CONTENT MARKETING FOR B2B SOFTWARE COMPANIES1

CONTENT MARKETING FOR B2B SOFTWARE COMPANIES

CONTENT MARKETING FOR B2B SOFTWARE COMPANIES2

INTRODUCTIONIf you’re a B2B software company trying to grow, you must find effective

ways to build brand awareness, connect with customers and prospects,

and make sales. B2B software companies face unique challenges as they try

to educate prospective customers in real time about the problems their

products solve — problems those prospects might not even know they

have. One way to do this is through content marketing, which 99 percent

of software marketers reported using in a 2013 survey by the Content

Marketing Institute.

Content marketing is especially popular in the B2B software industry

because of the complex nature of software solutions, explains Jay Ivey,

market research associate at Software Advice, a research-based resource

for software buyers. “In the crowded B2B software marketplace, it can

be very difficult to for buyers to differentiate between solutions. Well-

executed content marketing allows buyers to discover and understand

a solution, and it keeps a brand top-of-mind in a competitive market.”

But creating great content and using it strategically is harder than

it may initially appear. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 B2B

Content Marketing Benchmarks report found even committed B2B

content marketers face challenges including “creating engaging content,”

“producing content consistently” and “measuring content effectiveness.”

This guide is designed to help you overcome these and other content

marketing challenges. It provides a framework for mapping out your

content marketing strategy, as well as advice and examples from B2B

software marketers who’ve created and executed successful content

marketing campaigns themselves.

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First, Know Your BuyerEvery effective content marketing strategy starts with a solid understand-

ing of who you want to buy your product. In a B2B sales environment, you

are selling to people with distinct problems and needs — or you may be in

the process of creating your own market. You need to figure out who the

people in this market are, including their:

• Job titles.

• Biggest challenges.

• Work roles

and responsibilities.

• Preferred methods

of communication.

• Level of knowledge

about your software and

competing products.

• Reading habits about their

industry, software and

other business matters.

You then need to use this information to create buyer personas — detailed

descriptions of the type of people you’re trying to sell to. This will help you

develop content tailored to their needs and interests.

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“We decided to let the content do the targeting for us.”

Here’s how:

• Talk to your sales team. It’s important that marketing and sales have

a strong relationship, says Erin Wasson, vice president of marketing at

Web-based relocation management software company UrbanBound.

The company developed its buyer personas via collaboration with its

marketing and sales teams. “Developing personas together provides

the greatest insight on customers, a unified buy-in from both

departments and enthusiasm around the strategy.”

• Assess your analytics. Review your website analytics to learn more

about your customers through their behavior. Take a look at demo-

graphics, keywords, how they get to your site and the pages they

view there.

• Look to online resources. Use public data to help hone your personas.

Bizible, a marketing attribution application for Salesforce, developed

a detailed picture of its customers by using LinkedIn to profile decision

makers and users at each customer company, says Dave Rigotti, the

company’s head of pipeline marketing. The marketing

team realized many prospects weren’t listing “Salesforce”

as a skill in their LinkedIn profiles, which posed a

challenge to their plans to run a LinkedIn ad-targeting

campaign. “We decided to let the content do the

targeting for us,” Rigotti says. “By broadening our targeting, but

using ‘Salesforce’ in the title of content, we were able to reach new

potential customers very effectively and at an average cost per lead

of 32 percent less than other promoted content campaigns.”

• Listen in. While you’re on LinkedIn, pay attention to the conversa-

tions your customers are having to better understand them. Join

relevant groups and note trending topics. Do the same on Twitter,

Facebook and any other social media sites your customers use.

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Develop and Document Your StrategyDeveloping a strategy to connect with your buyers is essential to content

marketing success, and documenting that strategy increases its effectiveness.

The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks

report found that a third of B2B companies using content marketing say they

have a documented content marketing strategy; slightly less than half say

they have a strategy, but it’s not documented. It also found 60 percent of

those with a documented strategy rate themselves highly in terms of content

marketing effectiveness, compared with 32 percent of those who haven’t

taken the time to document their strategy.

Your strategy should include information about your:

• Goals. Do you want to improve your website’s SEO? Educate your

potential market? Get more qualified inbound leads? Knowing your

goals will help you target your content more effectively.

• Buyer personas. It’s important to always keep in mind who you’re

trying to reach with your content marketing.

• Brand voice. Is your brand dynamic and edgy, or conservative and

traditional? You need to know so you can make your content’s tone

and style fit.

• Broad content topics. What types of topics are you going to create

content around? When you don’t document this, it’s easy to stray from

your strategy and create less-effective content.

• Content production process. Who is in charge of producing and

publishing content? Establish roles so everyone knows what they’re

supposed to do.

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• Publishing channels. Are you just going to blog, or will you also create

videos, images and other types of content? Where will you publish

each type?

• Publication frequency. How often do you plan to publish content? Be

realistic. It’s generally better to publish two high-quality blog posts a week

than a mediocre post every day.

• Promotional channels. Which social media sites and other venues will you

use to promote the content you produce? Set up a process for each type

of content so you’re not winging it.

• Metrics. Use analytics to track which channels and types of content are the

most effective, and reassess your tactics periodically to ensure they’re still

working well.

Create Conversations Across a Variety of ChannelsTake a coordinated approach across several platforms to establish a voice,

build trust with prospects and customers, and educate new markets about

your company’s software.

Phil Haslehurst, head of marketing for Decibel Insight, says his team takes

a 360-degree approach to getting content out on all channels. They create

videos, white papers, guides, infographics, podcasts and blog posts. Haslehurst

acknowledges it takes a lot of work, but the integrated approach is working.

Consistently share content in the places your customers are looking, but don’t

overwhelm your followers with too many updates. Get the most value out

of everything you create by repurposing content into additional blog posts,

social media updates, podcasts and webinars.

Remember: Promoting your content to make sure your prospects and customers

see it is just as important as creating it in the first place.

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Your Company Blog

Blogs are a great place to house your company’s original content and an effective

way to draw buyers to your website. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015

B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks report found 80 percent of companies

surveyed are using a company blog as part of their content marketing efforts.

If you’re looking to build relationships in your industry and establish brand

authority, you almost have to blog, and blog well, Ivey says.

Customer intelligence and Web analytics platform KISSmetrics has attracted a

loyal following of blog readers by prioritizing topics important to its prospects

and customers. “Although we maintain a frequency of about seven posts per

week, we maintain post quality above all else. If it doesn’t meet our standards,

we don’t publish it,” explains Lars Lofgren, director of growth at KISSmetrics. By

making content useful, interesting and relatable, people will keep coming back.

To be effective, a blog must be updated regularly (twice a week is a good

place to start), so put together an editorial calendar that shows everyone what

you’re publishing on which day — and who’s responsible for writing, editing,

uploading and promoting the post. Ensure each post you create is informative

and engaging, and don’t forget to include a visual element such as a photo,

illustration or simple infographic.

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Downloadable Assets: E-Books, White Papers and Guides

People value content that helps them stay on top of the latest trends and offers

them actionable advice they can use to perform better at their jobs — and

they’ll share their contact information to get it. Longer-form, downloadable

content is key to capturing visitors’ and followers’ contact information and

converting them into qualified leads.

These downloadable assets dive deeper into a topic than a blog post can, and

can tackle issues customers may be struggling with or establish your organiza-

tion as an industry thought leader. Rigotti recommends expanding on your

company’s most popular blog post topics in white papers, as readership of

the topic on the blog is a good indicator of interest in the topic. Watson

suggests using them to examine a new market segment, buyer persona or

pain point — don’t just cover the same topics over and over again. Include

expert input, surveys and analysis.

Email

Email can be one of the most effective and useful parts of your content

marketing strategy. Seventy-three percent of marketers agree email marketing

is core to their business, according to Salesforce’s 2015 State of Marketing.

“If you need to focus on directly generating and nurturing leads at a low

cost-per-lead, the first place to start for most businesses should be email

marketing,” Ivey says.

Email newsletters are great vehicles for sharing insights and helping educate

your customers and potential clients — and it’s easy to create them by repur-

posing your other content. Check your analytics to see which recent blog posts

are most popular, and put those at the top of your message. Use a template

so you don’t have to code it from scratch every time. Experiment with A/B

subject lines to see what your audience responds best to.

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Visual Assets

Visuals, such as Slideshare presentations and infographics, can help you grab

your audience’s attention and get your main points across. They’re also a great

branding opportunity. Infographics in particular, Lofgren says, are a popular,

easy-to-grasp, shareable, fun way to showcase what your software can do.

Decibel Insight put together a heatmap showing how current and past winners

of the London Marathon would fare against each other and shared it on its

blog, Haslehurst says. “These are the tidbits that we hope will keep our active

audience engaged, or pique the interest of influencers and customers and

lead them to share.”

To put together an infographic, Wasson recommends getting a graphic

designer’s input at the beginning of the project, rather than trying to take

an idea and push it into a template.

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Video

Videos can be especially useful for explaining complex technical solutions and

building a story around them, such as the video “What is DevOps? In Simple

English” from Rackspace, which has more than 65,000 views.

“For a B2B software company, video is definitely part of the supporting cast,”

Haslehurst says. While Decibel Insight doesn’t usually get new traffic through

video, he says the company’s established audience finds a lot of value in it.

“One effective strategy for us is using video to create content that explains

our software better to people who are already interested, and driving them

to it through email marketing and social media,” he explains. “Another really

effective use of video is to create support content for our customers — so

it contributes to retention, too. It’s amazing how quickly you can respond to

customer needs by creating a quick video. Once you’ve made it and posted it

to YouTube, it’s there for future customers who experience the same problem.”

Your videos don’t have to be hourlong, glossy productions. A 30-second

response to a question about your software is sometimes all you need. As with all

content, keep it informative and useful, and steer clear of heavy sales pitches.

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Where to Get Your Content IdeasOnce you know what kind of content you’re going to produce, you may feel

overwhelmed by the idea of having to come up with enough ideas. Here are

some of our favorite tips to get your creative juices flowing.

• Listen to your customers and clients. What kind of questions are they

asking? What are their concerns?

• Stay on top of the latest news. Offer your organization’s perspective on

current events and what they mean for your customers.

• Try a Q&A. Pick an industry leader or successful customer and ask him or

her to do a Q&A on a relevant topic. Interviewing other people makes for

great blog content, and it helps build real-life relationships.

• Keep an eye on the competition. Check out your competitors’ content

and offer your own take.

• Look at Google Analytics. Pay attention to what visitors are looking for

when they come to your website and you’ll probably find a few ideas.

Technology Seed Marketing and PR Manager Katie Bissel says she looks at

industry trends, general news items that are trending and common questions

from customers to get content topic ideas. “We figure if our customers are

asking, others are probably asking as well.”

Trade shows and conferences are also content goldmines, says Michele Linn,

vice president of content at the Content Marketing Institute. “Attend the con-

ference in the eyes of your audience. What would they find useful? Then take

the best insights you have learned and turn them into a summary blog post

or SlideShare. Also, think about ways you can use the content you create to

connect with people at the event, and follow up with them after.”

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How to Produce All This ContentNow that you’re brimming with ideas, it’s time to figure out who’s going to

make them a reality. Establish your editorial calendar and make production

a priority.

“Find time to write posts yourself, hire freelancers, have your engineer write

a post every now and then — whatever it takes,” Ivey says. Smaller organiza-

tions may need help producing content, especially if they don’t have anyone

on staff with strong writing or graphic design skills.

Almost anyone can get involved in producing content. Technology Seed pro-

duces all of its content internally, and not only by the marketing team, Bissel

says. Having everyone in the company contribute helps increase the variety

of perspectives, which she finds valuable.

Finding time isn’t easy, but by spreading out the work and making it a priority,

you can get it done.

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Remember to MeasureOnce you start publishing content, you must measure its performance.

“Measurement is essential to every piece of marketing, especially online,”

Lofgren says.

You’ll be able to make better content marketing decisions if you analyze and

understand your data, including those that indicate:

• The best publishing frequency.

• The best time of day to publish.

• Which sites drive the most

referral traffic.

• Which topics resonate with

your audience.

• Which platforms drive the most

inbound leads.

• How readers respond to your

email newsletter — list growth,

open rates and click rates.

“There is power in being able to report on the number of leads or other key

metrics that your content marketing program has generated,” Linn says.

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Conclusion With most B2B software companies using content marketing in some form to

attract and connect with prospects and customers, sporadically posting on

your blog and social media isn’t going to help you get ahead. To establish your

company as a thought leader, you’ll need to refine your content marketing

strategy and organize your team to execute it effectively. We hope the advice

and insights in this guide help.

If you have questions about reaching decision makers for SMB and enterprise

B2B software with content marketing, the Reputation Capital team is here to

help. We’re content experts and have extensive experience working with tech

companies. Contact us today.