Ask any
progressive marketing executive archetype and they will pontificate on the
merits of content and the role it plays for their organizations. They will
share their experiences and observations of content relevance and its use in
modern-day marketing. Content is the new economic currency. There is ample
evidence that content has become the conduit to relevancy as post-modern
consumers continue to increase their reliance on multiple sources of content in
their quest to identify products and services that are relevant to their needs.
B2B buyers have embraced the Internet as the primary means to obtain anonymous
information that is timely, authentic, and relevant to their desire to obtain
fact-based examples of how a product or service solution will contribute value
to them.
Content, when aggregated by the user, will inherently
formulate greater trust or distrust depending on the results of their research.
When properly curated, created, and combined, content is one of the primary
sources of trust. As diverse forms of complex information are readily
available, the emerging millennial buyers (three out of five players in the
buying committee process) are fast becoming the dominant users of online
research, whereas their older boomer counterparts tend to prefer human interaction.
This is an important distinction that will only increase as populations evolve.
The consumption of often disparate content starts well
before buyers have identified a specific need exists or determined that it can
be addressed. This revelation is essential for every forward-thinking vendor to
embrace as the earlier you are engaged in the buying process, the greater your
chances of being considered and identified as a candidate on the buying
committee checklist. Regardless of your sales model, be it a ‘challenger’
approach, social media engagement, or populating the Internet with content that
is meaningful, this must start at the earliest possible moment.
Buyers in the post-modern age are focused on accumulating
as much trustworthy information as is necessary to make an informed and
risk-averse decision. Their selection criteria and choices are grounded in the
necessity for the available content to be easy to digest, relevant to the
specific requirements and affirmed by third party independent analysts, peer review,
and solid unbiased customer references.
The challenges facing most vendors today lies in their
ability to acknowledge and commit to making the necessary investment to be
relevant. They must be prepared to ensure that the content they create will do
exactly as intended. Their intentions need to be clearly defined, validated by
customer insight, and delivered in a professional, personalized, and proactive
manner. No longer can you rely on an outbound sales consultant to generate
demand. You must engineer content that aligns with Internet search engine
algorithms, indexing, and ranking presence. That content must be available in
multiple forms, structures, and places.
It’s time for a new marketing model for a new decade. Your new marketing model must be all about being digital-first in your approach to enlighten, engage, enable, empower, and enhance the experience with your brand. With content being the currency of relevance, that requires
a series of different flavours of content assets, each with their unique
purpose, timing, and value to the decision outcome. We call this the
Content Flywheel and have divided these into six sections, each of which is
identified by more specific assets and their respective relevance to buyer
personas.
Different types of content generally fall into one of the
following categories;
1. Internet Presence
2. Audience Enlightenment
3. Personas Engagement
4. Buyer Enablement
5. Decision Empowerment
6. Customer Enhancement
Raising awareness of your brand at the lowest cost possible
requires your organization to formulize a content strategy that touches your
entire audience. This requires the identification, development and distribution
of multiple forms of content that align to your audience as a ‘Flywheel’ that
casts a wide net and eventually narrows to a customer decision.
Generating brand equity demands content that is relevant,
sequenced, and aligned to the buyer’s interest. Given the diversity of content and the dimension of
form, each asset created becomes the catalyst to the buyer’s appreciation of
your brand value. The question is… where should you start? What is the shortest route to creating this
continuum of content across today’s channels?
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