Blogging, Branding, Buzz Marketing, Communications, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Thought Leadership
Using Content to Build Trust in B2B Marketing
Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
Paul, wonderful post! People buy from people they know, like and trust. This is especially true for technology products, as stated by Geoffery Moore in the book Crossing the Chasm WAY back in 1991. I quote, “numerous studies have shown that in the high-tech buying process, word of mouth is the number one source of information buyers reference, both at the beginning of the sales cycle, to establish their ‘long lists,’ and at the end, when they are paring down their short ones.” Now, social media is providing the technology to support the buying process Moore wrote about – and for all industries, not just technology…!
3-5 times is no small hurdle. Especially when you multiply out the average response rates across all the possibilities. Email marketing gets read by what, half of one percent? Today the tech media landscape is so competitive that even IF you get in the NYT, you still only have a tiny fraction of your target customers that actually READ it. And then the “word of mouth” factor is so fuzzy to quantify that who knows what percentage of your customers are hearing about you from someone else. Anyway, it does seem like a pretty logical argument that content marketing isn’t some nice to have exercise, but one of the few tangible exercises that a company can do to make sure that they have a fighting chance to hit that 3-5 contact goal for a meaningful % of their targets.
@Travis – totally agree 3-5 times is reasonable but the you almost need to be a statistician to make it work across multiple forms media – content marketing is really the only option
Excellent article, Paul. We are a human resources consulting company and the product is really a service, but more than that it’s a relationship we are selling. The trust we need to build with our prospective clients prior to even having a conversation with them is huge. Educational pieces, content links, and service recommendations all help to get that message across.
@Tim – totally agree – with all the content and social technologies you can really get a feeling for what it would be like to work with a company like yours. Keep up the great work!
Paul, thank you for the validation that just posting a white paper on a website, or sending an email campaign about an event, is not nearly enough.
I speak with many clients about the importance of repurposing their content, and it’s a difficult lesson. Many are reticent, because they are afraid their prospects will get bored with the message.
@Travis is right, the read and response rates on many channels are so low that 3 to 5 actual reads of a message is no small feat. Marketers have to remember that just because they are tired of communicating a new message, that doesn’t mean their prospects have heard–or believed–it yet.
@Paul that’s such a great point – I sometimes find myself tiring of a message only to realize that many people have yet to hear it – thanks for commenting!
Paul, Good post on the #of times a message needs to be heard for it to be trusted. While this is an important piece, I think the question of credibility of the place where the message appears (see pg. 5) is also a very imp. factor.
I was surprised to note that analyst report and business magazine are the top trusted sources of information ! What do you all think about this? Does this mean, we love social media but don’t trust it as a source of credible corporate info.?
@jijesh – I think that sometimes surveys lag the market’s true sentiment – and in this case I can see how they would respond with analyst reports as being trusted – but I would expect to see more peer to peer (social) interaction rate higher like I have seen in some other reports
@ Paul, you are right about the growing imp. of p2p interaction. BTW this is also reflected in the report, see Figure 7. However, the question really is – will peer-to-peer interaction on social networks gain the same credibility.
My own, view is that it will.
How many times has it been reiterated by many bloggers that content is king? Content is the key factor in determining whether or not people would be engaged with your blog or not. The better the content, the higher the possibility of having more subscribers.
@Contact Center Philippines – Content marketing is really becoming an art as well as the science behind creating it – its one of the last frontiers we have left as marketers!
Great post and great information on the number of touches to build trust. This is a great challenge for marketers, because it makes the point that just having content is not enough. You need great, simple and surprising content that tells a story and engages the prospective buyer. 5 touches for instance should tell a story that engages the buyer and involves them in a story.
In addition to great content, it needs to be propagated everywhere, so it can easily be found.
Because the bar for business is so high today, I believe companies need a Chief Content Officer on staff — as they need one person to own this critical need.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
President, Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.net
@fearlesscomp
Glad to hear the rule of thumb of 3-5 still holds. That’s what we used to use when I first started in marketing…ahem…back in the day. Also, that a multichannel, integrated approach is what works. Same rules, just new tactics added to the media mix.
Paul thanks for this useful info. Remember that that the 3-5 is just to be considered ‘believable’. If we apply the old and perhaps outdated rule of 7 touches before a client actually buys then we can see potential for the sales cycles to be lengthened. Given the shorter attention spans of our buyers it makes deploying social media all the more important as we deliver the content incentives in smaller more persuasive digestible bites?
@Chris – I agree with that assumption and like the fact that social allows you to explore smaller chunks of content with a broad audience – this way you can get more mileage from your content (humm good title for a blog post – Going Green with your Content thanks to Social Media)
Like Jennifer Beever, I’m also a Geoff Moore fan. He was my colleague and mentor at Regis McKenna Inc. where we tested his Crossing the Chasm precepts. In principle, I agree that “social media is providing the technology to support the buying process.” I’d, however, add a caveat. Geoff’s point is that WOM is effective when buyers hear it from others who are just like they are…or from sources they already know and trust. Therefore, it’s the messengers that buyers will believe, not necessarily the messages that are conveyed through social media channels.
@Joan – great point and an often overlooked fact – thanks for commenting