90 Second Content Marketing Lessons

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Supplement Sales Calls with Monthly Email

If you're a full time salesperson sales calls might occupy the majority of your time. But if you have other responsibilities in your company, finding time to make all those calls can be difficult. Believe me, I know! It's something I struggle with (and feel guilty about) every day.

This is why I like monthly email messages that deliver relevant informational content.

 

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Content That Buyers Seek

Today's lesson is about the kinds of content that business-to-business buyers say they find most useful when they are making purchase decisions.

 

Business buyers list the most useful content listed as product demos and overviews – no surprise there. Obviously everyone has that information on their web sites.

 

Next in line? White papers & e-books. Followed by case studies, webinars, videos, and blog postings.

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - The 63 Percent

Over 40% of business-to-business buyers say they wait until after they've done their own independent research before they ever talk to a sales representative. Another 23% delay interaction until after they have a short list of possible vendors.

 

You may never even be aware of 63% of potential customers who are interested in your product! Whatever your sales strategy is, it will never even kick in for this group. You won't be able to add an opportunity to your CRM system. 

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Newsletter Length

I’m a big fan of brevity. It wasn’t always this way, but it’s a lesson I’ve learned.

 

Too much content can put your newsletter into the “I don’t have time to read all this now, I’ll get to it later” category – virtually ensuring that most of your subscribers won’t ever consume your content.

Included in this lesson: my recommendations for article lengths.

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - HTML vs PDF

PDF is great for controlling the format of the output. And it is definitely the way to go to deliver documents that are meant to be printed. HTML documents, on the other hand, can appear differently in multiple browsers.

 

But for newsletters, I still prefer HTML. Find out why in this lesson.

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Website Content

Even in the age of social networking, your web site is where you want your prospects to go. There are lots of strategies about search engine optimization, keyword bidding, and such. But those efforts go to waste if your audience doesn’t do what you want them to do on your site once you get them there.

 

This happens quite a lot. Mainly because most B2B web sites are designed without an actionable objective in mind. I recommend establishing a purpose a little stronger than “visitors will learn more about our company.”

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Publishing Consistency

I talk to a lot of business owners and marketing people who aren’t convinced that publishing informational content on a regular basis really pays off. If they don’t see an immediate and measurable connection between a single article or event in their sales results, they are ready to abandon their efforts.

 

Content marketing benefits come from consistency and they take a while to develop. This is quite a bit different from measuring the ROI from a marketing campaign that has short-term objectives.

 

But I can tell you it does work. I'm a good example.

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Content Paralysis 2

How to revive a once-active content marketing effort.

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Content Paralysis

Writers block happens to all of us sometimes. But that’s a temporary condition that can be easily remedied with a number of different actions designed to get your brain engaged again.

 

What I’m talking about here is more of a chronic disability.

90 Second Content Marketing Lesson - Segmentation Drips

Segmentation is the science of splitting your contact list into groups that share a common interest. The finer you segment your list, the more relevant you can make your messages.Sequences of short email messages are a great way to take advantage of the targeted communication opportunity that segmentation provides.