Editor’s Note: Welcome to Finny Friday, our monthly blog dedicated to celebrating Killer Content Award winners from throughout the years. Stay tuned for future installments where we dive deeply into what makes killer content.
Effective B2B marketing campaigns are comprised of a variety of factors: engaging content, well-timed messaging and more. However, leveraging an integrated, streamlined technology stack to measure success in real-time and adapt to buyer needs on the fly is increasingly important. This approach is what helped Booker Software win a Finny this past February during our annual Killer Content Awards.
In a recent Killer Content Showcase Series webinar hosted by Demand Gen Report, Jim D’Arcangelo of Booker Software discussed the company’s goals, tactics and best practices for fueling content-driven demand generation initiatives.
Demand Gen Report: What were your goals for developing the content approach?
Jim D’Arcangelo: Our goals come down to our specific audience, market and how we’re pursuing them relative to corporate goals and the goals of our sales team. We start with the company’s key four goals, roll those into what we need to do from a channel perspective, and then roll it into our marketing goals.
Once we have that, we get very analytical and creative in terms of how we’re going to hit those goals. We forecast not only on a monthly basis, but also by the day, for every piece of content and campaign that we do. We also measure for ROI not just for tech stack components, but we also take a look at individual pieces by channel spend and so on.
We run things very tight; and like I said, we drill it down so everyone on the marketing team has a number they are accountable for each month. It all rolls up to sales and corporate goals.
DGR: What made you select your content formats and the overall execution approach?
D’Arcangelo: We did quite a bit of research before entering into the tech services space. We found out that the audience engaged much more with video content versus reading any sort of whitepaper. This was especially true in the SMB space; any sort of lengthy content was generally less engaging.
Along with video being an appealing [content format], our audience is really engaged with end-customers – in this case dogs – much more so than many categories. We found that if we wrapped that background information along with [the buyer’s preferences], we were able to combine it all into a video campaign that drove significant results. By the end of the month, we saw a 25% increase in the number of inbound leads generated.
DGR: How did you establish your content promotion and amplification method and what channels were included?
D’Arcangelo: We tested a variety of social media [channels] when promoting. It became extremely important relative to targeting SMB service companies. We found Facebook to be extremely powerful for us. The other channels, such as YouTube, were important, but Facebook really carried the day. We used Sprout Social to drive our measures and direction via the social channels.
We’ve done more market research on our space and the drivers for how buyers engage content, companies and brands — we’ve also assessed the data and analytics from our blog. In doing so, we’ve found that there are different ways to reach audiences and engage them far beyond the buyer journey. This month we are upping the ante on our blog content, and when we mix and merge [content selections], we see a huge uptick in engagement. On a week-over-week basis since launching our blog, sheBOOM, we’ve seen a 50-60% increase in unique visitors.
DGR: What are some key lessons learned from this process that you’d like other marketers to take with them for future campaigns?
D’Arcangelo: The biggest lesson-learned would be that the customer buyer journey never ends — it keeps evolving, becoming more detailed and complex. Customer advocacy, for example, was small at the beginning but has since grown into one of our bigger lead drivers. Content consumption, and the way buyers can be reached, will also evolve. Once you invest in the foundation of your tech stack and your approach to content-driven demand generation, you can increasingly jack up the efficiency just by understanding data and analytics.
Last lesson I’d share is for the tech stack itself. Each month, it’s important to assess our tech stack. Use conferences as a means to learn about key vendors at once, and keep your knowledge of the technology up-to-date.
Does your content deserve a Finny? Fill out the form and submit your nomination for the 2017 Killer Content Awards!