Marketers Focusing On Data And Engagement Opportunities Of Content

Published: September 17, 2014

While the role of content continues to mature, many marketers are just beginning to discover its true value — primarily in the data they can obtain through prospects’ interactions with content and its ability to enhance engagement through multiple channels.

At Marketo’s Marketers First virtual event, roughly 20,000 marketing professionals attended sessions throughout the day, highlighting best practices for content marketing, data analytics and social media. A recurring theme was that content needs to build trust and should not be used primarily as a sales tool.

“Your target audience is not going to trust you if you’re clearly selling too hard,” said Maggie Jones, Content Marketing Specialist at Marketo. “Today, people are not interested in being sold to at all. Being sold to and being spammed are interchangeable for a lot of people.”

Innovative content has to be useful, enjoyable and inspire readers, according to Jason Miller, Senior Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn. Incorporating old and new tactics into content delivery increases its impact.

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“If you leverage both inbound and outbound marketing techniques, it will lead to your company having a louder voice and a larger brand presence,” said Miller.“If you know your audience, and understand their wants and needs, then your company will not be wasting its time or money.”

In his session, Miller explained how thought leaders are not aiming to sell, but instead help prospects find value in the content they are sharing. When it comes to areas of focus, Miller highlighted three types of thought leadership that B2B companies can use when creating content:

  • Industry Thought — someone within an organization provides their point of view on news and trends;
  • Product Thought — an individual shares their insights on a particular product or solution, such as how-to tips and best practices; and
  • Organizational — when best practices focus on inner-company processes and strategies, such as company culture, colleague collaboration.

 

To help marketers create a roadmap of content that can help engage leads throughout the entirety of the sales cycle, Jones highlighted a strategy she dubbed The 411 Rule. Simply put, create four pieces of educational and entertaining content for every one piece of soft promotional content (such as promoting a webinar) and one piece of hard promotional content (such as product-related content typically shared toward the end of the buying cycle).

“This strategy allows companies to have conversations with their audience and build awareness, while also keeping in touch with followers,” said Jones. “But, this rule also helps the company not come off pushy or sales-like. Even if one of your top priorities is selling your product or services, it is not recommended to create a large quantity of content focused around your product.”

Content Engagement Produces High-Quality Data

The importance of data was also a major topic throughout the event. This growth in importance comes alongside growth in technology and the number of channels a prospect can take to engage with a particular company.

“It’s amazing how our industry has grown over the years,” said Justin Cutroni, Analytics Evangelist at Google, during his session. “The buyers are also changing, and their buying patterns have grown more and more complex. Marketers have to be able to analyze which channels these buyers are in, and how each one attributes one another.”

Increased buyer engagement through various forms of content are having a positive impact on the amount of information a company can obtain about its prospects. Behavioral data enables marketers to bring their messaging to an individual level.

“While it used to just be transaction data, now we have interaction data,” said Brian Kelly CMO of InsideView, during the closing keynote.“ All of these things are indications of a buying process that your target marketing is exhibiting on the internet. The challenge is that it’s all over the place, and it has to be harvested to enhance your lead generation and nurturing productivity.”

Due to this complexity, data management has often outsourced to third-party companies. But data intelligence has played a big role in B2B marketing success, and it is allowing B2B organizations to bring data analysis in-house.

“Over time, you want to reduce your dependence on external analytics,” said Cutroni. “It’s such a core part of business now, so you need to have people within your organization to analyze your data. A healthy mix of external and internal analytics is always possible too.”

In the end, data intelligence is having a major impact on sales as well, and leads to a happy sales team, according to Kelly. “Leads are going to sales faster, and these leads are more accurate, relevant and timely. The insights gathered offer sales teams better opportunities to make a great introduction.”

 

Click here for an on-demand version of each session from Marketers First.

 

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