Marketing Sherpa just published an infographic based on the results of a survey of B2B marketers. It’s a useful overview of the B2B content marketing process. Their focus is essentially content marketing for lead generation.
It’s interesting that unlike a few years ago, when surveys often showed that marketers were still discussing the real business value in adopting a content marketing strategy, this time it’s looking more and more like the development of a (proven!) best practice. Here’s a distillation of that best practice:
1. Start with your website.
Establish clear business goals. Bear in mind your blog can sit inside or apart from your site – different goals, different tactics. Develop a keyword strategy based on your targets’ online search habits. That’s where you turn existing demand into targeted traffic.
2. Create valuable, targeted content
Drive results through publishing targeted, valuable optimised content. Your goal is to work your keyword strategy.
3. Think strategically about content delivery
Each buyer persona has different habits. They hang out in different places (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Scribd etc). So make sure that you use the right channel for the right content for the right target. Plus, maintaining frequency and high value in your content gets best results. Make sure your content creation, curation and content promotion are all manageable and scaleable.
A word of warning: according to the results 68% of those surveyed didn’t have a funnel. If you are among them, start with thinking about your personas before you start thinking about content!
Download the full infographic here.
