“We are excited to share a proven account-based marketing approach to activate your best prospects with personalized, multi-touch engagement,” said Goldstein. “It’s my goal to spur creative ways to engage buyers with highly relevant experiences that map to the complex sales cycle to accelerate the sales cycle.”

The session, “Ignite the Pipeline with Personalized, Integrated Campaigns,” will take place at 9:45 today directly following the opening keynote address. The Nuance Communications case study will provide an in-depth look at how the organization is achieving a 14x ROI with their targeted account that combines personalized direct mail and website experiences with outbound emails and sales contact to penetrate key accounts that have not responded to traditional sales activities. With a proven track record for accelerating revenue with experiences that focus on buyer insight, Babcock & Jenkins has earned a reputation as a leading B2B account-based marketing service provider.

“Online Marketing Summit unites digital marketing leaders to share, innovate and learn,” said Aaron Kahlow, Founder and Chair, Online Marketing Summit. “We’re delighted to have Babcock & Jenkins presenting again at this year’s event.”
Online Marketing Summit is a professional development conference and exhibition dedicated to marketing leadership, technology and innovation. The event includes hands-on training workshops, one-on-one personalized labs with experts, thought-leadership presentations and peer-to-peer collaboration on subjects like SEO, paid search, web analytics, content management and email marketing. With more than 100 sessions and case studies, a full day Online Marketing Boot Camp, rich networking opportunities and an expo show floor showcasing the latest technologies, agencies and consultancies representing the complete mix of online and integrated marketing solutions.

About Babcock & Jenkins
Babcock & Jenkins is the premier B2B integrated marketing agency focused on demand generation and pipeline revenue acceleration.
Visit the Babcock & Jenkins blog: http://www.bnj.com/blog. Follow Babcock & Jenkins on Twitter @babcockjenkins.

About Online Marketing Summit
Online Marketing Summit (OMS) offers an educational environment that facilitates incredible learning, networking and collaboration opportunities amongst marketers, executives and digital professionals. OMS is singularly committed to its mission to educate marketers on the emerging best practices of online marketing through a professional development conference and exhibition. More than 12,000 marketers have learned, collaborated and networked at OMS events over the years. For more information, visit http://www.onlinemarketingsummit.com. Follow Online Marketing Summit on Twitter @omsummit.

Rather, I want to share some quick and dirty rules for staying inspired to write the gold-plated posts people are hungry for.

Rule 1: Love your subject

No one should be forced to blog. It’s inhumane and doesn’t do anything for anyone. Can we agree you have to have something to say if you expect people to listen? How do you get excited about something you don’t care about? You can’t. And if you try to pretend, we’ll know. Interview someone in your office on the subject if you feel out of your depth or simply can’t muster the enthusiasm. You might be surprised how a quick conversation can jump start your brain.

Rule 2: Have an opinion

Now that we know you love talking about your topic (right?), prove it. This is your turf and your opportunity to interpret, refute or evangelize. Don’t squander your screenshare by simply passing through some headline or timely industry stat. Don’t aggregate. Agitate. The best blogs have a strong voice!

Rule 3: Start the conversation 

Be bold. Don’t wait around to see if a topic has gained enough steam for you to finally join the conversation. Go ahead and pull that bottom apple out from the stack. Productive discourse often falls out. And since you’ve got comments enabled (tell me you’ve got comments enabled), read them and respond to them. This is the perfect venue for elaborating on the finer points of your post and shows how magnanimously you can validate differing points of view. Converse and convert.

Rule 4: Be a human

I’ve written my share of white papers, direct mail, sales materials and more. I imagine you have too. You have to remember that your blog isn’t any of those things. Do your best to fight the muscle memory of memoranda and talk to your audience the way you would talk to a friend or a family member. You’ll notice a marked increase in the energy and intimacy of your posts.

Rule 5: Relate the unrelated

One of my favorite things about working at BNJ is that everyone around me is their own brand of freak. Marketing is only one of their varied interests—just one of the things they dedicate their brains to. And many (many) times we come up with some powerful insights about our business through a conversation about something completely different. Don’t underestimate the non sequitur.

So there you have it. I hope these simple rules will help you fire up that WYSIWYG with renewed vigor. And as we move deeper into 2012, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s working and what isn’t when you sit down to write.

If you haven’t seen the Sirius Decisions inbound marketing projection, take note: By 2015 70% of B2B leads will come from inbound marketing. The inbound marketing lead explosion is dramatic when you consider that just five year ago the bulk of leads were derived from outbound demand-creation campaigns.

It’s reassuring that marketers are finding success in their content sharing programs. In 2012 B2B marketers will invest 25% of their budgets on content marketing (up again since 2011) according to the Marketingprofs B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends report. And their content is becoming more diverse with 60% of those surveyed planning to produce eight or more types of content.

These are all good indicators. B2B marketers are bullish about content and are continuing to evolve their strategies for stronger engagement, but unless a company’s distributed content strategy is 100% gated, the rubber meets the road when educated buyers hit your corporate website for serious product evaluation in the later stages of the buyer’s journey. And, chances are your existing site doesn’t do enough to extend initial content experiences for inbound leads. How can we create a more fluid experience for buyers who are toggling between distributed content and corporate during a purchase consideration?

I was at a B2B networking event recently where a leader from a prominent technology company talked about their inbound strategy. With so much continued emphasis on content development and socialization I was intrigued to hear how this powerhouse global player was planning to make good on the ultimate outcome of self-guided brand discovery: a deluge of inbound site traffic with variable demographic, behavioral and historic insight.

His response was surprisingly simple. He thinks of site visitors in two camps: existing customers and prospects that have short-listed their solution. His main inbound marketing objective is to produce “clean” site experiences for both audiences. Clean is relevant. Clean is uncluttered. Clean is focused. But how can you design clean experiences when you have little or no insight about a first time site visitor? Here are some thoughts to get you out of the gate to improve your inbound marketing success.

A Clean User Experience Leverages Insight and Human Nature

Providing personalized, relevant experiences for first time site visitors content can extend beyond key words and site referral logic. Thankfully, marketers can tap a growing set of tools that proactively gather visitor information to deliver stronger initial visits.

If you are looking for low-hanging fruit t0 improve  inbound lead engagement with minimal implementation burden, explore the growing number of reverse IP tools and account-based marketing approaches. Just as we do in social spaces, balance your “free” and gated content strategically to pique serious interest before requiring a form. When it comes to form capture, keep the number of fields to a bar minimum, or, consider an IP-based tool like RealTime ID by DemandBase that can augment your data capture based on IP address to eliminate fields like “company name”. With each field you eliminate you should see a consistent lift in form completions. Once this capture occurs, the initial heavy lifting is done. You can now begin designing informed inbound lead-nurture experiences that meet your buyers where they’re at in the buying cycle.

Create a Site Architecture that Aligns with the Buyer’s Journey

It’s common for major content initiatives to be led by demand-creation teams or a multi-disciplinary team on the demand creation/sales enablement side. It makes sense for content development and engagement strategies to be guided by the marketers with the deepest understanding of the buyer’s journey through the complex sales process. Historically, outbound campaigns have served the function of moving prospects through the cycle but today’s self-guided buyer operates at his own pace and uses multiple sources, including your website, to collect information throughout the process. For more fluid user experiences website architectures should evolve to align with the buyer’s journey. It’s time to break down the silos between demand generation and web teams for the good of the user. By sharing their insights about the buyer’s journey, there are likely small architecture changes that can enhance the experience (and lead capture!) for your inbound marketing leads.

If this is a topic interests you, watch for future posts where I’ll explore other ideas for bridging the gap for unified buyer experiences that convert. Have an idea or question to share? I’d love to hear from you!

That means inbound marketing–getting found online through search engines and social channels–has become an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. And it makes a well-planned and executed content marketing strategy even more important.

As Ardath Albee (@Ardath421) wrote in a recent post, “With inbound marketing, we’re working to attract prospects to our content through the optimization of search and the use of social media. Without the content, there would be no inbound marketing.”

Step 1. Developing Buyer Personas

Both search and social media are driven by the person who needs or wants information. So, in addition to ensuring that your content gets found by your prospects, you need to get inside their heads and give them what they want, when they need it, in the way they want to get it. My colleague Lauren Goldstein provides some great tips in her post, “How Busy B2B Demand Generation Marketers Can (Still) Use Personas.”

Step 2: Mapping the Buyer’s Journey

But getting found is just the beginning of a B2B marketing relationship. In a recent rant about inbound marketing, Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) wrote, “If content marketing were a football field, inbound marketing would get you to the 35-yard line. Definitely critical, but hard to score from that distance.” To ensure that your content will move buyers all the way to the goal line, you need to consider their information needs throughout the entire buyer’s journey–from discovery to advocacy.

Armed with your persona insights, you can map out that journey by determining what questions each player in the purchase decision process needs answered to progress to the next step or stage of their journey.

That journey can vary significantly based on role: A technical researcher will be most heavily involved in the consideration stage and will want detailed information about product specs and benefits and implementation information, while a strategic decision maker may initiate the buying cycle but then be only minimally involved until there’s a recommendation on the table.

Step 3: Conducting the Audit

The next step is conducting the audit, using a spreadsheet with an inventory of all the relevant content assets. I like to organize the audit spreadsheet by persona and stages/steps of the buyer’s journey. This makes it easy to identify gaps and to select appropriate content to use in campaigns.

For example, if you have an email nurture campaign targeting technical influencers in the late discovery/early consideration stage, you can select from the content that is mapped to that persona for that stage of the journey–and plan a logical progression of content that helps those buyers move from one step to the next.

It’s also helpful to include the questions from your buyer’s journey in your spreadsheet for reference, so as you view each asset you can see which questions it might address.

Here’s a partial snapshot of how that mapping might look:

In addition to the persona and buyer’s journey mapping, your audit will include the vital statistics for each asset (title, URL or filename, content type, source, date, etc.), as well as qualitative assessments such as quality and relevance, and insights about distribution channels and opportunities for repurposing. Other attributes could include:

• Vertical industry
• Geo/localization needs
• Distribution channel (website, email campaign, social media, etc.)
• Campaign or program usage
• SEO keywords
• Content management system tags/metadata
• Gated or ungated?
• Auditor comments/notes

Step 4: “Gapping and Mapping”

Once you’ve assessed all your content and completed your audit spreadsheet, you should analyze the gaps between the content you have and the content you need:

• Do you have content for each persona at each stage of the buyer’s journey…or do you have an overabundance of sell sheets without anything compelling to prompt early-stage conversations?
• Do you have different content types to suit different format preferences…or are most of your assets long-form white papers that must be downloaded before viewing?

When planning your ideal content portfolio you should consider how it aligns to your business goals and objectives as well as your buyers’ information needs and preferences.

Step 5: Content Development and Distribution

Now that you know what you need and where the gaps are, it’s time for the fun part. Depending on your budget and staffing resources, you may not be able to fill all your gaps–at least not all at once. So prioritize which are most important and start there.

An editorial calendar (another spreadsheet!) will help you map out when you’ll complete each new piece of content, as well as who is responsible and when and where it will be distributed. Michele Linn, Content Development Director of the Content Marketing Institute, has some great tips for creating an editorial calendar.

Has inbound marketing changed the way you approach your content strategy? Are you auditing for the buyer’s journey? What tips do you have? Add your comments below or tweet me @carmenhill.

As we approach the new year, I’d like to share a recent blog post by my colleague, Lauren Goldstein, that outlines a game plan to becoming a buyer-centric marketing organization. Cheers to Lauren for the following post:

Roadmap to Buyer-Centric Marketing in B2B

What kind of content do buyers want and when? What sources do they trust? What formats do they prefer? And are we even asking the right questions?

Several recent studies have approached these questions in different ways, with interesting—if contradictory and confusing—results. In some reports, white papers are favored while webcasts and virtual events are at the bottom, while in others the order is markedly different. But let’s look at the results that are consistent.

Corporate websites rule

Recent research from the IT Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), TechTarget and Eccolo Media all show that vendors’ company websites are one of the first places buyers look when researching a problem or technology purchase. In fact, in its “How B2B Buyers Consume Information Study, 2011” ITSMA revealed that, for the first time in five years, solution provider websites unseated peers as the top source of information in the early stage of the buying process.

What’s behind this shift? ITSMA reports that as solution providers have offered more valuable thought leadership content, buyers, rather than being skeptical, now rely on this content.  In fact, 88% of respondents said such content was either important or critical when when deciding which vendors to put on their short list.

(For deeper insights into the ITSMA research, check out Lauren Goldstein’s post, “What is the Major Shift in B2B Buyer Behavior?”)

Meanwhile, the “Eccolo Media 2011 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report,” indicated a dramatic shift in the types of content B2B technology buyers are using.

Old school “collateral” isn’t enough

In its report, Eccolo said survey results showed a “surprising drop in consumption among white papers, case studies, and product brochures/data sheets.” This doesn’t strike me as particularly surprising, but the trend prompted Eccolo to conduct a follow-up survey, which asked about what they described as “less traditional collateral types”: company Web pages, e-books, social media sites, blog posts and presentations.

“While the consumption of particular collateral types appears to have dropped, consumption of marketing collateral overall appears to be holding steady; respondents simply seem to be consuming a greater variety of content. They’ve spread their attention across a wider array of assets.”

A few reactions…

First of all, these other content types are not new; they’ve been a popular part of the content marketing mix for several years. Another nit: How can you consider a company web page a type of collateral? It’s a source of information—and a vehicle for content—but is it really collateral? And could it really be considered less traditional than a podcast?

By including content vehicles (company web pages and social media sites) in the same category as content types/formats, you confuse what you consume with where you consume it. And none of these labels address the actual substance of the information provided—the content of the content—which is ultimately much more important than the container it comes in.

Unfortunately, the follow-up survey seems to have only addressed one question, which makes it difficult to see how the more diverse content mix is impacting other areas. I would have liked to see more in the report about when and how technology buyers are using the other content types…maybe next year.

Can we stop calling content collateral?

I also take issue with the term “collateral,” which implies that it plays only an ancillary role. That may have made sense in the days when the entire spectrum of content could be contained in a branded portfolio with a few case studies, data sheets and a product brochure with the sales rep’s business card. But content now spans a much broader set of communication tools, from blog posts to infographics to multi-media experiences to widgets. It’s not just collateral; it’s a core business asset—and we should treat it that way.

Trends to watch

The Eccolo report isn’t perfect, but it does surface several significant content trends that B2B marketers should pay attention to:

Social influence: “More than 77% of respondents said that adding “Share This” buttons made the collateral either ‘much more influential’ or ‘somewhat more influential’ than collateral that didn’t include these buttons.”

Mobile content: “While the majority of content is still consumed at the desktop, 37% of the 2011 respondents report that they now consume content on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.”

Interactive elements: “83% of respondents reported that including embedded audio positively affected the overall influence of written collateral. 92% said embedded video positively affected the overall influence.” 

Buyers vs. marketers

Finally, it’s interesting to compare buyers’ evolving content preferences with those of B2B marketers. In a study conducted by Focus Research for eMarketer.com, “Marketers’ Benchmarks 2011: A Survey of Marketers’ Priorities & Challenges,” B2B marketers indicated that blog posts are the most valuable content type for supporting their objectives, followed by webinars and virtual events, and industry white papers.

In the TechTarget 2011 Media Consumption study, “Similarities in Brand Reception and Media Consumption of IT and Personal Technology Buyers,” which combined content sources and types, white papers were in the middle of the pack, with webcasts and virtual events at or near the bottom. Blog posts weren’t listed at all (although they may have been considered as part of the vendor website bucket).

TechTarget 2011 Media Consumption Study

So what do we make of all this data?

When you’re looking to data to help inform your content strategy, it would be nice to get a clear picture of what your buyers want…to see consistent patterns across multiple studies that can guide our decisions. But often, the picture is anything but clear.

You have to consider differences in respondent pools, the context of the questions, and the definitions that are used. All things being equal (or at least roughly equivalent), you have to ask whether it’s a white paper someone wants—or simply any type of content that provides relevant answers to the questions or problems they have at a particular point in time. Does it really matter whether they get it in a blog post or a video?

Collateral or core business asset? How is the role of content changing in your organization? And how are you adapting your content strategy to make the most of it? I welcome your comments below or on Twitter: @carmenhill.

IBM just released a study based on face-to-face interviews with 1,734 CMOs in 19 industries and 64 countries to find out what they are doing to help their companies cope with the immense shifts that are transforming marketing and the world.

IBM Global Chief Marketing Officer Study

My first thought was “how the heck did they do that”? Companies around the world are sitting on their earnings to an unprecedented degree, requiring CMOs to spin gold out of straw. It amazes me that they would have an hour sit down with an IBM researcher and chat about their challenges.

The report is certainly interesting. (I suggest you read the actual study over the summary. I had a hard time connecting the two.) In the summary, IBM expressed surprise at the degree of consensus among the respondents. No matter how large or successful the organizations are, what industries they address or where they work, they all feel similar pressures. And they all feel underprepared for the challenges of a radically shifting market.

Really? That’s a surprise? Really?

I’ll stop channeling Seth Meyers and get to the heart of this. As IBM’s actual study clearly illustrates, none of these companies are prepared for the massive onrush of data that’s coming. None are prepared for—or truly understand—social media. (“We built a Facebook game and 59,643 people ‘Like’ us. Now how the heck do I show ROI with that?”) None are prepared to deal with the explosion of communication channels, and certainly none understand what to do about the shift in customer demographics as the world shudders through economic turmoil and radical shifts in influence and purchasing power.

CMOs are clearly concerned about the pace of change. The last 10 years have been breathtaking. Imagine what the next 10 years will bring. Who is crazy enough to say they feel truly prepared for that? The study has some great gems of data to help drive this point home:

“Globalization has given customers everywhere many more options. Witness the fact that world export flows have soared from $7.9 trillion to $18.9 trillion in current U.S. dollars over the past ten years.”

IBM Global Chief Marketing Officer Study, October 2011

“With social media, anyone can become a publisher, broadcaster and critic. Facebook now has (800 million users as of today), for example, and the average user posts 90 pieces of content a month.”

Three a day, average? That can’t be right, but assuming it is, that’s 7.2 billion pieces of content a month.)

“YouTube’s 490 million users upload more video content in a 60-day period than the three major U.S. television networks created in 60 years.”

Underlying this flow of content, information and trade is a bottomless sea of data—ginormabytes of data, flowing without friction at incomprehensible velocity. While CMOs struggle to formulate a plan to deal with the highest level of abstraction of social and interactive web venues (engagement with customers, prospects, market gurus and critics) the most savvy among them understand that buried in this torrent of data is an opportunity for understanding and success. The challenge remains understanding how to process and interpret it all.

It’s clear from the study that most CMOs understand what they face:

CMOs are well aware of the challenges that confront them. They recognize, like CEOs, that the world in which they operate is much more volatile, uncertain and complex…. Increasingly, interconnected economies, enterprises, societies and governments have given rise to huge new opportunities. But greater connectivity has also created strong—and often unpredictable—interdependencies.

And like CEOs, CMOs don’t feel completely ready to handle the situation. A full 79% of the CMOs we talked with believe the level of complexity will be high or very high over the next five years. But only 48% feel prepared to cope with it. These percentages mirror those from the 2010 CEO study, when we asked CEOs the same questions about future complexity. A telecommunications CMO in Brazil described the prevailing view when she said: “The empowerment of the consumer is generating more complexity. The mental model is changing. We are facing a major social transformation.”

Beyond just dealing with the complexity and feeling unprepared for the challenge, CMOs also clearly understand they need to demonstrate ROI with every initiative, but they don’t have the tools or the knowledge required to place bets that are certain to win. No one can really afford to just toss something against the wall and see what sticks.

The need for a strategic marketing partner then becomes imperative. When CMOs feel pressure to show ROI, they pass that requirement on to their agencies as an edict.

An effective agency must, in turn, respond with surgical execution tempered with broad insights around current trends. They must understand markets and venues as they emerge. They must know what’s working, how best to optimize those processses and what pitfalls to avoid.

Now and in the coming years, it will be more important than ever to partner with an agency that doesn’t simply complete projects for you, but one that offers you the advantage of broad strategic experience in the trenches.

One thing is certain about the years to come: Companies will have to stay nimble and adjust strategies on the fly. Who you have on your team is going to mean everything.

Time will tell how this impacts marketing strategy, but it’s bound to increase the value of content that is timely and relevant. So much for your 6-month content plan. The companies that will really benefit are those that are able to publish content regularly, and related to hot topics. From an SEO perspective, it’s bound to lower the value of older content in many fast moving topic areas.

If blogs aren’t part of your 2012 plans, they should be.

As B2B marketers maintaining umpteen communication channels, it’s a daily challenge to achieve proper doses of sharing without driving prospects to the “tanks.” In the last week, I’ve encountered some strange and disappointing brand experiences indicating that business communication is suffering from multi-channel, multi-device madness where the volume of our activity compromises basic communication essentials. Random acts of communication shortchange prospects and brands by denying the opportunity for engagement now—and perhaps in the future. The burden to anticipate and deliver on user needs across channels should still reside with marketers. With so many channels and devices to factor, it’s a big job. How do we stop random acts of communication to make more of our B2B lead generation efforts? It might mean doing 5% less sharing 10% better. Let’s look at a lead generation misfire to illustrate the upside of thorough communications.

Businesses have become reliant on the almighty webinar as a staple in lead generation, but are faced with continually shrinking “show” rates which threaten their ROI. For companies with marketing automation lead rating systems that place greater promise on attendees, there’s significant value in recouping “no shows” by providing a link into the recorded webinar promptly following the event. A “we missed you” email with direct content access has become the industry standard in webinar communications.

Last week, I missed a webinar and waited for the post event-email to arrive. I eventually checked my email junk folder in attempt to access the recording. No dice. I went back to the webinar sign up page. 404: Page not found. Visited the company website. No trace. Two days later, I found the webinar deck on Slideshare which solved part of my problem. I scoured the deck for a webinar link or email address to submit a question. Neither existed. My engagement was road blocked by the worst of all random acts of communication, missed follow through. A better experience could have been produced with any combination of the following:

• Set expectation in the sign up confirmation email about material distribution for no-shows to encourage attendance
• Send a post-event email with link to access the recorded webinar
• Include a webinar link and contact information in the Slideshare deck to encourage full views

Ready to make the most of your B2B cross-channel communications? Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Build prominent contacts into brand materials that are likely to circulate virally
• Use a social monitoring tool to scape for questions and engagement opportunities
• Develop a content plan for your products/services that makes to the various stakeholders and decision points for the complex sale
• Add a branded footer in every chart you distribute (these get republished readily and there a few other ways to bake in attribution)
• Ensure your company pages in social channels are search optimized

Have you come up with any tried and true communication strategies that help people find and engage with your content across channels? We’d like to hear.

Website design works in much the same way. Just like next year’s department store styles are decided on the runways of Milan, the “cool kids” of web design are writing the rules today for the web design standard of tomorrow. If your website design is more then a couple of years old, you’re probably wearing pink fluorescent and don’t even know it.

Finding the Perfect Fit

Like fashion, website design has certain cliques with different dress codes. Ready to attempt a redesign/makeover? The first step is to figure out what those cool kids are wearing. Start by looking at some of the big dogs and innovators in your space.

If you’re a web application company, you might look at Basecamp, Dropbox or Sendgrid. Look for commonalities… here we see big, clear text with a value proposition, and giant buttons combined with a call to action.

Perhaps you’re developing consumer devices? Apple and Nokia’s websites show off their products with giant, elegant photographs and strong value adjectives.

If you’re an ecommerce company, you might look at Amazon and Best Buy. Note the aesthetic of function over form and extreme browsability built into their designs. Nothing to take your focus off products.

You can and should still be original with your own design, but it’s possible to be unique without being clearly out of style. By evoking the feeling of larger, trendier competitors you level the playing field online.

Of course you can go all hipster and create a wholly new web experience. If you’re brave enough, go for it! But be careful, it’s all too easy to end up at the party wearing an old trucker hat and an ironic T-shirt.

Maybe that’s the look you’re going for…

Continuous Evolution

The best way to stay in style is never fall out, and that means updating your wardrobe in bits and pieces. Similarly, the best websites evolve continuously. A new sidebar here, a new nav structure there, and a year later, it doesn’t even look like the same website.

Better yet, you avoid that awkward “We’ve really got to do something with our website” phase, followed by the dramatic “Do we all agree this is the right new design?” process. Let me know how that goes, and I’ll know what to say next time my wife asks me if her new dress “makes her look fat.” She’s as slim as can be but I’m still not sure what the right answer is.