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A DemandGen Report custom white paper for Brainshark
Citation preview
Same Content More Leads
An inside look at how progressive BtoB organizations
are jumping off the treadmill of traditional,
underperforming marketing channels and improving
the efficiency of their sales and marketing by
repurposing existing content and publishing it in new
formats.
Presented by
Sponsored by
Sale.” “We can now easily create and share
video, podcasts, slide decks, widgets and
more.”
In an interview with DemandGen Report,
Albee said that some sectors are likely to
see increased open rates and click-thru rates
by delivering content in a variety of formats,
which is becoming the obvious preference of a
growing number of executives. “Embrace the
interactive opportunities and make sure your
keywords and titles help your content get found
by those searching,” Albee said. “Your web site
is not the only place for your content to live.
Spread it around and watch who participates
with it. You may be surprised by new market
insights you wouldn’t have otherwise thought to
consider.”
This white paper will provide an inside look
at how leading marketers are reaching more
prospects by repurposing existing content
and delivering it in a creative, targeted and
measurable format that fuels successful lead
generation—while also saving time and money.
Every day some 247 billion emails are sent.
That’s some 90 trillion per year. And the
reality of the flooded inbox is that traditional
media channels, such as email, only generate
response rates in the 1% to 3% range.
According to SiriusDecisions data, the number
of campaigns received per week for the average
buyer has increased 32% since 2006, with the
average buyer now receiving 20.3 campaigns
weekly.
So how do you ensure that your company’s
message is heard? How do you create
compelling and timely marketing content that
can stand out in the inbox and rise above the
clutter and competition? The old batch and
blast mentality of email marketing has clearly
passed its prime, and the overcrowding and low
turnout for webinars has made it harder to truly
engage prospects in that format.
To successfully get prospects to raise their
hands and engage with offers, BtoB marketers
need to provide content that is targeted,
engaging and delivered in a compelling
multimedia format, via multiple channels and
accessible on multiple types of devices.
Many progressive companies are refreshing
content that has grown stale sitting on the shelf
by updating the messaging and putting it into
new, more interactive formats. “The variety of
formats now available for marketers to use is
expanding fast” said Ardath Albee, author of the
book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex
“The variety of formats now available for marketers to use
is expanding fast. We can now easily create and share
video, podcasts, slide decks, widgets and more.”
- Ardath Albee, author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale
2 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
campaigns, provide no real engagement metrics
after a prospect downloads. “As a marketer,
you have no real idea if they read the paper or if
they passed it along to members of their team,”
Kardon said. “Tools like Brainshark give us
intelligence into when they viewed the content
and how long they stayed engaged.”
In addition to seeing increased “absorption”
and improved engagement metrics, Kardon
said multimedia platforms are helping BtoB
marketers stretch their marketing dollars by
migrating existing content messages into new
formats.
To engage prospects in their preferred medium,
progressive marketers have learned it is critical
to deliver their message in a customized,
targeted presentation that is short, to-the-point
and utilizes multimedia tools. To be heard above
the noise and clutter of email for example,
utilizing video, audio and tracking tools offer
a better response rate coupled with a better
return on investment than traditional benign
email blasts and bulky attachments.
THE CAMPAIGN REFRESHThe reality for most marketers today is that
they are being asked to do more with less.
They typically need to feed more leads—as well
as better qualified leads—to their sales team,
while working with budgets that are leaner
than in past years. In order to succeed in this
challenging climate, marketers need to have
at their disposal a pool of sales and marketing
content that they can glean from and craft
customized campaigns to reach prospects
at any time—quickly—throughout the buying
cycle. And that means continually refreshing
campaign content from multiple sources that
can be repurposed in creative ways that focus
on the specific areas of interest of your target
audiences.
Brian Kardon, CMO of Eloqua, one of the
top marketing automation providers, said
Eloqua, as well as many of his clients, are now
incorporating more on-demand multimedia
platforms like Brainshark into their demand
generation campaigns. “Every prospect has
a different way they like to absorb content,”
Kardon said. “Some people prefer traditional
white papers and webinars, but others are
looking for more interactive formats that they
can turn on at their leisure.”
Although webinars are typically offered on-
demand, Kardon pointed out that they are
somewhat “time-locked,” which can limit
their effectiveness. And white papers, which
are still a staple of many demand generation
“Every prospect has a different
way they like to absorb content.
Some people prefer traditional
white papers and webinars,
but others are looking for more
interactive formats that they can
turn on at their leisure.”
- Brian Kardon, CMO of Eloqua
3 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
are all fueled by content. Lots of it,” Albee said.
“That puts a lot of pressure on limited marketing
resources to churn out not only volume, but
also quality content that delivers a consistent
storyline to a variety of target markets and
customers.”
For example, one white paper can help you
create five ancillary pieces of content:
• A series of articles or blog posts;
• Several articles and a few blog posts;
• Several scripts for multimedia slidecasts
(slides plus audio);
• A webinar on the same topic (give the
white paper away as a bonus);
• Targeted, multimedia emails;
Further, the Rule of Five is designed to help
marketers provide targeted content all along the
purchasing cycle—quickly and efficiently. But
the trick today is to take that content and deliver
it via formats that resonate with the target
MAPPING CONTENTThe reality of engaging prospects across
different mediums with different messages
requires a coordinated library of content where
you can cherry-pick the message, data and
information that you need to reach specific
customers or a database of prospects. And,
working with budget constraints, most
marketers need to accomplish this at a
reasonable cost. Albee advises marketers to
create an editorial/content calendar to help
identify how content development efficiencies
can be achieved.
Albee is an advocate of the “Rule of Five” when
it comes to content. The Rule of Five simply
states that each and every content development
undertaking should produce content assets
that can be used five different ways in order
to increase the efficiency of your spend and
engage prospects in their preferred medium.
“Lead nurturing, inbound pull, social networks,
blogs, email and other e-marketing activities
“In order to get attention, marketers must develop
valuable, relevant, compelling and consistent messages so
that prospects actually ‘opt-in’ to receive the marketing. It’s the
ultimate non-sell. Tomorrow’s marketing is all about publishing.”
- Joe Pulizzi, Chief Content Officer of Junta42
4 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
Pulizzi said marketers need to create consistent
and compelling content like any publisher.
And in today’s world, that requires utilizing
multiple channels. It’s also important to get
more mileage out of your content by slicing
and dicing it to target prospects all along the
discovery through purchasing cycle.
Another key point marketers need to
remember—in thinking as publishers—is that
their content must be more attractive and
compelling than the other offers arriving on a
reader’s desk or landing in their inbox. That
includes the delivery vehicle too. Sending out
a broad benign email coupled with a 50-slide
PowerPoint attachment is guaranteed to end
up in the trash bin. “You have to examine the
analytics and see what works and what does
not, so you can adjust and deliver messaging
that is on target and engaging,” Pulizzi said.
Further, it’s important to create within your
company—like any publisher worth his/her
salt—analytic tools to gain deep knowledge of
audience. This approach greatly increases the
odds that it will be opened and ideally tracked
to facilitate a targeted sales call designed to
personally engage a prospect.
THINKING LIKE A PUBLISHERAccording to Joe Pulizzi, co-author of the
book “Get Content, Get Customers” and
Chief Content Officer of Junta42, a web site
that focuses on custom content strategies,
marketers should view themselves as publishers
and their customers and prospects as readers.
The increased focus on feeding social media,
search engine optimization and lead generation
has led to what Pulizzi has called the “perfect
storm of content.”
Recent research from Junta42 supports the
premise that content continues to be king, as
more and more marketers shift their spending
to conversational messages. The 2010 Content
Marketing Survey found 59% of marketing
professionals plan to increase their spending
on content marketing this year. The marketing
professionals polled in the survey indicated
they are planning to allocate an all-time high of
33% of their overall budget to custom efforts.
“Customers are finding more ways to block
unwanted messages,” Pulizzi said. “In order to
get attention, marketers must develop valuable,
relevant, compelling and consistent messages
so that prospects actually ‘opt-in’ to receive the
marketing. It’s the ultimate non-sell. Tomorrow’s
marketing is all about publishing.”
“By eliminating the need for registration in order to gain
access to your white papers, eBooks, and other valuable
content, you remove the initial barriers to building
relationships with prospects.”
- Jon Miller, VP of Marketing of Marketo
5 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
your customers/readers. And that entails having
real-time tools in place to capture data in order
to push out targeted and engaging content to
increase product interest, lead generation and,
ultimately, sales.
REMOVING THE GATESWhile the traditional strategy to marry content
marketing with lead generation was built
around putting offers such as white papers and
webinars out through gated registration forms—
requiring prospects to supply their contact
information in exchange for the content—the
explosion of social media has rewritten the rules
on content distribution.
David Meerman Scott, author of “New Rules
of Marketing & PR,” recently estimates content
from white papers and eBooks would be
downloaded between 20 times to 50 times more
if they were offered without a registration gate in
front of the download.
In a recent blog post titled “Seed Nurturing and
the Future of Lead Nurturing,” Jon Miller, VP
of marketing at marketing automation vendor
Marketo, agrees that social media is changing
the rules of communicating with prospects. “By
eliminating the need for registration in order
to gain access to your white papers, eBooks,
and other valuable content, you remove the
initial barriers to building relationships with
prospects,” Miller wrote.
However, shifting to ungated delivery models
doesn’t mean sales and marketing can afford
to give up on measurement. It is now more
important than ever that content messaging
be measured, analyzed and repurposed in
multiple formats and media to continually target
prospects throughout the purchasing cycle.
IMPACTING THE SELLING PROCESSTim Riesterer, a 20-year marketing veteran
with a diverse sales, marketing and advertising
corporate portfolio, and co-author of
“Customer Message Management: Increase
Marketing’s Impact on Selling,” has become an
evangelist for on-demand presentations, stating
that they are the best sales tool marketing has
ever created.
“What we discovered is that a very brief email
that compels somebody to click on a link to
watch something with the promise that it will
be brief, hard hitting and insightful, is way more
powerful than email alone,” he said.
As CMO of Corporate Visions, a Nevada-based
company that helps clients create, deliver and
sustain messages that offer a differentiated
customer experience at the point of sale,
Riesterer knows about compressing complex
sales messages. The firm helps companies
translate the 30,000-foot company message
into a three-foot customer conversation in a
way that sets them apart from competitors,
communicates value and wins more profitable
business.
Riesterer explains that his company doesn’t
send out a single email without a Brainshark
6 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
a 70% improvement in the ability to get hold
of someone following a Brainshark email,
compared to when we just sent out a regular
email in the past,” notes Riesterer.
Riesterer also says people have tuned-out
regular email solicitations—and the low
response rates reflect that downward spiral.
With spam filters and firewalls blocking emails
with attachments, the odds further decrease
that your email will ever being opened. “Even
click-through or open rates have been a poor
judge to determine if a person has any qualified
interest ... because you can’t tell how serious
that person is about your product, which
can burn a lot of marketing cycles on poorly
qualified interest leads,” he says.
Utilizing Brainshark, Riesterer can respond
to serious prospects fast because the
sophisticated tracking mechanism allows him
to know what the prospect is focused on. For
example, he points to a webcast sent out to
prospects and found that it quickly went viral
and was passed around to 100 different people
who viewed the presentation. “This was spurred
from one original viewer who passed it along,
and we tracked it, which enabled us to track the
behavior of as it went around the inside of our
prospect’s company,” he said.
Because Brainshark is used for all lead-
generation digital marketing initiatives, Riesterer
says 45% of his qualified leads in the sales
link to it. Riesterer uses Brainshark email
campaigns to launch new products, notify
customers of events, and share industry
research and thought-leadership content.
“Basically the email contains one sentence and
three bullet points that compel a reader to click
the link to watch a two-minute presentation,”
Riesterer explains, adding: “We drive people
quickly to the online presentation—which is
trackable—and then we can follow up with a
phone call.”
Knowing the analytics of what recipients viewed
and how long they viewed a presentation,
provides immediate feedback to the sales team.
Sales can then tailor a follow-up call based on
the touch points of the recipient captured from
the analytics.
And because the sales team is armed with
exact knowledge of a prospect’s interest, the
odds increase dramatically to reach prospects
with a follow-up phone call because the sales
team can strike a chord with the viewer’s
top-of-mind interest. “I’d say we have seen
7 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
the investigative and purchasing cycle. Further,
the company knows that its technical product
information has to reach numerous people
involved in purchasing decisions. And, that
information needs to be direct in order to stave-
off distortion that can occur when information is
passed from one person to another—especially
when targeting a diverse global technical
community.
A tall order, indeed. But Malvern’s marketing
team discovered a strategy that allows it to
craft—and repurpose—its library of print, digital
and event marketing materials to increase lead
generation and response rates, and to better
communicate with its existing customer base.
“Scientists thirst for good information, and
because they live on the web, they want it
now,” says Randy Byrne, VP of Marketing, at
Malvern’s U.S. headquarters in Westborough,
MA. “But many people in our industry
(marketing) still approach marketing like they
did 20 years ago … information today has to be
targeted, delivered fast and measured,” he said.
pipeline were generated from utilizing the data
captured from a Brainshark marketing initiative.
“I can tell you the source,” he explains, “and
that basically is the fabric of our demand-
generation promotional campaigns, event
promotions, and sales follow-up. Every product
we have has a Brainshark, so when somebody
asks me about our products, we don’t send a
two-page overview, we send a Brainshark,” he
adds.
Riesterer stresses that Brainshark puts his sales
and marketing team in a position to guide and
facilitate their messaging throughout the buying
cycle—with real analytical knowledge—rather
than just “hoping that they watched or read
something,” he said.
CASE IN POINT: A NEW WAY TO DELIVER YOUR MESSAGE — AND INCREASE RESPONSEAs a leading supplier of analytical solutions and
instruments that measure the complexities of
macro molecules and nanomaterials, Malvern
Instruments serves a global—and highly
technical—customer base. Headquartered in
the United Kingdom, Malvern constantly strives
to engage highly technical decision-makers with
need-to-know-now data, specifications and
information—fast.
And that requires Malvern to utilize an array
of digital marketing tools that can be quickly
crafted—and delivered—during every stage of
8 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
can examine the analytics and follow-up with a
phone call—knowing that the prospect already
has expressed interest in a specific product or
solution.
“When we send out an email blast, we’ll say
up front how long the presentation is so the
recipient can either view it immediately or set
aside time to view the presentation later,” Byrne
said. He adds that because the Brainshark
emails capture the recipient’s data, “we can
continue to send that person very specific
emails because we already know they have
expressed interest in a specific product.”
To that end, Malvern initiated an email strategy
using the Brainshark application that delivers
targeted, engaging, and most importantly,
measurable marketing and sales information
that increases response rates to the point where
they don’t even measure ROI anymore.
“We call it switching on the light,” explained
Byrne. The “light” he refers to is the lead-
generation response rate attained by sending
out targeted emails powered by Brainshark.
Here’s how it works: Byrne will generally
email out audio/video presentations to a
targeted audience gleaned from its customer/
prospect database. The key is to keep the
email introduction short and move the recipient
to click to the presentation. Here again, the
recipient is informed that the presentation
will only take a few minutes of his/her time.
When the prospect opens the email and clicks
the link to the presentation, the prospect’s
information is captured and the marketing team
9 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
“Information today has to be targeted, delivered fast
and measured.”- Randy Byrne, VP of Marketing of Malvern
CONCLUSION
By graduating from a one-and-done approach to content marketing, leading BtoB
organizations are optimizing their offers by transforming stale content into more
immersive, interactive mediums. Since executives are more comfortable accessing
content in digital formats, they are able to measure and track prospect engagement
beyond simple open rates to get detailed analytical data.
“Marketers need to consider that every touch point leaves an impression,” Albee said.
“When consistent, the cumulative effect of these impressions builds credibility through
the delivery of information and insights considered valuable from the prospect’s
perspective. This is why one-off touches don’t work well. They tend to be all over the
board based on whatever the company thinks is important at the time. This tells a
disjointed story in the eyes of your audience.”
Rather than living with the low response rates of traditional email marketing or settling
for less than half of webinar registrants actually showing up for the event, many
marketers are taking steps to stop pouring their budgets into the same old channels.
As a successful alternative, many progressive companies are breaking out of the
traditional e-mail blast and webinar cycle and attracting qualified prospects with more
desirable and differentiated offers utilizing interactive and measurable platforms.
10 • A DEMANDGEN REPORT WHITE PAPER
ABOUT BRAINSHARK
Brainshark is the leader in on-demand multimedia for business.
The company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform enables
businesspeople to create relevant, timely, measurable content
that their audiences can access anytime, anywhere, on almost
any type of device. Marketers use Brainshark to drive demand,
launch new products, and increase mindshare with their
prospects, customers, employees and partners.
ABOUT DEMANDGEN REPORT
DemandGen Report is a targeted e-media publication spotlighting
the strategies and solutions that help companies better align
their sales and marketing organizations, and ultimately, drive
growth. A key component of our coverage focuses on the sales
and marketing automation tools that enable companies to better
measure and manage their multi-channel demand generation
efforts.