B-to-B Insights : Content Is King

Seven rules to follow for effective content marketing

2. Target the Prospect
The more narrowly you target the audience for your white paper or other content marketing piece, the better able you are to deliver truly useful content to them.

For our example of the white paper on tips for handling compressed cylinder gas, are you targeting plant managers or plant operators? Plant managers might be more interested in cylinder inventory and control, while plant operators want nuts-and-bolts tips for handling the cylinders. A CFO would want to look at reducing costly gas cylinder accidents, while the CEO might be concerned about liability.

3. Determine the Objective
Remember, we are not in the business of giving away free information for our health. There has to be a purpose for the content we are spending time and money to produce—content no one pays us for.

For instance, a software publisher found that when it lost sales, it wasn't because prospects bought a competitor's products with better features and benefits. It was because the software in that category is expensive, and prospects, even though they wanted the functionality the software delivers, couldn't cost-justify its purchase.

To solve this problem, the marketer published a white paper titled Calculating Return on Investment for Purchase of XYZ Software. It demonstrated that, even though the software was expensive, the time and labor savings it provided could pay back its cost in six to eight months. Salespeople used the white paper to overcome the objection of "it costs too much."

4. Educate the Reader
Years ago, Duncan Hines ran an ad in women's magazines about its chocolate cake mix. The headline was, "The secret to moister, richer chocolate cake." Why was that headline so effective? Because it implied you would learn something useful just by reading the ad, regardless of whether you bought the product.

Generic advice won't cut it in content marketing today. The prospect doesn't want to read the same old tips he's seen a dozen times before repeated in your white paper.

Chances are, you possess proprietary knowledge about your products and their applications. Share some of this knowledge in your white papers. Give your reader specific advice and ideas that everyone else isn't already telling him.

Don't be afraid that by telling too much, you'll eliminate the prospect's need for your product or service. Quite the opposite: When prospects learn the effort that solving their problem entails, and see that you clearly have the needed expertise, they will turn to you for help.

5. Deliver Value
When you can, include some highly practical, actionable tips the prospect can implement immediately. The more valuable your content is to prospects, the more readily your content marketing program will achieve its stated objective. It's like fast food stands giving away food samples at the mall: The better the free food tastes, the more likely the consumer is to purchase a snack or meal.

6. Set the Specs
Outline the characteristics, features and specifications the prospect should look for when shopping for products in your category. If you do this credibly, the prospect will turn your white paper into a shopping list. And of course, the requirements you outline should fit your product to a tee. For example, if your white paper title is 10 Things to Look for When Buying a Static Mixer, your mixer naturally will have all 10 characteristics, while the competition's won't.

7. Generate Action or Change Belief
Content marketing is successful when it gets prospects to take action or changes their opinions, attitudes, or beliefs about you and your product as it relates to their needs.

When writing white papers, I always ask my client, "What do you want to happen after the prospect is finished reading your white paper?" I often end the white paper with a final section titled "The Next Step" that tells the reader what to do and how to do it.

For more information on content marketing, visit the Content Marketing Institute online at www.contentmarketinginstitute.com.

Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 75 books including, "The White Paper Marketing Handbook" (Racom). You can find him on the Web at www.bly.com, e-mail him at rwbly@bly.com or phone (201) 505-9451.

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