I'm a founder and Creative Director of Velocity, a B2B marketing agency specialising in technology companies.
Twenty-plus years in B2B marketing, most of them in technology markets.
The mainstreaming of content marketing: ten implications
Let's face it, content marketing has gone mainstream. That kind of sucks, really, because it used to be a hugely powerful differentiator in most markets.
Soon it will just be the price of entry. Everyone will have a rich content library, so a new eBook or video won't be enough to make you jump out from that pack of pesky competitors.
So how will the world of digital marketing change when content marketing becomes the norm for everyone?
Here are ten predicions and what you can do about them...
B2B content marketing: finding your sweet spot
In B2B content marketing, what you write about can be as important as what you write.
But there's a hell of a lot of so-called 'thought leadership' out there that isn't leading anyone's thought at all. That's because it isn't written from the company's true sphere of authority -- from the 'sweet spot'.
If you're committed to content marketing (as I'm sure you are) it's incredibly important to think about your sweet spot and keep your content inside it.
17 tips for choosing a B2B content marketing agency
As content marketing leaps 'the chasm' and lands in Geoffrey Moore's back garden, more and more marketers are on the lookout for a B2B content marketing agency that can make them famous.
That's a good thing. But almost every B2B agency out there is hurriedly carving a new 'Content Marketing' sign for their front door.
So it pays to have a think before you get yourself committed.
B2B Content marketing is about you AND your customers
As content marketing goes mainstream in B2B, it's becoming something of a religion. And like all religions, a lot of it is based on articles of faith that are handed down, tweet by tweet, until they're considered gospel.
To question them is to risk being denounced as a heretic and made to do any of those horrible things religions do to their heretics (many involving fire or flaying or feathers).
I'm not in the market for a flaying or a feathering but there's one article of faith that I'd like to challenge here.
The one that says, "Content marketing is not about you, it's about your customers. Great content marketing is as far from old-school, interruption-based, broadcast-style marketing as Jamon Iberico is to Pepperami".
Let's pick that one apart...
Managing expectations in B2B content marketing
Your audience's opinions abut your content depends largely on their expectations, but few B2B marketers think about managing expectations around their content marketing.
Maintaining momentum in B2B marketing
A planning vacuum means most B2B marketing progresses in fits and starts. Inertia kills momentum.
Ask a consumer marketer for a look at their marketing plan and you're likely to get anything from a 20-page powerpoint deck to a 400-page binder with tabs, spreadsheets, gant charts and dashboards.
Ask a B2B marketer for their marketing plan and you're likely to get a funny look and some awkward rationalisation. "Erm... we're agile here. Our market moves too fast. If we had a plan it wold be out of date in a week." Yadda-yadda-yadda.
Psychographic targeting in B2B marketing
There are so many ways to segment an audience and target your messages – by job title, industry, seniority, behaviour... But there's an important dimension that's often ignored by B2B marketers: psychographics.
How different prospects feel about things can guide your segmentation, offers and creative. The trick is to find ways to get your psychographic targets to identify themselves so you can market to their specific biases.
When retargeting turns into stalking
Online ad retargeting is a very powerful concept that, in the wrong hands, can not only infuriate your prospective customers but also threatens the entire cookie-fueled display advertising market.
We've all been the victim of this: you look at a pair of pink, fluffy handcuffs on BondageMaster.com and for the next three months, the very same handcuffs appear on almost every other site you visit. Spooky.
As website management derails, marketers suffer
Studies show large websites are failing to deliver on the most basic expectations for usability and accessibility.
Why is this? How does it impact marketers? And what can they do about it?
B2B marketers: the revenue cat is out of the bag
There's been a sea-change in B2B marketing and it's all about our relationship to revenue.
Here's why it's a good thing, why it's an inevitable thing and what you B2B marketers can do about it.
