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Today’s B2B buyers are calling the tune

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Today's B2B buyers are calling the tune

B2B marketing is a dance between the marketer and the customer.

The decision to buy is never easy, so the marketer must cater to the potential purchaser’s desire for more information, providing it until the right moment comes to convert the prospect into a customer.

But technology will not play the same tune this year. The tempo has changed. The music is different. And the dance steps are faster.

The marketer and customer once did the tango. Now they are doing the twist.

Yesterday’s waltz

Things that used to work are being discarded. “Traditional sales calls are fading into the background,” said Lisa Ohman, COO of SEO solution Ubersuggest. Affiliate programs might drive sales with just five to 10 percent of membership. “The rest is noise and overhead,” she said.

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“As with any industry, tactics and techniques fall in and out of favor.” Said Dennis Shiao, founder of B2B agency Attention Retention

“Five to seven years ago, two of the trendiest tactics for B2B marketers were infographics and SlideShare…These days, marketers still create infographics, but not nearly as frequently as before. SlideShare seems to have become irrelevant, sadly.” Shiao said. The first infographic got a lot of attention, but a single infographic today is hardly noticed in a flood of many.

“The lack of results is a big reason why tactics fall out of favor,” Shiao said. “Tactics that continue to produce results do not fall out of favor. One example might be well-written, longform blog posts, though achieving success with these is more challenging today than it was in the past.”

“The ebb and flow of channels and tactics are strange; they go up and down, yet rarely ever die” said John Wall is a partner at analytics firm Trust Insights. “Digital ads are getting less effective as privacy has become a higher concern,” he said, “and prices going up at the same time.”

Read next: Why we care about B2B marketing

Today’s whole shack shimmy

It would be cynical to say that new technology merely empowers one to do the same old thing in a new way. The cow path is paved with such gold bricks of foolishness. The challenge is on the marketer to figure out how to find a way to use new technology that plays to future strengths. Take video.

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“I’d use a broader term for the category, which is ‘multimedia,’” Shiao said. “It encompasses slide-based webinars, audio podcasts, application screen shares and more… multimedia content should complement written content… For me, however, the sweet-spot combination is a high-quality written article with YouTube or Vimeo videos embedded adjacent to the copy.”

“We’ve found that for many organizations written content is most common early in the buying process and video is closer to the moment of purchase and used for post purchase, but this is different for every product.” Wall added.

Written content is great when someone is looking for information, but video can explain value, Ohman said. “I don’t need the article. Show me.”

Social media is another avenue of approach, but it must be more than being a place to dump content.

Ohman sees an opportunity to take social media to the next level. “Don’t talk about yourself. Get someone else to talk about you.” Here creative partnerships come in handy as “people are looking for social proof.”

“LinkedIn is always our first choice for B2B.” Wall said. “The fact that it’s business first, and there are paying customers who are doing recruiting [there], makes it an entirely different thing than social networks that are built around only advertising, which then creates incentive for clickbait and other sensationalism.”

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“While B2B companies need to claim their brand handles and have a presence on the major platforms, start by picking one or two to focus on.” Shiao said. “On Twitter, a tactic I found successful is finding Twitter chats in your industry. A Twitter chat happens on a specific day and time (around a particular hashtag) and usually lasts for an hour. Participate in the chat from your brand’s Twitter handle. Relative to all your other Twitter activity, the engagement from these chats can go through the roof.”


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Learning new steps without missing the beat

So what can B2B marketers do? Despite all the change, marketing fundamentals remain the cornerstone of practice.

 “Adopting new technologies is always a challenge, on one hand you have to learn how to effectively publish on the new platform…and then you have to have marketers who can effectively communicate through copywriting and compelling content, which is an art in itself.” Wall said. “For B2B marketers, do everything you can on the product marketing side. This will give your content more credibility, and help you better communicate value.”

“Get back to the basics, which has nothing to do with a change in thinking or a new technology. It’s about understanding your target audience.” Shiao said. “I often say that my wife knows me better than I do. B2B marketers should strive to know their audience better than they do. This comes from studying and observing them and it also requires engaging with them (e.g., having meaningful conversations). If you know your audience better than they do – or even if you know them as well as they do – your content and campaigns will be all the more effective.”

People struggle with new technology and the change it brings. If a current technique is producing conversions at two percent, why risk a new technology that can produce a five percent conversion — or zero? Sometimes it pays to try a manual technique on a smaller scale to produce and measure change, then understand how the customer used that new information in their journey to purchase.

Ohman related best practice this way:

  1. Personalization. “Be scrappy about it.”
  2. Encourage your people in lead generation and sales support to bring in the human experience.
  3. Drive value. Even if you provide value at the risk of “sharing the secret sauce”, do it anyway. It may unlock new levels of opportunity.
  4. Data. Data. Data. Data. Data. The more you find useful, the better.

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About The Author

William Terdoslavich is a freelance writer with a long background covering information technology. Prior to writing for Martech, he also covered digital marketing for DMN.

A seasoned generalist, William covered employment in the IT industry for Insights.Dice.com, big data for Information Week, and software-as-a-service for SaaSintheEnterprise.com. He also worked as a features editor for Mobile Computing and Communication, as well as feature section editor for CRN, where he had to deal with 20 to 30 different tech topics over the course of an editorial year.

Ironically, it is the human factor that draws William into writing about technology. No matter how much people try to organize and control information, it never quite works out the way they want to.

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MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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