eMarketer Webinar: Maximizing your B2B Content Marketing ROI

© 2016 eMarketer Inc.

Made possible by

Maximizing your B2B Content

Marketing ROI

Jillian Ryan

Analyst

April 7, 2016


Today’s Agenda:

The Evolving B2B Content Marketing Landscape

Thinking Long-Term: Nurturing Leads

Laying the Groundwork for Maximum Return

Creation, Dissemination and Optimization

The Cost-Effective Flywheel


The Evolving B2B Content

Marketing Landscape


B2B marketers expect to increase their content

creation efforts this year

76% anticipated creating

more content in 2016

than they did in 2015


The Changing Digital Ad Landscape

Traditional digital streams are oversaturated and too

expensive

Concerns like ad blindness, viewability and ad blocking

make it harder to reach B2B buyers

Digital ad campaigns are a one-shot strategy

Content provides a permanent “home.” Unlike an ad, it

doesn’t disappear if an action doesn’t occur straight

away


Content can create an authentic story and

relationship with the customer

“Content marketing

allows for a two-way

exchange, and a

meaningful,

authentic dialogue

and conversation

with the

customer.”

—Steve Chadwick, Director,

Marketing Communications,

Verizon Enterprise

Solutions

“Content marketing

facilitates a

long-term value

exchange between

brands and

buyers, creating

customers who stay

longer and buy more.”

—Joe Pulizzi, Founder and

CEO, The Content

Marketing Institute


B2B marketing budgets aren’t heavily invested in

content marketing

72%


Content marketing is deemed effective


Content marketing generates leads


Thinking Long-Term:

Nurturing Leads


The number of leads

is no longer content

marketing’s leading

performance metric.

Sales conversions is

the top consideration,

with lead quality and

cost savings rising in

importance, too


B2B marketers are focused on conversion rates


Generating leads isn’t enough to show success;

leads are people and need to be nurtured

“When a lead enters

the funnel, they

need to have

consumed enough

content from you

that they’re ready

to make a

purchase.”

—Annette Barnes Promes,

CMO, Moz

“Buyers want to

understand how

different vendors see

the world. The more

content they read,

the more they get a

sense of what a

company offers.”

—Tomasz Tunguz, venture

capitalist, Redpoint Ventures


B2B buyers consume a lot of content before

making a purchase


Content marketing can feel like a waiting game

“In order for content marketing to work, we’ve got to create value before

we extract that value. Extracting value too soon kills the

relationship with the customer, and that’s why, in a lot of cases,

content marketing doesn’t work.”

—Joe Pulizzi, Founder and CEO, The Content Marketing Institute

“The No. 1 cardinal sin is that B2B marketers do not stick

with content marketing long enough. They are quick to say, ‘It’s

underperforming. Let’s not do content marketing anymore.’ And no matter

the challenges, that is the worst thing to do.”

—Jeremy Goldman, CEO and Founder, Firebrand Group


Laying the Groundwork for

Maximum Return


Some B2Bs have problems with the basics

38% of B2B marketers have “no content strategy that

tracks to business.”

Source: CMO Council, Content ROI Center and NetLine, Q2 2015

92% of B2B marketers have trouble meeting content

deadlines, and 90% felt that redundant content

creation was inefficient.

Source: Gleanster in association with Kapost, April 2015


Building a content marketing engine takes time

“Looking back, it was an incredibly

hard journey. Even just getting the

right people in place and getting all of

marketing to take content seriously as

an organization, it was difficult,

like herding cats.”

—Amrita Thapar, Content Leader, Genpact


Know your audience and their buyer journey

Content becomes irrelevant if individual assets are

designed for more than a single audience

Generic content can be a wasted effort. It must be

designed for a specific archetype and be

audience-focused

Brands need to understand who they are speaking to:

1. Who the buyers are

2. Where they are in the buyer journey


B2Bs recognize the importance of audience

82%

used buyer

personas and buyer

journey maps

Source: Akoonu, August 2015

93%

believed

understanding the

customer buying

journey is important

Source: Regalix, January 2016


Developing buyer profiles:

62% of senior B2B marketing and sales professionals in

North America used persona-based marketing to drive

content creation.

58% modeled best customers and identified best

audience segments.

Common criteria to develop buyer personas included: job

function, title, core buyer pain points, product interest,

purchase authority, and size/revenue of the company.

(Source: Dun & Bradstreet, December 2015)


A B2B buyer’s department is also important to

consider when creating content


Audience research streamlines content marketing

“After categorizing

content based on

parts of our

customer’s journey,

we realized that we were

producing a lot more at the

top of the funnel than we

did mid- and post-sale.”

—Loni Stark, Senior Director,

Strategy and Product Marketing,

Adobe

“We talk to our current

clients, to prospects, and

we define what that

customer lifecycle journey

looks like, to find

challenges and

opportunities to

answer their

questions with our

content.”

—Ken Wincko, SVP, Marketing,

PR Newswire


Creation, Dissemination

and Optimization


Effective content types vary depending on your

company’s goals …

For B2Bs looking

to drive leads,

white papers and

webinars were

the best content

marketing tactics


… but certain

content types are

more effective at

various stages of

the buying

process


US B2B buyers

found third-party

and analyst

reports to be the

most valuable

type of content

during the

decision-making

process


Other B2B buyer attitudes on content marketing:

100% placed a higher emphasis on the trustworthiness

of the source, and 95% were willing to consider

vendor-related content trustworthy. Source: Demand Gen Report, January 2016

On-demand and mobile-optimized content were

important factors for content consumption.

83% found themselves overwhelmed by the amount of

content available.


The majority of

B2B buyers have

opinions on how

content can be

improved


Utilizing the right channel to disseminate

content isn’t a one-and-done deal

Two-thirds of US B2B

enterprise marketers

delivered content via five

or more different

marketing tactics


Common digital

distribution

channels for B2B

marketing

executives

included website,

email, SEO and

social


Just as the

effectiveness of

content type varies

across the buying

cycle, so does the

preferred content

channel


Email and LinkedIn were the leading channels

used for sharing business-related content


B2B marketers implemented the following

optimization tactics in 2015:

A/B and/or

multivariate testing

Landing page

optimization

Progressive profiling


Testing enhances performance and provides insight

“We’re looking at content

consumption to understand

what’s top of mind for the

market so that we can then

double-down in those

areas, whether it’s

through additional

content or specific

campaigns that are

tied to those topics.”

—Andy Hilton, Vice President of

Communications, Content and

Brand, ADP

“When content was

underperforming, we

studied the variables—the

title, summary, the site’s

structure, the location on

the landing page—and we

tested, optimized it.

We saw a double-digit

lift in conversion.”

—Ken Wincko, SVP, Marketing,

PR Newswire


Repurposing existing assets maximizes effort

“We produce in-depth

content about specific

business challenges. Then

we make derivative

content for our

audience who may

not want to commit

to reading a 20-page

report.”

—Loni Stark, Senior Director,

Strategy and Product

Marketing, Adobe

“We deconstruct our

content into more

relevant, snackable,

consumable pieces

along the buying journey

rather than pushing full

reports out and hoping

somebody reads it.”

—Steve Chadwick, Director,

Marketing Communications,

Verizon Enterprise Solutions


The Cost-Effective

Flywheel


Spinning the Flywheel


Content marketing’s long tail provides

“compounding returns”

The freshest content

usually doesn’t see the

most traffic

As content is shared,

linked to and indexed by

search engines, it gets

more traffic over time

Evergreen content creates

the flywheel, delivering

increased results through

its long tail


Content marketing allows B2B companies to truly

own their audience, rather than just rent it

“Trying to rent an audience

through media is getting

more expensive, less

effective. But if you own

your audience

through content, they

keep coming back.”

—Patricia Travaline, CMO,

Skyword

“By dealing more directly with

your customer through your

content, you have more

data and a better

understanding of your

customer.”

—Jeremy Goldman, CEO and

Founder, Firebrand Group


A cost-effective investment?

“yes…”

“over time…”

“with the right investment…”


Let’s recap:

Content marketing is effective; more content is being produced

to create authenticity and value

B2B buyers are real people with a long decision-making

process and marketers must think long-term and nurture leads

Pre-work must be done before starting to create content in

order to maximize return

Effective content marketing strategies must incorporate a

continual process of content creation, dissemination and

optimization

As the flywheel spins, momentum allows for compounding

returns and B2B marketers often begin to own their audience,

thus maximizing cost-effectiveness over time

Copyright © 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

4

Oracle Marketing Cloud

Kaila GarrisonHead of Product MarketingOracle Marketing Cloud


Winning with an Effective Content Marketing Strategy


Everyone Believes Content is King

of enterprise CMOs said that content marketing is important

to their business in 2014.

91%indexed pages of content in

Google. In 2008, only 1 trillion.

30 TRILLION of marketers say they are

producing more content than they did a year ago.

73%of content is wasted

each day.

70%

But it Fails to Deliver


Content is Not Strategic

of Marketers say they lack a consistentor integrated content strategy

– Altimeter Group

70%

Marketers employ the “spray & pray” approach instead of an overall strategy.


of customers are frustrated that web content doesn’t

map to their interest

74%

Mark Jones, 29INETERESTS: Skiing, Grilling,

Camping, Base Jumping

There is a Broken Marketers Experience for Content

Content is Not Personalized

As a result we have a broken customer experience.


It’s Time for Marketers to Take a Different Approach.


Scale Relevant Content Across Customer JourneyWith Oracle’s Content Marketing solution, create personas and deliver your audience relevant, contextualized content throughout their journey


Enterprise ReadyCreate large volumes of targeted content

Why The Oracle Marketing Cloud?

Deliver Personalized ExperienceProvide 1:1 messaging through content developed for specific personas and funnel stages

Marketing SimplicityProvide central view of editorial schedule, content repository, and analytics


Learn more about digital marketing with an

eMarketer corporate subscription

Around 200 eMarketer reports are published

each year. Here are some recent reports you

may be interested in:

Q&A Session

Made possible by

You will receive an email tomorrow with a link to view the deck and

webinar recording.

To learn more: www.emarketer.com/products

800-405-0844 or [email protected]

Jillian Ryan

Analyst

Maximizing your B2B Content

Marketing ROI

B2B Content Marketing in the US: Maximizing ROI and

Cost-Effectiveness over Time

Six B2B Mobile Marketing Trends for 2016: With a More Mobile

Workplace, Budgets and Tactics Must Follow

Marketing Automation: Examining Users and Usage, and

What's Coming Next

Marketing Technology: The Six Developments That Matter the

Most in 2016