Too much B2B marketing (and content marketing in particular) sees too few results. While the hype can be deafening, the quiet reality is too often full of missed opportunities and avoidable excuses. In this presentation, we explore the 12 excuses we hear most often and offer some suggestions about what you can do about them.
3. Listening is good – doing is better.
In the time you’re spending listening,
listening, listening, others are
experimenting, testing, making
mistakes and driving greater results.
!
The answer? Always look for low-cost
ways to rapidly prototype approaches
and test them in the field.
consideredcontent.com
5. To a degree, B2B marketing is a numbers
game. Without sufficient top-of-funnel
volume, you’ll never see hard revenue
gains. But do you really have a top-of-
funnel issue?
!
The answer? Check that what you think
of as a demand generation problem isn’t
in fact a lead conversion problem (it’s a
lot easier and cheaper to fix).
consideredcontent.com
7. True. They don’t care. Well not about
you or your products. They do, however,
care a lot about their own businesses.
They care about better serving their
customers, helping their staff and
beating the competition.
!
The answer? Focus on what your
customers really care about (not what
you wished they cared about).
consideredcontent.com
9. Inbound marketing is brilliant, but it takes
time. According to HubSpot, businesses
with over 100 pages of content will see 2.5x
the results of those with under 50. But how
long will it take you to develop 100 pages of
quality content? Probably too long.
!
The answer? Start by focusing on outbound
content marketing and make your content
easy to find – you’ll get far higher results
and still receive inbound traffic.
consideredcontent.com
10. TODAY IT’S ALL ABOUT
SOCIAL MEDIA
‘
‘
consideredcontent.com
11. If only. It would be lovely to think we could
hit all our targets with some well-aimed
tweets and a few LinkedIn updates. They’ll
help of course – in B2B, social typically
contributes around 5% of a company’s web
traffic. But be careful to base your time
investment on real world results.
!
The answer? Try multiple tactics and
invest more in what works hardest for
your business.
consideredcontent.com
13. Sales exists to make more (and more
profitable) sales. Give them the right
leads and they’ll happily run with
them. The problem is often that leads
are either insufficiently qualified or
passed over too early to be a good use
of a salesperson’s time.
!
The answer? Nurture leads longer,
agree what ‘sales ready’ means and
give salespeople the tools to take the
story forward.
consideredcontent.com
15. The difference between sales and
marketing is that sales knows customers
and prospects personally, marketing
doesn’t. Sadly, all too often, salespeople
don’t take the time to really help
marketing understand what makes a good
lead (or else marketing doesn’t ask).
!
The answer? Talk. Seriously. Have
marketing people go on sales calls. Learn
what’s it’s like to try to close a sale.
consideredcontent.com
17. You’re not alone. No one’s data is ever
perfect. Of course some is worse than
others and good data is core to success.
That’s why one of the objectives of virtually
every marketing campaign should be to
grow the database.
!
The answer? Clean your data regularly
and don’t be afraid to buy more if you need
it (but focus on quality over quantity).
consideredcontent.com
19. It’s not unusual for a B2B sale to take
6 months or more. Of course some take
longer – zombie sales can go on and on.
So it makes sense to do what you can to
accelerate the process.
!
The answer? Work with sales to identify
common points of friction that slow sales
down. Then look at what content and/or
assets could help speed things up.
consideredcontent.com
21. Marketing automation is brilliant but it
can be a little oversold by vendors. There
is no big red button marked ‘leads’ to
press. And all too often new users try to
do too much, too early only to be
paralysed by complexity.
!
The answer? Start small. Do the basics
well and then experiment – look to explore
one new feature in each new campaign.
(Oh, and don’t panic.)
consideredcontent.com
23. With all the hype around content
marketing, companies can often think they
need to become publishers in their own
right, competing with major industry
publications and sites. They don’t.
!
The answer? While there’s a baseline you’ll
need to get over, it’s more important you
have the right core content for each stage of
the sales cycle than simply volume content
for every conceivable search term.
consideredcontent.com
25. Great content delivers great results. But
creating great B2B content is difficult.
It demands you become pathologically
focused on what’s important to your
customers, where you can challenge their
thinking, and how you can help.
!
The answer? Interrogate any piece of
content you create to find out who will
benefit the most: you or your customers.
If it’s the former, try again.
consideredcontent.com
26. RIDDING THE WORLD OF CRAPPY
B2B CONTENT (ONE BRAND AT A TIME)
Considered Content is an outbound content marketing agency focused
on B2B and technology companies. We do three things really well:
Whether you need to drive leads or accelerate sales, we can help.
Check out consideredcontent.com to learn more or contact us at
hello@consideredcontent.com.