How to Make Personalization Work in a Privacy-Conscious World

In my last post, I wrote that it's time for marketers to rethink their approach to personalization. The value of personalized marketing has been widely recognized for nearly two decades, and most marketing pundits are recommending that marketers expand their use of personalization. They contend that marketers should make personalization more specific and use it more frequently, in more channels, and for more types of communications and experiences.

The problem with this "more personalization" approach is that it fails to account for widespread and growing privacy concerns among both consumers and business buyers. Personalized marketing will not reach its full potential unless marketers use an approach that addresses these privacy concerns. Simply increasing the use of personalization will be ineffective at best, and may do more harm than good.

Personalization has been the subject of numerous research studies over the past few years, and these studies provide a good picture of what is required for personalized marketing to produce maximum results. There are three major components of an effective personalization strategy.

Make Personalization Useful

The first requirement for effective personalized marketing is that it must deliver meaningful and pragmatic value to the recipient. A 2018 study by Gartner/CEB documents the business value of personalization that is perceived by customers and prospects to be helpful. I've previously discussed this research, so I won't repeat that material here. For a more detailed description of the Gartner/CEB study see this post.

Make Personalization "Relationship-Appropriate"

The second component of an effective personalization strategy is to use a level of personalization that is appropriate for each customer or prospect. By appropriate, I mean that the level of personalization should match the real-world status of the relationship. A message or offer sent to a long-time customer can and should be more personalized than a first outreach to a new prospect.

To be effective, personalized marketing must be based on genuine insights about your customers and prospects. When you take personalization beyond such insights, it becomes inauthentic and will tend to be perceived as presumptuous. Corporate Visions recently conducted a field trial involving this principle, and you can read more about that research in this post.

Get Meaningful Permission for Personalization

Much of the concern about data privacy and personalization revolves around the issues of transparency and control. Many consumers and business buyers aren't confident they know what personal data companies are collecting about them or how that data is used. And many feel they don't have any meaningful control over those data practices.

Several recent research studies have shown how important transparency and control are for customers and prospects. For example, in a 2019 survey of 3,000 people in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., The Harris Poll asked participants about the importance of several data privacy practices. The following table shows the percentage of survey respondents who rated four transparency and control practices as very important or absolutely essential:

These research findings point the way to the third important component of an effective personalization strategy. In a world where privacy concerns are heightened, permission is critical to successful personalized marketing. If all the research about personalization tells us anything, it tells us that most consumers and business buyers will welcome and value personalized content when it is helpful, authentic, and based on permission that is willingly and consciously given.

So, how can marketers gain this kind of permission? There are three key steps.

Use Personalization "Programs" - In most cases, personalization efforts should be organized into discrete programs, each of which is designed to provide a specific type of value to a specific type of customer or prospect. This approach leads marketers to focus on the purpose of personalized marketing from the recipient's perspective.

Invite Participation - Invite your customers and/or prospects to "subscribe" to personalized content on a program-by-program basis, and reassure them that subscribing to one program won't open the floodgates to other marketing communications.

Be Transparent - It's important to be "radically" transparent in your invitation about the details of the personalization program. The main objective of the invitation is to persuade customers or prospects to participate in the program. So it should include:

• Why the program will be useful and valuable for the recipient
• What personal information will be used, and how the information will be used
• How the personalized content will be delivered (format)
• How frequently the personalized content will be delivered
• The duration of the program
• A clear statement that the recipient has the option to "unsubscribe" at any time

It's About How - Not Whether - to Personalize 

The issue for marketers is not whether to personalize marketing content and customer experiences. The evidence is clear that customers and prospects want and appreciate the increased relevance that personalization can provide. The real issue is how to deliver personalization in a way that respects privacy. By making personalization helpful, authentic, and permission-based, marketers will reap the maximum benefits of personalized marketing.

Top image courtesy of Josh Hallett via Flickr CC.

Related Articles

Why It's Time to Rethink Personalization

With Personalization, Less Can Be More

Two Ways to Make Personalization Welcomed

The Growing Personalization Conundrum for Marketers

Share:

Three Critical Steps for Thought Leadership Success

It's now abundantly clear that compelling thought leadership content has become a vital component of effective marketing for most B2B companies. Numerous research studies have demonstrated that business buyers are relying on thought leadership content and that it has a significant impact on purchase decisions.

The 2020 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study by Edelman Business Marketing and LinkedIn provides more convincing evidence that good thought leadership content has become essential for successful B2B marketing. This research involved a survey of 3,275 global business executives across a wide range of industries and company sizes.

The survey was fielded in September - October of last year, and respondents were drawn from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, India, and Singapore. Nearly 1,200 of the respondents were located in the United States.

The Edelman/LinkedIn study clearly shows the importance and value of compelling thought leadership content. For example:

• Nearly half of the survey respondents (48%) said they spend at least one hour per week consuming thought leadership content, and 17% reported spending four hours or more per week.
• 69% agreed that consuming thought leadership content is one of the best ways to get a sense of the caliber of an organization's thinking.
• 48% said that thought leadership content had led them to award business to a company.

It's also clear, however, that thought leadership can be a double-edged sword. In the Edelman/LinkedIn survey, only 17% of the respondents rated the quality of the thought leadership content they consume as very good or excellent, while 28% rated the quality as mediocre or very poor. One in four of the respondents (25%) said that consuming a company's thought leadership content had directly led them not to award business to the company.

What Makes Thought Leadership Content Effective

Several research studies have identified the attributes that make thought leadership content persuasive. While the exact descriptions used in these studies vary somewhat, the research findings demonstrate that three attributes are critical.

1. It must address a topic and provide information that is relevant and important to the target audience.
2. It must provide information that is novel (not previously available).
3. It must be authoritative (supported by credible evidence).

Laying the Foundation for Thought Leadership Success

Producing thought leadership content that will earn and keep the attention and respect of your target audiences is not an easy task, but there are three preliminary steps you can take to lay a sound foundation for your thought leadership effort.

Step 1:  Set high standards for your thought leadership content. Remember that thought leadership content must address subjects that are relevant and important to your target audience, it must provide novel information or insight, and it must be authoritative. Don't make compromises regarding these standards.

Step 2:  Be realistic about the volume of thought leadership content you can produce. Effective thought leadership content almost always requires original research, and original research takes time. Therefore, you need to set realistic goals for the amount of thought leadership content you will produce during any given period of time.

Step 3:  Before you start, conduct sufficient research to get a clear understanding of the "knowledge landscape" that's relevant for your business, and keep that understanding up to date. You can't identify topics that will be appropriate for thought leadership content until you know what subjects have already been addressed. To develop thought leadership content that is novel, you will usually want to avoid topics that have already been discussed. However, there are three notable exceptions to this general rule.

• First, a broad topic may have been previously discussed, but specific aspects of the topic may not have been thoroughly covered. These particular aspects can be good subjects for thought leadership content if they are relevant and important to your customers and/or prospects.
• Second, if a topic has not been addressed for a significant amount of time, it can be appropriate to take a fresh look at that topic.
• And third, if a topic has already been addressed but the existing treatment is flawed or incomplete, that can be an appropriate subject for thought leadership content.

Obviously, these three steps are not all that's needed for a successful thought leadership program. You will also need to conduct any required original research, produce the thought leadership content resources, and implement activities to distribute and promote those resources. But these three preliminary steps will provide a solid foundation for an effective thought leadership effort.

Illustration courtesy of Abhijit Bhadurl via Flickr CC.

Related Articles

Why Your Marketing Content Should Be "Job Focused"

Effective B2B Marketing Demands Original Research 

B2B Buyers Remain Skeptical About Vendor Content

The Growing Influence of Compelling Thought Leadership

Share:

Why Your Marketing Content Should Be "Job Focused"

The first step to designing an effective marketing strategy and creating compelling marketing content is to understand what your potential customers are trying to accomplish when they purchase products or services like those you provide. In most cases, people don't buy a product or service because they want that product or service itself. More often, what they really want is what the product or service will help them accomplish.

Theodore Levitt, the legendary professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School, captured this idea in a memorable way when he often reminded his students that, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole."

In The Innovator's Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor built on Professor Levitt's idea to describe what is called the jobs-to-be-done framework. The basic idea of this framework is that when people become aware of a "job" they need to get done, they look for a product or service they can "hire" to perform the job.

Christensen and Raynor argue that this is how customers "experience life." Their thought processes begin with an awareness that they need to get something done, and then they seek to hire something or someone to to the job as effectively, conveniently, and inexpensively as possible.

What Milkshakes Can Teach Us About Marketing

Christensen and Raynor also provided a memorable example of hiring a product to get a job done. In their case study, a fast-food restaurant chain wanted to increase sales of milkshakes, and it commissioned market research to determine how to accomplish this goal. The most surprising finding of the research was that almost half of the milkshakes were purchased in the early morning. The milkshakes were usually the only item purchased, and they were rarely consumed at the restaurant.

Digging a little deeper, the researchers found that most of the morning milkshake customers were people on their way to work. Many of them faced a long commute, and they needed something to make the drive more interesting. Also, they were in a hurry, they were usually wearing their business clothes, and they only had one hand free.

These customers sometimes "hired" other foods to fill their morning needs, but most of the alternatives had significant disadvantages. Bagels left crumbs on their clothes, and breakfast sandwiches made their hands and the steering wheel greasy. It wasn't so much that these customers "liked" milkshakes more than bagels or breakfast sandwiches, but milkshakes were simply better than those alternatives at performing the job the customers needed to get done.

The Magic of Job-Focused Marketing

The jobs-to-be-done framework is often used to guide the process of developing new products or services, but it also has implications for marketing. What it tells us is that one key to effective marketing is to focus the majority of our marketing messages and content on the jobs our potential buyers need to get done.

To create compelling "job-focused" messages and content, marketers need to thoroughly understand the jobs their potential customers are trying to get done, including:

• What the specific jobs are
• Why the jobs are important
• What happens if the jobs don't get done
• How potential buyers are trying to perform the jobs - what tools and processes they are using
• What is preventing them from getting the jobs done effectively and efficiently - the limitations and shortcomings of their existing tools and processes

As marketers, it's easy for us to forget that most potential buyers aren't really interested in our products or services per se. What they are (or can become) interested in is what those products or services can help them accomplish. Our products or services are simply the means to an end, and it's critical to keep this in mind when planning our marketing efforts. 

To use Professor Levitt's metaphor, our marketing strategy and our marketing content should be more about quarter-inch holes than quarter-inch drills.

Image courtesy of GotCredit (www.gotcredit.com) via Flickr CC.

Share:

Two Observations on the New CMI/MarketingProfs Content Marketing Survey

A few days ago, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs published the findings of their latest content marketing survey. The B2B Content Marketing 2020:  Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America report is based on 679 survey responses from content marketers and marketing executives with B2B companies in North America. All respondents were with companies that have been using content marketing for at least one year.

The annual CMI/MarketingProfs survey has become one of the most popular and widely-cited research studies in the content marketing world. The latest survey has already triggered several articles and blog posts, and I'm sure many more are now being written.

In many ways, the findings from the latest survey echo those in previous versions of the study. For example, they tell us that having a documented content marketing strategy is vital for success, and that top-performing content marketers prioritize the information needs of their audience over their company's promotional messages.

In this post, I'll focus on how some of the attributes of top-performing content marketers have changed since last year's survey, and I'll argue the latest survey shows that most small and mid-size companies should be outsourcing more of their content marketing activities.

Notable Changes in the Attributes of Top Performers

CMI and MarketingProfs provide survey data for both "most successful" and "least successful" content marketers. The survey defines "most successful" marketers as those respondents who characterized their company's content marketing effort as extremely successful or very successful at achieving the company's desired results. "Least successful" marketers are those respondents who described their content marketing program as minimally successful or not at all successful.

The survey report compares most successful to least successful content marketers across several attributes and practices, and as might be expected, there are substantial differences between the two groups. It's also useful to look at how the most successful marketers have evolved over the past year.

The following table depicts how the most successful marketers rated several attributes of their content marketing program in both the latest survey and in last year's survey:

This table shows that in the latest survey, higher percentages of the most successful content marketers reported that their organization's content marketing is sophisticated and/or mature, that they have a documented content marketing strategy, and that they have successfully used content marketing to build loyalty with customers, nurture subscribers, audiences, or leads, and generate revenue.

Somewhat surprisingly, the share of the most successful marketers who said they measure content marketing ROI fell by five percentage points. This could be interpreted as a step backward, but I don't believe that's wholly accurate. I would argue that the change is more likely due to the recognition by sophisticated content marketers that the primary focus of marketing measurement should not be on content marketing per se. Here's my view on this topic.

Small and Mid-Size Companies Underutilize Outsourcing

In this year's survey, half of all respondents said they outsource at least one content marketing activity. However, the use of outsourcing varies greatly depending on company size, as the following chart shows:

Only 37% of respondents from small companies (1-99 employees) said they outsource any content marketing activity, compared to 56% of respondents from mid-size companies (100-999 employees), and 71% of respondents from large companies (1,000+ employees).

These findings suggest that many small and mid-size companies are outsourcing less than they should to optimize their content marketing program. Other findings from the survey show that 44% of small company respondents have no employees working full time on content marketing, and another 29% have only one full time content marketer. More surprising, just over half (53%) of survey respondents from mid-size companies reported having no or only one full time employee dedicated to content marketing.

As the use of content marketing has continued to grow, the competition for buyer attention and mindshare has become more intense. One effect of this heightened competition is that a significant amount of high-quality content has become a prerequisite for content marketing success.

The survey data suggests that many small and mid-size companies aren't committing enough internal resources to create and sustain an effective content marketing program. Under these circumstances, outsourcing some aspects of content marketing - particularly content development - can be a smart and cost-effective way to close the gap.

Top image source:  Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

Share:

Think Beyond Surveys for More Effective Research

In my last post, I discussed some of the major findings from the State of Original Research for Marketing 2019 survey by Mantis Research and BuzzSumo. This research found that a substantial number of companies have made original research an integral part of their marketing efforts.

Sixty-one percent of the survey respondents who had conducted research reported that it had met or exceeded their expectations, and 88% said they plan to conduct additional research in the next 12 months.

I also argued in my post that for most large and mid-size B2B companies, and for many smaller B2B firms, original research has now become essential for effective marketing. The shorthand version of my argument is this:

• Effective B2B marketing requires the development and use of real thought leadership content.
• Real thought leadership content must be both novel and authoritative.
• The only way to consistently develop novel and authoritative content is by conducting original research.

Original Research is More Than Surveys

When most marketers think about original research, surveys are usually the first thing that comes to mind. In the Mantis Research/BuzzSumo study, surveys were the type of research most frequently used by respondents for marketing purposes.

Surveys are popular because they can provide compelling data and because they have become easier and less expensive to use. Several firms now offer free or inexpensive tools for conducting surveys. (Note:  If you need advice on selecting a survey tool, check out this excellent blog post by Clare McDermott with Mantis Research.)

It's important to recognize, however, that original research encompasses more than quantitative surveys, and that other methods of original research can also be highly effective in the right circumstances. The following diagram shows the major categories of original research and the research methods that fall in each category:

As the diagram shows, there are two major categories of original research - secondary and primary. Secondary research involves the review and analysis of data or research that has been published by others. This includes data published by governmental entities,  and data and/or research published within academia and by other private organizations (consulting firms, research firms, other business organizations, etc.).

Primary research, on the other hand, is research that you conduct yourself (or hire someone to conduct for you). It involves going directly to a source to gather or compile information. The diagram shows several of the most common methods or types of primary research. In addition to surveys, three of these methods can be particularly powerful when used in the right circumstances.

Interviews
Interviews can be used on a stand-alone basis or in conjunction with other primary research methods. The major advantage of interviews is that they enable the use of open-ended questions and therefore can produce more in-depth and nuanced answers.

When used on a stand-alone basis, the interviewees essentially take the place of the survey panel. In my experience, however, one of the best ways to use interviews is as a preliminary step in a research project that will ultimately include a survey. In this case, the interviews are used to identify what topics may be important to potential survey participants, and to help determine how to formulate survey questions.

Analysis of Proprietary Data
This method involves the analysis of data that is proprietary to your company. For example, if your company provides some type of SaaS software application, this research method could be used to compile and analyze data regarding how your customers are using the application. A good example of research featuring this method is the 2019 State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report for Marketers produced by NetLine Corporation.

Experiments or Tests
This research method is widely used in social sciences such as psychology and behavioral economics. When you conduct an experiment, you expose participants to alternative versions of a hypothetical situation, and then ask them a set of questions regarding their experience. The objective is usually to measure differences in certain aspects of the alternatives. A field test is similar to an experiment except that the alternatives are presented in a real-world setting. An "A/B test" is a good example of a type of field test used frequently in marketing.

Corporate Visions is a company that uses experiments and tests fairly extensively. For example, the firm has used this research method to test the effectiveness of various levels of personalization and to evaluate what types of sales/marketing messaging is most effective at persuading business executives to move forward with a purchase.

Expand Your Research Palette

Don't misunderstand my point here. Surveys will always be an important and valuable method for conducting primary research. But diversifying the research methods you use can have several benefits. Each research method has strengths and weaknesses, and each excels at eliciting certain kinds of information. By using a variety of research methods, you can consistently produce thought leadership content that is novel, authoritative, and compelling. And that, in turn, will make your marketing more effective.

Top image courtesy of versionz via Flickr CC.

Share:

Effective B2B Marketing Demands Original Research

A few days ago, Mantis Research and BuzzSumo published the results of their latest survey regarding the use of original research in marketing. The State of Original Research for Marketing 2019 survey was fielded in May and June of this year and produced 644 responses from global marketers. Forty-seven percent of the respondents were from the United States, and 70% were affiliated with B2B companies.

Both Michele Linn with Mantis Research and Chris McCormick with BuzzSumo have written excellent summaries of the research results. You can find Michele's summary here and Chris' summary here. If you're a B2B marketer, I encourage you to read both of these articles, and even better, take the time to review the full survey report.

In the 2019 survey, 39% of the respondents said they had published the results of original research within the 12 months preceding the survey. The comparable percentage in the 2018 version of the survey was 47%. Chris McCormick believes this drop is primarily due to a shift in the demographics of the survey pool rather than a decline in research use, and I tend to agree with his view.

The survey also found that users of original research for marketing are generally satisfied with its performance. Sixty-one percent of the respondents who had conducted research reported that it had met or exceeded their expectations, and 88% said they plan to conduct additional research in the next 12 months.

So overall, this study indicates that a substantial number of companies have made original research an integral part of their marketing efforts.

The use of original research in marketing is not a new phenomenon. However, I would argue that for most large and mid-size B2B companies, and for many smaller B2B firms, original research has now become essential for effective marketing. Here's why.

Effective B2B Marketing Requires Real Thought Leadership Content

For most B2B companies, effective marketing now requires the development of compelling thought leadership content. Numerous research studies have confirmed that business buyers highly value thought leadership content, and that it impacts B2B purchase decisions at every stage of the buying process.

For example, in a 2018 survey of 1,201 business decision makers by Edelman and LinkedIn:

• 58% of respondents said they spend one hour or more per week consuming thought leadership content
• 55% said thought leadership content is a important way to vet potential suppliers
• 58% said good thought leadership content caused them to award business to a company
• 61% of C-level respondents said good thought leadership content made them more willing to pay a premium to work with a company

Real Thought Leadership Content Must Be Novel and Authoritative

The explosive proliferation of content over the past several years had made it difficult for marketers to create content that will cut through the noise. Thought leadership content can do just that, but only if the constitutes "real" thought leadership. There are two attributes that define real thought leadership and distinguish it from other types of marketing content.

Real thought leadership is novel - Real thought leadership content provides information and insights that are genuinely novel. Merriam-Webster defines novel as "new and not resembling something formerly known or used." Therefore, to qualify as real thought leadership, content must provide information or insight that adds something new and meaningful to the body of knowledge about a topic.

Real thought leadership is authoritative - It's important for all types of marketing content to be credible, but thought leadership content must meet a higher standard. Because thought leadership content advocates new and novel ideas, it's essential for content developers to support those ideas with sound and persuasive evidence.

Real Thought Leadership Content Requires Original Research

The only way to consistently develop novel and authoritative content is by conducting original research. Original research actually plays two central roles in the development of real thought leadership content. First, original research is required to capture the new information and develop the new insights that make thought leadership content novel. And second, original research is critical for thought leadership content because it provides the evidence that makes the content authoritative.

So the bottom line is, effective B2B marketing requires compelling thought leadership content, and original research is the only viable source for such content.

Image courtesy of Vall d'Hebron Institut de Recerca VHIR via Flickr CC.

Share:

With Personalization, Less Can Be More

There is no longer any doubt that marketers overwhelmingly believe in the value of personalization. Most marketing leaders now view personalization as essential to marketing success, and providing personalized messages and customer experiences has become a top priority in many companies.

Numerous research studies have confirmed that large majorities of marketers believe personalization improves marketing and business performance. For example, in the 2019 Trends in Personalization survey by Researchscape International, 70% of surveyed marketers said personalization has a strong or extremely strong impact on advancing customer relationships.

And in a 2018 survey of more than 600 business executives by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, more than half of the survey respondents said personalization is an important driver of their revenue and profits.

Recent research also shows, however, that marketers have more work to do to realize the full potential of personalization. In the Researchscape International survey, only 16% of survey respondents said they are very or extremely satisfied with the level of personalization in their marketing efforts. Fully half of the respondents said they are not satisfied or only slightly satisfied.

To maximize the impact and effectiveness of personalization, marketers need to use the right level of personalization for each customer interaction. Most marketing pundits and many marketing leaders seem to believe that the key to maximizing the benefits of personalized marketing is more personalization. According to this view, the right strategy is to leverage every bit of available data about customers and prospects to make personalization more specific, and to use personalization more frequently, in more channels, and for more types of communications and experiences.

But as I recently argued, the problem with the "more personalization" approach is that it largely ignores the real and growing privacy concerns of both consumers and business buyers. The real key to maximizing the effectiveness of personalization is to use an appropriate level of personalization for each interaction with a customer or prospect. And in some situations, the best strategy will be less, not more, personalization.

The Corporate Visions Research

Recent research by Corporate Visions provides compelling evidence that less can in fact be more when it comes to personalization. This study consisted of a live field trial that involved nearly 7,000 potential buyers in the Corporate Visions prospect database. All of the prospects in the trial met two criteria:

• Each was a cold prospect - someone who had had no prior interaction with Corporate Visions
• Each fit the Corporate Visions ideal client profile (industry vertical, company size, and job title).

The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of four methods or levels of personalization:

• Industry only
• Company only
• Industry + personal
• Company + personal

For the trial, Corporate Visions used emails that had identical offers and calls-to-action, but different subject lines and openings based on the method of personalization used. (Note:  The research report includes examples of the emails.)

The trial used three metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of each level of personalization - open rates, click-through rates, and number of meetings scheduled. The following table summarizes the results of the field trial.

As the table shows, the emails that used company + personal personalization (the highest level of personalization) produced the highest open rates, while those using industry only personalization (the lowest level of personalization) produced the lowest open rates. But the positions were exactly reversed with click-through rates. The emails that used industry only personalization produced the highest click-through rates, while those using company + personal personalization produced the lowest. 

In terms of meetings, the emails that embodied either industry + personal or industry only personalization produced significantly more scheduled meetings than those using either company + personal or company only personalization.

So the results of this trial indicate that when reaching out to cold prospects, messages that embody less personalization actually produce better conversion rates than messages using higher levels of personalization.

Explaining the Differences

The Corporate Visions research did not attempt to explain why the different methods or levels of personalization produced different results. However, in the research report, Leslie Talbot, Corporate Visions' Vice President of Customer and Commercial Excellence, offered a possible explanation:

"Human beings are self-centered enough to respond readily to something that looks like it's personal to us. But when we discover the underlying gimmick - that is, someone plucked a random fact from our LinkedIn profile and used it to suck us in - the letdown factor is enough to preclude further action.

Similarly, when you try to ingratiate yourself to someone by referencing an issue specific to their company, they already know you don't work there - you've just read publicly available content . . .

On the other hand, if you offer an insight about a prospect's industry, you activate their voyeurism . . . So when you share a story about how a similar company struggled and solved a common industry concern, they're better able to project themselves into the story and eager to find out what happened next."

I believe that Ms. Talbot's speculation is fairly accurate. To be effective, personalization must be based on genuine insights. When you take personalization beyond such insights, it become inauthentic, and customers or prospects will tend to view it as presumptuous.

Top image courtesy of BobChao via Flickr CC.

Related Articles:

Two Ways to Make Personalization Welcomed

The Growing Personalization Conundrum for Marketers

Salesforce Study Identifies Major Marketing Trends

How Customers Really Feel About Personalization

New Insights on Personalization - Usage, Value, and Challenges

Share:

Marketers Get Better At Strategic Content Management

Marketers have made noteworthy progress in managing content strategically, but still have work to do to match content with the right audience segments and customer expectations, and to fully leverage content management technologies.

That is the major theme of the third annual content management survey published recently by the Content Marketing Institute. The objective of this research was to assess how marketers are using technology to help create, manage, deliver, and scale marketing content, and how they are using content to better engage audiences across the customer journey.

The 2019 Content Management & Strategy Survey produced 250 usable surveys, so this was a relatively small study. For comparison purposes, the 2019 edition of CMI's annual content marketing survey produced 1,947 responses. Eighty-three percent of the respondents in the content management survey were affiliated with B2B or hybrid B2B/B2C companies, and 79% were with companies located in North America.

For this research, CMI provided survey participants with two important definitions:

• Strategic approach to managing content - "an approach that involves setting up processes, people, and technology to better scale and deliver content with the intent to improve the overall customer experience."
• Content management strategy - "a strategy that addresses issues such as how your organization plans, develops, organizes, distributes, manages, and governs content."

The Good

CMI found that marketers are making substantial progress in managing content strategically. Three-fourths (76%) of the respondents in the 2019 survey said their organization takes a strategic approach to managing content, and 59% said their company has a documented content management strategy. In the 2018 edition of the survey, only 43% of the respondents said their organization had a documented strategy "for managing content as a business asset."

CMI also found that many companies are now doing several of the basic things required to manage content effectively. Sixty-seven percent of the respondents said they have an inventory of their content assets, and 66% said they have performed a content audit (an evaluation of their existing content). In addition, 56% of the respondents said they have performed a content gap analysis (an analysis of areas where additional content is needed), and 55% said they have conducted research to better understand their audience.

The CMI research also reveals that marketers are becoming more confident about the success of their content management efforts. The following table shows how respondents in the 2019 survey and the 2018 version of the survey rated their overall success at strategically managing content:

As the table shows, the percentage of respondents rating their efforts as extremely or very successful grew from 12% in 2018 to 26% in 2019, and the percentage saying they are moderately successful increased from 44% in 2018 to 54% in 2019.

More Work To Do

While the broad findings in CMI's 2019 study are generally positive, some specific findings are more mixed and show where companies have more work to do. For example, more than half of the survey respondents said they are extremely or very confident in their ability to select the right overall topic for a content asset and identify the key themes or messages to emphasize in a content asset.

At the same time, however, the top three challenges identified by survey respondents were determining which audience segments to prioritize (71% of respondents), knowing what is most important to their audience (61% of respondents), and knowing the goal of the audience at each stage of the customer journey (50% of respondents).

These somewhat inconsistent findings indicate that marketers need to conduct more research to gain a solid understanding of market and audience dynamics. As noted earlier, only 55% of the survey respondents said they have performed research to better understand their audience, and this finding underscores the need for more research.

Top Image Source:  Content Marketing Institute

Share:

Three Ways to Make Your Case Studies More Persuasive

Customer case studies have been a staple of the B2B marketing content mix for decades. According to 2018 research by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 73% of B2B marketers are using case studies for content marketing purposes.

Recent research on the effectiveness of customer case studies has produced mixed results. For example, in the 2019 Content Preferences Survey by Demand Gen Report, customer case studies were classified as "influencer content." Ninety-five percent of the survey respondents said they prefer credible content from industry influencers, and case studies were the most-preferred type of such content (cited by 47% of respondents).

On the other hand, the 2019 B2B buying disconnect research by TrustRadius indicates that customer case studies have lost some of their effectiveness with buyers. In that research, just over 20% of the surveyed B2B technology buyers said they used vendor-produced case studies to inform their purchase decisions, and they ranked case studies 11th (out of 15 options) in trustworthiness. Two quotations from survey respondents capture a perspective that is becoming more prevalent among B2B buyers:

• "Vendor provided case studies - these are hand picked success stories / [we] preferred independent reviews."
• "Whitepapers and case studies are geared towards selling you the product so I don't put a whole lot of weight on these."

The growing buyer skepticism of customer case studies mirrors a decline of buyer trust in most forms of vendor-provided information. Therefore, one of the major challenges facing B2B marketers is to increase the credibility of their marketing content of all types.

When it comes to case studies, there are three concrete steps B2B marketers can take to bolster credibility and effectiveness.

Make the Customer the Hero

I'm often asked by clients to review and comment on their customer case studies, and unfortunately, what I read all too often is self-promotional "brochureware" disguised as a case study.

The mistake that many companies make is to cast themselves, rather than their customers, as the heroes of their case studies. The story line of many case studies resembles an old silent movie where the villain ties a helpless damsel (the customer) to railroad tracks, and the hero (the selling company) rides in at the last minute to rescue the damsel in distress from an oncoming train.

A good case study will lead readers to identify with the customer. You want readers to vicariously experience the "pain" the customer was feeling and the success the customer achieved. In essence, you want readers to finish the case study believing they can achieve the same success. When you make your company the hero of your case studies, you are asking readers to identify with your company, not the customer.

So, when you're preparing a case study, you can give your company a strong supporting role, but always let your customer be the star.

Include Enough Detail to Make It Engaging

When I began developing content for clients more than a decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that customer case studies should be short, usually no more than 1-2 pages. But most buyers want to use case studies to help validate their purchase decision. And this means that a case study needs to include enough detail to describe the customer's business situation and experience with your product or service in a meaningful way.

So, B2B marketers should forget the old rules about case study length. Each case study should be as long as it needs to be to tell the customer's story in a compelling way.

Make Your Customer Case Studies Realistic

This is likely to be the single most difficult change for most B2B marketers to accept and implement. Most marketers are conditioned by culture and training to emphasize the positives and minimize the limitations of their product or service. But this is the very tendency that causes many buyers to view vendor-provided content with a healthy dose of skepticism.

A lack of transparency about product limitations causes one of the most significant disconnects between buyers and sellers. In the TrustRadius research described earlier, 71% of the buyer respondents said it was very important to understand product limitations before buying, but only 42% of the marketing/sales respondents expressed this view. And while 84% of the marketing/sales respondents said they aim to be clear about the limitations of their product, only 36% of the buyer respondents felt the vendor they selected had been forthcoming about product limitations.

No product or service is perfect. And it's likely that many of your most satisfied customers can identify something about your product they wish was different. These customer perspectives should be included in your case studies because they will make your case studies more credible and persuasive.

A Final Thought

Many companies find it valuable to work with an external content developer to create their customer case studies. An independent content developer can provide the objectivity that's essential for creating case studies that are credible and trustworthy. Just be sure that you work with a content developer who (a) has experience creating evidence-based, non-promotional content, and (b) understands what makes a customer case study effective with today's skeptical buyers.

Image courtesy of Animated Heaven via Flickr.

Share:

B2B Buyers Remain Skeptical About Vendor Content

Last month, TrustRadius published the findings of its third annual B2B buying disconnect research. The 2019 B2B Buying Disconnect report is based on a survey of 712 individuals who were involved in a significant purchase of business technology during the preceding year, and on a survey of 229 individuals who worked for technology vendors in a marketing or sales capacity.

In my last post, I described some of the characteristics of the technology buying process, as revealed by the TrustRadius research. In this post, I'll discuss what the TrustRadius surveys discovered about how technology buyers research potential purchases, and where there are still significant disconnects between technology buyers and sellers.

Information Used to Support Buying Decisions

A primary objective of the TrustRadius surveys has been to identify what sources of information technology buyers use to support purchase decisions, and which sources they view as influential and trustworthy. The 2019 survey found that buyers used an average of 5.2 sources of information when they research potential purchases, up slightly from 4.9 in 2018 and 2017.

The most widely-used sources of information have changed little over the past three years. In the 2017, 2018, and 2019 surveys, the five most widely-used sources of information identified by buyers were:

• Product Demos
• Vendor/Product Website
• User Reviews
• Free Trial/Account
• Vendor Representatives

Information Trust

TrustRadius also asked buyers to rate the trustworthiness of each source of information. (Note:  TrustRadius presented buyers with fifteen sources of information in 2019 and 2018, and twelve sources of information in 2017.) It turns out that buyers' perceptions of trustworthiness haven't changed much over the past three years.

The following table shows the five most trustworthy and the five least trustworthy sources of information identified by buyers in the 2019 survey. The table also shows how buyers ranked the trustworthiness of these information sources in the 2018 and 2017 surveys.

At first glance, these survey findings would seem to paint a fairly bleak picture for B2B marketers, given that vendor-provided sources of information were ranked as the least trustworthy by buyers. However, there are reasons to believe that the situation isn't quite as bad as these survey results seem to indicate. The 2019 survey report contains several quotes from buyers that provide context for the survey results. Here are a few examples:

"Vendor collateral valuable for initial research but from there, really a matter of needing to actually see the functionality work as opposed to pretty pictures & glowing case studies."

"Providers are known for their platitudes, and less for the substance of their claims, so I took their marketing materials with a grain of salt."

"Any vendor can put up collateral and a good website, but trying the service for ourselves was crucial in understanding if the product was a fit for our team."

I contend that what these quotations really indicate is that most business buyers are unwilling to trust vendor-provided information completely, or rely solely on such information when making purchase decisions.

In many cases, buyers view vendor-provided information as inherently biased (although not necessarily deceitful), and in some cases, vendor-provided information doesn't adequately address some of the specific issues that a particular buyer may be concerned about. The quotations and the survey results also show that most buyers want direct experience with a produce via demos and free trials whenever possible.

A Major Disconnect Between Sellers and Buyers

One of the most significant disconnects between buyers and sellers revealed by the TrustRadius research relates to transparency about product limitations. Eighty-four percent of the vendor respondents in the 2019 survey said they aim to be clear about the capabilities and limitations of their product. However, only 36% of the buyers in the 2019 survey felt the vendor they selected was forthcoming about product limitations.

It appears that many vendors simply don't recognize how important this issue is for buyers. Seventy-one percent of the buyer respondents in the 2019 survey said it is very important to understand product limitations before buying, but only 42% of the vendor respondents expressed this view.

Marketing content and sales communications rarely address product limitations directly. It's not that B2B marketers and sales reps are intentionally dishonest, but they are conditioned by culture and training to emphasize the positives (and minimize the limitations) of their solutions. Unfortunately, this tendency causes buyers to view most vendor-provided information with a heavy dose of skepticism.

In my next post, I'll discuss one way that B2B marketers can address the trust gap.

Top image courtesy of Terry Johnston via Flickr CC.

Share:

The Growing Influence of Compelling Thought Leadership

Business buyers broadly agree that thought leadership content impacts their purchase decisions at every stage of the buying process. And recent research by Edelman and LinkedIn shows that the influence of thought leadership is growing. The research also shows, however, that thought leadership is a double-edged sword.

In November of last year, Edelman and LinkedIn conducted a survey (the "2018 survey") of U.S. business decision makers and purchase influencers to measure the impact of thought leadership content on B2B purchase decisions. The survey produced 1,201 responses from individuals representing a wide range of industries and company sizes. In this research, Edelman and LinkedIn asked survey participants several questions about how they use thought leadership content and how it affects their purchase decisions.

Edelman and LinkedIn conducted a survey in October and November of 2017 (the "2017 survey") that addressed many of the same issues. This type of "longitudinal" research can be particularly valuable because it reveals the degree and direction of change that has occurred from one survey to the next.

Several findings of the Edelman/LinkedIn research clearly demonstrate that the influence of thought leadership in the B2B purchasing process is growing. The following table shows how respondents in the 2018 survey and the 2017 survey described their consumption of thought leadership content and its impact on how they make purchase decisions.

These findings clearly show that B2B decision makers are spending more time engaging with thought leadership content and that the impact of such content is growing across the entire B2B buying journey.

The 2018 survey also revealed that thought leadership is a classic double-edged sword. For example:

• 75% of survey respondents said they will start following a writer or organization based on their thought leadership, and 60% said they will stop following a writer or organization because of poor thought leadership.
• 92% of respondents said thought leadership has increased their respect for an organization, and 46% said that poor thought leadership has decreased their respect for a company.
• 58% of respondents said they have decided to award business to a company because of its thought leadership, and 29% said they have decided not to award business to a company because of poor thought leadership.

These findings are particularly important given how business decision makers evaluate the quality of the thought leadership content they encounter. The following table shows how respondents in the 2018 survey and the 2017 survey rated the overall quality of thought leadership:

As the table shows, B2B decision makers don't believe the quality of thought leadership has improved since 2017. While the percentage of excellent or very good thought leadership increased (18% in 2018 vs. 14% in 2017), the percentage of good content decreased (53% in 2018 vs. 60% in 2017), and the percentage of mediocre to very poor content increased (30% in 2018 vs. 26% in 2017).

The most important lesson for B2B marketers in the Edelman/LinkedIn research is this:  There is no safe middle ground when it comes to thought leadership. Great thought leadership makes a positive impact on buyers at every stage of the buying process, but poor thought leadership results in lost business opportunities.

Image courtesy of Affen Ajlfe (www.modup.net) via Flickr CC.

Share:

Do Marketers Have a Clear Picture of Buyer Trust?

Earlier this month, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs published the findings of their latest B2B content marketing survey. The B2B Content Marketing 2019:  Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends-North America report presents findings from 771 North American respondents who indicated their company primarily sells to other businesses.

CMI and MarketingProfs made a fairly significant change to their methodology for this survey. This year, they qualified respondents based on whether their company has been using content marketing for at least one year, and whether they are (a) a content marketer, (b) someone who is involved with the content marketing function, and/or (c) someone to whom the content marketing function reports. The qualified respondents represented a wide range of industries and company sizes.

For the past several years, the CMI/MarketingProfs survey report has highlighted important differences between "most successful" and "least successful" content marketers. In the latest survey, the "most successful" marketers include respondents who characterized their company's overall content marketing approach as extremely or very successful, while the "least successful" marketers are those who rated their company's content marketing effort as minimally or not at all successful.

The following table shows some of the important differences between the most successful and least successful content marketers identified in the new survey:

Most of the differences shown in this table have also been seen in earlier versions of the survey. For example, the importance of having a documented content strategy was first identified in the 2014 edition of the survey. So, most of these findings are not particularly surprising.

One of the more interesting findings in the latest survey deals with buyer trust. Ninety-six percent of the most successful marketers agreed that their customers and prospects view their organization as "a credible and trusted resource." Even more surprising, about three out of four (74%) of the least successful marketers also agreed with that statement.

Other recent research has painted a different picture regarding buyer trust. For example, the 2018 B2B Buying Disconnect study by TrustRadius was a survey of 488 individuals who had played a significant role in a business technology purchase within the preceding year. In this research, survey participants were asked to select which sources of information they use during their purchasing process from a list of 15 options.

TrustRadius also asked survey participants to rate the trustworthiness of each information source, and the five least trustworthy sources identified by respondents were:

• Vendor marketing collateral
• Vendor blog
• Vendor-produced case studies
• Vendor/product website
• Vendor representative

It's difficult to reconcile these findings with those in the CMI/MarketingProfs survey. It's possible, of course, that the business technology buyers surveyed by TrustRadius are simply more skeptical about vendor information than other B2B buyers. 

It seems more likely, however, that the marketers responding to the CMI/MarketingProfs survey have an overly optimistic opinion about the level of trust they've earned from prospects and customers. Several other recent studies have shown that business buyers tend to view vendor-provided content with a considerable amount of skepticism.

One possible explanation for this apparent disconnect between content marketers and business buyers may relate to how marketers learn about the needs and perceptions of their prospects and  customers. When the marketers surveyed by CMI and MarketingProfs were asked what techniques they use to research their audience, the top three methods identified were:

1. Sales team feedback (74% of respondents)
2. Website analytics (73%)
3. Keyword research (65%)

Only half of the respondents said they use primary research to learn about their target audience, and even fewer (42%) reported using customer conversations or panels. While sales team feedback, website analytics, and keyword research can all produce valuable data for marketers, those techniques won't consistently provide reliable insights about buyer trust.

Trustworthy and credible content is now essential for marketing success. Therefore, it's imperative for marketers to get a regular, objective assessment of the level of trust their content is earning from prospects and customers.

Top image source:  Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs

Share:

Getting Thought Leadership Right in 2019

There's no longer any doubt that thought leadership content is having a major impact on B2B buying decisions. Research studies have confirmed that business buyers are consuming more thought leadership content, and that it affects decisions at every stage of the buying process. Research also shows, however, that business decision makers have become more selective about the thought leadership content they will give their attention to.

Today, thought leadership has become a classic double-edged sword. When it's done well, thought leadership has major positive impact on business buyers. Poor thought leadership, on the other hand, can actually be detrimental. In a recent survey by Edelman and LinkedIn, about a third of C-level respondents said that a company's poor thought leadership content had led them not to do business with the company.

The explosive proliferation of content has made it difficult for marketers to develop content that will cut through the noise. Thought leadership content has the potential to do just that, but only if the content constitutes true thought leadership. Therefore, thought leadership is now of those things that marketers really need to "get right" in 2019.

Unfortunately, the term "thought leadership" is now used so loosely that it's no longer clear to some marketers what real thought leadership is. We do know what business decision makers are looking for in thought leadership content. In a survey by The Economist Group, business executives described compelling thought leadership content as innovative, big picture, transformative, and credible.

The problem is, these adjectives don't identify the specific attributes that make content true thought leadership. And the same can be said for many of the other terms we use to describe content. For example:

• All real thought leadership content is relevant and insightful, but not all content that is relevant and insightful qualifies as real thought leadership.
• All real thought leadership content is useful and valuable, but not all content that is useful and valuable qualifies and real thought leadership.

There are two attributes that define true thought leadership and distinguish it from other types of marketing content. When used together, these two attributes provide and effective guide for developing thought leadership content that will cut through the content noise and earn the attention and interest of potential buyers.

Thought Leadership Content is Novel

Real thought leadership content provides information and insights that are genuinely novel. Merriam-Webster defines novel as "new and not resembling something formerly known or used." Therefore, to qualify as thought leadership, content must provide information or insight that adds something new and meaningful to the body of knowledge about a topic. Content that discusses established principles or information can be useful and valuable, but it doesn't constitute true thought leadership.

Thought Leadership Content is Research-Based

Research plays two distinct roles in the development of thought leadership content. First, original research is usually required to capture or develop the new information that makes thought leadership content novel. For example, surveys are often used to capture data that provides the foundation for thought leadership content.

Original research is also critical for thought leadership content because it provides the evidence that makes the content authoritative and persuasive. It's important, of course, for all types of content to be credible, but thought leadership content must meet a higher standard. Because thought leadership content advocates new and novel ideas, it's essential for content developers to support those ideas with sound and thorough research.

Thought Leadership and Third-Party Content

Some B2B companies - particularly technology companies - regularly use content produced by third-party experts in their content marketing program. This often includes content produced by analyst and consulting firms, and by research organizations. Third-party expert content can be a valuable part of your content marketing program because business decision makers tend to view such content as credible. In fact, I've been advocating the use of third-party expert content for more than four years.

It's important to recognize, however, that distributing thought leadership developed by others will not cause your company to be perceived as a thought leader. To earn thought leader status, you will need to create your own thought leadership content. This doesn't mean that you can't work with external research firms and/or content developers to produce thought leadership content. In fact, working with an experienced researcher and/or content developer is the right approach if your company doesn't have internal expertise in these areas. But the finished content should be published under your company's brand.

Image courtesy of Affen Ajlfe (www.modup.net) via Flickr CC.

Share: