Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show Episode 82: Building a content marketing team at B2B tech companies with Erin Balsa
Feb 14, 2022
56:47
Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel
5 most common content marketing & demand generation mistakes B2B companies with a high ACV make.
1. Lack of customer insights in content strategy.
Focusing on providing answers to the questions your target audience is interested in generates more opportunities than generic top-of-the-funnel articles for high-traffic keywords.
Companies miss one point:
The goal of the content is not generating traffic but generating demand and more sales-qualified opportunities.
Simple formula: in-depth answer to buyer’s questions + your expertise/examples = demand.
2. Copying B2C/e-commerce.
more articles - more keywords + longtails - more traffic - more revenue works in B2C but not in B2B.
The quality of content in B2B over weighs the quantity.
3. Hiring cheap writers.
Hiring cheap writers or writing content with an AI assistant is the easiest way to fall down. Your market will immediately recognize low-quality content and will ignore you.
4. Copying giants.
Until you are building a new sales or marketing community like Sales Hacker, you don’t need to have a blog like HubSpot to generate quality B2B leads.
Otherwise, after 6 months of publishing dozens of blog posts, hundreds of social media updates, you’ll realize this has had a miserable impact on your bottom line.
5. Developing content funnels.
Demand generation is not linear.
If a person downloads an ebook or signs up for your webinar, it means they are interested in the topic, not your product.
If you are going to send these contacts to sales, you’ll burn out your pipeline fast.
What if marketing stepped out from the keyword research for their content strategy and set down with sales asking about questions, concerns, needs, and challenges across the buying journey?
What if sales invited customers to contribute to the content?
Then content starts resonating with a target addressable market.
Sales proactively distribute it to the target accounts because they have a good reason for a non-sales touch.
Customers happily share the content inside their organization and with their network.
Sales get lots of pieces of content to share on social media.
This simple shift leads to inbound opportunities and opens doors to engage target accounts way better than expensive ip-based ads, gated e-books, or virtual events your audience doesn’t care about.
That’s why a content engine is crucial for long-term success.
I sat down with Erin Balsa to chat about building a content marketing team and creating a content engine at B2B tech companies.
We are covering:
1. How to hire great writers and content marketers.
2. The minimal viable content team: roles and functions you need
3. How to develop a great content strategy even if your market is boring and conservative.
4. How to attract attention to your content and generate demand
Erin on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinbalsa/
RESOURCES
On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/
Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/
Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenches
Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events
Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog
Get 10% off Happier Leads - website identification software: https://happierleads.com?via=fullfunnel - apply code ANDREI.
5 most common content marketing & demand generation mistakes B2B companies with a high ACV make.
1. Lack of customer insights in content strategy.
Focusing on providing answers to the questions your target audience is interested in generates more opportunities than generic top-of-the-funnel articles for high-traffic keywords.
Companies miss one point:
The goal of the content is not generating traffic but generating demand and more sales-qualified opportunities.
Simple formula: in-depth answer to buyer’s questions + your expertise/examples = demand.
2. Copying B2C/e-commerce.
more articles - more keywords + longtails - more traffic - more revenue works in B2C but not in B2B.
The quality of content in B2B over weighs the quantity.
3. Hiring cheap writers.
Hiring cheap writers or writing content with an AI assistant is the easiest way to fall down. Your market will immediately recognize low-quality content and will ignore you.
4. Copying giants.
Until you are building a new sales or marketing community like Sales Hacker, you don’t need to have a blog like HubSpot to generate quality B2B leads.
Otherwise, after 6 months of publishing dozens of blog posts, hundreds of social media updates, you’ll realize this has had a miserable impact on your bottom line.
5. Developing content funnels.
Demand generation is not linear.
If a person downloads an ebook or signs up for your webinar, it means they are interested in the topic, not your product.
If you are going to send these contacts to sales, you’ll burn out your pipeline fast.
What if marketing stepped out from the keyword research for their content strategy and set down with sales asking about questions, concerns, needs, and challenges across the buying journey?
What if sales invited customers to contribute to the content?
Then content starts resonating with a target addressable market.
Sales proactively distribute it to the target accounts because they have a good reason for a non-sales touch.
Customers happily share the content inside their organization and with their network.
Sales get lots of pieces of content to share on social media.
This simple shift leads to inbound opportunities and opens doors to engage target accounts way better than expensive ip-based ads, gated e-books, or virtual events your audience doesn’t care about.
That’s why a content engine is crucial for long-term success.
I sat down with Erin Balsa to chat about building a content marketing team and creating a content engine at B2B tech companies.
We are covering:
1. How to hire great writers and content marketers.
2. The minimal viable content team: roles and functions you need
3. How to develop a great content strategy even if your market is boring and conservative.
4. How to attract attention to your content and generate demand
Erin on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinbalsa/
RESOURCES
On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/
Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/
Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://sendfox.com/trenches
Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events
Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog
Get 10% off Happier Leads - website identification software: https://happierleads.com?via=fullfunnel - apply code ANDREI.