Numbers don’t lie: Measure how your current content is performing
1. Figure out how your content ranks in Google and whether it brings you traffic and conversions
2. Find content that can be easily improved/edited to begin bringing value

The needs and wants of your business: Define the right metrics to track your progress

Don’t neglect the importance of SEO
1. Find related keywords
2. Check the competition level in the SERPs

Content promotion that gives short-term results
A. Promote your posts on social media channels
B. Collect leads
C. Use remarketing
D. Use email marketing automation to turn leads into paying clients

A content upgrade is unique to a piece of content. It’s usually tied to a blog post. But there are other types of content you can uplevel with a free resource. Webinars, podcasts, and videos are examples. The point is to enhance the value of your content with this additional resource.

As you can imagine, there are several ways to achieve that.

You can create a resource that helps readers implement what you just discussed. An action sheet, workbook, or toolkit are excellent examples. You can give away something that saves them time, like templates or cheat sheets. The ultimate strategy is to create something that will help them delve deeper into the topic. This is where you give additional strategies, tutorials, case studies, etc.

All content strategies are not equal. B2B enterprise companies have to get these three content types down to fully engage potential buyers.

"Now is the perfect time for content marketers to get ahead of the curve. Here’s how:

• Evaluate repetitive, manual marketing tasks that could be intelligently automated. AI tech like Curata and Scoop.it are great for promoting, measuring, and analyzing that content’s performance.
• Assess opportunities to get more out of your data. There are plenty of ways to discover insights, predict outcomes, devise strategies, personalize content, and tell stories at scale with the right type and amount of data. However, the right type and amount of data are highly specific to your organization and your needs. 
  Consider the AI capabilities of your existing marketing technology.
• Platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot are actively integrating AI into their existing products. Existing platforms give content marketers a great place to start familiarizing themselves with AI capabilities. From there, explore the potential of emerging AI solutions."

Prospective buyers of B2B products find content to be most useful when it speaks to their needs and pain points, provides specifications, and educates them. See more from this marketing research.

Get insight into how content influences the purchasing process – from the buyer’s perspective – in research from SmartBrief and Content Marketing Institute

The term “content” is problematic. It commodifies the core of what we do, but for want of a better catch-all phrase for the articles, books, podcasts, talks and presentations we create, we all continue to use it. Sidenote: terminology matters. Combine “content” with “marketing” and you further undermine what you’re creating. The phrase suggests the entire point of the exercise, or at the very least the primary one, is marketing. But if you want to attract people to your product, this is the wrong approach to take. 

It dawned on us: the phrase “content marketing” actually puts content first. It’s just the term is so widely used that we’ve all become deaf and blind to that primacy. So now the first principle of our team is “content, then marketing”. Put simply we believe if we’re not creating something people will want to read/watch/listen to, then we are wasting our resources.

If we were driven by marketing considerations rather than editorial ones, we probably would never do things like publish a 120-page hardcover book and then sell it at a loss. But by focusing on the quality of that publication, rather than marketing hacks to get readers to download something of poorer quality, we’re attracting more than enough potential customers to make the whole exercise worthwhile.

Content intelligence may draw on artificial intelligence and big data, but it is neither of those two things. It’s the systems and software that transforms data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics. Content intelligence means having the full context of an individual piece of content. Not only that—but the whole corpus of content, to make better decisions about anything pertaining to the content in question.

Forrester analyst Ryan Skinner defines content intelligence as “technology that helps content understand itself—what it’s about, how it speaks, how effective it is at accomplishing certain goals, what emotions it calls to mind, etc.”

So what does having the full context of a piece of content mean? It’s understanding what the content is, what it’s related to, how it’s performed in the past, and how related content has performed in the past. This includes understanding how competitor content may have performed as part of the broader context it sits in. As well as other content it’s competing with in search engine optimization and search engine results pages.

Content intelligence means understanding everything there is to know about a piece of content. And to the extent that the past can help predict the future, using that comprehensive understanding to guide decision making for that piece of content. It doesn’t necessarily have to include the automation and execution of those decisions.

Eighty-eight percent of the B2B enterprise marketers we surveyed use content marketing, and nearly all agree that it’s an important component of their marketing program. This 45-page report, sponsored by KnowledgeVision, shows where enterprise marketers are in terms of overall content marketing success—and how the top performers do things to set themselves apart from their peers.

Download the report to learn:

• How enterprise marketers organize their content marketing teams
• Where they’re at in terms of content marketing maturity
• The types of content marketing tactics they use—and which ones they view as most critical to their content marketing success in 2017
• How many are focused on building their audiences, crafting content for their audience versus their brand, agree that their leadership gives them ample time to produce content marketing results, and more.

I’d like to point out a handful of specific benefits:

• It’s one of the best ways to nurture leads. According to Marketing Sherpa, “73% of all B2B leads are not sales ready.”
• You can position your brand as an authority. “45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it.”
• It enables you to tell your brand’s story and convey your philosophy and values.
• It reduces skepticism. “In 1997, consumers indicated that they had a high level of confidence in 52% of brands. By 2008 that percentage dropped to 22%.” This is a great way to slash through any doubts your prospects may have.
• It’s an excellent way to educate consumers on your product’s features and the way it differs from the products of competitors.
• You can address any objections that may arise.

Which types of content most influence buying decisions?:

• White papers – 82%
• Webinars – 78%
• Case studies – 73%
• E-books – 67%
• Blog posts – 66%
• Infographics – 66%
• Third-party/analyst reports – 62%
• Video/motion graphics – 47%
• Interactive presentations – 36%

The concept is a simple one: no content plan is complete unless it's based around delivering content consistently. To do this requires a focus on strategy, not just on a few blog posts and the odd bigger campaign.

That consistent delivery — and the audience retention it creates — comes from the smaller content pieces, the glue that binds it together; the strategy in its entirety.

The discussion around the purchase funnel often turns out to be incredibly important: it ensures you look not just for ideas that help with awareness, but also further down the funnel. It's also possible to tie content types in to this to ensure variation between the types of content you produce. To do this we use the Content Matrix I created specifically for this purpose; you can see it above:

Learn what distinguishes the top performers in Content Marketing Institute’s Technology Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report.

"With nearly 80% of content marketers saying that increasing their company's online visibility is their primary content marketing goal, a study suggests that for optimal SEO and content results, B2B marketers might want to re-think the overuse of infographics and the actual quality of their content over quantity.

The study suggests that online visibility as it relates to search engine optimization (SEO), implies that to earn a spot on the first page of Google means content needs to be ten times better than anything found in search today.

A separate study however, conducted by Moz and Buzzsumo presented evidence to suggest that content marketers' reliance on infographics should be reevaluated. The justification is that content that earns social shares typically is formatted for entertainment – list posts, videos, quizzes – while content that gets links and earned media is more informative (i.e., research-backed articles and opinion-forming journalism)."

No matter how great you are at digital marketing, event marketing is still a great way to explain products, humanize your brand, and connect with customers.

When you accept the role of mentor with your content, your business accomplishes its goals while helping the prospect do the same.

Chart of the day: Case studies, best practice advice and how to guides are the most effective types of content. A recent survey of over 600 B2B marketing p. Marketing topic(s):B2B Content marketing. Advice by Robert Allen.

Awareness Phase

• Social media posts
• Guest articles
• Infographics
• Blog posts
• Landing pages
• Free eBooks

 

Consideration Phase

• Comprehensive white papers
• Exclusive Webinars
• In-depth articles
• Brochures
• Input from brand advocates

 

Purchase Phase

• Free trials
• Case studies
• Free consultations
• 1-2-1 videos
• Demos

Top of the Funnel
At this early evaluation stage, marketers typically use long form blog content to grab referral and organic traffic and introduce a brand to the audience. Other types of content at this stage include:

• eBooks and white papers
• Reports
• Infographics

Middle of the Funnel
At this stage, it’s not uncommon to use email marketing, segmented by audience and intent, to build a relationship with the audience. Other types of content for the evaluation stage include:

• Comparison white papers
• Expert guides
• Live interactions including webinars

Bottom of the Funnel
At this phase, you want to leverage content that persuades your audience to make a purchase. This can include:

• Trial downloads
• Demos
• Infographics
• Product literature or buyer guides
• Further case studies