Fast & Easy Friday: A Recap of the Week’s Top Articles & Insights

Here are the stories that grabbed our attention this week. We hope you find some inspiration before you head out to enjoy the weekend.

  • Struggling With B2B Marketing? Here’s What You’re Doing WrongWith most businesses eager to cash in on content marketing’s many benefits, it’s concerning to see that nearly 60% of B2B companies do not have a clear idea of what successful content marketing looks like, according to a recent report from the Content Marketing Institute. If your company falls into that majority, be sure to peruse this post by Julia Payne. Once she walks you through the importance of gaining that clarity and making a whole-hearted commitment to success, Payne gets down to the nitty gritty of why so many B2B organizations struggle and offers up three blunders and how to avoid them. (Spoiler: The blunders involve marketing personas, platforms and a clear strategy for moving prospects through the buyer’s journey.)
  • How to Apply a B2B Buyer Persona to Marketing Strategy: If you’ve put the effort into researching and defining buyer personas for your B2B company, give yourself a hand. It’s a great step toward preparing more successful marketing campaigns. But before you open a second bottle of champagne, be sure you’re prepared to take that persona and translate its insights into a coherent content strategy to support those campaigns. Take heart, though, as Ardath Albee comes to the rescue (again) with this Kapost article that will walk you through the process in nine steps. It may not be as simple as the “check the box” approach she’s steering you away from, but it’s a fantastic foundation that will ensure you don’t miss any important details as you progress.
  • Why Content Matters (No Matter What Type of Marketer You Are)As content marketing continues to come into its own, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the various reasons it’s become so integral to every marketing strategy. Here, Rebecca Lieb discusses six of those reasons: declining advertising results; the convergence of earned, owned and paid media; its relevance across the organization; the globalization of marketing; a growing reliance on real-time marketing and the changing nature of context as we see sensors and the Internet of Things taking hold. It’s an interesting read, and offers perspective on how content marketing has gotten where it is, and where it may be headed as it continues to evolve.
  • First Devise a Content Strategy, Then Do Content MarketingNow that Rebecca Lieb has reminded us all why we do what we do, we may as well go all in on her new book, “Content – The Atomic Particle of Marketing.” In this Native Insider article, she talks about the basis of her guide to content strategy. The biggest takeaway, of course, is that you can’t put content marketing ahead of content strategy and get away with it. You’re bound to miss important opportunities if you don’t plan out what you’re doing and why. She touches on three main types of content and how they play into a comprehensive strategy. If you’d rather read the book itself, it comes out in paperback on June 28 and is already available on Amazon Kindle.

If you need help building or executing on your content marketing strategy, Content4Demand can help. Visit our Resource Center for valuable self-serve content, or contact us directly.

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