July 29, 2016
B2B content has the habit of falling into a mould – whitepapers, research reports, brochures etc. There are a number of reasons why this content can be problematic: it can be boring, it can be the ‘same old’ stuff and, if done well, it can be very expensive. Budgets are often squeezed and finding ways to sweat content is essential to getting the most from it and seeing an ROI for your assets.
Build don’t shatter
Although the principle of shattering, updating and sweating assets works – the dream is to get in from the ground up and think about content in a different way. What if we could build the content with the end goal in mind? In a way that puts the audience at the heart of the content creation exercise and allows us to create innovative research and data pieces with reduced budgets and stakeholders. Well it is possible, you just have to think outside the box and start looking externally rather than internally. Break process, try something new and challenge your old models. Here are a few ways you can breathe new life into the way that you create B2B content:
Test and prove
Instead of timely, costly insights projects – a test and prove campaign can often yield better, more real-time and honest data. It is important to move out of the planning phase and get content in channel. If you can build a data pool whilst collecting results then surely this would be beneficial.
Think UGC for research
Sure, you can pay a telemarketing agency to go and survey 300 employees from the market and get data that way. But then you have to churn that data, find something interesting, build the research report/whitepaper and then shatter that to get social. Why not just use social to get the data? Twitter polls, surveys and questionnaires can be just as effective at gathering relevant data to serve back to your market.
Get interactive
Online quizzes and calculators can be a great way to get leads. Asking a series of questions to help a prospect determine what type of product they may need, what stage of the buyer cycle they are in or how they may on-board something new can be a solid way to open a chain of dialogue with a prospect and begin the route to sale.
So there it is, you don’t have to use the same old models for creating content – hopefully these have inspired you to try something new, break the mould and burst through the noise.