set aside a couple of hours. In the meantime, we've pulled out five quick facts to give you a taste of what HubSpot found.

Content writers are the builders of your B2B content marketing strategy. The content that they create enables you to connect with - and build lasting relationships with - the people for whom your business was made.

But even the best content writers need a little help sometimes. Whether freelance, in-house or part of an agency, they usually have lots to do and not quite enough time to do it. 

So we've identified four useful online tools that will enable the content creation process to run that little bit smoother - and add even more brilliance to the work of the best content writers.

One of the hardest tasks any company faces is finding and connecting with potential customers, then nurturing those initial contacts until they become actual customers. The development of new marketing channels, the revolution in customer knowledge, and the subsequent changing demands of the customer have made this task simultaneously easier and more challenging. 

Visual communication is generally considered to involve graphics, images, video – conveying messages and information via a visual stimulus. If your business makes products that are not particularly photogenic, or are complex in nature, or you offer a service that has no physical manifestation - such as a box or packaging - you may feel that visual communication is not for you. You could be forgiven for thinking that your product or service can’t be communicated successfully in a visual medium. You might even feel it’s just too boring. But are you right? If not, what CAN you do? And just when is visual communication right for B2B inbound marketers?

The simple answer to this last question is: always. It is always right. In fact, it is essential!

You have to catch their attention instantly

Today’s media landscape is cluttered with a multitude of channels, all clamouring for attention –all fighting for a moment of the viewer’s time. And that is all they have – a moment. In order to survive in today’s jungle of messages, your message has to stand out – instantly. The key way to do that is with a visual – whether moving, still or graphic. Catchy headlines are all well and good, but they will always lose out to a striking image.

In short - inbound marketing will count for little if your efforts don’t convert to sales. For sure, inbound marketing can help generate leads, build an audience, raise your profile and extend your reach but, ultimately, without a strategy for sustainable sales growth, you are likely to end up focusing on the cost of doing inbound rather than the revenue generated from it.

Problems surface if your sales team are not bought-in on the inbound methodology. And where there has been a historical misalignment between Sales and Marketing (curiously common considering both functions are part of the ‘revenue department’), this can exacerbate the issue.

So, if you are taking a closer look at how inbound marketing could reverse your fortunes, be sure to consider how you are going to involve the sales team from the outset.

What’s the most important ingredient in your content marketing mix? Your way with words, your eye for design, perhaps, or your turn of phrase - and, your marketing data. A data-driven content strategy is a powerful one; informed by what your audience really wants and needs.

Data is an invaluable tool for inbound marketers - but you have to know both how to collect it and put it to good use. From the number of views on your blog, to how many people downloaded your latest eBook, to how many marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) you have at any given time: there are numerous metrics you can track. And these figures can then be used to influence your future content decisions – for the better.  

Writing for HubSpot, Rob Lons says: "Content marketers don't just write, they write with purpose." But you can only achieve this if you understand why some approaches work while others sputter to a halt. And the best way to acquire this knowledge is to get measuring. 

The old sales playbook would likely quote "always be closing" or "it’s a numbers game". The sales team would be "calling to touch base" or overheard, for the 50th time that day, saying "if I could show you a way…"

Essentially, if a sales rep wasn’t spending the larger portion of their day hustling prospects, trying every trick in the traditional sales playbook to get that deal signed, sealed and delivered, they were likely not long for the role.

The sales manager didn’t care if the solution they were selling benefited the potential customer or not. Their world was driven by the numbers, and "the numbers don’t lie". Unlike the buyer because "buyers are liars" (sic) so, get your foot in that door and show me the money.

But the world around us has changed. Customers are empowered by technology, the internet and the social web. Today, they want to inform and educate themselves long before they are ready to speak with someone in sales.

If you have done any reading at all on inbound or content marketing, you will probably have been struck by how often agencies emphasise the use of buyer personas. You may even be slightly bored with the constant urging to define and use these personas when developing your marketing strategy. But if you want to succeed in business, personas are pretty much essential. So if you want to understand the obsession with buyer personas, then read on, as I’m going to explain why they are so important and why successful modern marketing depends on them.

The importance of attracting and engaging prospects

Let’s start by going over some obvious business basics. Customers are the lifeblood of any business. But no customer, no matter how loyal they are to your brand and no matter how well you treat them, will stay with you forever. There is a constant need to attract new customers just to stay in business. And if you want to grow, then there is no denying that new business must become your driving force.

Newsletters often get a bad rap - we’ve all received boring ones that fail to offer any useful information and provide "updates" on topics about which we neither know nor care. But, believe it or not, newsletters don't have to be tedious.

In fact, email is still a powerful weapon in your inbound marketing arsenal. They can help you to nurture leads and delight customers, by providing useful information that answers their questions, solves their problems, and generally piques their interest. Regularly sending out informative and usefulcontent can strengthen the relationships you have with the people that need or are already using your product or service.

But where do you start? How do you come up with engaging newsletter content that doesn't bore the socks off your readers? If you're stuck for email newsletter ideas, here are three easy ones to get you started:

Professional services marketing is not immune to the broader changes transforming the marketing techniques of the current generation of marketers. In every sector, marketing has changed. Older techniques, such as advertising, direct mail, flyers and trade shows, are not producing the same results they did in the past and are proving expensive and uneconomical. And while some traditional techniques, such as business networking, are still delivering new clients, they are time-consuming and require a physical presence that limits their scope and range.

So the newer channels of digital marketing – social media, opt-in newsletters, blogging and the like – are becoming the most effective way for any business to reach new and existing clients.

But these new marketing opportunities are not without their pitfalls; social media, in particular, is a potential minefield for the professional services firm. And even some of the biggest of corporates can get it wrong.  But we know that high-growth professional services firms focus more on social media than average growth firms. So in this post, we will look at the social media pros and cons for professional services marketing.

Your website is often the first point of contact between you and your future customers. Therefore, it’s vital that it makes a good impression. Otherwise, you’re fighting a losing battle from the start.

A study by Microsoft found that humans now have an average attention span of just eight seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. By comparison, a goldfish has an average attention span of nine seconds.

With multiple screens and multiple distractions at their fingertips, people have less time for information and websites that don’t immediately spark their interest. It’s likely that you made the decision to read this post in a matter of seconds.

As a business, you need to ensure that your website captures the attention of the people you most want to reach, amid the huge interruption that is the Internet. That means ensuring that it offers up an enjoyable - or at least useful - user experience from the outset. And the key to that lies in your website design.

Writing for HubSpot, Lindsay Kolowich says: "Poor user experience can cause high page abandonment rates, low visitor-to-lead conversion rates, poor organic search listing positions, and a plain ol' bad reputation."

So if your B2B website design is failing, it’s time to take action.

More and more professions are coming round to the idea of inbound marketing. And law firms are among those businesses really embracing the power of content.

At the end of last year, Contently published an article in which they addressed this growing trend. Julia Schur wrote about how John Corey, president and co-founder of communications firm Greentarget, had been speaking to law firms across the US about content. His findings? He predicted that "between 30 and 50 percent of law firms will have a dedicated of content strategy by the end of the year [2015]."

Whether those figures are an accurate reflection of the situation currently, there’s no denying the value of an inbound approach in the legal arena. Inbound marketing is a strategy that fits with the way in which buyers today make decisions on purchasing goods or services from businesses; it reflects how prospective clients move from awareness to consideration to decision – and it is all centred on content.

So, in terms of marketing for law firms, let's consider how you can adopt an inbound approach more in keeping with the clients of today. And, do you already have a head start on others with valuable content writers in your ranks?

In a previous post, we discussed why inbound marketing results in more effective B2B lead generation than traditional outbound tactics. We explored how, while the inbound process takes more time to come to fruition, it deliver leads that are more valuable to your business. 

Here’s a definition of inbound marketing from HubSpot: "Sharing is caring and inbound is about creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more."

In other words, inbound uses content to attract people, who are already interested in the kind of solutions that you provide, to your website, where you can kick-start the process of turning them into leads (and then customers).

So how can you put the wheels into motion and start generating these inbound leads? Furthermore, how can you utilise content right the way through the buyer’s journey, to nurture those leads and turn them into customers?

Coming up with new blog ideas is something that we have to do on a constant basis as content and inbound marketers. But that doesn’t mean it’s always an easy task. From feeling that creativity has eluded you to simply not having enough hours in the day, it can be difficult to keep on top of your editorial planning.

On the other hand, we know that blogging regularly is crucial to our marketing efforts. It’s one of the best – and most cost-effective – ways to attract new visitors to your website and turn them into leads. In fact, according to HubSpot, B2B marketers that blog receive 67 per cent more leads than those that do not.

So how can you keep the creative juices flowing and generate new blog ideas that will fill your sales funnel?

In a previous post, we discussed the fundamental importance of buyer personas to your B2B content marketing. And once you’ve defined your personas, it’s time to start creating content that will capture their attention, create valuable connections, and move them towards doing business with you.

So you need a content marketing plan.

Crafting a strategy that will fulfil the needs of your audience and meet your business goals requires careful consideration. Online, content forms the link between you and your future customers. Through it, you need to inform, to educate, to build trust and, ultimately, prove why you are better than your competitors; why you are the best choice.

Let's consider how you can come up with a winning content marketing plan to ensure you can do just that.

Anyone familiar with sales or marketing will recognise the traditional model of the sales funnel. It can also be represented by the acronym AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.

As a model, it was developed in principle in 1898 by American advertising advocate E. St. Elmo Lewis - in the days before the Internet, before television and even before radio. So it’s hardly surprising that this century-old model may need re-thinking.

In professional services marketing, the funnel was traditionally "fed" with leads from networking and referrals from clients. While business is still generated using this approach, the funnel has changed radically - with some even saying that the sales funnel is dead.

Referral: the act of directing someone to a different place or person for information, help, or action, often to a person or group with more knowledge or power (Cambridge Dictionaries Online).

Referrals have traditionally been used to garner business for professional services firms. Trust and good relationships are created and built upon through hours of networking and recommendations from current clients. And this approach remains a highly valuable way of acquiring work.

However, while word-of-mouth is still an effective tool, it is no longer enough on its own and, in the current climate, fewer clients are being won using this technique. In short, traditional marketing methods are no longer as impactful as they once were, as the Internet has fundamentally changed the way people research and buy from professional services companies - and, indeed, businesses across all industries.

So perhaps you’re finding that you are reaching fewer people and are beginning to wonder how you can make more connections again.

Now, prospective buyers seek out information about a company online before committing to doing business with them. Like the referral system, trust and genuine relationships lie at the heart of this new model – but it is powered by content and marketing automation rather than conversations and handshakes.  

Let’s take a look at what this means for your organisation and how you can adapt, to successfully thrive in this changing environment.

"A lead generation company is a business that provides [other] businesses with prospective customer contact information based on certain criteria." (Houston Chronicle, Small Business) 

If you’ve hired a lead generation company or are thinking about doing so, you will have one goal in mind: to garner more leads.

It's a simple aim in itself, but it requires a lot of work to achieve in practice. So how can you rest assured that you will see the excellent results you're looking for? 

Whether your partner is simply helping you to achieve the numbers you seek or is providing a more thorough, end-to-end marketing solution, there are a few important questions that they should be able to answer.

Inbound Marketing could be thought of as a huge monster with a massive gaping mouth, devouring content at a rate of knots – never satisfied – always hungry. Whilst this might be overly dramatic, there is no doubt that if you are doing it well, you will be producing lots of blog posts. This is not easy. After a while, you may struggle to come up with new posts, new titles, new ideas.

If you feel that the well of creativity has dried up, here are a number of ways to generate blog ideas.

Ask – research sales – customers 

A great way to get new topics for your post is to talk to people in your company. Talk to customer services and see what issues customers are having. Maybe write a post on the top five questions customer services are asked? Do the same thing with your sales team – what are the most common questions prospective clients ask? Talk to product development or senior management and see what’s planned – is there anything you can talk about?

Buyer personas are integral to everything you create as a content marketer. They represent the people that you want to connect with; without them, you are essentially creating content blind and slinging it into the stratosphere. Therefore, it’s important to take the time to define your personas in detail.

First of all, let’s clarify exactly what a persona is. Here’s a definition from HubSpot: "A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers."

Personas are not specific people, but they should embody the main fears, problems and ambitions of your target audience. By delineating your personas, you can better deliver value through your content.  

So how can you implement this process effectively within your B2B content marketing?

More than any other communications channel, social media is subject to change – often fast and unpredictable change. As an important part of any Inbound Marketing strategy, it is essential that your use of social media is evaluated on a regular basis. Not only to ensure that your implementation is up to date with the latest techniques and technical changes, but also remains fully aligned with your overall Inbound Marketing strategy.

Profile pages

Start with the basics – are your profile pages up to date?

Circumstances change and so do company logos, colours and corporate messages. So check that all your social media profile pages are up to date with the latest company information and branding.

The format of images and backgrounds on profile pages can change too, check that everything works with any changes that the social networks have introduced. Most of the major social media channels have changed their image sizes or added images – if you don’t keep up with these changes you may be in danger of having an unsightly blank area on your profile.

"Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting qualified prospects to fill your sales funnel." (Unbounce)

In other words, lead generation allows you to acquire contact information about people who fit your buyer persona profiles and may go on to become customers. But what do I mean by the term "the best lead generation companies"? Well, quite simply, businesses that are great at implementing this process - that are the best at attracting and engaging the right contacts with what they offer.

And the best way to generate leads is through content. However, it’s not as simple as that. A "churn out content and the leads will follow" approach isn’t going to cut the mustard. Instead, you need to execute a carefully considered strategy and keep your eye on the prize at all times.

So what tactics do the best lead generation companies employ?

So we’re an inbound agency – what are we doing writing a post on how to choose one? How does that work?

Well, core to the inbound philosophy is the creation of useful content – unbiased, helpful content to support those that might be researching what you do. So it makes perfect sense for us to write an article helping you to choose the right inbound marketing agency (it’s called ‘practise what you preach’ and you will find it under the fourth heading below).

What relationship do you want with your agency?

Before we look at the other factors, one of the first things you should consider when choosing an agency, is to think about what sort of relationship you want. Do you want to do most of the content creation and management in-house with help from the agency, or do you want them to do most of the work? Or somewhere between these two approaches. If it’s the latter, then you will need to check that the agency has a sufficiently large team of content writers to create all the content you are likely to need.

Content is the fuel for your marketing efforts – it’s crucial for connecting with your customers and providing them with the information they need. But content can’t just be churned out and left to do its work. The best content is memorable; it’s highly-researched; it’s visually appealing. It’s creative.

In order to boost your B2B lead generation, you need to implement creative marketing solutions that will capture your audience’s attention and bring them closer towards your solution. If they like your content, they will want to find out more. Therefore, they will be more willing to give you their contact details in exchange. 

Achieving this means approaching content as though it's a work of art. Yes, creating content is a process and there are certain boxes that you have to tick (using the right keywords, targeting the right people etc.). But it's also an opportunity to spark your audience's imagination and show them why you are the business they ought to be working with. 

Modern digital marketing can produce lots of data – but what does the data really mean? Is it really helpful? This post lists five questions to ask about your marketing data to ensure it’s of value to you. But first, what are the most important questions you need answering?

Nearly every business is now either using social media for marketing or is considering doing so. But like any communications medium, it has its plus points and its negatives.

Here are 10 social media pros and cons to recognise, or remind yourself of, when using social media.

You can use the positive list as a justification to use social media in your organisation, to remind yourself of why you are doing it and to make sure you are not missing out on any of the benefits. And you can use the list of shortcomings as a guide to what to look out for, what to manage and what to avoid when using social media.

A B2B blog is one of the most valuable assets your company can possess. According to HubSpot, B2B companies that blog generate 67 per cent more leads per month than those who don’t. 

Maintaining a blog allows you to create valuable content that is directly targeted at the people you want to connect with. And the only real investment a blog requires is your time.

However, that’s easier said than done because, of course, time is a precious resource - and, as the saying goes, time is money. With various calls on your time during the working day, it can be a challenge to keep on top of your blogging schedule - and that can make the whole endeavour start to feel stressful.

But there are ways to restore calm to proceedings. The processes we will consider in this post can help to streamline and focus your efforts so that you can ensure you are creating the valuable content that your audience hungers for.

“A revolution is underway” (Hinge Research Institute).

Fortunately, it's not a bloody, violent one, but for professional services marketing change is afoot.

Traditional marketing methods - such as referrals, advertising and direct mail - are becoming less effective as more and more individuals and companies rely on online resources and searching the web to guide them through the buyer’s journey.

Within this new system, content is king. In order to attract (and keep) the attention of the people that are looking for the solutions you provide, it’s necessary to create useful and educative content that tells them what they want (and need) to know.

So how can you achieve this? Probably the best option is to appoint a content writer or writers to craft the excellent content you require. This person or persons might be a new hire, or they might already be within your company. In fact, you might be surprised to find that you already have more content writers than you think.

But what benefits will a content writer bring to your professional services marketing? Well, they can help you to achieve a number of things…

There have been plenty of articles written on the importance of using inbound marketing, including social media, to publicise events - but very little on the importance of events to inbound marketing and your overall B2B marketing strategy.

Inbound marketing content thrives on stories, but sometimes they can be a bit thin on the ground. So what can you do? Well, you can create your own story, and that’s essentially what creating an event is all about.

Here are just four reasons why events make for great content, and how to maximise their benefit.

“Casanova: a man notorious for seducing women” (Oxford Dictionaries).

Lover of more than 130 women, fierce intellectual and jailbreaker: that was Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, the infamous 18th-century figure of both history and fantasy.

Despite his vast achievements and talents - writer, astrologer, spy and mathematician are just a few ways to describe him - Casanova is best known for his sexual escapades, with his name often used as a synonym for a womaniser. The Venetian lothario wasn’t classically handsome, but he used particular tactics to attract and seduce women.

Writing for The Independent, Mark Wilson says of Casanova: "His technique? Discover a lady in trouble; be attentive; extricate her from her difficulty; bestow small gifts; use alluring words; make hay; get bored; exit stage left."

However, research has shown that Casanova did not simply use and abandon his lovers. He is said to have genuinely cared about the women he entered into relationships with - and both parties benefited from the liaison in some way.

But what does this have to do with inbound marketing? And how can it help to inform your inbound and content marketing strategy?

Well, as marketers we can learn something from Casanova’s approach...

It’s that time of year when we all start looking to the future: what lies ahead in 2016? Besides the fact that you’re probably thinking how on earth are we already a sixth of the way through the current century (it doesn’t seem that long ago that people were prophesising Millennium bug related catastrophe), the approach of a new year always brings with it lots of exciting predictions.

And inbound marketing is certainly worthy of a few. Inbound is in a continuous state of flux and there is a whole range of hypotheses about its future. So I’ve had a look around and picked out five inbound marketing predictions for 2016 that I think have a good chance of coming true.

Ho, ho, ho! Season’s Greetings to you all! Here’s a festive post to bring a little yuletide cheer to all content marketing professionals. Should you be bored with the repeats on TV, the endless family arguments and the never-ending plates of turkey and sprouts, here’s some collected words of wisdom from us – yes, a post for every day of the Christmas season! 

Sometimes, elements of your digital marketing mix don’t turn out the way you planned. And you may think that's trashing your overall campaign.

Whether it's the number of downloads for a new eBook that don't reflect your intense efforts or a video project you had to postpone, life happens.

But there's no need to be despondent. These blips won’t consign your overall marketing efforts to the abyss. Focus instead on the bigger picture.

What do your overall marketing results look like? An upward curve or a downwards spiral? Are the results from that eBook or video project part of a wider trend or an anomaly? 

When you focus on the bigger picture you'll see the true impact of your marketing efforts.

So it’s that time of year again. Along with John Lewis Adverts, the Coca-Cola truck and repeats of old TV shows, predictions of trends for next year are a blogger's staple.

In fact, if you think of the past predictions of futurists, science fiction authors and moviemakers, we should by now be piloting flying cars, instantly travelling from one place to another and owning hoverboards that actually hover.

In a similar way, many marketing pundits' predictions cover what they think are the main trends for marketing in the next year. And of the ones that are not entirely predictable, how many have subsequently proved useful?

So I thought I would take a different approach - here are some inbound marketing practices you should definitely stop doing next year (if you haven’t stopped doing them already). And these are a practical certainty.

Email is one of the most successful inbound marketing tools at your disposal. Done right, it can help you to nurture leads and turn them into customers - and, of course, it can delight current customers too. But it’s also very easy to approach email in the wrong way.

Think about your own inbox. It’s likely that it’s filled with lots of emails that you find irrelevant, unconvincing or just downright boring.

These negative reactions could be due to a number of reasons: the sender contacts you too often; the content is not compelling; or perhaps you’re no longer interested in the brand. So, perhaps you open an email and then decide not to read it; maybe you delete it straight away; or you might even unsubscribe from the mailing list altogether.

Safe to say, these are precisely the kind of actions that you don’t want your business’ audience to take. But what can you do to ensure as many people as possible open your emails, read them - and, then, respond to your call-to-action?

As an inbound marketer, how can you send effective emails? 

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." (Nelson Mandela)

The fears that most of us face on a day-to-day basis are hardly comparable to those faced by the late, former South African President. But his famous words tend to be applied to a myriad of situations, and the point remains: often, fears must be faced.

So what are you afraid of?

Perhaps you’re terrified of spiders; maybe you break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of an elevator; or have nightmares about public speaking.

But that’s for another post. Here, we’re talking about B2B content marketing.

Perhaps you’re worried you’re not good enough to take on the task at hand; maybe you think you’ll never be able to produce the amount of valuable content your organisation needs; or you have more deep-seated anxieties about making a fool of yourself.

It’s time to cast off the albatross and take on your fears.

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." That quote is attributed to Ernest Hemingway. On the contrary, many people would argue that the novelist was a "master" of his craft. 

Nevertheless, his words raise an important question: what makes a writer great? The answer is a myriad of things, many of which can’t be pinned down. And many others which are subjective.

As a content writer, you don’t have to be a master - it's perfectly okay to feel that you're learning as you go. But you do have to keep your readers’ attention.

In previous posts, I’ve discussed how to attract people’s attention in the first place. But once your post, eBook or the like is in front of them, how do you keep them hooked? Here are five tips for keeping your reader engaged.

Blogging is getting very competitive these days, and there are more and more blog posts clamouring for attention - 56.6 million per month (or 1,268 per minute) on the WordPress platform alone. That’s a lot of posts. Increasingly, the emphasis for bloggers has to be on quality rather than quantity alone.

When it comes down to it, inbound marketing is geared towards gaining leads. But sometimes, particularly at the beginning of a new strategy, it can feel like a rewardless task.

You’ve been writing blog posts each week, sending out targeted emails, and you even have an eBook to offer to your readers. So why aren’t the numbers reflecting your hard work? Why aren’t the phones ringing off the hook? Why do you feel a bit, well, flat?

In fact, it’s perfectly normal for it to take some time for you to see results from your inbound efforts. But, when you do, the wait will have been worth it.

That’s because inbound marketing results in more effective B2B lead generation than traditional outbound tactics, such as cold calling and advertising. Although the process takes longer, inbound delivers leads that are more pertinent and more valuable to your organisation.

And the content that you produce is an evergreen asset that will transport these vital leads to you time and time again. 

In order for your B2B blog to be successful in its inbound marketing mission, you have to get people to read it. And how do you do that? By providing content that is both readable and useful. And what could be more useful than a "How To" post - a helpful article guiding your readers through a product or process.

So setting aside the imminent danger of becoming incredibly recursive (you’ve seen Inception, right?), here is a How To guide to How To posts.

We are told that blogging is fundamental to a successful inbound marketing. But where do eBooks fit into the equation?

They form the next part of the process. eBooks are an excellent way of turning your blog readers - as well as other visitors to your website - into leads.

An eBook can be a valuable offer that is gifted to an individual in exchange for their details.

However, this means they need to be worth their salt. eBooks represent an opportunity to mine deeper into a topic that is of interest to your audience; to further address their needs and problems.

So how can you make eBook marketing work for your business?

A change is as good as a rest. So if you think your B2B blog is looking a little tired or uninspired, perhaps it’s time to make some changes.

The crux of a good blog is educative and valuable content that addresses your audience's needs.

However, that content should also be presented in a delectable way. And it should be written in a clear and accessible voice that strikes a chord with your readers.

Yes, of course, looks can be deceiving. Just because something seems attractive, that doesn’t mean it has substance. But appearances are important online - people will often judge the book by its cover before they make a decision on whether it’s worth reading.

And even when they've committed to reading your blog, if the topic isn't delivered in a way that keeps them fascinated, they'll be gone. 

So how can you inject some energy back into your B2B blog?

Whether you’re part of an agency or an in-house team, if you are doing inbound marketing it's likely you have a particular role. Perhaps you are a strategist, a writer or content editor, a designer or an inbound consultant.

However, while it is important that your focus is predominantly on your particular element, don't underestimate the value of gaining a deep appreciation of the whole inbound marketing process.

At school and university, we’re told about the importance of engaging in extra-curricular activities. In the workplace, it’s a good idea to learn new skills outside of your specified job title too.

Of course, it’s not a case of neglecting your own work, but of not being afraid to try new things; of working laterally. In doing this, you will understand better how you and your team members fit cohesively together. 

I’ve talked about having a strategy for your blog in the past, and the importance of having a reason to blog.

The first reason I suggested for blogging was to establish authority, giving clients and prospects a reason to trust your judgement, see you as a valued partner, come to you/your organisation for help and advice and choose you when it comes to purchase.

So how do you establish authority with your B2B blog? What approach should you take so that clients respect and listen to you?

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” Those are famous words from American film director and scriptwriter, Jim Jarmusch. And they can apply to any endeavour.

Originality is overrated. The best ideas are informed by what’s gone before - even the most astounding invention or find will have been built on years of previous research. Take the discovery of electricity, for example.

So when it comes to formulating your content marketing plan, don't succumb to fear that you have nothing new to say. The process is not about coming up with entirely new ideas, it's about reshaping them; putting your spin on them, and providing information that will resonate with your audience. 

With the rise of blogging as a proven and profitable inbound marketing tactic, more business people than ever before are laying their hands on a computer keyboard and publishing their words of wisdom online.

For a few this is a natural process, and they will feel entirely comfortable with it. Many more will struggle, but with perseverance they will be able to blog relatively easily. But then there will always be some who will find it difficult to start and may well abandon the enterprise at the first hurdle.

But as a valuable – we would say essential – method of marketing, you cannot afford to let your fears or lack of experience stop you from blogging.

So in this article we are looking at your first B2B blog post. Everyone has to start somewhere, so here is some help with that initial step.

Choosing an inbound marketing agency to work with is a big step. Even if you’re satisfied that they meet the criteria you’re looking for; it's still a leap of faith.

If you've picked them, then there's definitely “love” there. But how do you know whether you’ve made the correct decision?

Ultimately, much of the success of the new relationship will come down to how well it is cultivated. Working fruitfully together is dependent on numerous factors. You need to have clear channels of communication, establish tangible business goals and regularly review your efforts.

So how can you go the distance with your agency?

Writing for the web is a beast that we’ve had to learn to grapple with in recent years. And it’s certainly a different one to writing for print. It comes with specific guidelines.

You can be a talented essayist or poet and still find yourself struggling to connect with an online audience. That’s because many of the rules go out the window. Forget long drop intros, intricate descriptions and digressions.

We need to get to the point. Now.

So, without further ado, what is it that makes online writing unique?

HubSpot has just released its seventh annual State of Inbound report. So what does it tell us about inbound marketing today? 

The comprehensive document, which is just over 70 pages long, represents the experiences of almost 4,000 marketing and sales professionals across 150 countries. The majority of these respondents work for B2B SMBs. 

The good news is that the report paints a very positive picture - both for now and the future. Inbound marketing continues to grow as a movement - with positive results across the board. 

Whether you're a seasoned inbound marketer, just getting to grips with the methodology, or have never tried it at all, there are a number of illuminating insights. 

Here are five things we can learn from HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2015 report:

A fundamental part of social media for B2B inbound marketing is sharing others' content - providing useful information to your readership, followers, clients and potential customers. So how do you go about it and what should you be looking for?

The first thing to do is to get a decent search routine going. If you are using HubSpot, the Monitoring section has a facility to search Twitter for key terms, which is a good starting point and should give you some articles to consider for sharing.

I like to supplement this with a couple of other programs. One of my favourites is Feedly, which makes it very easy to create streams of constantly updating articles. You can use it to search for subjects - it will then lists blogs covering those topics and allow you to subscribe to the ones you choose. Adding a blog feed is easy - you don’t have to know anything about RSS or even locate the RSS feed, Feedly finds it for you and adds it to your subscriptions.

On the tablet, I also like FlipBoard, as it’s very visual and makes searching for shareable B2B content a lot more enjoyable - almost like looking through a magazine on your favourite business subjects.

So what sort of content should you be looking for, and what criteria should you be using when considering sharing it with your audience?

Have you embarked on a B2B content marketing journey? Or are you considering taking the first steps? Whatever your situation, it’s likely you have discovered that the exact route you should follow is open to interpretation.

In fact, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to B2B content marketing. It’s a case of finding the right fit for your company, dependent on your particular needs.

However, certain recommendations tend to hold true regardless of your strategy. Things like compiling an editorial calendar, blogging regularly and analysing your progress at each stage.

And then there are less tangible suggestions, such as being patient and developing a writing voice.

It’s impossible to capture all the valuable tips about B2B content marketing out there in the ether in a single blog post. So, for today, here are four from those in the know.

Content never sleeps. In a 24/7, global world, it’s always at work, drawing in people who are looking to solve their problems or find solutions for their needs. But that doesn’t mean you need to have your nose to the grindstone at all times.

In fact, the best blog writers give their work room to grow and mature. That means taking a step back and returning to posts later.

This approach may seem counter-intuitive when you’ve got a lot to do. Why put something off when you can get it completed now?

But creating great content should not be rushed. If we want to deliver real value to our audience and, ultimately turn them into customers, we need to take our time.

What does it mean to be creative? Do you have to be a Pablo Picasso or a JK Rowling?

According to the OED online, the definition of creative is: "Inventive, imaginative; of, relating to, displaying, using, or involving imagination or original ideas as well as routine skill or intellect."

In other words, you can be creative in any industry and any endeavour. And that includes, of course, B2B content marketing.

Creative marketing is about thinking outside the box and trying new things; it’s about engaging with your audience in a meaningful and unique way.

It’s easy to associate creativity with “fun” - and often B2C - businesses: think John Lewis’ Christmas adverts, for example. It’s harder to do the same for more "serious" - and usually B2B - companies. 

But perhaps as a B2B business we just need to redefine our ideas about creativity.

Writing on Mashable, Sarah Ang says: "Creativity isn’t just for 'creatives'. Rather, it’s a mental tool prized by employers across all fields."

"Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy." Those are wise words from the famous Persian poet Saadi Shirazi, who lived during the 13th century. Almost 1,000 years later, they still hold weight. And they hold a particular resonance when it comes to B2B content marketing.

You may question what role patience has to play. After all, isn’t the ultimate aim of content marketing to reach more people to do business with? While that’s true, it takes time to form meaningful connections.

Creating valuable content, distributing it and analysing the results - before starting the whole process again - can’t be rushed. At times it may feel counterproductive to spend time waiting - but that's exactly what we need to do. 

We know that blog posts without images are not nearly as attractive as those with images and will suffer a lack of readership as a result. Very few bloggers have the time, resources and skills to go out and either shoot or commission original photography for every blog post they write. So stock photography is a necessary evil that almost every blogger will resort to at some point in time.Why do I say necessary evil? Well, as bloggers, we’ve all seen stock images in blogs, and most of us will have used them at some point or another, some of us maybe every day. But we have all seen images that look uncomfortable next to the associated content or are just too obvious. Poorly chosen, or poorly used stock photography, just seems cheesy or glib. At its worst, it can stop the reader in their tracks or fight the central message of the post.

Some stock images are just downright weird or inappropriate for almost any purpose - there's even a blog dedicated to those. And earlier this year, to promote the movie Unfinished Business, a set of deliberately cheesy images were created, which photoshopped the lead actors into existing stock images. 

So given that most bloggers have to use stock photography at some point, here are a few quick pointers to ensure that you get the best out of using stock images.

If you’ve ever published anything online, you’ve likely asked yourself: “Who’s reading this?” The answer may well be lots of people. But perhaps the numbers are, instead, disheartening.

The internet is full of distractions and amid the viral videos, news articles and blogs, it can seem a real challenge to attract attention - and keep it.

Of course, in the first instance, we need to be writing about topics that are interesting to our target audience - but that’s not enough on its own. Our B2B blog posts also need to be reader-friendly.

Imagine you are searching for a recipe to make a dish you saw featured on a cookery programme. You find two that are suited to your purposes: the first is composed of very detailed instructions that are presented as a block of text; the second features an image of the dish and tells you how to make it in concise, numbered steps. Which one do you use? Most likely, the second one - because it is clearer and easier to understand.

So how can we apply this kind of logic to our B2B blog posts?

Pictures are a must in any blog post these days as they attract the reader, get shared on social media and help with SEO. But too many blogs feature posts in the headline/picture/text format, with no great variation in any of these elements. Lots of posts have been written on the text in a blog, and maybe even more on the importance of the headline, but what can we do with the pictures?

It has always struck me as strange that the one thing that can be varied - can be changed; can be played with - is the image in a post, and yet so many content creators settle for a standard layout and a standard rectangular shape.

So here are some other ideas for bringing your blog to life with images.

From sport to business, fashion to IT: teamwork is essential to a vast number of industries. Each member of a team has their own specific part to play – if they don’t fulfil their role, everyone else will be affected too.

Take an athletics relay team, for example – the first three runners could give 110 per cent and clock up a good time, but if the final runner decides to walk and drops the baton then all four people will be at the bottom of the race leaderboard.

And when it comes to B2B content marketing, teamwork is just as crucial. Behind every successful campaign are the people that make it happen. Each of these individuals is integral to ensuring that a piece of content solves their target audience’s problems and moves them a step along the buyer’s journey.

So think about your own content marketing team. Whether your company employs specific people for each job or shares the main responsibilities among employees in other positions, building a successful team requires you to cover certain bases.

Let’s consider five key roles that make up a successful B2B content marketing team. This is not an exhaustive list, but it will certainly set you on the right track.

Many bloggers and content creators will just take or find an image and use it "as is" - but this is rarely the best approach. Ideally, they should be resizing it, adjusting the contrast and brightness, sharpening where necessary and cropping.

The first three are fairly obvious: uploading a huge image and letting the blogging software resize it slows down response times and is unnecessary; adjusting contrast and brightness will get the best out of the image and show all the detail; whereas sharpening will also help the detail and remove any fuzziness.

But why crop? Of course, if you have a rigid layout with a specific area for an image, then you would have to resize and crop to fit that space. But otherwise? Well, cropping is a very powerful tool in the content creator’s toolbox - which is mostly overlooked - but once you understand its power, you will never look at images in quite the same way again.

You are here because you may be considering setting up Awards for your organisation. I have written this post especially for you. Working on over twenty Awards during my time as a magazine publisher has given me a certain insight. And I hope to share that insight with you here with over 200 tips.

As a B2B marketer, you are likely finding that traditional marketing methods are challenged. Prospects have learned to filter messages - and a "broadcast approach" can struggle to make an impression.

And, according to research by CEB, the average customer is 57 per cent through the buying process before they first make contact with a supplier. So, assuming you can scale the barriers to their initial attention, you need to provide what they really want at this stage – informative, educational content that helps answer their questions or solve their problems.

But once you have created this valuable content, how do you ensure that it’s delivering the best possible results?

That’s where marketing automation services can help.

In short, these technologies complement an effective inbound strategy, helping your business to successfully convert leads into customers.

But be warned: they are not a substitute for great content. Marketing automation only works if your company makes a concerted effort to attract prospects in the first place, be it through search, blog posts, social media, emails or other means.

Think of the software as your engine and the content as your fuel. You need both to get anywhere - without content, software is useless; but without software, content can get lost in the crowd and its impact can be hard to measure.

Creating B2B content can be difficult at times – even for the most seasoned content writers.

You may have prepared thoroughly – undertaking hours of research; interviewing customers and relevant members of your team; and crafting a detailed plan – but, ultimately, you have to sit down and put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. And that’s when the hard work really begins.

Speaking to the Guardian, American author Joyce Carol Oates said: "Given that the act of writing provokes such misery, why do you do it? – here is the writer's perennial riddle."

She added: "Most writers find first drafts painfully difficult, like climbing a steep stairs, the end of which isn't in sight. Only just persevere!"

That’s coming from a prolific award-winning novelist! You may well have become a content creator because you, too, love writing but, equally, you may write because it is a necessity in B2B marketing, or simply because it’s part of your job.

Either way, a looming deadline coupled with a blank page can truly be the stuff of nightmares.

So how can we boost our productivity and ensure that we get words down on the page consistently and on time, in order to connect with our target audience?

What makes someone a great blog writer? Perhaps it’s their in-depth knowledge of a topic, their pithy turn of phrase or their clear-cut descriptions.

Different people shine in different areas when it comes to content creation. But it is almost guaranteed that the best bloggers all have one thing in common: they are voracious readers.

Reading widely is an assured way to improve our writing skills. And while it’s important for us to read around our industry and specific topics, all subject matter is worthy of our perusal.

You may already be a keen reader or you may find it difficult to dedicate specific time each day. Either way, we can all aim to become "better" readers.

There are a number of techniques we can employ that can not only help us to read more, but also to read in a more focused way.

If you’ve got a great offer for your audience you want to ensure they receive it.

But, in order to reap the benefits of creating valuable content that will attract the right people to do business with you, you need to implement an effective campaign that will show your audience that your product or service is the solution to their problems.

Writing on Content Marketing Institute (CMI) Steven Macdonald says: "This kind of scenario happens a lot. You create the content, hit ‘publish’, and expect visits, leads, and sales to explode overnight. It’s a nice story, but it rarely happens that way. And yet, when done right, content marketing will be your most powerful source for new traffic and customer acquisition."

So how can you ensure that you business is one of the ones doing it right? There are essentially five key components of a successful B2B inbound marketing campaign:

• Produce a compelling marketing offer
• Place the offer on your website
• Attach the offer to automated workflows
• Promote it via email, blog & social media channels
• Measure results

By building all of these parts into a cohesive whole, you are likely to see a perceptible ROI from your content marketing efforts.

One of the first things you may have considered when embarking on a content marketing strategy is: who will our writers be?

There may have been some obvious choices, but it can often be impractical for just a few people to take on responsibility for all of a business' content creation.

So where can we find more writers? In fact, we may not have to look that far – because everyone in a company has the potential to become a content writer.

For example, consider the head of a sales department: they know the product or service they are selling inside out and understand the kinds of problems their customers are facing; they know the most common questions your company is being asked time and time again. All of this knowledge could be channelled into blogs, eBooks and other multimedia content.

"I'm not a writer," they might say. But, when it comes to content marketing, everyone can be just that - in one way or another.

The GIF image format is making a comeback. While you may not have heard of the format until now, it is, in fact, one of the oldest image formats on the web. If you had noticed it, it was probably when some annoying small, brief animated cartoon popped up on the page you were browsing. But now that Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook have all introduced support for the format it's time to work out what it is and how best to use it.

Having a content strategy to guide our B2B marketing efforts is generally considered to be a good thing. But putting this into practice is not always straight-forward.

According to the 2015 CMI (Content Marketing Institute) Benchmark report, 86 per cent of B2B organisations use content marketing – but only around a third (35 per cent) of these have a documented (written) strategy. The report also found that:

• 48 per cent of these have an undocumented (verbal) strategy
• 60 per cent of those B2B organisations that have a documented strategy rate themselves highly in terms of content marketing effectiveness
• 32 per cent of those who have an undocumented strategy rate themselves highly in terms of content marketing effectiveness

Perhaps your company is already among those with a documented strategy; maybe everyone in your organisation is on the same page but your strategy isn’t written down; or your business is new to content marketing.

In any case, it’s worth considering what devising an effective B2B content strategy entails. The key is to meet the needs of your organisation and, more importantly, provide the right content in the right way to your audience.

More and more businesses are now investing in inbound and content marketing. However, implementing an effective strategy requires a long-term commitment.

When your company is focused on its core competencies, it can be difficult to find the time and resources needed to make an impact. That’s where working with an inbound and content marketing agency can help – but how do you choose?

Before selecting an agency to work with, we should consider the subtle difference between inbound and content marketing.

The term inbound was coined by HubSpot in 2006. They say: “By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more.”

Content marketing tends to be more open to interpretation. The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says it is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience - and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action”.

If you think they sound similar, it’s because they are – but, generally, content marketing is widely acknowledged to be an integral subset of an inbound marketing strategy. And that means we need to hire an agency that can cover all of these bases.

It’s all very well committing to a regular blog schedule - but coming up with fresh ideas can often be a challenge. Even the best B2B marketers can find themselves scratching their heads in puzzlement at times.

But the secret is to have an arsenal of techniques up our sleeves that can help the ideas to flow. These methods won’t necessarily make forming blog ideas an effortless process, but they can help to guide us towards the answers we’re looking for.

And if we can reduce the time spent chewing the tips of our pencils – or tapping pensively at our keyboards – we can dedicate more hours to actually creating the content that our audience is searching for.

People often think of connections as a social thing - how we connect with followers and attract likes, how we link to connections we have met and worked with.

And while this is absolutely true and vital, it is not the full picture. Not even close.

Any effective marketing strategy will incorporate a plan and a policy for social media, of course, as it should. But, without a 360-degree consideration of how we build an audience, how we connect at every step, and how we sustain online relationships - a purely social approach will come up short. 

Much of creating online content is about keeping it simple: creating catchy headlines; writing in clear and concise terms; addressing our audience’s needs and desires.  

And while that holds true, there’s a specific type of content that benefits from a more formal, academic approach: a white paper.

This is HubSpot’s definition: “A white paper is essentially a report; a detailed document that uses information, evidence and logical arguments to influence readers about a product or service.”

White papers can be a great asset to our content marketing. They are aimed at the decision makers in an organisation and are characterised by high-quality, well-researched content.

This means they are usually most successful when written by someone who really understands the finer points of the industry and topic being discussed – but it also means writing them requires time and dedication.

Perhaps that all sounds great in theory but not in practice. As B2B marketers we have a lot of balls to juggle – so is it really worth spending hours writing a white paper?

In fact, the potential to generate leads and increase sales is huge. And isn’t that the aim?

Picture the scene: It’s a night at the very beginning of man’s history.

What do you think of when you hear the word “agility”? Perhaps a twirling gymnast or a skilled footballer; or maybe a brilliant mathematician or writer.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, agility means “the ability to move readily and quickly;” or “the ability to think and understand readily and quickly”.  

But there’s also another meaning: “The ability to change rapidly in response to customer needs and market forces.”

When it comes to B2B marketing, agility is an essential component. From your own experiences you will know that the needs of your customers aren’t static – and there are macro forces to contend with, which are out of your control. These could include, for example, the introduction of new regulations regarding your industry.

Being able to respond to changing situations and adapt your strategy accordingly is an important part of the marketing mix. This doesn’t mean you have to depart entirely from a structure or overarching plan – but we should be willing to rise to the challenge if someone throws us a curve ball.

For many people, being videoed is up there with their worst phobias. Even the most dynamic personality can find themselves trembling in front of a camera. And for others it’s a breeze. The quietest person in the office can be transformed once the spotlight’s on them.

But whether you’re a natural on film or feel queasy at the thought, there’s no denying the power of video when it comes to B2B marketing.

"A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words," according to Forrester Research's Dr. James McQuivey. And over 70 per cent of marketers say that video creates more conversions than any other medium.

Adding video to your digital marketing mix can help you reach and influence more people at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

However, despite its track record for success, lots of businesses are still wary about investing in video production – and why shouldn’t they be? It sounds expensive and seems like a mammoth task to add to the workload.

But you don’t have to possess the budget and expertise of a Hollywood producer to create video content that will capture the attention of your audience.

The struggle is real: it’s hard to be heard above the noise when it comes to online content marketing.

We know, from our own experiences, that the web is full to bursting with content: from blog posts to magazine articles; viral videos to memes.

Everyone is jostling for attention and it can be difficult to find the gems among the stones. So how can you get your blog posts noticed?

While we don’t want to impose our message on an unwilling audience, there’s nothing wrong with a little gentle, targeted cajoling.

If you’ve spent time producing useful content, isn’t it worth publicising the fact? After all, this is information that your readers want and need.

And promoting your blog helps them to find your content - and your business.

Perhaps you’re reading this post because the headline caught your attention.

From the front page of a newspaper to the title of a book, headlines are the first thing we see - and they are even more crucial when it comes to online content.

We make snap judgements when browsing the web: if a headline doesn’t catch our attention, more often than not, we won’t click through to the content.

According to a Microsoft survey carried out this year, the average person’s attention span is just eight seconds. By comparison the average goldfish’s attention span is nine seconds!

So how can you create catchy headlines for your B2B blog that get your reader on board quickly?

As long as humans have been on the planet they have told stories.

We all know the power of a good narrative: whether it’s the children’s book that has stayed with you well into your adult years, the urban legends that surround a certain area, or the political speech that inspired a nation.

So, ask yourself, are stories just as important when it comes to B2B content marketing?

Every day each one of us tells stories, don't we? They help us to interact and communicate with the people around us.

And is the same thing true for businesses?

Of course, this isn’t about "once upon a time" and "happily ever after". But consider how you can tell stories to your target audience about how to solve a particular problem. 

The idea is to make the reader of your content the hero and guide them from pain to relief.

“You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.”

Those are wise words from Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, about the importance of not putting things off.

So, ask yourself, if you are committed to B2B content marketing, how often does your company blog?

We've all been there: you get to the end of the week and realise you haven't published as many pieces of new content as you planned - or maybe none at all. Do you need to overcome blogger's block?

Perhaps you didn’t have time; you weren't sure what to write about; you didn’t think anyone would read it; or maybe you were worried your attempts would result in failure.

But, while these are genuine concerns, ultimately they are excuses we use to avoid starting. They are all forms of blogger's block - a problem for sure - but one that can be solved.

Some industries seem like they were made for content marketing.

But others, particularly in the B2B sector, can appear to present more of a challenge.

Perhaps you love your job and the company you work for but, when it comes to content writing, you feel the subject is quite, well… dull.

But is it time to take a fresh look?

Is there really no such thing as a "boring" industry – just boring content?

When people have a problem, they seek out information. And content that helps them find a solution can be highly interesting, whatever the subject.

So here are three questions to ask yourself.

Whatever industry you work in, it’s likely that you want to be influential. But getting the right people to take note of what you have to say isn’t always easy.

The world’s greatest writers, from Jane Austen to Louis de Bernières, have a distinctive voice that resonates with their readers. They convey something that others can’t.

As a B2B content writer, you also need to develop your own voice – one that captures the attention of your ideal customers.

However, it’s not easy – there’s a fine balance between letting your personality show and producing something that your audience actually wants to read.

Here are three things to keep in mind.

In theory, you’ve done everything right: chosen a topic that is relevant to your ideal customers; used appropriate keywords; and shared your resulting blog posts, eBook or the like across your social reach.

However, is there something missing? Does your writing lack that je ne sais quoi? What you’re saying is good - but it is it remarkable?

Improving your content means becoming a better writer; it means engaging on a deeper level with your target audience.  

Can anyone learn the necessary skills – and where would they start? The best content writers will tell you that they got to where they are today by hard work – they practised a lot and honed their craft.

Here’s five pearls of wisdom from five content heroes of our day.

The theme of this blog post is simple.

Keep things simple.

That’s it.

Okay – so that might be a bit too simple.
But that mantra should be at the forefront of your mind when managing your content marketing. Here are 10 ways to keep it simple.

Imagine you’re using Google to research the best beaches in Barbados. You come across two blog posts on different travel websites: one describes the paradise-like coastline in vivid detail - but it includes no pictures; the other contains minimal detail but a series of stunning photographs.

Which one is more useful?

Most likely, the second one.

It gets your attention - because the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

And the picture superiority effect (PSE) shows that pictures also help us to remember information.

If you read a piece of text you will remember around 10 per cent of it three days later. But if it contains an image, that will increase to 65 per cent.

So, although the first blog post may be well-written, it is the second one that will stick in your mind.

You’re more likely to return to it and take the next step towards booking your holiday.

And that makes it a more useful piece of content.   

When writing an article for a blog or posting to a social media channel, there are many things you need to think about before you post. And you need to make sure that your post is not going to end up having a negative impact on the organisation or brand.

In fact there are so many things to check, it would be helpful if you had a social media checklist. So we've created one for you. Introducing The Ultimate Social Media Post Checklist.

Last week I looked at the different characteristics of the three generations of B2B customers – Baby Boomers, Generation X and the Millennials (or Generation Y) in an infographic. Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are generally considered to be those born in the 1980’s to 2000’s as against Generation X; born in the 1960’s to 1980’s. Baby Boomers are the post war generation born between 1946 and the 1960’s.

The infographic was base on research by IBM into the buying habits of the three generations that uncovered some surprising and significant differences between them.

This week I am going to take the five main points of the research and lay out the implications for your marketing strategy.

IBM recently released the results of a study of the B2B buying habits of Millennials vs. Generation X vs Baby Boomers, which highlights some significant differences between the way that the three generations make purchasing decisions.

Content shock; content overload; content glut – you’ve likely heard such terms being bandied about.

But what do they mean?

Undoubtedly, there is a deluge of information today, arguably making it difficult for your business to stand out from the crowd.

Prospects are overwhelmed by this tsunami of content and they’re learning to filter it out.

Welcome to the era of content shock.

Except, maybe, that’s not strictly true.

The debate is not new. Marketing authorities have been arguing for years over whether content is losing its inherent power in the marketing mix.

But, for many companies, the question is still unresolved.

Perhaps you’re not yet sold on content; maybe you’re “doing” content, but it’s not delivering the results you’d hoped; or perhaps you just want content to serve you better.

So you want to market your company. You’ve heard about this thing called social media and something else called content publishing and you like the fact that they seem to be pretty much free.

But who’s going to actually do the work?

Well, you could employ or co-opt a young intern who is completely at home with social media, you could outsource the work to an agency, or you could train an existing marketing professional to manage the channels.

Now each of these has potential flaws. But what if you could harness the power of your entire workforce? What if they could all become ambassadors for your company?

Not only does this give you a way to manage your social media marketing and content creation, it massively amplifies your presence and it draws on the DNA that sets your company apart.

Firstly, I should state that this blog post has no sex in it whatsoever. 

None.

Sorry.

Are you disappointed? Annoyed even? Well this is how most readers react when marketers lie or, shall we say, exaggerate or "tweak" the truth. And once you disappoint your customer there is no going back.

In this article I am going to talk about the lies that B2B marketers tell and why the truth is a better approach.

Podcasts are on the ascent - again.

Originally a Noughties phenomenon, today these digital audio files are being eagerly downloaded onto computers and smartphones across the world at a growing pace.

According to the Washington Post, subscriptions of podcasts through iTunes passed the one billion point in 2013, while the number of unique monthly listeners stands somewhere around the 75 million mark.

New York Magazine calls it a “renaissance”, Digiday refers to the “second coming” and Forbes says the medium is the Uber of advertising.

What the podcast revival means for B2B marketers 

While this is certainly a rebirth of sorts, podcasting as a medium still remains an uncrowded communication channel. It’s certainly not mainstream just yet. 

And that’s good news for your business, because it means you can make an impact. 

But B2B podcasts are not merely another marketing tool. No one wants to download an elaborate sales pitch.

However, they do want to be educated and to be told stories. Even better, they want to do all this while also doing something else, be it driving, working out or grocery shopping.

Here’s how you can ride the second wave.

Over the history of the Internet we have seen countless social media networks launched, blossom, and in many cases, fall by the wayside. In the past five years alone we have seen the launch of Instagram (2010), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), Google+ (2011), Vine (2012) and Ello (2014) – to name the more well-known entrants to the market.

Looking at surveys of the content that most influences business buyers in their purchasing decisions, it’s clear that case studies have been towards the top of the polls, year upon year.

So in this post I’m going to look at what makes a persuasive case study.

Traditionally B2B marketing has been viewed as fundamentally different to B2C marketing with different strategies, methods and implementation. Nowhere is this clearer than in a recent report from Salesforce where the top 5 areas for increased spending for B2C and B2B marketers show a completely different focus.

Those 5 areas - as seen below - seem to indicate that the main focus for B2B (with the honourable exception of content marketing) is on sales and advertising. This seems rather old school and doesn’t take account of the modern trend away from interruption marketing.

It’s a sales-led approach that results in lead generation but that does not necessarily follow-through to sales and long term customer relationships.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll see that we’ve been taking you through the steps required for the successful use of social media, from developing a strategy through to the nuts and bolts of making a post.

So we’re ready to post some stuff – right? Nope. There’s one very important thing left to do – think!

Social media not only has the unfortunate capacity to remember your ill-thought out post, but also to spread it far and wide. Post something problematic and the Internet will ensure it’s preserved forever to haunt your dreams and remind you of that fateful day.

So it’s vitally important you do everything you can to mitigate that risk.

At this time of year it is traditional for bloggers to look back over the previous year or make predictions about the coming year.

Well, predictions may or may not come true, and many seem to originate from one specialist’s particular point of view – so their usefulness is often questionable.

So instead of making predictions or reviewing the year, in this post I’m going to look at five big marketing ideas for 2015 – five things to think about, five ideas to inspire and to influence your thinking. Five big, useful, ideas.

In previous posts we have looked at strategy, monitoring, engagement and content; in this week’s post we are looking at the actual business of social media posting – insights into best practice along with tips and tricks related to the practical issues of how and when.

First, let's look at some generic advice for all social networks:

Complete your profile

Whatever social media network you are posting on, take time to complete your profile. A brief description is essential – make sure it tells potential followers what subjects you are going to cover and give them good reasons to follow you.

Include a good image of yourself or a corporate logo – depending on whether you are taking an individual or corporate approach. If there is scope for a banner image – make sure it’s a quality image and one that conveys a message – either subtly or explicitly.

Include links to an appropriate page on your web site and contact details. Don’t miss these last items out as many people will find your social media profile in a search engine when looking to contact (= potentially buy from) you.

Social media can be used as a platform to establish authority and enhance your standing with clients. One of the key ways to do this is to share content that is useful or inspiring.

Some of this content you can create and publish yourself of course, but it is also great to highlight stories, news, and blog posts from the web that you think would strike a chord with your audience. So how do you find them? And more importantly, how do you find them without it taking every waking hour?

Here are a few tools to help you with curating content.

Alltop

Alltop was created by Guy Kawasaki to help discover what’s happening in areas that interest you. It is similar to a search engine but is more focused on fresh and authoritative content like blogs grouped into categories and sorted by the most popular posts of the moment that are being viewed and shared by others.

Arguably Guy has done a significant part of the curating job for you and it is now up to you to collect the right sections from the platform and compile your own personal ‘Alltop’ from which to draw inspiration. Highly recommended!

Social media is a two way street – a platform for conversations. It is possible to post, blog, tweet and publish without engagement of course, but that kind of misses the point.

So how do you engage? When do you engage? When is it best not to engage? And how do you encourage engagement?

Encouraging engagement

Let’s deal with that last one first. Nobody seems to be engaging with your wonderful posts – how can we change that?

Sometimes fans and followers just need a little help.

Questions & Polls

People like showing off their knowledge and they also like to feel they make a difference, so serious market research style questions can not only encourage engagement but they may also provide valuable insights into what the market wants.

The first task of any social media day – whether it’s your first step into social media or you are an old hand – should always be listening – monitoring the conversation.

Now there are many choices of software for monitoring social networks, blogs and news – from simple free tools, to highly sophisticated and highly expensive intelligence gathering systems – but they all share one thing in common; they are so often used just to spot simple mentions of a brand, product or organisation.

This is a criminal waste of software and fails to make use of the huge business intelligence resource that the Internet represents.

Here are six web monitoring tips to improve your social listening:

Unless you have been living in a cave recently, you cannot help but know about the outstanding achievement of the European Space Agency (ESA) in landing a probe on a comet speeding through space, more than 300 million miles from Earth.

The Rosetta mission is the result of collaboration between teams of 50 contractors in from 14 European countries and the US, and British high-tech space industry companies* were used to build many of Rosetta’s systems.

Rosetta is a ten year mission which launched in 2004, and was woken from hibernation mode earlier this year. Then in the past week it’s lander – Philae – left Rosetta and landed on the target comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

You may have heard it in the news, in the papers or in social media – or in all of these. And although it is a major news story, the depth of impact and the nature of the story that’s being told is the result of a great marketing campaign.

So how does a box of high-tech hardware grab the World’s attention? Here are ten B2B social media lessons we can draw from this success:

Social media is used by people for many things; some tweet about the music they are playing, some post to Facebook about what meal they just ate, bloggers write about the smallest of plot details in an obscure TV series, and Pinterest users post recipes containing beetroot.

What has this got to do with business you ask? Absolutely nothing. And that’s really my point. You can tweet, post, blog and pin about anything under the sun, so what you really need is a plan, a direction – a strategy – to ensure your social media activity serves the business and delivers real return on investment.

Marketing strategy

It should not be surprising that your social media strategy should fit with your overall marketing strategy.

The best strategies are integrated strategies – almost all the big successful campaigns of recent years have been integrated across many different communication channels. One of the biggest, and most famous is the Compare the Meerkat campaign – wonderfully integrating, TV, radio, posters, social media, PR and sales promotion to great effect.

It’s not so long ago that most professional services work was won through referrals. Not just from client recommendations, but also from hours of networking invested over the years, building relationships with introducers and intermediaries.

Referrals still work of course but, for most firms, fewer clients are won in this way today. In fact, tougher regulation in various sectors has made referral for new business almost impossible. Tighter controls recently imposed on the legal sector are testament to that.

Maybe therefore your firm is not growing at the same rate as it used to.

Social Media is a unique communications channel. In previous posts I’ve talked about it being more than just marketing – a combination of marketing, PR, customer service, research and more.

I suggested that an organisation has to recognise the multi-dimensional impact of Social Media on its business.

And I recommended that an organisation should employ a multi-discipline, Social Media Manager.

So who is this extraordinary person and what qualities, skills, competencies and knowledge should such a superhero possess?

Historically, for many organisations, the relationship between Sales and Marketing resembled a battleground - Sales contesting that leads from marketing were woefully unqualified, and Marketing feeling affronted by the apparent lack of effective follow through on their hard won leads. For many, the rift ran deep.

Replace the guns and blades with pointed fingers and heated memos, and you’ll have seen this scenario at some point in your career, I can almost guarantee it. You may even feel things aren't that much better today.

I don’t need to tell you: selling just doesn’t work like it used to!

It used to be a salesperson held all the cards – had all the information a buyer needed, and the consequent power over any deals on pricing, spec, etc.  But today, information is highly accessible to anyone who cares to search for it, and the buyer holds the upper hand.

Really? I hear you! Surely, the link between camping and the digital marketing mix must be pretty tenuous.

But bear with me - it’s still summer after all (just), so maybe you've still got the time and space to ruminate and reflect on even the most obscure of analogies…

My family does a fair few camping holidays each year; we’ve chalked up 3 this year so far (in the UK and France) with a fourth planned at the end of September, before the weather gets too chilly.

And rather sadly, some may say, I found myself thinking about the ways in which planning and undertaking a camping trip bore a striking resemblance to the approach that businesses should take to their marketing in this noisy, digital world. No, really!

One of the great liberating things about social media as a communications channel is that anyone can do it. But, for a business this is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a curse because any of your employees could be using social media in a way that does not benefit the business or even worse, in a way that may be sabotaging it.

On the other hand it’s a blessing, as all those employees could be a collective force for good – adding significantly to the marketing effort and engaging directly with customers and prospects, providing an authentic voice for the company.

Anna Lawlor, journalist and co-founder of Social i Media, gives her interpretation of the term "thought leadership" and what it takes to become a proponent in your field.

Thought leadership is a term that is often bandied around in the content marketing field so Anna, what do you define as thought leadership and how do you deal with clients who are interested in becoming a "thought leader", out of the blue?

Quite a lot of people either think they are thought leaders (often self-determined) or would like to be. I’m a bit uncomfortable with the term "thought leadership" because there’s a danger of it just being another mindless piece of business jargon. What does thought leader actually mean?

Email is easy, right? You design your campaign, your content is penned and you have included the offers that you want to highlight to your contacts, and now it’s time to hit send. No, not quite yet!

Done well, B2B email marketing is a highly efficient and cost-effective means of generating new revenues, repeat business and stronger relationships with your clients. But done badly, as we all know, it is an area of marketing that is shrouded with risk: risks around your reputation as a purveyor of interesting, useful content ("that link is broken"); risks around your spoiling your relationship with your clients ("my inbox is drowning…!"); risks around your relationship with ISPs – with the danger of being black-listed if you are sending large volumes to an un-opted-in mail -  the worst outcome here.

So, how can you ensure that the emails you send do not fall foul of these inherent hazards, and achieve the engagement, interest and response that you desire?

According to research in The State of Inbound Marketing 2013 by Hubspot (sample 3,339) 62% of marketers published a blog in 2013 and almost 80% reported inbound ROI, proof that they can be ultra-critical to the success of your business.

A good b2b blog has multiple benefits and can be a great way of projecting an authoritative and trustworthy company personality to your existing customers as well as helping you get found by new prospects, too.

If it contains relevant and useful insight, helpful advice, and intelligent opinion, it will get shared, extending your reach. And, each time you publish a new post you are adding a new page to your website, so you become more visible to the search engines.

Brian Clark, CEO of Copyblogger Media and architect of the recent ‘agile’ launch of New Rainmaker (a new inbound/content/automation marketing platform) coined the moniker ‘media not marketing’ to position his latest offering which comprises the suite of software solutions used behind the highly successful Copyblogger platform.

‘Media not marketing’ goes to the crux of how b2b marketers need to rise above the tsunami of ‘noise’ flooding the Internet today, especially if you are in a crowded market. Look at it this way -- in 2010 Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, was quoted as saying “Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003”.

I like to think of blog posts as arrows – powerful, accurate and effective – but only if they are targeted. In fact any weapon is only effective if properly targeted – and can cause huge damage if it’s pointing the wrong way.

Whilst forgiving the somewhat campaign/war like bent of this view, applying this analogy to a blog – you have to identify the overall nature of your enemy and then hit specific targets with your posts. So what you need is a brief and a targeting system.

All projects require a brief – to set out aims, objectives and methods of measurement. Without a clear brief that sets out what is wanted, when it is wanted by, and the specific criteria for success, no project can be a success – because success is not defined. A blog should be no different. Even if you already have an established blog, you should go back and write a brief for it.

Anna Lawlor, writer and director of Social i Media, offers some fascinating insights into why writing and thinking like a journalist can give content creators a real edge.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I have left; I still write journalistic content, but I also call myself a content creator, because I produce content marketing for corporations like Barclays and the Economist Intelligence Unit.  We talk nowadays about every company having to be their own publisher or broadcaster, and I’m very much of that mind-set. I suppose I'm straddling both spheres - I’m still a journalist but I’m also working on social media and content marketing.

We were having a discussion on Twitter the other day about the term ‘content marketing’ and whether there is a better one out there. Because it just seems to be a fairly benign term, it puts us in a third class citizen position in the world of media and marketing. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I’ve introduced social media to a lot of people over the past few years and one thing has struck me time and time again; the number of organisations that approach it as a marketing channel only. They are used to dealing with other types of communication channels such as print advertising, posters, radio, TV, newsletters and the like – all of which are purely marketing channels. They are principally one-way communications and they usually fit neatly within the remit of the marketing department.

But social media is radically different – not just different – but RADICALLY different. It isn’t just a marketing tool and you cannot restrict it to just a marketing tool. Trying to treat it as such and ignoring the other aspects WILL actually harm your marketing efforts.

Likewise – some organisations approach social media from the point of view of customer service – but again, it’s not just a customer service channel.

This multi-faceted nature creates a number of problems for an organisation and its social media management.

We all know the reasons for having a blog right? It drives traffic to your website, it helps with search engine results, it generates leads, and all those great marketing objectives. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are all excellent reasons. But those reasons should be true across the board, I mean, they should be a given.

They are the reasons why you should have one, they are not the reasons for your particular blog.

So why are you really blogging?  You need to think about the strategic reasons as much as you do the practical reasons. If you don’t have a strategy, then you will fail, and the positive effects on your business will be lost.

Blogs can be used to achieve many strategic goals – in fact, they can achieve many strategic goals at the same time.

Here are five strategic reasons:

1 To establish authority

You can write about your latest product, its new upgraded features, the amazing offer you are running at the moment – but frankly that’s just a little small-minded and self-serving.

We recently ran a training course for folk new to blogging, which covered everything from the business case for blogging and content planning to creating writing that works and how to measure it.  One of the areas that sparked real interest for our new budding bloggers, and proved invaluable to planning their writing for the coming months, was our trainer’s examples of the types of blog post that are open to them.  We counted around 17 types of posts that writers might wish to consider in approaching their blogging, to be used variously and applicably, as befits the tastes of your audience and the tenor of your blog.

So, here are our 17 suggestions for the types of post you might consider to keep your blog interesting, vital and educative for your readers:

Following on from my last post where I talked about a range of strategic reasons why an organisation might have a blog, in this post I am going to look at the hidden benefits of publishing a blog.

Listen up – this applies to you.

You see, what you might not appreciate is that publishing a b2b blog can benefit both you and your business in other, perhaps more subtle, ways. Ways you are definitely going to like.

So here are 10 hidden benefits of writing a blog:

1. It forces you to keep up to date

In order to create a blog that's relevant and timely, you need to follow the latest developments in your industry, the direction the market is going and what your organisation's latest developments are. You'll be the organisation's "Cutting Edge Expert" in no time.

2. It makes you think about your business, your industry, your products and services and your customers

John Lee talks about the power of visual content in social marketing, the importance of quality content rather than quantity, and why - just occasionally - it's alright to opt for social silence!

So John, you've given us (in part 1) two clear messages about encouraging people to interact with your social content, around planning and integration into your marketing mix and also, very much about your "social" tone.  What's next - what else should we be thinking about?

So once you’ve established what social means for your organisation and have understood that it’s not about you, and your tone’s set up, I think the next thing you need to look at is how you present your content.

Do you share links to your website or blog and wonder why no-body clicks on them?

John Lee, Head of Social Marketing at Webtrends (update: John is now a Brand Strategist at Twitter), offers some great insights for B2B marketers on how to you get your content noticed in amongst the 500 million tweets a day.

John, regarding your blog post on this subject, did it come about as a result of some research that you’d done or just observations you’ve made over the years?

It’s a little bit of both – we’ve done a lot of research in terms of looking closely at our own social channels and finding out what really leads people to engage and repeatedly engage – so not just that “first click” but what makes that click more meaningful in the long term. And also, we’ve been able to look at other industry leaders, particularly in B2B digital marketing, and to look at what kind of patterns they’re seeing; it seems to be a trend that’s pretty consistent across the industry.

Digital marketing sites, content publishers, pundits, brands and regulators currently seem obsessed with native advertising.

The IAB have created a task force and published “The Native Advertising Playbook”. Adweek, Marketing Week, Mashable, even the Guardian are talking about it.

Recently the Sunday People website was relaunched funded solely by native advertising, and even more recently still, it’s been closed due to lack of audience.

At least one content marketing expert has said it is neither ‘native’ nor ‘advertising’. So what is it? Is it the next big thing in marketing? Should it be part of your essential inbound marketing toolkit?

Paul Hutchinson discusses how marketing for law firms, using social marketing to communicate with clients transparently and authentically, have found a winning marketing mix.

So Paul, can you start by explaining a little bit about your background?

I work for Black Letter PR, helping legal professionals develop their current communication methods. As the legal sector is becoming more and more consumer focused, we are finding increasingly that law firms want to engage with their clients via modern channels such as social media.

This time last year, we came to the quick and sensible decision not to devise out own list of predictions for 2013, instead leaving it in the safe hands of other experts in the field who could foretell with renown and efficiency the inbound and content trends of the coming year.  And they did so with aplomb – thank you Messrs Sheridan, Colman et al.

So, with the advent of another new year, we have scoured the Internet to compile a 2014 list of the best B2B content and inbound marketing predictions for the next 12 months, in the hope that they will prove useful in guiding your future marketing planning and strategy.So here’s our list of the four most salient objectives and anticipated trends for 2014 from the thought-leaders in our industry:

In an age where Generation Y are, as I observed in an earlier post, “completely visual learners”,  with Generation X not far behind, does the rather formal, text-heavy, slightly august medium of the white paper still have any kind of place in your content writing armoury?

Should you just abandon it in favour of what David Meerman Scott, in his New Rules of Viral Marketing, called “the stylish younger sister to the nerdy white paper” - the more visual, interactive and “human” eBook?

Consultant employment solicitor Michael Sissons at Cubism Law talks here about how to avoid legal and HR nightmares around employees use of social media for business, by getting your procedures right before you hire people.

Michael, we have been looking recently the growing importance of social media skills in the workplace, and wanted to talk to you about some of the issues arising as social media comes more to the fore, and get your take on some of the legal or contractual requirements that are popping up in your world.

When you say legal requirements, one has to break that down a little bit, and it depends what area we are talking about.

We can’t be the only business with a blog that has seen an increase in the numbers of requests received (some welcome, others not so) for guest posts, both from those wanting to post on our blog and those wanting us to post on theirs!

The guest post, it could be argued, is fast-becoming B2B blog currency; so it's worth asking why that is, identifying some of the challenges associated with it, and exploring how carefully negotiating these hurdles could bring benefit to your existing inbound and content marketing activities.

Guest blogs, valuable content, and SEO

Guest blogging done successfully - in conjunction with well-selected and reputable blog writers in your field, can deliver significant benefits for your business - in terms of profile, authority, perspicacity and originality to your online content.