Highly Competitive - software industry insights

Content Marketing for Midsized Companies: Who to Target, What to Create

 

An integral part of creating a strategy for content marketing initiatives is to identify which of your customers are the targets of your content: what are their roles in their companies, what part do they play in the buying process, what are their preferred channels for different kinds of content. Then decisions must be made for the types of content that will be created, based on the preferences of target customers and different phases of the customer or buying journey. Just as companies should be segmenting target markets and target customer roles to better connect their products to customer needs, the same segmentation should be used for content.

 

Software solutions are important tools for learning more about customers and their buying behaviors, to provide the continuous intelligence needed for effective content marketing. Advanced analytics can process data from many disparate sources, such as social media, master data and CRM systems, and provide customer insight that helps with customer segmentation, mapping customer journeys, and relating customer content preferences to specific channels for publication. Content management and marketing automation solutions enable dynamic management of the customer / content matrix as it relates to buying processes and customer desires. Various software solutions also nurture consistent customer experiences across channels, to enhance positive perceptions. Most of the above technologies provide capabilities for tracking activities and outcomes, to be able to repeatedly measure effectiveness, and fine tune approaches and processes.

 

 

What Kind of Content Should You Create?

Forcontent to provide superior customer engagement, the focus is no longer on vendor offerings and product features. It's about content that helps prospects and customers solve their problems and improve the performance of their organizations. The kind of content that attracts your customers will change on a regular basis, as media options evolve along with customer interests and needs. Companies must keep on top of these changes through different industry reports, analytics on the effectiveness of current content marketing activities, direct feedback from customers, and continuously tracking changes to buying / customer journeys.

 

Content categories that currently catch the attention of different kinds of customers include:

à Content Optimized for Mobile Consumption

Mobile is rapidly becoming a top channel for connecting to customers. To engage customers, content must be specifically optimized for the device, particularly smartphones where display real estate is at a premium. Content has to make sense for how customers use mobile devices and generally should be simple, very interesting and to the point.

à Video

Customers like video content when it covers topics relevant to their needs. High quality, sophisticated video is greatly preferred over amateurish efforts. Customer expectations for engagement look for entertainment combined with information.

à White papers and Product Information Sheets

These types of content are primarily of interest for B2B customers. White papers will only be useful if they cover topics and issues that matter to customers. Customers are strongly turned off by marketing "brochureware" masquerading as a white paper, and may well reject the vendor that created it.

à Customer Stories and Case Studies

Customers still find great value in customer stories with useful details around the customer problem and how it was solved. Include the value and benefits that were gained by the customer after solving the problem – and keep the focus on the customer, not your company.

à Interactive Elements

Engaging customers with interactive elements, such as embedded video or hyperlinks, frequently builds customer interest in your content, and can take customers further into the buying process. Be sure to overtly identify what each interactive element will do. For example, you may be losing customer follow-through on links if it's not clear what will happen when the link is clicked.

 

Content Marketing Doesn't Stop at Purchases

The bonus value of content marketing is to nurture and build positive customer experiences beyond the purchase, throughout the lifecycle of a customer. Customers and markets can change very quickly; agile and sophisticated software technologies, processes and creative practices are needed to grow and sustain positive customer relationships. Content marketing is an integral part of what it takes to positively engage customers on any channel at any time.

 

 

Image source: ironpaper.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

In Pursuit of Customer Experience Excellence

 

Competitiveness for many companies is often translated into external activities over which they have little or no control, such as focusing on tactical methods to attack competitors, to convince a customer not to buy from a competitor. These same companies overlook many activities that are completely in their control such as greatly improving and innovating product quality and reliability. Another area that can significantly enhance company competitiveness is working towards customer service excellence. Customer service excellence can produce a blatant ROI: Happy Successful Customers. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com makes a strong case for focusing on customers, rather than competitors:

When asked what competitors he worries about, Bezos replied that Amazon decided early on that it would be "competitor alert, but not competitor obsessed," Instead, his company is customer obsessed.

"The best customer service means the customer doesn't need to call you," Bezos says... That fixation on customer service appears to have paid off, Bezos says: The company has some of the highest customer service ratings in the retail industry.

 

 Swinging in the other direction, it’s fairly easy to dig up lots of horror stories and statistics on the high cost (quantitative and qualitative) of poorly executed customer service. For example, Genesys came out with a study, The Cost of Poor Customer Service, where consumers were surveyed globally:

Nearly 70% of consumers said they had ended a relationship due to poor customer service alone. Consumers feel the most significant root causes of poor service are:

• Being trapped in automated self-service

• Being forced to wait too long for service

• Repeating themselves

• Representatives that lack the skills to answer their inquiry

On average, consumers in virtually every country walk away from a relationship due to poor service. Overall, consumers end more than 1.4 relationships each year on average due to a poor customer service experience.

                 

The approach to customer service has been changing for many companies, and it clearly needs to change. Companies are facing not only the need to ramp up positive customer experiences whenever customers interact with the company, but now must understand and construct strategies for providing a seamless customer experience over multiple channels of communication. Many new customer communication channels are not even provided by the company. ‘Anywhere-anytime’ customer interactions, frequently driven by the customer, are happening now, and are likely to grow in diversity and occurrence over time.

But companies are not helpless in this “new world” of customer engagement. Companies have full power to create a consistent and differentiated service experience for their customers, across any and all channels. Making this happen is not an easy task, but making it happen can be a solid path to sustained competitiveness, and to providing continuous real value to customers.

 

A Continuum of Customer Engagement

Industry analyst Esteban Kolsky has been writing about the transition of customer communication channels from ones under company management to a proliferation of new modes of interaction, often pushed by customers. Kolsky considers customer-driven communication channels part of a continuum that is currently evolving:

This new continuum arose from the Social Customer becoming demanding, and expecting the interactions to happen on their own terms. No longer do customers want to be transferred from department to department – they want quick resolution by whomever they happen to interact with. They expect to get access to the relevant data regarding their transactions virtually anywhere, in any format. They want to dictate the terms of the relationship as they deem relevant…

…we see organizations today ill prepared across all channels to deal with it. Their people are not prepared to deal with customers and communities accessing all relevant information, their processes are not sophisticated enough to accommodate these dynamic demands for information and data, and the technology behind them definitely is not up to par to support flexible exchanges of information as determined by the customer – not the organization.

From Customer Lifecycle Transactions to Socially-Augmented Relationship Continuums

 

Beyond a continuum of communication channels, the path to improved customer interactions must focus on people, practices, processes, and technologies, with technologies subservient to the first three components. New accomplishments for engaging experiences with customer service functions can include knowledge co-creation that will benefit many, collecting customer intelligence to underpin ever-improving service, and highly relevant personalized exchanges that speed up acquisition of answers for customer questions and needs.

 

                                   

             Source: From Customer Lifecycle Transactions to Socially-Augmented Relationship Continuums 

 

One Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels, Old and New

Guy Stephens writes in a recent post about the influence of social media on customer relationships with companies. Stephens’ wonderfully detailed post is a response to a report from the Institute of Customer Service, Return on investment in customer service: the bottom line report. A few of his observations:

The report points out:

- customer service is moving towards a fundamental shift away from a largely transaction–based cost center to a strategic driver that helps generate value for the organisation

- calculating the ROI in customer service is complex

- a profound change for the customer service world is taking place

(but) the preoccupation remains firmly on the channel, or the mechanics of the channels. The modern day contact centre has been built on the pursuit of tactical efficiencies and expediencies, but its future lies in a far more expansive, challenging and less familiar landscape.…although technology has created many new channels that affect customer behaviour, the traditional channels don’t disappear.

To succeed with all customers, creating and maintaining consistency of experience across and between channels of communication, through many interactions, is the priority. This goes beyond listening well to the customer -- this is about action, enablement and empowerment.

 

                
 
 

Developing Solutions for the Customer Experience Continuum

Recently I worked with software company Sword Ciboodle, collaborating with Mitch Lieberman (VP Marketing Americas and well-known SME for Social / CRM) and several others to co-create a thought piece on the current state and future direction of quality customer service experiences, including the evolving customer engagement continuum, – and the impacts on company success and on the value created for customers. 

Sword Ciboodle, based in Scotland, has been growing its presence in the Americas. The Ciboodle software solutions are all about helping companies provide improved customer interactions and the many ways that this can be accomplished, including traditional customer service. Ciboodle technology powers a customer engagement platform that includes capabilities for CRM, customer intelligence, dynamic process management, and a good start on tapping into multi-channel communication interfaces. Ciboodle also gets into interfaces with social apps, plus sentiment analysis, a built-in community platform, and self-service portals. Ciboodle has a view in mind for the future of customer service and is exploring the customer engagement continuum as the ‘anywhere anytime’ customer interaction venue that is likely to become more important for many companies.

  

Collaborating with a Company That Believes In People-Centric Businesses

Collaborative projects are frequently distinct from one another, so “rules of engagement” should reflect the goals and needs unique to each project. “Rules of engagement” may be explicit or just informally understood. Collaborative communication is best when open and responsive, at a frequency that moves the work along. And companies that believe in collaboration and in connecting people for mutual benefit also end up creating solutions and deliverables that work well for what people want to get done and how they want to do it. All of the above notions have been part of the collaborative experience to create the white paper with the Ciboodle team.

The content of the white paper that we co-created is much richer for having the participation of multiple strong team members. The full team includes these experts who have been with Ciboodle for several years: Clare Dorrian (VP Marketing EMEA), Ian Henderson (VP Presales / Strategic Consulting), Rachel Tait (Marketing Manager Americas), and Lisa Goodwin (Design & Marketing Americas). I greatly appreciate all of the knowledge and insight that they have shared with me, and the great enthusiasm that this team brings to the work that Ciboodle does. Towards the end of the project, newcomer John Merritt (Product Marketing Manager Americas) jumped right in to shepherd the white paper through final production and publication. Then there’s Mitch, whose vision, drive and commitment contributed so much to the content and direction of the white paper.

  

If you are interested in reading the white paper Focusing on the Total Customer Experience (and I highly recommend that you do…), send an email request to:  [email protected]  And then please come back to my blog or to Mitch’s blog to let us know your thoughts, reactions, new ideas, and suggestions for improving customer interactions, achieving customer service excellence, and the evolution of the customer engagement continuum.

Mitch has been turning out posts on the white paper topics, including:

The Importance of Positive Customer Service Experiences

Coordination, Collaboration and Co-operation; An Approach to Service Excellence

Creating Graceful and Rewarding Customer Service Experiences

The Dynamic Customer Service Experience Framework

  

My Related Links

Achieving the Social Business, Inside and Out

The Effective Intranet – Engaging the Employee as Customer

Goals and Metrics – Measuring Customer Engagement on the Web

Social collaboration in enterprise:The heart–and goal–of Community is “collaborating people”, not collaboration tools

 

Disclosure:  Sword Ciboodle sponsored and compensated me for the white paper that I wrote with Mitch Lieberman.

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services

 

 

Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Software Vendors: Starring the ‘New’ White Paper

 

For the past several years, multiple studies by different research firms have been conducted to evaluate the most sought-out and influential content for B2B technology customers during decision-making buying cycles, and every time, in every study, the #1 preferred content is the White Paper.

The white paper is the #1 most influential piece of collateral that technology purchasers consult when making or influencing a buying decision for their company, according to a recent survey by Eccolo Media

However, many B2B software vendors still are missing the boat with their use of white papers and have not employed them in ways to engage potential buyers, let alone convert them to customers.

  

In The Beginning…

Technology white papers find their origins in government briefs that were called white books, alluding to the plain white binding that was used. With the transformation to the technology white paper, experts, lead architects, systems designers used these documents to provide authoritative discussions of key ideas or technologies to show thought leadership and future direction. The classic white paper was very technical and dissertation-like, rich with in-depth details and research results.

Then something happened to white papers when many software companies began to generate them as “product collateral”. White papers were hijacked by many product marketing and marketing groups to directly promote products. Content became thinly veiled product brochures extolling the virtues of the software offerings, highlighting information favorable to the vendor. White papers became just another item in the checklist of collateral to generate for a product launch. Little strategic thinking or advance planning went into creating white papers, including the recruitment of a top tech professional to write the white paper. Well, guess what: software solution buyers do not like that kind of white paper.

 When asked what most disappointed in a white paper, poor writing ranked number one.

 One surprise in the findings – the respondents said they're more disappointed when a white paper doesn't contain enough technical information rather than when a paper contains too much.

 

 What Potential Buyers Want In Effective White Papers

Quality Quality Quality

Customers continue to call out high quality writing with accurate and useful content as top values for the white papers that they want to read and use. They want plenty of details (tech / business), which means content has to be: tight, clear, compelling, authentic.

The survey also found that the quality of report writing gets noticed. Some 86% of respondents felt that high-quality writing was at least moderately influential and 51% ranked good writing as either very or extremely influential. By contrast, poor quality writing was the most frequent reason respondents gave for decreasing the influence of a white paper.

 

Less Time to Consume Content

A lot of great content is constantly published on the web, due largely to constant brisk evolution of business needs and corresponding software solutions. Customers would like to consume a large variety of content, so they prefer shorter lengths for white papers. Shorter white papers also allow vendors to generate a constant flow of new content that also keeps pace with business and tech changes. According to most of the studies cited in this article, the ideal length of a white paper is 4-8 pages. (Tech Marketing Best Practices Research Series on white papers states that 86% of tech buyers want white papers under 10 pages.)

 

Buyers are proactive in the use of white papers:

How to Maximize the Use of White Papers in Your B2B Marketing and Sales Process, released by InformationWeek in February 2009. Its survey of 542 professional buyers found that 93% of IT buyers pass along up to half of the white papers they read/download, and that 54% of those surveyed contacted a vendor for more information after reading a white paper.

 

No Registration Please

When marketing groups co-opted the white paper another marketing staple was added: requiring buyer registration to be able to download the white paper. There is a strong buyer sentiment that vendor websites should not require any information from the buyer for any content downloads.  After all, the sales engagement is buyer-driven, with the buyer deciding when and if next steps will be taken.

A recent survey done by Spiceworks (SMB IT management resource site) addressed the issue of having to register for white papers:

We also found a lot of people – more than 75% – DON'T sign up for papers requiring registration, which means the vendor is missing the opportunity to share and disseminate their knowledge.

         How many (vendors) stopped requiring registration as the result of your survey?

A handful so far. The results are pretty staggering. When you remove the "registration wall," downloads go way up. One white paper that was offered without registration was downloaded 500 times in three days!

  

White Papers and Content Marketing Strategies

Potential buyers visit B2B corporate websites with the intent of finding all kinds of information that will help with purchase decisions. Buyers also look for vendor information on other web venues. It is critical for any vendors who see web presence as a key to success to build a strategy for content marketing. A content marketing strategy for B2B software vendors should focus on providing relevant, compelling, and frequently updated information for target markets and customers/buyers. A high quality white paper is a significant business asset for content marketing: quality content holds its value for reusability, engagement, impact, and vendor credibility.

Adam Needles: Content marketing is the architecture behind information exchanged with the buyer before we can get them to ’sales ready’; it is the rationalization of what content that our prospective buyers need at various stages of the buying cycle and via what media and channels; and it is integral to the nurturing process.  Content thus has moved from tactical to strategic.

 

Many B2B software vendors could benefit greatly from building a content marketing strategy around white papers. Don’t just produce single white papers in a reactive fashion, as a product launch checklist item done in a hurry. Plan, create and publish excellent white papers well in advance of any product launches.  B2B software vendors should be publishing white papers with high frequency (since customers want shorter white papers): set the stage for what your company does now and will do in future. Show authentic thought leadership, clear understanding of various customer needs and real problem-solving.

Publishing sets of “companion” white papers is a good idea for vendors targeting buyers with different perspectives such as business and tech buyers, and biz-tech composites. Some white papers can be created to bridge the gap between business and tech, to encourage collaborative definition of needs and problem-solving. Series of white papers that break down a complex topic can be an interesting approach as well. These approaches will show vendor commitment to helping customers understand current technology trends as well as provide guidance for solving problems or for becoming more competitive.

Beyond publishing great white papers is the opportunity for vendors to engage customers in conversations through social media, wherever customers participate. There already is a social aspect to downloaded white papers – customers have a high rate of sharing white papers. Tap into social media for interactive conversations with potential buyers and industry writers. On download pages include links to communities and forums to encourage discussion. Schedule Tweetjams for topics covered in white papers. Comment on blogs that address the topics of vendor white papers, not to directly promote the white paper, but to add to the brainstorm and show command of the topic.

 

Value of white papers for B2B software vendors:

 
 

   

The Right Industry Professional to Create White Papers for B2B Software Vendors

Keeping in mind that customers have made clear that they want high quality content with extensive tech details, it would make sense to work with a software industry professional with strong tech experience, business smarts, and who can articulate complex ideas clearly and authentically. This would be a professional who has worked with customers, understands both business and tech, has the ability to hold the interest of these readers. And of course, this professional has to be a really good writer.

White papers will benefit from a professional who has decent smarts for several software solution categories and who has good hands-on experience on the tech side of software. The business-technology professional should contribute rich insight, produce creative content and original thinking, see unexpected connections and future trends. Direct customer experience enhances an understanding of how tech will help customer competitiveness, and will enable writing from the customer POV.

Another very useful attribute of the right professional would be one who is inter-connected to individuals throughout the software industry: analysts, practitioners, consultants, writers, vendors. A professional who is in constant conversations with other industry SMEs will be up-to-date on key topics and trends, and will have resources at hand for research and confirmation. Quality white papers will result if the professional regularly writes software industry-related articles and blog posts, participates in new product briefings from various vendors and start-ups, and continually monitors several software solution spaces. A business-technology professional who is well-connected in social media can also provide guidance to vendors for content marketing strategies that target white papers and social media.

 

The ‘New’ White Paper:

• Reflecting studies cited: high quality and accurate content, plenty of deep details (tech / business), 8 pages or less which engenders content that is tight, engaging, well-written, inspiring
• Often written from the customer POV, using customer language
• Covers trends that matter: new solution segments – transitions of solutions
• Real takeaways that benefit customers whether they buy the vendor solution or not - vendor is associated with insight to solving problem, doing things in new way that is useful
• Inform, educate at sophisticated level to provide real depth
• Create companion white papers when different customer roles come into play for the topic (business, tech, hybrid/composite)
• Passion in the treatment: blogging has shown that writing about software solutions is more engaging if the writer inserts personality into the work – apply this to white papers when appropriate
• Provoke thought about the solution space: new thinking for addressing needs; provoke desire to find out more;  provoke a conversation that will lead back to the vendor
• Look into employing variety of buyer scenarios to connect customers to relevance of topic
• Infographics, tech details, guidelines, suggested reading, links to other resources (not necessarily on vendor site) – all add to value in buyer eyes
• Format for readability, flow, quick-scanning, engagement
• Publish on the distributed web – not just on corporate site but share on sites frequented by buyers
• Stir the pot: encourage social media conversations through blogs, Twitter, forums, communities, Facebook; also actively contribute comments on relevant blogs
• Not self-serving brochure-ware solely touting vendor offering – but can address issues that matter to buyers that generally could be solved with vendor’s offering

 

Related Links

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the “customer as buyer”

I have a confession to make: I am a Hybrid

Goodbye Corporate Website – Hello Web Presence Management Framework?

 

  

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services