Content Strategy Consistently Yields 20-25% Open Rate on Biweekly Newsletter

Australian-based Pilbara Group provides academic resource management tools to higher education institutions worldwide that support costing and budgeting processes vital to financial sustainability and survival. They have been a TME client since 2016.

First, define gaps between internal BI and target need-to-knows

In the beginning of 2017, Dr. William Massy, Pilbara’s longtime advisor and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, interviewed more than 50 individuals to better understand what academics and administrators need to support their involvement in the financial management of their institutions.

Second, build content your audience actually wants/needs

As a result, Dr. Massy and Pilbara’s Michelle Brooke were able to distill eleven shared data governance requirements. This was critical content that Pilbara wished to disseminate to its community of prospects and customers to demonstrate how its solution meets all of the requirements uncovered by Dr. Massy.

Third, determine best distribution strategy and schedule

At this juncture, TME recognized that this content could very easily be translated into an 11-part series that would enable them to feed the bi-weekly newsletter and blog posts as well as LinkedIn. The series would then culminate in the complete report which would be gated content on the website.

Fourth, deliver content in channel-appropriate formats

The report was quite extensive so an abridged version was also created as a quick teaser to be used at industry events. The one-pager pointed back to newsletter subscribership and the Pilbara blog as well as a new interactive online demo. The full report was also produced, but only for highly qualified prospects.

Finally, keep readers hooked with consistently strong content

Since the series launched almost one year ago, Pilbara has consistently seen a 20-25% open rate on its biweekly newsletter. President & CEO of Pilbara, Lea Patterson, reported a spike in direct inquiries and demo requests tied to readership as well.

This success story shows how powerful content can be to an overall marketing program when the RIGHT content is generated and then extended properly and thoughtfully to target audiences through all relevant channels.

In summary:

When a client works with TME to define its prospects/customers need, the content can be created and disseminated in the right format and right frequency allowing the upfront investment of time to be maximized.

This “build once” strategy proves time and again to be one of the most effective ways to feed marketing channels over an extended period of time while successfully maintaining community interest and motivating movement within a sales pipeline.

Learn more about TME’s content creation and digital marketing expertise or speak to us now for more information.

News for Credibility, Not Just Press Releases

Distributing your press releases over a Newswire does support organic SEO but not considered silver bullets for small businesses. Many can’t justify the expense and often stop or do it when they think they have something hot, and expect a lot out of it.

However, prospects—many with short attention spans scan “recent” headlines—judge us based on our Newsroom (or our Blog acting as a newsroom), which shows credibility, advancement, and innovation—especially for product companies selling software, devices, hardware, consumer goods, etc.

What you have buried, disbursed, or not posted to your website may be considered News by today’s standards. We suggest that you can centralize what you have. Here are some examples:

  • Blog posts that reveal subject matter expertise
  • Webinars and podcasts
  • Explainer videos and infographics
  • Product or software releases and roadmaps
  • Conference speaking and participation
  • Expert reactions to trending industry news
  • Strategic partnerships
  • Published trend reports, guides, e-books, survey results
  • Customer successes
  • Corporate achievements and milestones
  • Key executives joining or changing roles
  • Achievements by your technical staff
  • Philanthropy and work in your community
  • Activity in industry organizations

Side note: Make your headlines short and compelling for today’s attention spans and optimize your pages for organic search. Or speak to TME about elevating your digital marketing plans.

2018 Guide: Content Marketing for Tech Buyers

Content Marketing for Tech Buyers: Nuances Between Attracting Product & Services Leads

By Experience-Driven Strategists, Creators and Executors

PDF Version

Many companies have high expectations for their marketing. They may also want to run before they walk, without taking the necessary steps that generate consistent leads. But the most effective, lucrative marketing can’t be turned on and off. Random acts of marketing don’t fill your pipeline.

In fact, it takes six to eight touchpoints just to qualify a lead, according to Salesforce. Dr. Jeffrey Lant believes you must contact your buyers at least seven times in an 18-month period before they remember you.

Marketing that consistently harnesses multiple touchpoint opportunities keeps your sales pipeline full. It leverages content to attract your specific tech buyer throughout their journey. And that buyer journey starts well before you discover a sales lead.

There’s a substantial period when your prospects are doing their homework on topics relevant to your service or product. They’re learning and forming opinions before you can identify who they are. This is the stage in the buying process when prospects are most open to your knowledge and guidance. But many companies fail to take advantage of this opportunity.

The 5 Effects of Content Marketing

Big brands fortunate enough to lean on their name and stable of sales reps often have an advantage on smaller firms. Yet, even the biggest industry players are smart enough to share content along their prospects’ buyer journeys. By accommodating modern buyer behaviors, content marketing supports your sales efforts by:

  1. Demonstrating industry thought leadership
  2. Establishing trust and credibility with your target audience
  3. Raising brand awareness and reinforcing your values
  4. Building valuable target audience data and pipelines
  5. Validating your offering, eliminating the “hard sell”

How your unique business leverages marketing content is dependent upon your industry, audience, and offering. But there are distinct marketing differences between service and product companies. While the following tactics may be best practices for one offering versus the other, your business could benefit from any of the outlined strategies.

Marketing Your Technology Service

As a services firm, you typically endure long sales cycles, building relationships over time. Your differentiators may be your insights, customer successes, approach, and/or project methodologies. But prospects don’t consider these values until the sales process begins.

Your prospects rarely use search as their main source to find service companies. They search for content that guides their strategies or compares different solutions. Original content that answers these questions positions your brand as subject-matter experts. When the time comes to assess service providers, your company should be a natural consideration.

Using content to raise awareness

  • Blogs, guides, whitepapers, and infographics are common forms of educational content. That same information is valuable material for equally-effective speaking engagements – opportunities where your target audience and influencers are readily gathered.
  • Strategic partnerships can fast-track your lead generation. If you’re a product integrator or solution provider, you can attract prospects at your partners’ user conferences, webinars, and podcasts. Product companies benefit from a demonstration of their solution’s value, and you get exposure to a new, relevant audience.
  • Third-party publications and online resources are paid partners that can also expose your content to new prospects.

Marketing Your Technology Products

Search engine marketing has played a big role for product companies. Your audience is searching for as much information about products that can solve their problems. This is especially true of solutions that automate business processes. Whether you’re selling cloud applications or devices, you need to boost your visibility amidst the murky sea of competitors that may offer many of the same product features.

Using content to differentiate your product

  • Online demonstrations can be a powerful way to quickly compare your competitive features to similar products. The “under-the-hood” approach allows your prospects to imagine how your product would address their needs. Take it a step further by offering short trial periods, which give your prospect a better feel for your user experience.
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns that promote feature comparison guides or other valued content are equally effective. Offering an unbiased look at how your industry collectively solves common problems will position you as a valuable resource. And ultimately, that trust may be the difference that wins your business.
  • Syndicating your content on third-party trade publications or sending materials to contacts of other relevant databases helps you tell your product story to an unfamiliar audience. Rather than buying or renting cold lists, you’ll benefit from the brand trust a publication or online community has already established.

Using Content to Continue Nurturing Leads

Even after your marketing content converts leads and fills your sales funnel, content continues to play an important role. Remember, prospects become customers after seven or more touches. And there’s valuable content to provide at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Providing case studies, explainer videos, or other relevant content helps you strengthen your prospect relationships and build a brand of trust and leadership.

Efficient marketing and sales teams create automated lead nurturing campaigns, strategically following up on leads who may not be ready to buy today. They evaluate trend and activity reports to gain intelligence on each lead and optimize their future follow-up.

Content is the heart of effective marketing. The question is: are you doing what it takes to achieve consistent success?

Talk to us and explore your marketing opportunities.

Marketing Calls-to-Action Along the B2B Buyer Journey

Your offerings were developed because your solution meets a specific need in a new, innovative way and/or in a way superior to similar offerings in the market. Human behavior tells us that today’s B2B buyer—especially today’s B2B tech buyer—wants to go as far as they can in evaluating your solution virtually before having to engage and/or respond to a sales consultant by email or phone. It’s your job as the solution provider to serve up content in a way that clearly demonstrates value AND lends itself to this virtual vetting process. And from your perspective, you have invested in a sales team and need that team to be extremely efficient with their time, avoiding chasing tire kickers in order to focus on serious buyers.

What will persuade prospects to move from a competitor’s offering or to justify the adoption of a new concept to start a relevant sales conversation?

Product companies may consider providing an educational asset (solution guide, white paper, third party assessment/analyst report, pre-recorded webinar, etc.) to download as gated resources—which establishes brand recognition and initiates the sales process. These assets demonstrate thought-leadership and feed other marketing channels. After 2-3 days, have automatically deploy an email from your CRM or marketing automaton tool that links to a video landing page—giving a peek into the product. Upon viewing the video, you can direct your prospects to schedule a demo with one of your sales consultants or go directly into a trial program, if available. However, we have seen greater success allowing sales consultants to control the trial and pricing requests upon the live demo.

Service companies may also consider providing an educational asset to get things started but should first make sure there is a unique way to package or productize their solutions (or methodology) so that prospects can see clear, tangible deliverables and outputs upfront—not just a list or services. You can then expand upon deliverables via a “brief” turnkey GoToMeeting session with interested prospects. Be sure to promote this offer on your website as well. It’s mutually beneficial and also you gauge your prospects’ level of interest and intent before committing your sales resources to do any heavy lifting.

Both product and service companies should also consider the of development customer case studies to validate your claims along the buyer journey.

All of this said, we recommend that your marketing programs ultimately focus on only one or two strong calls-to-action rather than many. Using too many calls-to-action ultimately dilutes the strength of each and can throw off your click rate statistics. Make it clear to the recipient what you think their next action should be by determining what you feel would be most valuable to their virtual evaluation.

Key takeaway: The easier you make it for your prospects to visualize their potential with your offerings, the shorter your sales cycle will be.