There’s a yawning gap between the effectiveness of original research in content marketing and its use. Here’s why this needs to change.

Research bursts onto the scene.

When it comes to influencing the B2B buying process, there’s a new kid on the block who’s challenging word of mouth for supremacy — original research.

The latest findings on the role of content in B2B purchasing decisions show that 74 per cent of buyers consider original research to be influential. In fact, word of mouth (80 per cent) and original research (74 per cent) far outstrip the third-placed product reviews (58 per cent).

Delivering what nothing else can.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: publishing original research satisfies the thirst for unique content that sets you apart from your competition. During the buying process — and after — your target audience is looking for reassurance that you are the right choice. Fresh insight into their questions or a new take on the issues they’re facing builds your thought leadership position and their confidence in you.

The action lag.

So why, then, are only 37 per cent of B2B marketers using original research within their content marketing? There’s definitely a gap here between buyers’ perceptions and the current marketing reality. A gap — and a missed opportunity.

Perhaps marketers don’t know where to start, or find the prospect of a new area somewhat daunting.

An approach for everyone.

Original research can mean as ‘little’ as collating the views of your subject matter experts, or as much as a global quantitative survey of the market. There are a multitude of ways to find the answers to the questions that perplex your target audience, in ways that guide their decision making. The bottom line is that you’re delivering what people can’t get anywhere else — and because that has great value, it attracts attention.

If you’d like to talk through how we can help you incorporate original research into your 2018 content marketing strategy, then get in touch.

Does effective B2B content have to be a question of quality or quantity? We spell out the definitive answer.

What would you choose?

Content marketing is the backbone of many organisations’ communications with customers and prospects. It’s particularly crucial in a B2B environment, where buying cycles are lengthy and 95 per cent of buyers consider content to be a trustworthy way of evaluating a company and its offerings. And, since content is the main form of contact with these nascent sales leads, you need to get it right.

So, which way do you go? Focus purely on producing high-quality content that’s useful and engaging? Or concentrate on building your presence through delivering content frequently, but often, repetitively?

A custom blend.

The answer is a mixture of the two; quality AND quantity.

Build your process around creating a piece of high-quality content that you then repurpose in a variety of ways. Think of it as creating a flagship piece of content, and then producing versions of it to offer frequent opportunities for your target audience to click, read and share.

You may want to take your original content and repurpose it by vertical, geography or buyer persona. You may consider turning your initial in-depth piece into more snackable forms, using your key points to catch attention. Perhaps you’ll want to think about ways to use your content across your communication channels. Your blog, for example, will probably see traffic ebbing and flowing from organic search, whereas your email newsletter goes to an engaged core audience who want to hear what you’ve got to say: there’s a place for your content on both channels.

Let’s look at how this might work in practice. You may start by researching and producing a white paper. This could then become the basis of a webinar, an email campaign, a series of blogs and infographics, and a whole range of activity on social media.

The essential ingredients.

Both the creation and distribution sides of your content-creation process require skill and commitment. Generating the initial piece of fresh research or thought leadership takes hard work, but so does getting people to consume and share that quality content.

We all know it’s not just a question of putting that great content online and sitting back; it takes work to make sure the right people see what you’ve produced. Content creation and promotion needs time and skill too, to provide the necessary exposure to your target audience.

If you’d like a hand with creating high-quality content in high-volume formats, and getting that content in front of your target audience, just get in touch.

Getting personalisation right in B2B content marketing is your ticket to better relationships and more effective sales enablement. Find out how…Ask any B2B marketer about how to boost content engagement, and we guarantee that the answer will contain the word ‘personalisation’.

Unfortunately, this term is in danger of joining the collection of buzz words people bandy about without specifying what they really mean — losing its power along the way. And, considering its potential, this would be a real loss to the effectiveness of B2B content marketing.

To help you outsell your competition, we’re going to break down personalisation into three key action points.

The three golden rules of personalisation.

1. Make your content talk to a person, from a person.
   
   If you were having a face-to-face conversation with a customer or prospect you wouldn’t just talk at them, you’d find out where they were coming from and adapt what you said accordingly.
   
   It needs to be exactly the same in B2B marketing. By finding out who you’re talking to and how their buying journey has brought them to this point, you can match the content you offer to their needs. Plus, by discovering how they like to receive content and how they like it to be presented, you can make sure your information is more likely to get seen. You need to give your target audience a persona: your communications will have more of a ring of realism, and your target will feel understood — responding accordingly. And, using your audience’s natural language will reinforce your relationship, too.
   
2. Put a face to your communications.
   
   Bring your C-suite executives and subject matter experts to the fore by letting your target audience ‘meet’ them through your content. By giving your organisation a more personal face (or faces), you make it easier for your customers and prospects to forge a relationship with you. People like talking to people, and a blog coming directly from an expert in the field is likely to have more impact than a generic one.
   
   Explore the many ways you can create the personal feel your audience wants: grow personal brands within your organisation by letting your people’s personalities speak through their writing or video blogs. Something as simple as including photos of content authors with blogs or on social media quotes can add to the picture, too.
   
3. Keep it relevant.
   
   When creating every single piece of B2B content ask yourself: how is this relevant to my audience?
   
   Focusing on the needs and goals you’re seeking to address will make sure you’re offering value within your communications. Consistent relevance will draw your customers and prospects closer to you, as you develop a reputation for offering valuable content.

Get personal with us.

This is just the start of the personalisation conversation. If you’d like to find out more, then get in touch or sign up to receive our regular newsletters, packed with the insight you need to stay ahead of your competition.

The infinite vastness of the cosmos can make life on Earth look insignificant. But it can also teach us a thing or two about B2B content marketing.

You need to think ‘big’ when writing.

It’s always handy to get a bit of perspective when writing an article. Take the Universe, for instance. The Earth’s a pretty spacious gaff, right? Well, you can fit our planet into the Sun more than one million times and still have space to stack your DVDs.

And that’s not even all that impressive. The Sun is tiddly in comparison to the largest star we’ve discovered so far (2,000 times more tiddly, to be precise).

Avoid disappearing into a constant stream of content.

Like the Universe, the amount of content on the internet is massive. Let’s put it in perspective. Every second online sees around 7,770 tweets spring into existence, and 70,928 YouTube video views.

It’s now nearly impossible to keep up with everything, so you’ll probably only look at the stuff that really grabs your attention.

It’s the same for your prospects. They won’t read your articles if they don’t see a good reason to. So, to help you out, we’ve put together our top tips to make it happen:

Do…

• Use your people’s expertise — get your staff to write about what they know.
• Post regularly — build a body of work that shows your followers how reliable your insight is.
• Plan ahead — create a schedule and stick to it. It’ll help you organise your key messages more clearly.
• Write simply — lead your readers through a coherent argument with a clear conclusion.
• Make a point — Show how you can solve your audience’s problems.
• Be consistent — your audience is more likely to follow you if your tone of voice is consistent and becomes familiar.
• Promote your articles online — support your content by sharing it on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Don’t…

• Write for the sake of it — make sure you’ve got a clear message to put across.
• Rush to post your article — there’s nothing wrong with adding new ideas to your plan, but you need to leave enough time to create a good article.
• Overwrite — most articles are 300-500 words long. You don’t want your readers to give up half way through your message because you’ve drawn it out too long.
• Give up — you want your followers to see you as knowledgeable so you need to keep them up-to-date as frequently as you can.

Make your article writing simple.

Writing is easy. Writing something your audience wants to read is harder. Take a look at the rest of our blog to see how we do it, and get in touch if you’d like us to lend you a hand — we’ve got the Brian Coxs and Neil deGrasse Tysons of the writing world waiting to help you out.

Your company has asked you to write a blog post. So where do you start? First of all: don’t panic! Second: read these tips before you do anything else.

An ode to the SME.

We’re always impressed when one of our clients’ subject matter experts (SMEs) writes a blog for us to edit and post for them. It’s not easy. It takes time (which is usually scarce for busy SMEs), and writing something that will be published on the internet is far outside the comfort zone for many people.

Keeping that in mind, what’s even more impressive is how many of the SME-written blogs we get are downright good reads. But what separates a great SME blog from a good one?

They’re personal.

In the most engaging SME blogs, the writer is clearly passionate about their subject. And when someone writes about something they’re enthusiastic about, it’s infectious — no matter the subject. We’ve read blogs about network infrastructure that were page turners (or whatever the digital equivalent of a page turner is — a scroll-down-er?), and it was because the writers decided to discuss something they had a personal stake in.

They aren’t a sales pitch (but they can sell things).

Blogs are many things, but one thing they are not is a straight sales pitch. That’s what brochures, adverts, product pages and salespeople are for. Blogs are supposed to give potential customers something more. The best SME blogs don’t just list all the great benefits of a product — instead, they talk about something interesting. And here’s the thing: in talking about a fascinating area of the job, these blogs show thought leadership, which sells the company itself.

They have an angle.

As We’ve said, the best SME blogs aren’t simple sales pitches, they’re opinion pieces. And the really good opinion pieces are the ones that have an interesting angle. For example, one blog that sticks out for me used a simple, fun and relatable metaphor to explain a complex technology. The writer could’ve explained it in another, less imaginative way, and that would’ve been fine — but we probably wouldn’t remember it today.

They edit themselves.

What we mean by ‘editing themselves’, is that the really great SME blogs read as if the writer has thought about how they’re framing their thoughts. Many blogs we read are pretty much a stream of consciousness. That’s fine, and there’s usually a good story in there somewhere. But occasionally the writer has got so caught up in saying what they want to say, that they’ve forgotten how to make any sense. Of course not every SME has time to plan the structure of their blog, but a quick read of the first draft is an effective way to make sure the message is coming through, loud and clear.

If you’d like a hand with your SME blog posts, or would like to find out other ways we can produce expert content for you, just get in touch.

The difference between a good blog article and a great blog article… these eight top tips.

Blogging remains at the forefront of effective B2B digital marketing. There are plenty of benefits: improving your search ranking, enhancing your brand, driving traffic to your website, establishing your business as a thought leader… the list goes on.

But writing blogs can be a real challenge. First, you have to find the time in your busy schedule to sit and scribble something down. Then, you need to write something that’ll provide genuine value to your audience — not just sell your services. Plus, it needs to read well.

At asabell, we write blogs of all shapes and sizes, for different companies that operate in diverse industries. Doing this for over a decade, it’s fair to say we’ve picked up a few tips and tricks.

So, we thought it’d be useful if we shared some of the things we’ve learned. After all, the more great blogs out there, the better.

Get ready to write a better blog.

Here are the eight tips that we feel are most important.

1. Writing with purpose.
   There’s no point writing a blog for the sake of it. You should have a genuine reason for taking the time to compose an article, and this (to an extent) naturally improves your writing. The reader can tell if you truly care about your subject.
   
   In addition, if you’re using valuable time, you want to produce a blog that is relevant and provides true value to your audience. At the end of the day, your aims are to generate blog views, website views and enhance your brand — and you’re unlikely to achieve any of these without writing about something that matters to both you and your audience.

2. Your opinion matters.
   People don’t usually read blogs for a dull overview of a topic or product; they want to learn from your expertise and hear what you really think about a particular subject.
   
   By including your own opinion, you sound more genuine, provide more value for the reader and boost your reputation as a thought leader. It’s better to be a little divisive by presenting your own thoughts than to please everyone by playing it too safe and not adding anything new to the conversation.

3. Construct a winning title.
   There’s a reason this article is titled: ‘Eight top tips for better blogging’…
   
   It works. It offers readers a concrete benefit in return for their time.
   
   Now, a title isn’t the only factor in deciding whether your blog is a success or not. But consider what makes you click-through to blog articles you find online… it’s the title, right? And, how patient are you when browsing social media? Do you take the time to click a link when the title doesn’t grab you?
   
   Your title should be short (so that it displays fully), engaging and contain the key words you need to grab people’s attention. Here’s some great, more detailed advice from HubSpot if you want to find out more.
   
   And, one more thing that always irks us: don’t write click-bait headlines! Deliver on any promises you make in your titles, or people will leave your site and not return. Especially in B2B, it’s better to try and earn repeat blog viewers, rather than go for that easy one-time clicker who won’t return to your site after being disappointed.

4. Keep it simple.
   You should have one simple, core message at the heart of every blog article you produce.
   
   If you try and squeeze in too much, your message becomes confused and diluted. If you have lots more you want to say, think about putting together a series of blog articles, which you can publish over a few weeks. Then remember to link to the rest of the series in each one, so that your audience can access your full range.

5. Structure matters.
   After you’ve written the first draft, think: “how can I improve this?”
   
   A lot of the time, the answer lies in restructuring.
   
   Make sure your story is set out in the most compelling way possible. Break down your stream of thought into short, snappy paragraphs. Use subheadings that both catch people’s attention and boost your SEO. Insert images or videos that will strengthen your blog and support what you’re saying. All of these things will help you hold the attention of your readers, and boost your reach.

6. Promote the heck out of it.
   It’s all well and good writing a blog — but how are you going to get people to read it? You need a plan to get your blog out there, and one of the best ways to do this is through your social channels.
   
   Extensive promotion is vital to making your blog a success, so don’t be afraid to share it multiple times. Just make sure you customise your message for each channel you use. Getting your colleagues and partners involved and sharing your blog will increase your reach even further.
   
   Use images to help draw attention to your blog on social, pull out key quotes and try to spark debate.

7. Include a call-to-action (CTA).
   One thing you need to include in every blog you write is a clear call-to-action. Tell your readers where they can find out more, and make it clear where they need to click.

8. Learn from each blog you write.
   An important (yet often overlooked) aspect of blogging is learning from each blog you produce and promote.
   
   Explore how many views it received, its bounce rate, how it performed on social, whether it generated any interesting conversations. By taking the time to properly analyse how your blog performed, you’ll pick up some insights that you can take forward to your next piece of writing.

The CTA.

These eight steps aren’t exhaustive, but we hope they’ll help you to improve your approach to blogging, and ensure the time you spend writing is time well-spent.

Get in touch to see how we can help you improve your social media strategy or B2B marketing campaigns.

Discover why employee advocacy on social media is so important — and how it can boost your reach, driving more prospects to your content on LinkedIn.

Why employee advocacy?

When it comes to B2B social media, you shouldn’t just be relying on your company channels to drive content views, engagement and to get your name out there to prospects. Every business has a secret weapon: its own employees.

LinkedIn has found that nine out of ten brands (at least plan to) make use of employee advocacy. And why? The simple answer is that we’re all more likely to trust a person over a company on social media, especially if that person is someone we know.

In fact, even when sharing exactly the same content, employees see twice the click-through rate than their company channels — driving more views to your core content.

And, if you’re still not convinced by the return you’ll get by embarking on an employee advocacy programme, consider this: almost two-thirds of employees in a formal programme credit employee advocacy with attracting and developing new business.

So we can see that employee advocacy really works. And, it benefits both your company and your employees themselves, by not only driving people to your brand but also by improving your peoples’ own standing as experts in their field. So everyone’s a winner. But, when it comes to LinkedIn, what sort of content should your employees be sharing for maximum impact?

What content works best?

Brand new data from LinkedIn has revealed that, when shared by people rather than companies, SlideShare presentations receive 44% more shares than any other type of content.

At asabell, we’re huge advocates of SlideShare for its easily-digestible yet information-packed presentations that are proven to have big benefits for your SEO and can easily be repurposed for use elsewhere in your social media strategy. We always break down slides as images, tweet out stats from our presentations and create articles with our presentations embedded, for maximum results.

At the end of the day, think about what you’d be likely to share if you saw someone post on LinkedIn. You want to share content that is useful for others in your network, looks great and that helps you to be seen as a thought leader. That’s why SlideShare fits the bill when it comes to employee sharing.

So, here are the key types of content your employees should be sharing on LinkedIn, and their expected outcomes:

1. Articles

To drive company page views on LinkedIn: articles result in 3% more company page views than any other type of content.

2. Videos

To increase company page followers: not only do videos result in 6X more engagement than any other type of content, they also generate 7% more company page follows per impression.

3. SlideShare presentations

To expand the networks of your employees (which will further increase your reach when they share your content): SlideShare presentations produce 10% more profile views and 2% more connections per impression.

How can I get my employees sharing?

Importantly, you need to help your employees to understand the benefits of employee advocacy, both for the business and for their own profile.

The main takeaway from the research for me is that diversity of content is crucial; your employees’ connections just won’t engage with the same types of content all the time. So you need to be creating a range of great content that your people will want to share with their networks.

And, while this blog has focused purely on LinkedIn, employee advocacy shouldn’t stop there. Wherever your people are active on social media, they should be sharing your content and being your biggest advocates. Help them out as much as you can by producing great content, and reward the best sharers to encourage ongoing commitment. By making employee advocacy part of your culture as a business, you’ll see big results.

Get in touch if you’d like to find out more, or would like to see how we can help you with your social media strategy.

Let’s blow away the smoke and mirrors, and reveal how we use psychology in B2B content marketing to influence decisions in your favour.

Now you really see how it’s done…

When you see a street magician make a twenty-pound note appear out of your nose, you know some skilful sleight of hand has taken place. You don’t know how it was done, but you’re pretty confident you haven’t been walking around with a twenty-pound note up your shnozzle.

Effective B2B content marketing works in much the same way — significant skill has gone into creating the communication piece, you’re just not exactly sure how or why it works.

In this series, we’re taking the lid off some of the psychologically-based tools we use in B2B content marketing, showing you why the content we create for you is so effective.

Robert Cialdini identified six principles of persuasion, and we’ve been using our magic wheel of chance to determine the order in which we explore what they have to offer.

In our first instalment, the golden clicker tick-tick-ticked to a stop on reciprocity and authority. And, on our second lucky spin, it landed on social proof, and commitment and consistency. In this, our final instalment, a bit of careful nudging made sure it landed on the principles of liking and of scarcity.

You seem just my type: liking.

This principle isn’t a complicated one by any means. It’s based on the idea that the more you like someone, the greater the chances of you doing what they suggest. So how do we decide whether we like someone?

The first stage is almost instantaneous: we make a rapid assessment of what we have in common with the other person, based on external characteristics like age, sex, race and socioeconomic status. And that initial decision to like can be reinforced if the people we’re assessing pay us compliments and cooperate with us.

In short, liking is all bound up with our perceptions of safety. Feeling safe encourages us to interact and communicate. This, in turn, increases our chances of finding things in common. And identifying joint interests builds rapport, reinforcing our decisions to agree with what’s suggested. Job done.

So, in a B2B context, seize every opportunity to establish common ground with your target audience. Research your target audience and work to bring out your similarities: choose your language carefully to make it clear that you have a shared operating environment and, in your personal dealings, seek out opportunities to find emotional and attitudinal connections.

Don’t miss out: scarcity.

Scarcity plays on another fundamental of human nature: we attribute more value to something that we believe is limited. Basically, we want what we can’t have. To put a more academic spin on it, opportunities seem more valuable when they are harder to obtain.

We don’t want to miss out, and this motivates us to take action. So all those ‘last few remaining’ type offers do really work and, in a B2B environment, you can clearly see how this is applicable to sales.

Make psychology work for you.

Fancy knowing more about how we employ behavioural economics to maximise the effectiveness of your B2B content marketing? Just get in touch, or catch up with part one and part two in this series.

Even the best need a hand to achieve their goals. Find out how you can help your sales teams smash their targets, through sales enablement.

How to lend a helping hand.

Throughout the history of fiction, even the greatest characters rely on having the right tools to get the job done. Where would Harry Potter be without his wand? Or Luke Skywalker without his lightsaber?

And, as awesome as your salespeople might be, there are always ways to help them win new business. That’s why we’ve put together a comprehensive list of the sales-enablement tools you can give them to turn prospects into customers.

Nine tools for sales success.

1. Cheat sheets.
   The simplest way to keep your sales team on message is to hand them a script. Armed with a short breakdown of key messages, info and FAQs, your people will have all the answers your clients want — boosting their faith in your expertise.
   
2. Data sheets.
   You’ve just come out of a great meeting with a prospect (who’s super psyched about your pitch), but you’re keen to stay at the front of their mind. Enter the data sheet — a short rundown of your key info that gives potential clients a useful reference point once you’ve left the meeting.
   
3. Presentations
   You might think you already have this covered, but you’d be surprised at how many presentations we see that fall short of what an audience is looking for (and this’ll go for your competitors as well). That’s why a short, succinct presentation can really engage your prospects and help you to stand out.
   
4. Sales emails.
   The best way to get a prospect on board is by building a personal relationship between them and your people. But, first, you have to capture their attention. And an email (or a short series of emails) that offers the exact solution to your audience’s problems will do just the job.
   
5. Internal training emails.
   There’s no point in collating a range of content to connect with customers if your sales team don’t know what’s going on. Internal comms, such as emails, are the key to making the most of any part of your sales-enablement campaign.
   
6. Intranet campaign pages.
   Along with cheat sheets and training emails, creating a bank of resources that your sales team can refer to, whenever they need, will help you share your key messages and win sales.
   
7. User videos.
   Your prospects don’t want a constant barrage of info from your salespeople. They want the time to explore their options. But this doesn’t mean you can’t present your best offer. With a collection of user videos, you can give potential customers all the info they need — without having to keep them on the other end of the phone.
   
8. Calling days.
   A great way to boost your sales is to hold a calling day — setting specific targets, offering incentives and creating an atmosphere that brings your people together to achieve more.
   
9. Full-on sales-enablement campaigns.
   Ok, so not technically a tool itself, but still worth a mention. With a full campaign, you can bring all of the previous elements together to form a cohesive message and make sure your people have everything they need to succeed.

Tool up and start selling.

With the right tools for the job, your people will smash their sales targets (and then some). Get in touch to find out more about how sales enablement can work for your B2B business.

Sometimes you know the decision is right for your B2B client and you just want them to say ‘yes’. Here’s how psychology can make that happen.

The wheel of chance.

In this series we’re exploring how you can use the principles of persuasion to get the results you want in your B2B marketing. It all sounds a bit Svengali, but by understanding and using psychology in your communications, you really can influence your audience towards the choice you want them to make.

When we spun the magic wheel of chance in our first instalment it stopped on reciprocity and authority. This time, the golden clicker has tick-tick-ticked to a stop on the principles of social proof, and commitment and consistency.

The community thumbs up: social proof.

Social proof plays on our fundamental uncertainties about our own opinions. How sure are we that we are right? And the bigger the decision, the greater the pressure to make the right choice — and the more likely we are to question our own judgement. So we look for reassurance.

The psychologist who developed the six principles of persuasion, Robert Cialdini, stated that “The greater the number of people who find an idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.”

Translate this into the B2B environment, and we see decision makers looking for reassurance to mitigate the risk inherent in their decision, by looking for evidence that people like them agree with their choice.

Social proof is the theory that people will adopt the beliefs or actions of a group of people they like or trust. So, in a B2B context, a case study from a satisfied customer with a similar business profile to the decision maker will provide social proof. Positive feedback via social media, client testimonials on your website, prominent display of well-known names that you work with — all these can also provide the social proof that could tip the decision your way.

When crafting your B2B content you need to remember that the decision to buy often involves a series of agreements within an organisation. Your initial point of contact may not be the person with the power to sign-off purchase, so you need your content to act as a persuasion tool, creating social proof all the way along the decision-making journey.

Being steadfast: commitment and consistency.

The principle of commitment and consistency revolves around — and makes the most of — the fact that people don’t like to back down from something they’ve agreed to. Humans like to follow pre-existing, values and actions. So, once committed to an action verbally or in writing, this becomes part of our self-image — and we’re much less likely to damage that perception by going back on our word.

So in B2B decision making, encourage your target audience to commit to something relatively small and (usually) free of charge as a first step. This might be giving their email address in order to receive a newsletter or to download a white paper, or agreeing to some form of taster activity, such as a proof-of-concept exercise. This small start then forms a commitment that you can build on to get agreement to larger requests that the decision maker would have found it very hard to say ‘yes’ to initially.

Make psychology work for you.

Fancy knowing more about how we employ behavioural economics to maximise the effectiveness of your B2B content marketing? Just get in touch, or catch up with part one in our series.

And watch out for the final instalment, coming soon.