I’ll give you my thoughts a bit below, and in future posts, but check this out first.

This is for all of you who have reached out to me in the last month asking about how to create and share information with prospects and customers in a way that creates awareness, preference and — as this presentation contends — paying customers. This really hits the nail on the types of content to create and when to do it based on where people in your prospect pool are in the sales cycle. Really worth your time. Commit it to memory.

Cautionary Tale Ahead

As good as this deck is, however, what I’ve found in my experience, is that in trumpeting “Content Marketing” as the way and the light, marketers and their bosses get lulled into thinking … “Hey, if we get interns to blog and write a white paper our prayers will be answered.”

This is a career killer of ridiculous expectations unmet. Content marketing is or should be the linchpin in a much larger strategy.  (more on that next time). For the purposes of managing expectations from people in the C-suite, the corner office and even your own, I’ve seen content strategy succeed  or fail based on whether these five must-haves to succeed in content marketing were present.

1. Patience — If you’re ramping up a content strategy with the sole goal of generating revenue, you’re doing it wrong. This is a strategy, if executed well, that takes 3-6 months to develop and may not bare fruit for a several months after a campaign is launched. Content is a conversation. It is meant  to walk people through the way they buy a product or service and serves up information as it is needed to make decisions or help others in their company reach conclusions. If your entire marketing strategy is a single piece of content or a content carpet-bombing of the marketplace for the purpose of having sales-ready leads, you will disappoint yourself and others.

2. A large library of information (bought or created) that targets people based on who they are, the problems they are trying to solve and how they make decisions.

• Are people unaware of your company and why its products are what they need?
• Do they need to narrow selected companies down to a list of 5 for a presentation to compare apples to apples?
• Are they selling it up into the organization to bosses and bean counters?

The answer to all of the above is YES. You better have content that addresses all of these things and more before you set the world on fire with your white paper. Otherwise You’ll always be playing catch up to the needs of your prospects.

3. Deep  research to understand your universe of prospects, influencers and visionaries in your field. Start a content strategy at your own peril if you don’t know who you’re talking to and why.

4. A clear path to integrating content marketing into your sales/marketing go-to-market plans — Content is the conversation catalyst, accelerant and hopefully, the decider. It won’t deliver itself and it won’t build a relationship with a human being. Only you can do that.

5. A multi-dimentional content calendar that includes a strong blog, social evangelism and an asset creation strategy that is tied  to news, events, interesting discussions and other topical engagements occurring in your universe. Notice how a blog or whitepaper talking about your product  doesn’t fit this criteria? Good!

Oh, and 5a: A distribution and socialization strategy that uses all online and offline tools at your disposal that you can afford. How is your content being used as pay offs for these tactics:

• Social media engagement (company and external blogs, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, etc.)
• Direct mail campaigns
• Email blasts
• Search Engine Optimization/Marketing efforts
• Paid online and offline advertising
• Events
• Earned media coverage

Content Marketing has a place in all of these inbound and outbound marketing tactics, which should be tightly woven into your larger, more theme-focused Go-to-Market strategy.

If there is one thing to takeaway from all of my words it is this: Content Marketing is absolutely vital for maintaining relevance in the marketplace. You need to incorporate it into your marketing efforts. That said, success will elude you unless you have an integrated plan, more than a modicum of patience and the persistence to keep developing the content the market needs — not just what you want to tell them.

Reach out if I can help.

Mark

Here’s a “Director’s Cut” for a post of mine born on Feb. 16, 2011 at nonboxpdx. Viva la verbosity! -ME

Want to know what your company has in common with cultural powerhouses with iconic products  like Nike, Apple, Virgin Atlantic, Legos and Porsche?

As it turns out, not much.

That was my key takeaway from the latest book trumpeting design and deep customer analysis as the way to the promiseland of sustained revenue and consistently unleashing products that people crave.

Thankfully, former Business Week Seattle bureau chief Jay Greene uses Design is How it Works, as a platform for showing the uninspired that creating a product or a company that taps into the Id of people is as simple as embracing failure and financial losses, changing organizational processes to bring Design Thinking into every discipline in a company from the C-suite through R&D and on down through the ranks,  and doing deep ethnographic and psychographic research on probable users of your product before embarking on your next build.

Sound a bit daunting?

It is. which is why IDEO’s Tim Brown notes in the book, that when people tell him of their aspirations to be like Nike or Apple, he counters “You don’t have the nerve.” That is the greatest part of Greene’s book for me. The corporate moguls and design luminaries he interviews call a spade a spade. You can’t be Nike. You aren’t Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive. You haven’t got the discipline, the reputation or, frankly, the balls.

The headline of this post is inspired by every client or boss who has uttered phrases like “We want to be known as the Apple of the (insert industry segment here).” Or…”Our products are best-of-breed innovations and we need to create the same experience and culture Nike does to drive demand and loyalty to their products”

Never mind that the industry segment is sewage treatment technology or the product is road salt. Make it pop, sucka! How many of you design professionals can relate to John Barratt, president and CEO of Teague in Seattle:

“I can’t tell you how many how many product briefs we get saying we want a product that’s as good or better than the iPhone,” he says. “That’s a five-alarm brief for me..those folks just don’t get it. An iPhone is not a product. It’s a manifestation of a culture.”

It’s that kind of no-bullshit take on the power of design to transform a company and an economy that makes Greene’s book so endearing, refreshing, and such a swift read.
For those of you who still think you’ve got what it takes to check your egos at the door, throw caution to the wind in the face of financial pressure, and actually find out what your customers want instead of what you can give them, here’s something you should know. Good design isn’t what you think it is.

• It’s not an emotive image with pithy text and a dope beat from a band named Mooseknuckle.
• It’s not a box made of hemp fiber in the shape of condor’s nest that was — be honest – an afterthought to hold your clever “Must-have” eco product.
• It’s not even the promise of a new piece of software that reports it will solve world hunger with a user interface you’re sure is so easy even a chimp can use it.

It’s how a product works in the hands of your customers. It may be easy to use or pleasing to look at, but if it doesn’t solve a pain it’s a waste of time and money. “If there’s no pet peeve, there’s no product,” says Alex Lee, president of OXO.

Thus, the title of the book absconds with the Steve Jobs quote: “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Whether that’s the tried-(or trite?)and-true of form following function, an evolution of tired phrases like “out of the box thinking”or new fangled concepts like Design Thinking permeating all disciplines to foster organizational creativity — the bottom line is you need to know your customers better than they know themselves. The only way to do that is to get your hands dirty and actually engage with them where they will put your product to use. The book gives some great examples of how and where to do that in the profiles on OXO, REI, Nike and Lego.

So, for me, the book is a call to get your head out of the freaking clouds or at least out of your own building.  It’s time to stop aspiring and start perspiring. There’s plenty of work to be done learning about what your customers need to cure their pet peeves. Build those products and they will come.

And, instead of leaving you with a cheesy movie line platitude, here’s a more actionable treat from Jay  Greene himself when I swapped a note asking for him to clarify design thinking and discuss ways all companies can infuse their operations with the principles of design thinking:

“Like industrial designers, design thinkers use creativity and empathy to help them craft something that has an emotional connection with customers. They prototype concepts and collaborate with colleagues to test theories and come up with novel approaches to new products. The difference is that design thinkers apply those concepts to businesses, such as software-as-a-service, that people don’t typically think of as being design-focused. They use anthropology, sociology and psychology to study customers in order to understand their unstated and unmet needs. They prototype strategies and experiences much the same way that companies model early versions of physical products. So if you’re looking for strategies for companies to implement to create iconic products, design thinking would be a great place to start.”

Here, here!

This Post Inspired By I’ve Seen All Good People — Yes.

You and your sales colleagues call them leads. Some call them prospects. Others suspects. Whatever you call those who you believe absolutely need what you sell—take a breath.

Think for a minute before you go headlong into strategies, tactics and buying cycle position assessments. These are people.

Just like you and me. We all hold the same fears of making bad decisions, losing respect or getting fired. The same needs for validation. Similar desires for adulation.

With that empathy in mind, now take a look at your current sales funnel. Some people are waving a big red flag saying “Help me right now” by phone call, e-mail or Web site visit. Others were kind enough to respond to your BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) profile questions on a microsite after you reached out to them via direct mail, e-mail or online.

Tire-kicking isn’t a crime
All others who showed interest in your message but didn’t meet your sales teams’ BANT criteria have been relegated to the tire-kicker position—doomed to languish into perpetuity in your CRM database.

This decision just cost your company big money. Research indicates that 80-90 percent of those “tire-kickers” will buy a product similar to yours in the next 12 months. It’s likely that product won’t be yours unless you keep your company top of mind. Turn your info seekers into buyers by becoming a genuine business decision collaborator.

Prospect-to-lead tip: Restraint
But…wait! Back away from the phone or keyboard for a minute. Before offering more brochureware or demos, put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. What would you want? If you are actually having an internal dialogue right now, you’re likely saying “Something relevant. Something actionable. Something that helps me take one step forward—not retreat in fear from a full-frontal marketing assault on my senses.”

Here are four steps.

First: Be relevant
Your marketing materials in all media formats sent out via every communication vehicle at your disposal is not relevance. It’s carpet bombing. Find thought leaders outside your company to talk about solutions to broader industry challenges. A simple, timely, “Did you see this?” with a one-sentence description, a link to the article, and a one-sentence explanation of why this is relevant to previous interactions with your company will suffice.

Second: Be timely but considerate
Again, put yourself in the shoes of the person you are engaging with. How many times would you want to be contacted in this manner or another mode of communication and what makes it less intrusive? Once a week? Once a month? Once a quarter? Don’t know? Ask.

Here’s a great article forwarded to me recently by a colleague that has two industry leaders answering questions on B2B best practices, reading “Digital Body Language” and nurturing prospects to become leads: When Is It Nurturing, When Is It “Big Brother”?

Third: Set expectations
On that first communication with your new acquaintance, set the ground rules for any outreach going forward. Tell them you are contacting them based on their expressed interest in the subject matter and that you intend to send news and information that could help them stay abreast of key issues and solutions in the industry. Set a delivery expectation timeframe and enable them to say “No.”

Fourth: Request feedback
Set up a feedback loop for prospects to either ask questions or update their current interest or buying status related to your products. The key is patience. Help them arrive at decisions based on knowledge.

Lead cultivation resources
Marketing Sherpa has a library of strategic documents on proven approaches that gingerly move people through buying decisions. Lead Nurturing Best Practices: New Data, Charts, Tips to Put More Punch in Your Cultivation Tactics provides great guidance.

Ann Handley from MarketingProfs is another marketing/buying behavior guru worth checking out. She can be followed on Twitter here.

Good luck and stay positive.

Mark