B2B Myth of the Week: My Company Needs 3 Blog Posts a Week
by Emily Swet
The Myth: My Company Needs 3 Blog Posts a Week to Achieve Our Goals
The Truth: Your Blog Sweet Spot Is All About Quality, Not Quantity
You’ve decided it’s time to ramp up your content marketing strategy. Your first thought? We need blog posts, lots of them, stat! Right?
Well… yes and no. Your blog is the workhorse of your content marketing program. You need strong, informative content that entices and engages your audience. What you don’t need is a bunch of filler that leaves them unsatisfied, misled, or annoyed. How you find your magic blog post number is directly related to both. Just as it’s unwise to let your blog collect tumbleweeds, it’s also a poor strategy to flood your followers with dozens of useless posts.
So How Do You Find Your Sweet Spot? Start By Asking Yourself These 4 Questions:
- What are your resources? You’ll need a writer that understands how to write for SEO while still comfortably speaking to your company’s buyer personas. Most of all, you’ll need time: a well-researched, edited blog can take upwards of four hours to write. How much or how little budget dedicated to content is your first indicator of how frequently you can successfully post.
- What are your goals? Brand awareness. Brand loyalty. Customer engagement. You’ve got to know what goal you’re posting for and how to leverage it. But the core goal of every content program must be to resonate with your audience – which brings us to the next question.
- What does your audience want? If you’re in a fast-moving industry, short and sweet updates might work best – in which case, you’ll likely be able to post more often. If your pace is slower, lengthier info pieces posted less frequently may be more worthwhile. But more importantly, what kind of content does your audience crave? What are their pain points? A blog post that addresses these things is a thousand times more effective than a post filled with fluff.
- What is your competition doing? You don’t have to beat how often your competitors are posting. Instead, look at what they’re posting and see how you can differentiate your brand. How are you different? How are you better? Use competitive analysis to capitalize on your strengths.
If the value of your content is consistently high, publishing more often will likely bring more traffic. More posts mean more content to keep your readers happy and more indexed pages in search engines. However, if you find your resources are too limited to dedicate to several quality posts, once a week is sufficient to keep your audience tuned in to your brand. Content marketing is meant to entertain, educate, and provoke questions. It’s next-level marketing that readers actually want – but only if it’s done well.
Continue ReadingUsing B2B Video Content To Boost Understanding and Trust in Your Products
by Ben Quinn
How the Brain Processes Video Content
Sell sheets are nice. But when you want to tout your product benefits and truly engage your customers, look to B2B video content. Why? Our brains are wired to understand stories better than bulleted facts. According to a study done by MIT, the brain can process images viewed for as little as 13 milliseconds. By contrast, text is processed at a much slower rate. Using B2B video content allows you to get your message across much faster. Consider why the most successful presentations we experience in business are full of visual information.
An Example of an Effective B2B Product Demo Video
This video from Milwaukee is a good example of a product demonstration video. It takes all the selling points of their M18™ ForceLogic™ Commercial Crimper and Cable Cutter and brings them to life. Hearing and seeing product specs from the mouths of people who use the products is much more effective and memorable than distributing text that promises results, but gives no visual confirmation of the results.
Using Video for Search and Social
So our brains are wired to understand video better than text alone, but a video is only as effective as the number of eyes that see it. When optimized correctly, video can help increase your search rankings. An investment in video also pays off by giving you interesting content for all of your social media outlets. You are more likely to gain traction and engagement by posting a relevant video than a simple link to, say, your new 30-page product catalog.
Video Content Is Like Pizza – Even When It’s Bad, It’s Still Pretty Good.
Your videos do not need to be the next great feature films. Getting meaningful content to the viewer is much more important than the quality of the recording. Research shows that people are more put off by videos that don’t explain a product or service clearly than by poor quality design. That’s not to say you shouldn’t make a piece worth watching. But relatable content trumps Hollywood polish.
Check out this video series created by etrailer.com. They don’t use expensive on-screen talent or high tech animations, just clear useable information that is super helpful if you are looking to install a trailer hitch on a 2015 Nissan Frontier. They set up a simple logo backdrop and created hundreds of videos with different truck models, so that when a potential customer searches for “how to install a trailer hitch on my [your vehicle here],” they are the first option that comes up. This video series allows them to both build awareness of their product offerings, and give customers confidence in how easy it is to use their products. This method of marketing also strengthens the sense of trust with the company. The eyes don’t lie; people love to see products in action instead of simply taking the company’s word for it.
In conclusion, there are many benefits to making video content a key part of your marketing strategy. It promotes greater understanding of your product offering while also building trust in your products and brand in general. With video recording devices and internet platforms being more accessible than ever before, a small marketing budget can still produce large returns with this dynamic medium. Put some money behind these videos, and you have a platform that can both elevate your brand and leave your potential customers with a memorable experience.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: I Can Save Money By Keeping Digital Marketing In-House
by MGB2B
The Myth: Keeping Digital Marketing In-House Saves You Money
The Truth: With All the People You Need to Hire, Outside Help Is Worth Looking Into
Some companies are big enough that they can afford the marketing team they need to run their digital campaigns. But often, this is not the case. The number of people you need to have on staff to do digital marketing well is higher than you might think.
Think about it in terms of the different channels you need to drive prospects into your sales funnel. Then, consider the people who make that happen. Let’s take a look at the key components of a strong digital program:
- Paid Search and SEO. These are easily two of the most important parts of a successful digital marketing program, but B2B brands are often unsure of how to execute them successfully. You can hire an expert internally or an outside agency to help you avoid roadblocks.
- Email. This is easily overlooked, but it is essential for reaching both prospects and current customers. Whoever runs your email program should know everything there is about segmentation, testing, landing pages, and reporting (just to name a few).
- Content Creation. This is a big one. Content takes a lot of time. And often a lot of people, depending on how many pieces of content you’d like to produce each month. The best thing to do is calculate that first, then figure out how many people you’ll need to pull it off. Some companies use 1 or 2 people. Larger brands often have entire content studios producing their content. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, your content team will also rely on some of your key staff outside of the marketing department for stories, demos, and other substantial pieces they can turn into engaging content. Together, you can create the arsenal of content you need for a successful campaign.
- Social Media. Have interns running your company’s social media? You may want to rethink that. Content is no good unless it’s distributed properly. You’ll need someone who can not only post now and again but create an overarching social media strategy that can be fine-tuned and perfected over time.
- Design. With increasing demand for compelling visual content and landing pages that drive prospects to convert, you’ll need a talented designer to help you. Many B2B brands focus on quantity when it comes to content, leaving design and writing to fall by the wayside. But you can’t underestimate the importance of design. Simple, intuitive design is a difficult goal to achieve, but there are designers out there who make it happen every day. Those are the ones you want to work with.
- Reporting. Some reporting will fall to your Search person. Some to your Email person. And some to your Social person. But you’re going to need someone who can evaluate everything from the top down and make recommendations to improve your marketing program overall. This might be your Marketing Director or someone beneath him or her. But it needs to be someone who’s good with numbers. And someone who both cares about accuracy and can interpret data.
- Web Development. Not all web developers are created equal. If you’re lucky, you can find one who is brilliant not just at coding but at understanding the consumer’s journey online. They understand the importance of user experience. And do everything they can to make it smooth and seamless. There are not many who have mastered this. So when you find someone who has, do whatever you can to make them stick around for as long as possible.
Depending on the needs of your organization, you’ll need at least one person working in each of these categories (if not more!). And you won’t likely want entry-level people in these positions.
So, using the list above, add up the salaries of your mid-to-expert-level internal digital team. Then compare the total to what an ad agency or other outside service might charge. More likely than not, your number is going to be higher than the agency’s.
Often what works best is a mix of an internal team and an outside agency. Your lean, internal team works with the agency to develop a sound marketing strategy, and each one uses their strengths to implement the seven key components listed above. Which gives you the most bang for your marketing buck. And keeps you – and your CFO – smiling.
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