Ah, the familiar scent of fielding content requests—while trying to make an impact on the metrics that matter (velocity, win rate, average deal size, etc.).
The content conundrum is real:
- How do we differentiate our messaging?
- How do we change up content format for a better buyer experience?
- How do we use content throughout the buyer’s journey to enable the revenue team and create engaged buyers?
On the latest episode of The Marchitect, Rowan Noronha, Founder of the Product Marketing Community, and Adam McQueen Content Marketing Manager at Klue, chatted with three content pros:
Eddie Shleyner, Founder of VeryGoodCopy, Erin Balsa, Chief Picky Editor at Erin Balsa Content Marketing, and Camille Trent, Head Content Droid at Dooly.
Each shared their top tips for creating compelling B2B content in 2022.
Listen to the full episode here, or skim the highlights below.
1. Brainstorm Within a Format and Elements
We stare at a blank page, desperate for inspiration to strike us like a bolt of lightning. We look to see what others are creating, or do a group brainstorming session. But too many ideas and too many options can result in creative paralysis.
The solution? Guardrails. Guardrails free creativity.
Eddie Shleyner said:
“Ideation becomes much easier when you have a format. You know, putting yourself into a box or putting walls around your thinking. And this way you don't have 1,000,000 directions you can go in—you only have a few … The other piece to that is training yourself to think in elements, which usually make up the format you're working in. For example, at VeryGoodCopy I publish a specific format called micro articles, and the format consists of two elements: the story and the lesson.”
2. Understand Where To Spend Your Time
Lots of times, marketers optimize for volume over value. But you might not need to create 100 net new blogs; you could get more impact from refreshing your 20 top-performing blogs and redistributing them to the right audience.
When it comes to roadmap planning and brainstorming impactful content ideas—while also fielding incoming requests—content marketers need a process.
More specifically, they need a content prioritization process.
Use a simple 2x2 Eisenhower Box to evaluate each content idea or request. Across the top, you’ll have “low impact” and “high impact.” Running vertically, you’ll have “low effort” and “high effort.”
As Erin Balsa said:
“When I’m thinking about “big content” (research reports, physical books, documentaries) within a prioritization model, the effort for big content is high, but the pay off is also very high … The reason I love big content is that it’s different so people tend to have a better reaction to it, tend to share it more—and not just any people, but partners. Your partners are typically hungry for content to share, but they may be less enthusiastic to share just another blog post or just another one-sheet. … Think about what you can do to get people really excited to consume and share your content.”
3. Find the Gaps, Create Better Content
Often as writers and marketers, we search for that single piece of content that can open the floodgates for sales. A solitary Holy Grail that’ll close deals faster than Usain Bolt can win a race.
But what if we told you that the Holy Grail piece of content you’re looking for is probably hiding in plain sight?
Good content marketers look for the gaps in their content as sales enablement opportunities. Finding content gaps can really help sales move people through the funnel, especially in B2B.
Camille Trent said:
“A lot of content marketing goes back to understanding the gaps in the market and how your product solves them—evangelizing not your product so much as the problem. Most of the time this is where content marketing falls flat, by trying to skip way ahead to solving for the product and not getting people through the funnel … not bridging that gap. Understand your product, understand why it exists and what the problems are that you're solving. Then look at it from a content perspective of What are the gaps in the content landscape?”
Better Content Leads to Better Buyer Experiences
If you take only one thing away from this article, let it be this: the quality of your content directly impacts your buyer experience. Engaged buyers do something other buyers don’t do: they buy. And at the end of the day, marketing exists to make selling easier.
Selling in a post-pandemic environment is harder than ever … and the more high-quality, relevant content you can serve up along the buyer's journey, the better!