B2B content marketing has changed, especially with the advent of social media. This post is not about the technology - it's primarily about how behaviors and expectations have changed - and the changes are substantial.
Rule #1: The Customer has Become the Hunter, the Marketer the Hunted
This started with Web 1.0 and has grown in importance for the last 15 years; with Web tools at their disposal to almost effortlessly collect the information they need, B2B buyers of costly and complex offerings are now in control. Today, they initiate the search for help on their business issues. They no longer wait for brochures to arrive by mail or email, or ask the corporate librarian to do the searching. With search engines able to pour through more than 1 trillion web pages in seconds, including materials posted by marketers around the world, the customer increasingly takes the lead in securing the information she needs. In a world of search engines, the customer has become the hunter, and the marketer the hunted.
Statistics bear this out. The Web has become the best source of business information for U.S. executives, topping references from colleagues, print and broadcast media, conferences and personal networks, according to a 2009 study by Forbes and Google. Some 73% of senior executives at large companies surf the Web daily, with 64% doing six or more searches a day for business information. These numbers will only increase given the generational differences in Web usage. Some 81% of executives less than 50 years old surf the Web every day for business information; less than two-thirds (62%) of those over 50 do likewise.
U.S. Executives Who Use the Internet to Gather Business Information (Source: Forbes and Google)
This has huge consequences for thought leadership marketers. It wasn't so long ago when the roles of thought leadership marketers and their target audiences were reversed, when marketers did the hunting using white papers, books and articles as lures. Marketers with the widest distribution (think McKinsey Quarterly and its 100,000 print and 2 million online readers) had a far greater chance of getting their points of view in front of prospects than did smaller consultancies with much smaller mailing lists. But Google and other search engines have eroded that advantage. The $20 million strategy consulting firm with a white paper on scenario planning can end up on the first screen of search results if the article is good and has generated links from admirers. Over time, a compelling white paper or article that gains lots of followers and links will finish higher in the search engine rankings than one that is mass mailed or posted by online white paper distributors.
The fact that customers increasingly start their hunt for solutions with a search engine has a big ramification: The quality of the content is critical.
Rule #2: An author's admirers now do the promoting
The most effective way to distribute thought leadership content has always been to get readers to recommend and pass it along to colleagues. You're far more likely to read an article endorsed by a peer than one that shows up unannounced in your inbox. However, before the emergence of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, word of mouth or viral marketing was logistically difficult. With today's social networking tools, this is no longer the case. Word-of-mouth recommendations of a notable article or paper now can reach thousands of prospects in hours.
Think social networking sites are mostly for the unemployed? Think again. The Forbes/Google study found that 73% of large-company executives under 50â€"i.e., people with jobsâ€"logged into such websites at least once a week. (About one third of managers over 50 did likewise.) In making buying decisions, people using online social networks are three times more likely to put stock in the opinions of their peers than they are to trust advertising, and the clear majority takes a friend's opinion over a professional critic's review.
Social media + thought leadership content is a marriage made in heaven. The members of any social network are always on the prowl for good information to pass along to their contacts. By definition, thought leadership content is educational in tone, not promotional. The members of an online business community won't pass along advertising copy; they will circulate thoughtful insights on issues they think are relevant to their friends and contacts.
But you still have to prime the pumps. In the new world of B2B content marketing, marketers have to seed the content of their best articles in places like Facebook and LinkedIn before they can sit back and let their members spread the word.
Is it OK to post links to your own material? That depends. It's all right if it is valuable to the people you are broadcasting to. If it's purely self-promotional, it's spam.
McKinsey's Quarterly Takes a Big Early Lead in Facebook Fans
In the management consulting industry, one firmâ€"McKinseyâ€"has a big advantage in seeding new content. It is way out in front in establishing an audience on Facebook. McKinsey's print and online publication, McKinsey Quarterly, has more than 50,000 fans (up 10,000 from when we made the chart above a month ago.) But much smaller firms can quickly gain share of voice in these social networks without large investments. Unlike the tens of millions of dollars that are necessary to burnish a brand with broadcast, print and online advertising, creating a Facebook group doesn't cost a dime. And this is starting to bother big, sophisticated marketers like Procter & Gamble. "What I worry about is that [social media] democratizes scale," P&G CEO Bob McDonald recently told a reporter from Advertising Age magazine: "It allows the little guy to get scale almost instantaneously."
Social media marketing is about peer endorsementâ€"in the case of B2B thought leadership content, getting members of a social networking site to endorse and link to your material. Scale helps, but having content that people will want to pass on to their friends is more important.
I'll explain rules 3 & 4 of the series next week...