Category: B2B Marketing

Part of our funnel is missing: 3 kinds of asset content marketing forgot

Posted on by The Radix Team

The Funnel is a frankly pathetic metaphor for the way marketers want buyers to move from stranger to prospect to lead to customer to advocate.

Problem is, it’s still how most people plan their marketing content.

As Velocity’s Doug Kessler pointed out in his inimitable way, funnels tend to have gravity on their side, and aren’t, on the whole, particularly leaky. (What goes in the top of a funnel is sure to come out of the end pretty soon… if only sales funnels were so reliable.)

The Funnel model is so limited, in fact, that Workbrands would rather talk about a water park, giving buyers options, routes, support and the chance to ride more than once. Sounds like fun to us.

In truth, The Funnel is a 92-year-old* cockroach that simply refuses to die. Limitations or not, it’s still the model everyone uses. It’s clear, it’s simple and – ahem – it makes for a cracking board game.

And that’s fine(ish).

But when you use The Funnel to plan your marketing content – as a lot of marketers do – you’re bound to miss some fairly important stuff.

TOFU, MOFU and BOFU are only half the story

Let’s recap. It’s common for content marketers planning an editorial calendar to try to cover the whole funnel with lovely content:

TOFU     The top of the funnel. Prospects barely even know who you are, let alone want to buy from you. Your job is to get into their consideration set, get their details and start a conversation.

TOFU tactics include: thought leadership blogs, social media, slideshare rants, infographics

MOFU   The middle of the funnel. The prospect has realised they have a problem, and it’s one you can probably solve. They might be putting together a shortlist of vendors.

MOFU tactics include: ebooks, case studies, workbooks, videos, “how to” blogs

BOFU     The bottom of the funnel – now you’re selling. Assets need to be carefully aligned with sales, and focused towards building a business case, helping prospects through practicalities, and ultimately winning the contract.

BOFU tactics include: whitepapers, checklists, comparison charts, buyers’ guides

All very important, and very useful. But we know the funnel is just part of the content marketing story – the inbound bit – and, like Joe Pulizzi said, that isn’t enough.

If you’re focusing only on TOFU, MOFU and BOFU, you don’t have all the content you need. So let’s meet their charmingly-named cousins…

Say hello to PREFU, REFU and POFU

Most of the people you’ll do business with in the medium to long term are not in your funnel right now. Some have already been through, converted (hurrah), and are customers. Others have just left it… or maybe they’re nowhere near it just yet.

These contacts are where next year’s revenue is coming from. So what kinds of content will you give them now?

PREFU – people who are nowhere near your funnel (yet)

Some companies aren’t in the market for what you’re selling. Maybe they’re not big enough or at that stage of maturity yet. Perhaps they haven’t even noticed the pain that you solve. Could be they simply can’t afford you just now.

They’re not leads – in fact, they’re not even suspects yet. And in a world of limited resources, sales can’t talk to many people in that category… but marketing can.

If you’re interesting (dare I say it, even entertaining) and demonstrably helpful, expert and informed, a little marketing content can go a long way towards building awareness, and a good impression, in the hearts and minds of people on the fringes of your market, who might be customers later.

REFU – or the dark art of staying friends with your ex

As we’ve established, your funnel has holes in it. Lots of them. Face it: it’s more like a funnel-shaped colander. The point is, there are many reasons why a prospect mightn’t turn into a sale.

Maybe there were internal changes. Or perhaps the budget got used up. Who knows, they might have even (whisper it quietly) chosen a competitor instead this time. One way or another, the sale isn’t happening – but that doesn’t mean they’ll never be in your market in future. After all, haven’t they shown they’re just the sort of company who might buy from you??

The question now is how to get your brand into prime position next time around – to keep in touch, keep building engagement, and eventually get them back into the funnel once more. That’s where your REFU content comes in.

Effective REFU (Return-to-the-Funnel) content depends on the reason you lost the sale: hints, tips and guides to help when a new incumbent’s honeymoon period ends, or assets to help your contact build a better business case. Use data you’ve collected but, crucially, respect the decision your contact has made – don’t be pushy.

POFU – they’ve bought from you. Well done. What now?

The most neglected bit of content marketing – arguably, any marketing – is what happens after the sale. How do you a turn a one-off customer into a fruitful, long-term relationship – and an ambassador for your brand in turn?

Among all the many kinds of marketing content we’re asked for, almost none is aimed at existing customers – that’s left to account management teams. It doesn’t seem to compute that – just maybe – they need just as much marketing support as sales.

Who’s done the most to prove they’re the kinds of customer who’d buy from you? The people who already have. So keep them happy, help them to make the absolute most of their purchase, broaden their relationship with you, and watch the repeat business, upsell opportunities and referrals roll in.

(If in doubt: dig into your data, and compare leads’ conversion rates by their source. If you’re not more likely to convert a referral than anything else, I’ll buy a hat and eat it.)

POFU (Post-Funnel) content needn’t be rocket science: newsletters, ideas, updates, user guides and events. Build relationships, and an interactive community to foster a sense of belonging… involve your customers in content creation, too.

What works for you?

How do you make sure your content covers all eventualities – and what kinds of content work best? We’d love to hear your PREFU, REFU and POFU ideas (or names for other bits of the funnel we might have missed… do your worst!).

Drop us a line on Twitter.

*Yep, the idea of the sales funnel first appeared in a bond sales book in 1924.

reddit v Quora: how can you use them in B2B marketing?

Posted on by The Radix Team

reddit calls itself “the front page of the internet”. It’s like a massive global forum that has sub forums for just about anything.

Alexa, as I write this, ranks it as the 9th most popular website in the US and 31st globally.

Quora says its mission is “to share and grow the world’s knowledge.” It’s a huge question-and-answer repository of knowledge. Alexa ranks it as the 127th most popular website in the world.

David McGuire, Radix’s Creative Director, told me he’s heard reddit might be useful for B2B marketing, but the site absolutely terrifies him. Quora? Zero opinion.

Keep on reading to find out what both platforms are like, how you can use them in your B2B content marketing efforts and why you might want to go with one over the other.

As a B2B content marketer, I use both

I’ve been on both sites for four years, so I’m pretty well placed to tell you what they’re like, how you can use them for B2B content marketing (and how you shouldn’t), and why you might go with one over the other.

Full disclosure: I use reddit a lot more than Quora and I was once a moderator of a large subreddit (like an online forum). This is not to say that reddit is better for B2B marketers; I just mainly have a Quora account so I can fully view site content.

The differences between reddit and Quora

reddit is made up of subreddits: communities of users (known as redditors) who discuss a particular topic or post content around a particular topic, with threads and replies. Quora has questions and answers, and a slightly hidden blogging feature.

Subreddits are communities of users on reddit and each subreddit has a particular focus. So /r/Games is about videogames and /r/scifi is about science fiction.

Quora’s topics are groupings of questions about particular subjects. You’ll find topics like Technology Trends or B2B Marketing.

Both platforms have the possibility to help with your content marketing efforts.

But what are the other main differences between the two sites?

(Click on image for a larger view.)

(What’s “astroturfing”? Check out this definition over on TechTarget.)

While there are many similarities between the two platforms, as you can see from this table there are a lot of differences too.

What could a B2B marketer use reddit for? (hint: it’s NOT promoting your own content)

There are many articles, blog posts, that describe how to use reddit to gain web traffic. Almost all of them involve concealing that you’re a marketer while doing this. They say you should embed yourself within reddit and in subreddits relevant to your business in order to build up a reputation as a “genuine poster” and then start to promote your business.

Do not do this.

What those articles don’t really mention is the fact that if you are found out, all that hard work you put into pretending to be genuine will have been for nothing and your brand’s reputation tarnished.

Or, as this article on SocialMediaExaminer points out:

redditors expect extreme transparency and authenticity from advertisers. Spam and hard selling aren’t tolerated and using either tactic will damage your brand’s reputation.

It doesn’t matter how awesome your content is. You can’t approach reddit the same way that you do Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. If you jump in and submit content blindly, you could find yourself banned or your websites blacklisted.

Despite all this, paid-for ads that link to your content are perfectly acceptable. Why? Because you’re being honest that you’re marketing something.

So what should a B2B marketer use reddit for?

Outside of content promotion or starting a subreddit specifically for your brand?

You should use reddit for finding out about part of your audience.

I say part, because the users of reddit are, anecdotally, incredibly skewed towards a particular demographic (white, straight men who are under 40). But for B2B marketers looking to find out more about everyone from end-users to senior decision-makers, there are subreddits on almost anything related to industry and business.

For example, there’s subreddits like /r/sysadmin, /r/engineering and even /r/talesfromtechsupport.

Lurk and listen.

There are no quick fixes and it might take some time to find where you should be listening (the first part of that SME article has good advice on finding relevant subreddits). The benefit of listening is that you might discover ideas for content and ways to flesh out audience personas.

Can you try posting on reddit?

You have to be really careful about posting to reddit and linking to your brand in any way. When reddit advises you to “tread carefully” they really mean it.

If you decide to post, do as SocialMediaExaminer advises:

Submit appropriate content, provide insightful answers, ask questions related to your industry and respond to people who engage with you.

So what do you use Quora for?

Well, you use it to be yourself.

A lot of what you would do with Quora you could do with reddit. But Quora encourages you to be yourself:

Having profiles that are meant to be based on who you are gives Quora an edge that reddit doesn’t: Quora gives you a true public face as a user. This means you can do a lot more, because you can be honest about who you are from the start and build up a reputation that you can use to your brand’s benefit.

Ways to use Quora for B2B marketing

This article from Buffer’s Kevan Lee is an excellent guide on how to set up your Quora profile and how you can use the site as a marketer.

As Kevan suggests, here are just some of the things you can do with Quora:

  • Research a topic your business is interested in
  • Crowdsource content
  • “Re-answer questions you’ve answered in your blog”
  • Discover new content ideas based on questions

But its main strength for marketers is how public-facing it enables you to be, and the transparency that enables.

I’ve previously written on this blog that the impact of being truthful and authentic should never be underestimated; existing and potential customers appreciate it.

Quora is essentially a place where you can build a reputation as a thought leader and gently tie this back to your brand. This includes linking back to your existing content in answers when it’s relevant to do so.

We’ve even seen clients’ contributions to Quora discussions being quoted in the media, so it can be valuable from a PR point of view, as well. (As long as you’re saying something you’d be happy to see quoted!)

What about Quora’s blogging feature?

The blog feature is not nearly as prominent as some other self-publishing platforms, like LinkedIn’s Pulse. However, if you’re looking for somewhere you can atomise and reuse content then it has potential and helps to build up the authority of your Quora profile when people check it out.

reddit v Quora: which do you pick?

Like any online platform, the first part of looking into its marketing benefits is finding out whether your audience is there. If your audience isn’t on reddit or Quora, then you shouldn’t waste your time on the platforms, because they won’t help you bolster your marketing efforts.

But if your audience is on both and you only have time for one?

Then decide if you want a public profile or an anonymous profile.

Public brand building? Choose Quora.

Anonymous information gathering? Go with reddit.

But above all, remember: spam is not your friend.

(I don’t know if David is any less terrified of reddit after reading this post.)

Want more B2B copywriting and content advice?

Check out the Good Copy, Bad Copy podcast.

Header image adapted from “Daily News Golden Gloves Boxing” by Mike Lizzi under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

How to brief a B2B copywriter

Posted on by The Radix Team

Brief even the world’s greatest copywriter badly, and they won’t deliver what you need.

The words they tap out won’t appeal to the right people. Or talk about the right thing. Or fit where you want to put them.

You might as well scrape them off your homepage and replace them with some significant-looking geometric shapes, or vaguely aspirational go-faster stripes. If they’re for a standalone content piece – like an eBook, or a SlideShare – there’s every chance it’ll end up languishing among the estimated 60+ percent of B2B content that gets created, but never actually used.

And yet… a lot of the briefs a B2B copywriter receives are woefully inadequate.

At a recent Twitter chat, we asked the assembled copywriters (TM pending) to share the biggest issues they have with the briefs they receive. Here are two representative responses:

And these are not lone voices in the wilderness. These are the cries of an army of professionals, desperately wanting to do a good job – so they can earn your repeat business, sure, but also so they can take some genuine pride in their work.

So, how do you brief well, and give a huge boost to both your marketing efforts and your copywriter’s self-esteem?

Here’s my take on the absolute fundamentals.

1. Help us understand who we’re writing for. (The audience.)

You know the kind of person you want to reach:

  • Where they work
  • What they do
  • What keeps them lying awake at night
  • What makes them gaze droolingly into the middle distance
  • What job title they’d ultimately like to call their own
  • What they already know (and don’t know) about your product or service

So, tell your copywriter. It’s a lot easier to be persuasive when you know who you’re talking to.

If you don’t know who your audience is, or you genuinely think your audience is ‘everyone’, you’re talking to a copywriter too early. Instead of rushing to produce content, you should be working to refine your marketing strategy.

In our Twitter chat, Dave Harland ‏@wordmancopy succinctly summarised the kind of brief that’s guaranteed to make a copywriter’s heart sink:

(Even better than telling us about your customers, you could introduce us to them.)

2. Tell us where the audience will read our copy.

That ‘where’ is both physical – on this blog, in an email that follows this template – and metaphorical. If you’re mapping your content to the good old sales and marketing funnel model, or it’s part of a larger campaign, let us know where it’s going to sit.

That way, we can make sure our copy forms a neat, logical journey, and even helps you effectively qualify leads along the way.

3. Explain how you speak, what you want to say, and why your audience should care.

Whether you’re producing a series of thought-leadershippy blog posts, or a thoroughgoing product guide, you’re producing it to engage your audience, and tell them something.

All you need to tell your copywriter is:

  • How you speak – if your company has a tone of voice guide, share it with us now
  • What you want to say – whether it’s ‘Hey, have you thought about how you’ll handle all the data from the Internet of Things?’ or ‘This is how our software helps businesses hire faster’
  • Why our audience should care – which of their challenges, worries and dreams does your message speak to?

4. Tell us what you want the audience to do next.

Thanks to the multiple teams, stakeholders and pressures involved in the creation of most marketing content and campaigns, it’s all too easy for the ‘call to action’ – what you actually what your audience to do after reading the copy – to be finalised very late in the day.

Ideally, however, it’s there from the start, front-and-centre in the brief. That way, your writer can create copy that carefully builds towards it – until taking that next step seems like the only natural thing to do.

5. Lay down the briefing law.

As our Twitter chat revealed, different writers like to be briefed in different ways. You could ask them for their preference. But you’re probably better off covering all bases:

  • Put together a written brief. This needn’t take long. The stuff you’ll want to include – from who the audience is, to how the copy is going to be used – is all stuff you should know already. Putting it in a Word doc will help you nail it down, and highlight any gaps or issues. (And once you’ve written your first brief, you’ve got a template you can use again and again.)
  • Arrange a briefing call. It doesn’t matter how comprehensive your written brief is, a good writer will relish the chance to hear you explain the project—and to ask questions.
  • Arrange further calls, if necessary. Some projects will require your writer to understand and convey complex ideas, others to present genuinely expert advice. If that’s the case, give us a chance to quiz the people with the ideas and/or knowledge. (Often, this means product experts.)

6. Give feedback.

If you’re working with a writer on a series of projects, the feedback you offer becomes a crucial part of the briefing process. Tell us if we met the brief. Tell us if you felt you had to tweak the tone of voice, or cut our hilarious play on words. Tell us if a project has met its targets, and if not, where it’s failed.

This is the kind of information copywriters thrive on. It helps us correct, perfect, and ultimately do an even better job next time.

Here’s the simple truth, and one that few will be honest enough to tell you.

Great copywriters can use their skills in two ways.

If you brief us badly – something the best of us will fight tooth and claw to stop from happening – we’ll reluctantly use our writing prowess to paper over the cracks in our understanding. We’ll produce words that read just fine, whoever’s reading them, and neatly fill some space. But that’s all they’ll do. They won’t hit home with your audience. They won’t make them sit up and take notice – and action.

And we’ll feel bad about it, even though we’ve done a bloody miraculous job under the circumstances.

But if you brief us well, it’s quite literally a different story.

We’ll use our skills to engage the people you’ve told us you want to engage. We’ll have the grounding and the confidence to write with genuine authority, find resonant narratives, and bring the full force of your expertise and our creativity to bear.

We’ll make any organisation look as clever as it is – if not more so – and its products or services look as invaluable as they are. Which is, after all, why you went looking for a great B2B copywriter in the first place.

All I’m saying is this. Let us show you what we can do.

For more B2B content tips…

Subscribe and listen to the Good Copy, Bad Copy podcast.

Three people your B2B copywriter definitely needs to meet

Posted on by The Radix Team

This is a plea.

It’s on behalf of B2B copywriters everywhere, to you, as a marketer. And quite simply, it’s this:

Let us talk to your people.

Don’t get me wrong; we love it when you’re organised, help us with our research and provide a clear brief for the work you want. But give us direct access to a few people from around your organisation too, and you’ll be rewarded with stronger, more compelling copy.

And let’s be frank: you need better copy. Look at almost any survey of B2B marketers’ top challenges, and you’ll find creative engaging content is there or thereabouts. If you want engagement, this is how you get it.

(By the way, if you’re an agency marketer, the same thing goes for letting your copywriter talk directly to the client.)

Why? because a direct conversation will give us three essential ingredients your briefing document (helpful though it is) usually can’t:

  • It lets us hear how people really talk, and use your sector’s terminology, in the real world – which helps your copy to sound authentic.
  • It gives us an insight into attitudes, and how people think about concepts (the bad as well as the good) – which enables your copy to be honest, and deal with people’s real issues.
  • It presents an opportunity to ask questions, and listen out for angles, ideas and hooks you might have missed – which means your copy might surprise you.

That makes for copy that’s informed, engaging and resonant.

Horrifying thought, isn’t it? Putting an external writer in direct contact with the assortment of oddballs, nerds and outspoken critics who reside in the dark recesses of almost every B2B-focused company. Who knows what impression we might get of them (or they might get of us)?

But relax; we’re B2B copywriters. Talking to geeks, digging into technical subjects, and finding the story in something dusty and dull is simply what we do every day. But more than that, we chose this line of work. We enjoy it, we’re good at it, and crucially we’re on your side.

So your office characters don’t need to be polished before they talk to us; polishing is our job.

And if you want your copy to really speak to your customers in a language they’ll recognise, there are three people above all others you should introduce us to…

1. That “challenging” salesperson

You know the one. They get great results, but they’re impossible to satisfy – always negative about your latest marketing work, dismissive of new product releases and outraged at production lead times. If you squirm inside at the thought of what they might say, they’re the one we need to talk to.

Why we want to talk to them: they’re our quickest way to find out why grass roots customers really buy from you. They’ll also probably be completely blunt about what’s bad about your product or service, where your competitors have an edge, and where they’ve seen marketing materials miss their target audience.

2. Your biggest product geek

Oh yes, the enthusiast. The one who – irrespective of your market research – thinks the new triple widget flangelator is really what you should be promoting, because it could revolutionise the whole flugelbinding process. If they read product catalogues and instruction manuals for fun, they’re perfect.

Why we want to talk to them: this is where your deep content comes from. The actual insights that customers can really use are currently lurking between your expert’s ears, and we’re experienced at mining them out. Also, it helps us to know not just that it’s faster, but *why* it’s made that way.

3. (Deep breath…) your customer

Yes, it’s a bit scary. But as writers we’re acutely aware that when we talk to your customer, we’re holding your baby – so we’re always on our best behaviour. Case studies are a great way to make this happen (while making the customer look clever and feel important to boot), but even helping you on a trade show exhibition stand can do the trick.

Why we want to talk to them: to find out exactly what’s important to people in your sector and – crucially – how they speak in the real world. One we’ve met a typical customer, it’s easier for us to picture them, and write compellingly to that kind of person. (They might also say things to a third party they wouldn’t tell you – giving you extra insights when we report back.)

You need engagement, we need access

For years, B2B marketers’ biggest problem has consistently been producing content that really engages. As external copywriters, the more we can immerse ourselves in your world, the better our chances of picking up on real, current concerns, unearthing fresh insights, and finding the right language to cut through the noise.

Please do continue to give your copywriter a full, detailed brief – but please, trust us talk to your characters too. Often, that’s where the gold is.

Fancy reading B2B copywriting tips and ideas on a regular basis? Our email newsletter is perfect. Try it for yourself…

Research report: barriers to B2B marketing content

Posted on by The Radix Team

In November 2019, we invited B2B marketers to tell us, anonymously, about the problems that prevent them creating the content they’d like. We write B2B content, so we thought we might learn something useful.

The response was so surprising, and so vehement, that we turned it into a full research report – and we asked leading B2B marketers from the US, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands to share their commentary and advice.

It reveals six problems shared by at least 75% of marketers, as well as six ideas to break the cycle. If you want to dive straight in, you can do so here…

Click to read Barriers to Great B2B Content 2020: Survey Results and Analysis

Big surprises in the survey results

The response to the survey shocked us, in a whole bunch of ways.

Responses from all kinds of B2B marketers, everywhere

First, the number and variety of marketers who took part. We’d anticipated that maybe a few dozen would be disgruntled enough to use our survey to let off steam. In fact, we attracted 105 responses – B2B content marketers of all levels, from all round the world. CMOs and marketing directors to content writers and agency types, working in all kinds of B2B: tech, engineering, SaaS, legal, manufacturing, and more.

B2B marketers are really, really angry about this stuff

Second, the sheer vehemence of the answers. These aren’t just small frustrations; B2B content marketers are angry. And when you think about it, it’s hardly surprising; marketers are being prevented from doing their best work, and then being talked down to by content experts who only see the content, but not the struggle behind it.

Maureen Blandford has experienced this in previous roles, and says the results are “the reality for most marketers”.

Imagine having people screwing your work up, and then being blamed by the market when your content sucks. It’s like: “If you only fuckin’ knew.”

– Maureen Blandford, VP of Marketing, Community Brands

Pretty much everyone is dealing with the same crap

Third, the fact they’re largely angry about exactly the same things. Irrespective of seniority, business size, sector or location, there are issues that seem to affect everyone. Specifically, six challenges were rated as a problem by 75% or more of our respondents:

  1. Conflicting and changing priorities, and unclear briefs
  2. Stakeholder interference
  3. Limited budgets and resources
  4. Too much work, and not enough time
  5. Lack of co-operation from other departments
  6. Problems getting access to customers

All the assumptions about B2B marketing are wrong

Fourth, the challenges that aren’t on that list. We often read that B2B content is not engaging because the subject matter is complex and dry, B2B buyers are conservative, or marketers lack creative skills. None of those things made the list. Instead, we see a picture of B2B marketers who have plenty of good ideas, but are prevented from executing them by their own organisations.

And finally, a lot of the findings are shocking in their own right. For example…

Just 32% of B2B marketers are proud of most of their content.

Many of the critiques of B2B content seem to assume that marketers don’t know their content could be better. This result – in response to the question “How much of your published B2B content makes you proud?” – proves that’s a huge mis-assessment.

Out of 105 respondents, not one could say they’re proud of all the content they produce; only 32% could even say “most of it”. By contrast, the most popular response was “a handful, ever” (37%). 28% went for “less than half”, and 3% said “none”.

It’s a worrying state of affairs, replicated in every group we spoke to. CMOs and marketers in North America were slightly more positive, but there was no category where “most of it” scored higher than 45%.

81% of B2B marketers have to fight hard for their content.

And the issue certainly isn’t that stakeholders don’t care. 81% agreed with the statement, “I sometimes have to fight hard to publish content I’m happy with.”

That’s a global issue, and the scores were fairly uniform. There was no category where fewer than 73% agreed (the UK, followed by tech marketers with 76%), and for marketers working in enterprises and on mainland Europe, the figure was 100%.

Just 14% of B2B marketers say their organisation agrees on what good content is.

Conversely, no enterprise or European marketer agreed with the statement, “In my organisation, everybody agrees on what good content is.” Overall, the figure was just 14%.

The fact the figure is almost an exact mirror image of the “I sometimes have to fight…” question could suggest that a lack of stakeholder alignment could be one of the root issues revealed in this report. If the organisation cannot agree what good content looks like, then the marketer will always face a fruitless task trying to create it.

In the report, Doug Kessler talks about stakeholder alignment as “the number one job” for B2B marketers. And he explains the importance of taking that alignment work outside of the daily process of content approvals.

If your stakeholders are not in alignment, nothing is possible. And if they are, almost anything is.

– Doug Kessler, Creative Director, Velocity Partners

One way to address the issue is to draw up a clear, agreed specification for your content, and base each point on data (whether from research or, better still, your own A/B testing). If you can use independent metrics like content readability scoring, better still. This makes the conversation less subjective, and more aligned to the pass/fail quality tests in other areas of your business.

If you like, you’re more than welcome to steal the B2B content quality checklist we use for our own internal reviews, and adapt it for your own purposes.

There’s evidence these content barriers really do hurt business results.

As we looked at the research, it quickly became clear that B2B marketers aren’t lacking inspiration for their content; they need evidence to help them fight their daily stakeholder battles. So we went back to the data, to see what we could find.

We cross-referenced some of the bigger problems marketers were reporting with the answers to the question, “What is it about your best content that makes you proud?”

It’s not absolute proof, but we can show the impact of each problem on marketers’ perceptions of their own content, based on whether they were more or less likely to be proud of that aspect, compared to the average.

And this is where things get really interesting:

Excessive stakeholder interference makes B2B content 26% less likely to get good business results.

Ever thought that all that micro-management from stakeholders was actually making your content less effective? Turns out, you were quite possibly right.

Respondents who reported stakeholder interference as a big problem were 26% less likely to be proud of their content’s business results than the overall average.

Tight marketing budgets make content less effective. (Heavy workloads makes it less creative.)

The theme continues among marketers who said lack of budget and resources were a big issue; they were 18% less likely to be proud of their content’s business results.

There was also a marked decrease in pride about original concepts, and quality of copywriting – which suggests that cheap content has a knock-on effect on business outcomes.

A similar pattern occurs among people who said workload is a big issue: they’re 25% less likely to say they’re proud of their best content’s originality, with a commensurate impact on results. It suggests that having insufficient time ties marketers to tried-and-tested concepts, at the expense of cut-through.

B2B marketers who can’t talk to customers are 27% less likely to be happy with their content’s business results.

Our sixth barrier was possibly the most surprising: marketers around the world are being kept away from customers, meaning they don’t have a clear view of their priorities, needs, and language.

This is obviously a painful issue, as the respondents overwhelmingly believed that giving the reader value, and reflecting the customer’s point of view, were the most important aspects of good B2B content.

As you might expect, marketers who say this is a big problem are 24% less likely to be proud of their content’s customer alignment. But here’s the surprising thing: the impact is even greater on business results (27% lower).

That’s reflected in a comment from Intel content marketing and automation analyst Shaema Shazleen Katib, who says: “Our best-performing content has that credibility factor, things like statistics, customer success stories, and testimonies. These things have always performed the best on a global scale.”

What’s important is finding the right format, length, structure, and tone – and that’s a matter of knowing your audience well enough.

– Shaema Shazleen Katib, Intel

59% of B2B marketers say their own signoff process makes results worse. (And the really shocking part? They’re right.)

Here’s a crazy thing: almost 6 out of 10 B2B marketers think their organisation’s own signoff processes actively impairs content outcomes. In fact, 59% agreed with the statement, “If nobody else had to sign off our content, the results would be a lot better.”

And here’s a crazier thing: the research agrees with them. People who agreed with the statement were less likely to be proud of their content, right across the board:

  • Writing quality: -8%
  • Business results: -8%
  • Customer alignment: -6%
  • Marketing prestige: -15%
  • Emotional impact: -19%
  • Value for reader: -5%

Time to break the B2B content cycle.

Sooner or later, the six barriers to B2B content come down to a single fact: in many B2B organisations, marketing does not get the respect it needs to work effectively.

The irony is that good content can be part of the solution: 86% of respondents agree that “Great content makes the marketing team look good”. But until marketing gets that respect, that content can’t happen: just 20% say their best content reflected well on the marketing team.

In the back of the report, we discuss six approaches which might help. First among them is getting away from the idea that good content and effective content are two different things.

56% of respondents disagreed with the statement “The best content usually gets the best results”, and Doug Kessler thinks this is the heart of the problem. Marketing will continue to be underestimated until marketers’ objectives align with the rest of the organisation. As Doug says: “What’s great, what’s effective, and what’s wonderful should be the same thing.”

There shouldn’t be this tension between the well-crafted, beautiful content and the effective content. If we don’t start by defining great content as that which has the most impact, we’re never going to succeed.

– Doug Kessler, Creative Director, Velocity Partners

Ultimately, the fight is yours.

Please feel free to use this report however best helps you to win the argument for good content. Share it with stakeholders, write blogs, whatever works.

Because unless we can change the conversation around B2B content and what good looks like, marketers will continue to have to fight their own organisations, just to get effective work done.

(And selfishly, as B2B content writers, that’s no fun for us either.)

We should be shouting these results from the rooftops. Because if marketers aren’t delighted with the work they’re doing, we need to show why.

– Maureen Blandford, VP of Marketing, Community Brands

 

Our favourite B2B marketing insights from Ignite London 2021

Posted on by The Radix Team

For obvious reasons, the B2B Marketing Ignite London event was held virtually again this year – which gave me an opportunity to go and see what all the fuss is about, without even leaving Cornwall.

Ignite is a place where all the big thinkers and experts in the B2B marketing world meet up, network, learn and keep pace with new developments and practices.

And this year, for me, three key themes stood out: likeability, bravery, and the opportunity to boldly go where no B2B brand has gone before.

Amid a packed, two-day schedule, here are my three biggest highlights:

1. Sage “bossing it”, by breaking new ground for B2B

Sage’s Vice President UKI Marketing, Kirsty Waller, opened the keynote sessions with a surprising case study.

You probably know Sage as the safe accountancy software company that makes life that bit easier for small business owners – but Kirsty showed us how Sage’s marketing is anything but safe. She walked us through their groundbreaking “Boss It” campaign, and how she made the decision to boldly go where young entrepreneurs hang out but no B2B brand has gone before: TikTok.

Far from being a gimmick, the #BossIT2021 campaign was an object lesson in doing your research and meeting your customer where they are. Small and medium-sized businesses ran with the idea and revealed, using Sage’s #BossIT2021 theme tune and hashtag, how they’ve been thriving (or “bossing it”) over the last year, to win £5,000 of home office gear.

Sage is clearly “bossing it” too, as the move proved a really popular way to involve SMEs. The results were impressive: 1.3 million hashtag uses, 2 million engagements and 8.5 million impressions.

It demonstrates the potential of TikTok in B2B marketing if you’re bold enough… and if you get the planning right.

2. Social issues: B2B brands need to stop sitting on the fence

Next up, Dara Douglas and Stefan Doering of PwC discussed why B2B brands need to be braver in challenging times. Pandemic, climate change, and global disruption has changed the landscape forever, and B2B marketers must change with it.

Dara and Stefan talked about being less impartial, taking a stand and, most importantly, taking practical action to help solve some of the issues we all face. Playing it safe is no longer an option for B2B brands, and the risk of upsetting some customers – in order to stand up for others – is one worth taking.

They encouraged B2B brands to become more purpose-led, because brands driven by their own, authentic values are best placed to elicit change. That change might be creating more opportunities for people from underrepresented backgrounds, forging a culture of inclusivity (NB: we have a whole podcast about how to make your content more inclusive), being carbon neutral, or deciding not to work with customers who have a detrimental impact on the planet.

They offered some key steps towards becoming an authentic brand with purpose:

  1. Decide what matters to you, your people, and your customers.
  2. Walk the talk – so what your organisation presents to the world aligns with what’s inside.
  3. Empower your people to have their own voice.
  4. Build a community based on trust and shared values.

This inspiring keynote got me thinking about where we need to take action and what we can do to be braver and more authentic in our marketing. Because however long it takes to go reach a “new normal”, people will always want to work in and with businesses that actually make a difference.

3. People don’t need to love your B2B brand – but they do need to like it

Rooster Punk’s Paul Cash had some fantastic insights into brand likeability and why it matters. As he put it: “People do business with brands and people they like.” Likeability builds trust, which means sales… and repeat sales.

Paul seemed to agree with Dara and Stefan, saying: “People don’t want to buy from you any more, but they do want to buy into you,” and sharing research that shows 81% of people need to be able to trust a brand to do what’s right.

To achieve that, and build a brand that’s likeable, you need to have authentic values, and stand for something real. Or as Paul put it “Stop chasing ‘likes’ and start doing more likeable things.”

The more digital your market, the more customers interact with your brand online before they talk to anyone from your business. So what they see is extremely important. Your brand’s values, and what you stand for, must be obvious – and the content you produce should aim to initiate an emotional response, build a rapport with your customer, and focus on their feelings over any product features.

Paul shared five steps to build a likeable brand. Namely:

  1. Your brand needs a meaningful purpose, an identity, and a clear, relevant vision.
  2. Your content must have a point of view, and be interesting, meaningful, and helpful.
  3. Your culture has to be visible and celebrated.
  4. Your storytelling should be about people, not products.
  5. Your marketing needs to harness the power of emotion.

Being likeable is key to customer trust, loyalty and advocacy; clients who like a company enough to recommend it are the golden ticket for any B2B marketer. We need to stop being limited by “business to business”. In B2B, we are all humans who act on our emotions and decide who we want to work with and who we can trust.

Be bold. Be authentic. Be likeable.

For me, the key takeaways from these sessions are that B2B marketers need to deliberately eject ourselves from our comfort zones and try something new. Let’s stop being so afraid to mess up and aim to do things differently.

That might mean taking a stand to win over your stakeholders or challenging the norm by running more provocative, honest or emotional campaigns. On platforms we’ve never used before.

Let’s pick a side, and try to build purpose-led B2B brands that take action to help tackle the societal issues we all face. That might feel risky, but when people perceive your brand as disruptive, diverse, and dynamic, it benefits your organisation, your people, and your marketing.

We can also strive to be likeable. For too long, B2B has been perceived as boring and sterile – but that’s not true. And there’s no reason we can’t be both competent and human, right? That’s allowed. We can shift the focus from products to people. We can have a purpose and embed the power of emotion and storytelling throughout our marketing. And having attended Ignite, I feel fired up to give it a go.

(I might just need a lie-down first…)

Three ways AI is helping improve animal welfare

Posted on by The Radix Team

As a longtime fan of dystopian science fiction like The Matrix and Metal Gear Solid, I’ve always found AI to be a compelling, if somewhat unsettling, concept. That’s why, despite those cautionary tales, AI is consistently surprising me as a force for good.

Whether it’s generative AI being used to enhance medical research or computer vision helping athletes track and analyse their performance, I currently spend a lot of time writing about how AI can help people work smarter, and more safely and efficiently.

While it’s all fascinating to learn about, for me, here’s one application that resonates much more than the others. It may not seem like the most obvious use case, but AI is already playing a key role in humanity’s efforts to improve animal welfare – and the more I learn, the more it makes sense.

In this blog, I’ll look at three ways AI is helping make life a little better, if not more dignified, for wildlife and livestock. But before we dive in…

A quick guide to the tech

Were you confidently nodding along when I mentioned generative AI and computer vision? If those terms make sense to you, feel free skip to this section. If not, then read on.

Generative AI refers to models that can learn from existing content – like the collected works of William Gibson, or the films of Ridley Scott – to create new text, images, video, and synthetic data.

Computer vision (CV) is a field of AI in which algorithms are continuously trained using visual data to recognise objects and people. This helps it spot and respond to pre-defined patterns and behaviours.

Eager to learn more about AI? Be sure to read my colleague George’s blog about synthetic data, and Katy’s deep dive into AI’s applications in healthcare.

Use case #1: Protecting British wildlife on Network Rail

Network Rail (NR) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) – a science-driven conservation charity – are working with Google Cloud to identify, monitor, and learn more about wildlife living in and around the 52,000 hectares of land owned by NR.

Together, ZSL’s Machine Learning (ML) image processing systems and Google Cloud’s advanced data analytics enable NR’s ecologists to rapidly survey wildlife, map their behavioural trends and take protective action at scale.

Connected sensors capture huge amounts of audio and visual information in key wildlife areas. AI tools are then used to analyse the data and inform decisions regarding how to best protect different species.

So far, the initiative has helped track and protect endangered hazel dormice living along the edge of railways in the south of England, and many bat and bird species in and around London – including the rather lovely Eurasian blackcap. It’s also helped NR identify the best places to create “hedgehog highways” on its lines, helping the spiky lads cross over safely.

As climate change drives many species to find new habitats, ZSL and NR plan to use AI to monitor and safeguard their migration without disrupting railway operations. The project’s conservationists also expect AI will soon help them better manage vegetation alongside railways and on road verges to encourage biodiversity.

It’s nice to see organisations working together to protect these creatures, and it’s sure to help boost NR’s reputation with some passengers and investors. You can learn more about the initiative here.

Use Case #2: Observing livestock welfare for healthy herds

The National Farmers’ Union says animal welfare is a high priority for all British farmers, and while there are many RSPCA-assured farms, less than 3% of UK farms are inspected by official Government bodies each year.

There are also more than 1,000 “US-style mega-farms” in the UK, and they can become extremely crowded. These are the most likely candidates for animal mistreatment, given the aggressive turnaround on production and limited space.

It’s often difficult for vets, cattle consultants, and farm advisors to tell what’s happening behind closed doors. Plus, even with the best intentions, farmers may struggle to keep manual track of every animal’s wellbeing.

This is where computer vision and AI-powered analytics can help. Automatic image detection and analysis solutions can provide remote, AI-enhanced livestock surveillance 24/7 – to everyone who needs it.

Non-intrusive cameras are installed in strategic farming areas, providing a live video feed  augmented with on-screen visuals that indicate each animal’s current status, behaviour, and risk level.

Machine learning algorithms continually monitor and analyse the footage, including user responses, to more accurately identify when an animal is at risk or action must be taken to optimise their environment. To achieve this, the AI is taught to recognise and assess the environment’s brightness and humidity, and even animals’ faces and vocalisations.

Users can pre-define scenarios that they want the AI to alert them to, such as abnormal animal activity, whether cows are lying down enough, if their stalls are comfortable, and when food or water is running low.

AI-powered monitoring solutions can also help farmers and vets identify sick animals, predict emerging health issues, and analyse behavioural patterns that are indicative of an animal’s wellbeing. This information can improve farming productivity too, ensuring animals are kept in conditions conducive to safe and efficient pasture and growth.

Use case #3: Reducing avoidable animal suffering in slaughterhouses

Animal welfare organisations The Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals and Eyes on Animals, meat producer Vion, and professional services giant Deloitte have teamed up to develop AI4Animals – an intelligent animal surveillance system.

Their mission is to “significantly reduce avoidable and unnecessary animal suffering through innovative technology”. The solution uses AI to continuously monitor how animals are being handled in slaughterhouses, and alert those in charge of animal welfare to any signs of mistreatment or deviation from regulated protocol.

AI4Animals says many major slaughterhouses lack the time and resources to assess footage captured by traditional camera monitoring solutions. With AI, every frame is analysed in real-time using a rules-based criteria to detect handling issues, such as:

  • People causing stress by walking directly against the direction of the pigs
  • Animals remaining idle due to possible exhaustion or injury
  • Inappropriate use of mobile stunners as defined by regulatory protocol

There are other issues it can detect, but they turn my stomach – so I’ll leave those out for both of our sakes. Should the AI detect an issue, users can manually review any flagged footage to confirm mistreatment or a false positive. The AI will also compile regular reports to help outline deviations in behaviour over time, and inform decisions at a more strategic level.

Will this technology catch on?

During my research for this blog, I came across an article exploring the use of AI to detect distress in pigs. It’s already able to do this with 92% accuracy compared to human assessment.

While it’s true that happy animals tend to be more productive, and calmer animals are easier to handle, it’s questionable whether all producers of animal products are ready to embrace such technologies. By monitoring the emotions of livestock, you also acknowledge their existence and importance. Some industry commentators believe producers will resist this shift, fearing the imposition of new regulations that diminish the profitability of their operations.

It’s grim to think that people may ignore such promising technology because it risks humanising animals and harming profits, and I can only hope it does inspire more meaningful change across the industry.

In the meantime, the solutions explored in this blog are already driving meaningful change, and while I may not like industrial farming, if AI can help the animals live out happier, more dignified lives – I’m all for it.