By guest blogger, John Love.
I attended a webinar a couple weeks ago on content marketing entitled “Stay Relevant: Map Your Interactive White Papers to the Buyers Journey” featuring Tom Pisello, Chairman & Founder, Alinean Inc. The presentation started with a number of statistics to build credibility in white papers as a viable and engaging offer for prospects. And indeed they made a good case here (I’ll let the presentation speak for itself). The webinar was really to promote “interactive white papers,” which are dynamically customizable documents based on a quick survey – e.g. the examples might change based on industry, role, company size, location, etc. I wasn’t particularly impressed by those, but as with all such presentations, there were a couple nuggets that I thought were valuable and worth sharing.
- White papers have a lot of influence as do peer referrals. I found it interesting that webinars have more influence early in the sales cycle but little influence later on, suggesting they may be best used for awareness and educational content that is most important early in the sales cycle.
- Vendors need to become more like publishers, providing advice, best practices, and other relevant educational content, not self-centered, product, or sales content.
- Vendors need to align content to the buying cycle and, where reasonable, customize it by job function or industry. I like his “provocative approach” earlier in the sales cycle (to get attention) and “value approach” later in the sales cycle.
To me, all of this is very consistent with the very definition of marketing, which is two parties with something that the other values entering into a process of finding each other and discovering the mutual benefit of doing business together. Vendors need to take the lead by openly sharing valuable information and educational content to no only build credibility but also trust.
About the author:
John Love is the president of JLC Marketing, Inc., specializing in outbound marketing and communications strategies and programs.