2. There has been a vast amount of justified
buzz around “content marketing” over
the past few years.
Marketing teams are rushing to create content
to steer information-led buyers towards their
tools and services.
Those teams have been vastly successful
as the production and distribution of
content has become increasingly simple
and commoditized, thanks to the web and
marketing automation.
Teams have been measured by production
and lead generation but have left a void in
the final mile of content distribution for the
enterprise -- arming the field sales team with
an easily available and refined set of content
as they work to close opportunities.
This guide is provided as an introduction
for marketers trying to deal with a volume
of marketing assets though curation - and
how to target and distribute that information
across field sales (be they internal sales teams
or channel partners) using mobile devices.
We’ll cover the following topics:
1. The Content Effect
2. Why Curation Counts
3. The Audit You Want
4. Getting Meta
5. Better (Mobile) Distribution
Let’s get started.
Introduction
3. We have reached a watershed moment
in content marketing.
Marketing organizations have reorganized
around content production over the last few
years and with that have unprecedented
access to tools and publishing mechanisms.
This has made marketing efficient and
organized in terms of content production.
Key Content Marketing Stats*
But with this success, there is a new set of
challenges.Howcanmarketersmakeiteasyfor
sales channels to find the right content to help
the sales cycle? How can the content gap be
better bridged as an opportunity is converted
from a qualified lead? How can marketing
provide this in a concise and accessible way,
reducing the effort and overhead for sales?
Typically sales team members lean on known
content and have little time to search through
multiple repositories, for the latest and
greatest information. It’s overwhelming.
Forrester recently reported data from Cisco
Systems. With over twenty million pieces of
content (3 million new assets in 3 months)
and 165 case studies for one product alone,
it highlights the issue facing the management
and discovery of all of these assets.
AstheIMNresearch(right)suggests,marketers
believe their goal through content marketing is
lead generation. Yet for enterprise, marketing
needs to evolve and steer opportunities
through the pipeline using these resources.
And the way to do that, is to arm sales with a
rich set of targeted and up-to-date assets.
This means marketers are facing the task
of managing their library so that it can be
categorized, filtered and pushed based
on sales opportunities. Through this effort
they can further enable personalization and
predictive consumption across all access
methods.
This results in additional value being driven
from each content asset, on an ongoing basis,
so it has a continued influence on conversion
and closed sales.
.
Primary Goal of Content Marketers ^
TheContentEffect
* Source: MarketingProfs - marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/11759/2014-b2b-content-marketing-benchmarks-budgets-and-trends
^ Source IMN Research - ‘2013 Content Marketing Survey Report’
4. You need to be a “Content Jockey” -- a
front-line aggregator of the vast array of
available content for your team.
cu·rate [n. kyoor-it; v. kyoo-reyt, kyoor-eyt]
to select, organize, and present (suitable content,
typically for online or computational use)
It is estimated that up to 90 percent of
marketing teams are creating content that
is not being discovered by sales teams or
customers*. That’s your effort going to waste.
This is because most content marketing assets
are dispersed across many places within an
organization (file servers, intranets, cloud
storage) and promoted via bulging inboxes.
A curation process (in terms of selection,
organization and distribution) enables
marketers to help sales teams discover
appropriate and targeted material that may
be useful to their needs in a much more
proactive and relevant way.
To do this, content needs to be organized and
structured to drive relevance. There are few
systems that have been built that can offer the
granular support needed to do this well.
Any system must offer marketers the ability to:
1. Add an asset
2. Apply meta-data to an asset
3. Retire an asset
These key actions improve relevance through
a publishing cycle that includes categorization
and descriptive information, which can be
applied in various ways to aid discovery.
In addition, not all content assets are static
like PDF documents, white papers, eBooks or
info-graphics. We live in a world of real time
information, and as such, it is also essential to
curate and centralize access to those sources
of content too.
These may include:
1. Company news and information
published via your web-CMS or blog
2. Intranet and cloud-based information
such as corporate presentations
3. Event information
4. Training materials
5. Social posts that provide up-to-the-
minute news and information
Curating all of this information from the same
convenient location can offer a manageable
way to extend relevance for your audiences.
This will not only help promote research and
discovery, but it will also allow teams to better
manage content as its library grows.
Understanding the benefits of a centralized
curation strategy and its impact on distribution
and discovery will become even more evident
after you perform a content audit.
WhyCurationCounts
* Source: Corporate Visions, Inc.
5. When putting a curation system in place,
stepping back and performing an audit
will help you with content organization.
This section is provided to offer some tools
to start your audit process. It is intended to
ensure that all of the content you produce is
under your control, and meets a basic criteria
to be useful to your organization and your
audience.
It is split up into four key areas of information
that need to be understood for each piece
of content, as part of any content marketing
audit.
1. Core Content Information
a. Where is your content stored?
b. What is its title?
c. What is the intended call to action?
d. What channels used for distribution?
e. Who is the buyer role(s)?
f. What is the expiration of the content?
2. Content Organization and Process
a. Is this content mapped against a
buyer journey?
b. How is this content aligned to buyer
personas you use?
c. Who owns this content, from an
editorial point of view?
d. Does this content map to an existing
library of keywords and tags?
3. Messaging
a. Has the content piece expressed a
unique vision for a target persona?
b. Is the “message” clearly articulated?
c. Does the message align to other
content pieces?
d. Is one target-role or audience clearly
being addressed?
e. Can the content piece be used in
more than one buyer journey stage?
f. Is there a “call to action for the
reader?
4. Effectiveness
a. Is the content piece being used by
your audience(s)?
b. Is the content piece being
recommended/distributed by Sales?
c. Is the content piece improving
revenue velocity or conversion rates?
d. Do you know how the content piece
performs by content channel?
By refining your content based on testing
against an organized process of business and
marketing needs, you will improve the quality
and relevance of content so it has a better
impact on your business. It will also enable
you hone your content marketing process
to ensure that every new piece of content
matches this criteria and can be measured
more effectively.
TheAuditYouWant
6. Managing and organizing information
about each piece of content will improve
its discoverability and effectiveness.
While 49 percent of B2B marketers have a
documented content marketing strategy†,
almost all marketers have an issue with the
organizationandmanagementofthatcontent.
With so much content available, the best way
to drive use, search, and discovery for each
piece of content is to create meta-data for it.
This means that for each piece of content you
produce, there should be a supporting piece
of content that describes it and how it should
be used. While it may be dry to implement,
this is critical for its success during its lifespan.
Meta-data may include:
Descriptive Name
Short Name
Description
Author
Tags
Categories
Asset Type (PDF, PPT, GIF, ...)
Publish Date
Retire Date
Asset Thumbnail
Link to Asset (short link to asset)
In addition, all content should have the
following fields applied for internal use:
Intended Audience
Intended Buyer Stage
Intended Next Step / Call To Action
A sophisticated management system that
allows for the creation of structured meta-
data for each content asset should act as
a structured way to discover, query, and
promote content.
This may be as simple as offering content
based on a category of interest or vertical
market, or as complex as allowing the meta-
data to be used with predictive analytics to
promote other content.
At a minimum, a standard document should
be created that can be stored alongside each
asset which contains defined fields outlining
how to use that piece of content. Even if this is
only used for internal organization and access,
it will provide a better process for teams to
ensure the correct asset is being used at the
correct time.
GettingMeta
†Source: CMI - http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/10/2014-b2b-content-marketing-research
7. With your content organized and
structured with descriptive meta-data,
you need to push it out to sales channels
and promote its use more effectively.
If you want to drive the use of content by your
organization, you have to take one thing away
from this eBook: you have to take the promotion
of your material out of the inbox.
Most companies either rely on an email to
“all:sales” to drive people to assets, or to
updates to internal sites. They hope that
individuals will be proactive enough to read
and action that email and to manually check
the many sources of information available to
them.
This is ineffective. You need a new channel to
engage with your team to facilitate the use of
content to bring marketing and sales closer
together.
For many companies that means turning to
mobile devices. It’s an ideal environment for
the publishing of information to a ‘mobile’ and
geographically dispersed team.
The very nature of a mobile interface forces
a simpler way to convey curated content to
enable users to take action immediately.
Rather than seeing an email then forgetting to
come back to it later (via a VPN connection),
individuals can be altered (by email or a push
notification) and be able to review and use
material instantly.
There are some things that a mobile sales app
must provide to be successful:
A Branded Experience
Secure Access
Push Notification Support
Multi-format Support
Presentation Mode
Offline Availability
Integrated into existing systems, like CRM
But the mobile experience should not stop
there. Once in a face-to-face meeting, a sales
person should be able to follow up with buyers
in real time too.
That means that an application should allow
many pieces of content to be bundled and
shared from device – straight to the buyer.
Upon receipt, they should be able to open the
link, view it however they access it.
This means, whatever drives your app needs
to offer:
Tracking
Packaging
Sharing
Multi-Channel Access
This may all seem like a brave new world, but
tools are currently on the market place that will
enable you to offer this kind of functionality.
Better(Mobile)Distribution
8. Summary
Blatant pitch...
Genwi has been in the thick of mobile
content distribution for years. For help with
a strategy to put your information in the
hands of those who need it, talk to us:
http://genwi.com
+1-650-290-7176
info@genwi.com
@genwi
So what are you waiting for?
How you address curation and distribution
toyoursaleschannelsisanimportantstepin
a closed loop sales and marketing strategy.
Following these key elements will ensure a
more effective process for your marketing
team and will result in better selling,
engaged buyers, and more revenue for your
business.
