Creating B2B content that gets shared...a tech company example
It’s fairly easy.
Creating the best B2B content marketing for technology and other companies is relatively simple, even if you skirmish with ideas, grammar or writing. Here’s how to make it easy and enjoyable.
Best B2B content marketing – 1 step at a time.
So you want to create the best B2B content marketing ever?
The best content focuses on a single, current industry hot button. Think user challenges, cost, support, adoption and integrations, for starters.
Keep your eye on the ball. The knowledge you’re distributing will help someone do their job better.
The most effective B2B content
Case Study55%55%
Best Practices53%53%
How-To Guides47%47%
Market Trends43%43%
Product Features24%24%
Competitive Comparisons17%17%
Next steps
To create the very best B2B content marketing, the next step is to go through this short exercise, jotting down a few bullet points.
1. Background: usually a recent trend in your industry, vertical or market space around this topic.
2. Current challenge: a B2B challenge is almost always described in terms of time and money wasted.
3. Your experience: ‘we’ve seen this happen with some of our customers’.
4. Your recommendation: ‘based on this, I recommend…’ It’s fine to recommend something your solution fixes. Just don’t mention your company, product or service.
5. Conclusion: the best B2B content marketing conclusions begin with next steps.
Example: an article for a tech company
You are with a company that sells file management software to certain verticals. Here’s how you would create a piece for an enterprise data storage audience focused on the life sciences vertical.
1. Background – Life sciences is creating petabytes of unstructured data through genome and related projects that have complex workflows with lots of technical and/or rich content. This leads to soaring storage and IT costs for those companies.
2. Widespread Challenge – Data storage costs are skyrocketing and overburdened IT staffs need a way to push file management down to the business user, in this case the research scientist. Allowing the researcher to determine what, when and where to archive data for later retrieval will migrate data to lower cost storage and save huge amounts of time and expense for IT teams.
3. Your Experience – Recently we’ve seen next-generation enterprise software solutions that solve this problem. With ROI focused architectures, these solutions are ideal for cloud computing and object storage.
4. Your Recommendation – Look for software companies that offer cloud file management across multiple storage locations. Fashion a bullet list that, of course, highlights your company’s competitive advantages without ever mentioning the name of your company or product.
5. Conclusion – There’s no longer a mandate for IT departments to keep adding costly near term storage. Nor is it necessary for IT teams to bear the labor brunt of mediating between business users of data and storage archives.
With those simple bullet points you have an outline for an article. And you’re on the way to creating top B2B content marketing.
Once you’re happy with your bullet points it’s time to write the article or delegate to someone else. If you delegate make sure it’s someone who knows your company, products and markets.
For written posts aim for a minimum of 1,000 words because search engines won’t take you seriously otherwise. Search engines like to see more than the minimum.
Create a headline
Next, look at what you’ve created and think of a seven word headline that grabs someone’s attention and gets you found by search engines. Potential headlines for this article could be:
Overwhelmed By Unstructured Data? Here’s Good Medicine.
Need Relief For Your IT People?
The Unstructured Data Tsunami. Here’s How To Manage.
Finally, notice how easily this article can be converted for an audience in a different vertical.
Ninety percent of this content can also apply to industries with rich content or technical workflows including Media & Entertainment, Oil & Gas, Software Development and others.
So with relatively little effort you now have interesting, relevant content that can be blogged, tweeted and posted multiple times across multiple verticals for several weeks.
About Mike Harris
Mike is the founder of Harris CMO Partners, a Nashville based firm offering on demand CMO services for SaaS and tech companies.
He enjoys writing about what's working in B2B sales and marketing.
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If you are on the phone, a webinar, or in person, and you have a few minutes with the executive, what do you say to keep on track and be professional?
Here is an invaluable framework. Adapt it to your situation, and boost your confidence and credibility.
Imagine that you have a satisfied client company for one of your offerings. You feel now is the best time to discuss your next and higher investment offering.
Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE
The team, your main contact, is ready to view a product demonstration set for the next day. All your demos are delivered in a webinar.
At 2 P.M. you get a call from your main contact who says ?Great news! Tomorrow our boss, who is the real decision-maker, is going to be in our office. Rather than just showing our team what you have to offer, the boss said he would like to sit in on the first five minutes. I know you will do well.?
Don?t panic. This is a great opportunity, and once you make a positive impact, the sales cycle is going to be cut short. You will not have to hear, ?We love this, but now we have to convince our boss.?
This is, however, now your number one priority to prepare. You may be seasoned, but take this seriously. Your sales manager is always telling you, ?Sell to the C Suite.? This is your chance. Remember these five simple suggestions for sales success.
5 Crucial Steps – [scroll down to see Fripp’s video]
Build rapport before you speak. It is easier to connect if you can make eye contact with the client, so turn on your webcam to welcome everyone and then again when you answer questions. Although many professionals say they are not comfortable doing this, it has many benefits. Who can resist your friendly smile? You will look more confident, and it is tougher to say no when they are looking at you.
Be prepared, and get to the point. Remember, with an executive you need to be clear, concise, credible, and able to articulate the bottom line of your message. The higher up the corporate ladder you go, the more quickly you need to get to the point and demonstrate value. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the less time you have in which to present your case, the longer you will need to prepare. You may have friendly chatter with the team before you get to business, but in this case every second counts. Be polite, respectful, and get to the point fast.
Remember you are not alone. Speak on behalf of your leadership. This way you can feel you are making a connection with the position, even when you are not holding that position yourself. You will discover that this technique adds to your confidence.
Remind the executive they have already made a wise decision by doing business with your company.
Remind them that they have already researched your company and that they were comfortable enough to make you a vendor of choice. This is just a logical next step.
Make heroes of the team you are working with. These are your internal champions, and although they may not make the ultimate decision, they certainly have influence and can sabotage your sale. Your job is to work closely with the team or champion who will give you information. Do your research so that you are on target with your questions about their company and the approach the executive will most likely respond to.
When you have to deliver an executive overview, be clear and concise and sound credible. When you adapt this framework to your situation, you will get results.
Suggested Talking Points -?[scroll down to see Fripp’s video]
?Good morning, Mr. Smith. On behalf of our leadership and my team, thank you for your business. As you know, we are committed to delivering the best service for our valued clients like you.
“On a personal note, working with John and Mary is a delight. They are both helpful and incredibly efficient.”
“The purpose of this call is to deliver a high-level overview of our product that you have invested in, review your results compared to your expectations, and then introduce you to three other ways in which we can be of service.”
“Once we have proven the power of (our product), most of our clients find it logical to add ________ and ______ to their package.”
“John suggested you are most interest in seeing . . .”
“Mary mentioned you have ambitious goals for next year to . . .That is an area in which we could be very advantageous to you.”
“My understanding is that we have four more minutes. Is that correct??Let me roll up my sleeves, and you just sit back, watch the demo, and be amazed.”
“Please feel free to interject at any time.”
“Do you like what you saw?”
“Then, our next logical step is to continue the conversation with John and Mary and prepare a draft proposal for your review.”
“Does that make sense to you?”
“Moving forward, is there any other area you would like for us to pursue?”
“Again, thank you for your business and the opportunity to demonstrate how we can continue to streamline your company.?
In Conclusion
Can you see the five suggestions in this simple outline? Again, I recommend you turn on the webcam when you open and close the conversation. This makes it easier to make an emotional connection.
Because you are on a webinar, you can have your opening script and outline printed. Once you internalize your new, tightened script, it will become second nature.
Make sure you smile. Your client will hear it in your voice.
Video: Fripp’s 5-Point Framework for C-Suite Sales
About The Author
Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE is an award-winning speaker, author, sales presentation skills trainer and in-demand speech coach. Her speech-coaching clients include corporate leaders, celebrity speakers, well-known sports and media personalities, ministers, and sales teams. Meetings and Conventions magazine named her “One of the 10 most electrifying speakers in North America.” She delivers high-energy, high-content, and dramatically memorable presentations.
For the purposes of this article, we will focus on Sitemap Protocol 0.9 introduced by SiteMaps.org which is a standard, validated and used by Google and most other search engines.
A Sitemap allows you to create a file hosted among the other files in your account that informs the search engines of all pages your website contains. In other words, it provides the search engine with detailed information about the content of your website. Although Sitemaps are mainly used to improve the indexing process of your website by search engines, they can be used to provide access to certain pages as well. For example, pages that are not accessible via your menus can be indexed by the search engine if you want.
The Sitemap does not affect the normal way crawler bots index your page – it just extends the visibility and accessibility of your content. Note, that having a Sitemap on your website does not guarantee that certain pages will be indexed and included by the search engines. Neither it affects your page rank.
Harris CMO Partners Sitemap
The Harris CMO Partners sitemap acts like a blueprint, listing all my pages, blogposts, images, and videos. Not only does this sitemap help organize the website, but it also benefits our search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
That is because web crawlers use sitemaps to discover all pages on the site, speeding up the indexing process and consequently boosting the site’s visibility in search results.
If you’re not sure where to start, we will guide you through the entire process of making a sitemap and submitting it to major search engines.
You may view the Harris CMO Partners sitemap any time. Feel free to use it as a template. Since I am a WordPress CMS user, I used the XML Sitemap plugin to create the Harris CMO Partners sitemap.
every second counts. Be polite, respectful, and get to the point fast.