How to Create a Content Strategy for B2B Nurturing Campaigns

Author:

Paul McKeon

Source:

The Sales Cycle Has Become the Buying Cycle
 
If you are like many B2B marketers, you have great content-delivery tools—in the form of marketing-automation or campaign-management software—but a short supply of effective content to push to the market.
 
There are two reasons for the lack of content: marketing myopia and underestimating how buyers use content.
 
Marketing myopia. Many marketing departments are driven by their own internal events, such as new-product launches, user conferences, and the CEO's latest initiative. But that is the myopic approach.
 
Here's the painful truth: Your prospects couldn't care less. They move through the sales cycle at their own pace, based on their own needs and pressures.
 
In fact, it is not even accurate to call it a sales cycle anymore. It is really a buying cycle—and the buyer is in control. Therefore, the most effective content, and thus the most effective marketing, must meet the buyer's needs, not yours!
 
Underestimating how buyers use content. Marketing doesn't fully understand how buyers use content. B2B marketing is no longer just in the business of brand management and lead generation. It must serve a huge demand for content that spans buyers' needs, from pre-awareness to post-sale. And matching the right content to each buyer—at the right phase of the buying cycle—is critical.
 
An intelligent content strategy gives buyers the content they want at each phase of the buying cycle.
 
Four Stages of the B2B Buying Cycle
 
The B2B buying cycle has four recognizable stages, each requiring a wholly different content approach....