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The Empowered Business Buyer Is a Myth [New Demand Generation Research]

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One of my favorite scenes in a movie is from Men In Black. Jay, played by Will Smith, is a new “man in black” and has just dealt with his first aliens. He asks his boss Kay, played by Tommy Lee Jones, why they don’t just tell the world that aliens exist. Kay says humans simply couldn’t handle it. Then, he adds this:

Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll ‘know’ tomorrow.

He perfectly encapsulates that even though we humans can intellectually comprehend something new, it’s often difficult for us to take it in and make rational changes.

What do we know about business buyers

Today, many B2B businesses think an asymmetric relationship exists between their companies and potential customers. They perceive the buyers are in control and armed with more and higher-quality information than ever before. They see the prevalent research that says 47% of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a salesperson and 90% of buyers won’t take a cold call.

Many #B2B marketers perceive the buyers are in control and armed with more and higher-quality content than ever before, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent @Vidyard. #Research #DemandGen Click To Tweet

Marketers conclude the modern empowered buyer and their preference for self-service knowledge should be the center of the buyer’s journey conversation. Sales teams provide the differentiating product features and ensure that the company is positioned as the best supplier of such research and information.

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Then, demand generation teams distribute thought leadership and product/service information to websites and resource centers. These teams vow to become buyer-journey-focused. They use all their energy to dump mountains of research, data, and information and become the first available answer to why should we change?

They seek to meet their mission: To generate demand.

There’s only one problem: Many of today’s buyers are not empowered, and what’s more, they have little interest in being so.

Many of today’s buyers are not empowered and have little interest in being so, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent @Vidyard. #Research #DemandGen Click To Tweet

Just imagine what you might know tomorrow.

Myth of the empowered buyer

Five years ago, research from CEB (now Gartner) illustrated that buyers are “deeply uncertain and stressed.” Yes, modern research concludes buyers are self-directed. But the follow-up question we marketers should ask is why are they self-directed?

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Increasingly, it’s because their organizational leadership assumes all information they need is readily available. It’s just a “Google search away.” Thus, these managers are under increasing pressure to self-educate and become subject matter experts.

Yes, almost two-thirds of buyers are now likely to be part of a buying committee of four or more people, according to Gartner. However, as marketers, we must again ask – why? One of the prevailing answers is they are dying to speed up the long, complex acquisition process. To do that, they divvy up rationalization arguments for purchasing a product/service. As Brent Adamson, principal executive advisor at Gartner, says:

In many ways, the single biggest obstacle to purchasing today is a buying problem that has nothing to do with the supplier at all.

Put simply, there are reasons why today’s buyers perform so much online research before talking with a salesperson. They usually don’t know what they’re looking for, where to get it, or whom to trust when they do.

Is it any wonder that so few buyers want to talk with a sales rep first? They’re already worried they haven’t gathered enough information and education they can trust. They have no time for people who will distract them from that task and simply offer more information that they don’t know if they can trust.

Further, many demand generation marketers created an unintended result by providing more and more content focused on evolving a sophisticated argument about why a prospect should change. Buyers see the same point of view repeatedly but from different angles.

The buyers’ goal is to learn how to play chess. The demand gen marketers are bombarding them with points of view on the history of chess and why it’s such an important game.

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This leads, as the Gartner research found, to “unproductive, open-ended learning loops by the deluge of information.” While providing more high-level educational and product-oriented content feels more customer-centric, buyers say it actually decreases their purchasing ease.

This process almost certainly doesn’t leave the buyer empowered or better enabled to make the best purchase. What’s the answer? What kind of content should demand generation marketers produce if more thought leadership, research, or product information isn’t helping?

New research for demand generation

Things are different in 2022. As we emerge from the pandemic-related disruptions, marketers are moving back into familiar habits. We, once again, are getting comfortable with what we know to be true.

In our 2020 version of this research, reported on in a market brief titled, Architecting Desire: Connecting Content Marketing Experiences to Generate the Best Next Steps Along the Buyer’s Journey, CMI recognized the difficulties of remote work, challenging economic conditions, and the waterfall of negative headlines.

This newly released 2022 report, Challenging the Myth of the Empowered Buyer, based on CMI’s 2022 Content Marketing for Demand Generation survey, sponsored by Vidyard, illustrates a return to some demand generation priorities of the past and recognizes (and challenges) the myth of the empowered buyer.

New CMI demand gen research illustrates a return to some priorities of the past and recognizes the myth of the empowered buyer, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent @Vidyard. #Research #DemandGen

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As you’ll see, demand generation marketers still focus on top-of-the-funnel brand awareness but are also starting to recognize content should focus on making it easier to buy.

Chart Showing Stage in Buyer's Journey Where Organization Receives Most Value From Content Marketing Used for Demand Generation

Demand generation teams are beginning to find better results by focusing earlier and later in the process and making it easier to purchase rather than pouring on more information to convince people to change. While generating awareness increased slightly (56% from 54%), consideration/intent dropped to 24% from 30%. And interestingly, late-stage doubled from 4% to 8%.

Big jump in account-based marketing

One of the more interesting findings in this year’s research is the jump in account-based marketing (+13 percentage points). While this increase was markedly more among enterprise companies (1,000-plus employees), it was also meaningful among smaller companies. More demand generation marketers are focused on creating valuable content for buying committees or teams that make decisions about solutions.

Today, in demand generation, content marketing is vitally important (and, in fact, has become more important over the last year, as our research found). So, if not thought leadership, research, or more product information, then what?

1652351990 252 The Empowered Business Buyer Is a Myth New Demand Generation

When we ask, “What business is the demand generation team really in,” we might note the myth of the empowered buyer. We might ask ourselves four clarifying questions:

  1. What if instead of seeing every prospective buyer or buying team as a highly informed expert looking for yet more requirements, alternatives, and other education, we see them as people eagerly looking to decide about a thing that they probably aren’t terribly passionate about? Instead of coming up with more sophisticated arguments to convince prospects to change, what if we created easier and more valuable methods of actually helping them understand how to change?
  2. What if we were more prescriptive and consultative about the entire buying process? What if the business enabled all kinds of frontline workers to help distribute education while exuding confidence, delivering value, and anticipating the needs of a buying group? Put simply: What if the demand gen team worked more with onboarding and customer teams rather than (or in addition to) industry subject matter experts.
  3. Can our companies evolve from a reactive “buyer experience myopia” to connected consultative experiences that make for new kinds of customer experiences? What if we did give away the best practices of how to implement, make the change, or deliver value – instead of teasing that our solution is a magic “black box” of unicorns and rainbows that creates satisfied customers on the other side?

What customers really want

Customers don’t buy products; they buy results. Professor Theodore Levitt taught us this. But the question is, what results? Building a strategic content operation that can better help our teams answer that question is the first step in challenging the myth of the “empowered buyer” into a more expansive and differentiated consultative experience.

Get more insight and survey results; download Challenging the Myth of the Empowered Buyer based on CMI’s 2022 Content Marketing for Demand Generation survey

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Want to dive deeper into demand gen? Join us online May 18 and 19 for the Demand Generation Summit. Sessions cover video for conversions, content as fuel for demand, first-party data, agile marketing, personalization, and more. Sign up free. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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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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