Speaker 1: Welcome to the SBI Podcast, offering CEOs, sales and marketing leaders ideas to make the number.

Speaker 2: Welcome SBI Podcast listeners and video podcast viewers. My name is Andrew Urtiaga, and with my co-host Drew Karan, we're principals at SBI, a sales and marketing consultancy dedicated to helping you make your number. This is the weekly SBI Podcast, and its purpose is to share insights and information relevant to your business.

Speaker 3: So today's topic is content creation and how it fits into the overall organizational strategy. We're going to review a recent blog we read by Heidi Cohn entitled Three Steps to Maximize B2B Content Creation Resource. So Heidi received her undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Chicago and received her MBA in marketing with honors from NYU's Stern Graduate School of Business. Heidi built her marketing career at well-known brands for major international corporations, such as Citibank, Bertelsmann, and The Economist. So I would say this puts her in a position to be a subject matter expert.

Speaker 2: Before we get started, an interesting fact about myself and co-hosts, besides the same first names, we both hold black belts in the martial arts. Drew, my friend over here, has 27 years of martial arts experience, and I have 17 years. What this means to you is that we can't agree on a topic, we're going to settle it in a cage fight for SBI TV viewers. Be careful, don't tug on Superman's cage. Okay, Superman, let's get started. In her blog, Heidi writes about the different types of content available to B2B marketers and the three steps to maximize B2B content creation without a budget. Drew's a quote that I really like from her blog. As a champion of content marketing, incorporating a documented content strategy, I believe marketers must be strategic in their resource use to maximize their results in line with their business goals. I really agree with this statement. So how can our listeners do this, Drew?

Speaker 3: Well, we've got to unpack it a bit first. So let's define strategy, which is the allocation of people, money, and time in the pursuit of profitable growth. Right? That's the first step. Let's take it one step further and define what is a marketing strategy, right? So a marketing strategy is an operating plan for the company's marketing department. What does a marketing strategy do? It ensures that we allocate the resources efficiently to drive revenues. And what does it mean when you utilize a marketing strategy? Utilizing a marketing strategy means the marketing department builds buyer preference for the company's products. In order to do this effectively, there are five steps for defining the right market strategy. They are planning, engagement, organization, execution, and support.

Speaker 2: So why don't you let me take it from here. So let's walk through each of those five steps. Number one is planning. Planning is where you develop brand, campaign, budget, and data plans that when you execute are going to help you make the number. Second comes engagement. Engagement is where you define the processes that marketing team is going to use to interact with the prospects and the customers. This begins with demand generation, early stage inquiries, then continues with lead management process to help nurture the inquiries to sales-ready leads. The third step is org. That's setting up the correct organizational structure so the right people are in the right roles to execute the process. Fourth comes execution, and execution is where you begin doing all the work, right? This is the doing part. And at this point, it's time to determine how you're going to produce content to meet the needs of the marketing and the sales organization. You need to execute campaigns and the lead management process to produce sales-ready leads. Finally, we get to support. Support is where you help the marketing team effectiveness by removing the non-program responsibilities and streamlining those that can be offloaded. So now that we're on the same page, let's go back to Heidi's post. Where does the process content creation sit inside this framework?

Speaker 3: Well, I think it's in two places. I think, one, it's initially in engagement, and the second area is on execution as well, too. So you've got to create good content to draw the buyer in. I think we've talked about that before on another podcast, that over 60% of the buyer journey is going to happen prior to them ever engaging a salesperson, so we have to draw them in early. Then also on the execution. So we've got the right materials in the right person's hand at the moment of truth, right? That's when it comes down to it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm going to take a second here, and I'm going to pull two statistics from Heidi that she throws out on her blog that I think are really important. Number one, 76% of U.S. B2B marketers plan to increase their content creation in 2016, and this is according to the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Professionals Research that they did. Okay. The second one is 51% of U.S. B2B marketers plan to increase their content budget, right? So everybody's moving towards content, and I do believe that content is king. However, not having a strategic plan can lead to a waste of money and resource allocation. Here's what she mentions in her post, which I believe and I agree with her. One of the major B2B marketing challenges, namely that in many B2B companies, the sales and the marketing organizations often don't communicate or work with each other.

Speaker 3: Yeah, Heidi, if you're listening, I could not agree more. I'll take it a step further. All the functions, if they're not communicating with each other, fall into strategic misalignment, right? Absolutely. And what we have categorized as 91% of the companies that we've surveyed actually are misaligned. Wow. Hey, Andrew, thanks for walking our viewers through where this sits in the overall strategy and the framework, too, but before we continue, why don't we take a short break to let our viewers know about some new offerings from SBI, and after the break, we'll look at how to ensure that you're strategically thinking through your content strategy.

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Speaker 3: So welcome back, everybody. My name is Drew Karan. I'm here with my co-host, Andrew Urtiaga. Today we're discussing a blog written by Heidi Cohn entitled Three Steps to Maximize B2B Content Creation Resource. So during the last segment, we discussed Heidi's concept of content strategy and how to ensure you're developing a solid operating plan around the content. That cannot be done without first defining what a marketing strategy is and is not. Why? First, the marketing strategy builds demand for the company's products and services, too. It requires choices on the marketing channels, which ones to invest in and which ones to forgo, right? So Andrew, we agreed with Heidi right before the break that the sales and marketing are not communicating enough or collaborating enough, right? So we call this strategic misalignment. So can you walk our audience through this a little bit more and give a little deeper

Speaker 2: explanation? Yeah, this is like the time like when I kicked you in the side, remember, and your back was misaligned?

Speaker 3: Oh, you mean after the bell?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's how you remember it, but I remember somebody falling to the ground and crying

Speaker 3: like a baby.

Speaker 2: That's strategic misalignment. Yes, exactly. But just to walk our audience through this and they understand what we're talking about, let's walk through the strategic alignment and not just in the context of sales and marketing. So first we start with market research. That's having a deep understanding of the market, accounts, buyers, and users and what their market problems are and where we want to focus. Then we can determine as an organization the external market. Now we can develop our corporate strategy, which is the allocation of people, money, and time towards the pursuit of profitable growth. Once we do that, then we can build products and we can launch them. And these are products that resonate with the marketplace and solve the market problems. Then we want to create demand for those products. We already discussed that framework in the marketing strategy. Then we progress to sales. And sales' role from a sales strategy perspective is converting that demand into revenue. And then finally, the talent strategy. And the talent strategy is really kind of the fuel and the engine. It's the people that we need to actually execute the strategy. So even if you look at Heidi, she even says it herself in her blog, in order to build an effective content strategy, she gave the following tips. And try to correlate these with the six steps that we just walked our audience through. Number one, know your overarching business goal. I love this, Heidi. This is corporate strategy, right? What's the direction that we're going? What are we focused on? Number two, understand the specific audience for each piece of content. This is market research, right? This is buyer segmentation. Create market personas. Once again, buyer segmentation. So a lot of the content that she discussed in her blog and what she's focused on from a content strategy perspective sits in market research. It defines the direction. So if you're a listener or viewer, the point to take away is that in order to execute a successful content strategy, you must first have strategic alignment. If not, it's like driving down the freeway and you're throwing money out the window. You'll be building a content that is out of alignment with the goals of the organization.

Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that was an awesome explanation. Thanks for walking us through that. So what we're going to do now is we're going to take a quick break to let our listeners hear about some new offerings from SBI. When we return from the break, we'll wrap this up and put a bow on it for our audience.

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Speaker 3: Welcome back, everybody. My name is Drew Cure. I'm here with my co-host, Andrew Urtiaga, and today we're discussing the blog written by Heidi Cohn, Three Steps to Maximize B2B Content Creation Resource. During the last segment, we discussed the concept of strategic alignment as it relates to content strategy. But one thing I thought might be helpful for the viewers and listeners is we went back in and talked about how to create that content strategy. So if you take the 2016 How to Make Your Number Workbook and you flip it over to page 124, I'm actually in step two of the marketing strategy, and I'm talking about phase five. There's a questionnaire, there's nine questions that you can go through that you can sit down with your functions to help create this as well, too, and it'll really guide you all the way through the process. So the first one is, what are the content goals for the marketing and sales team? It's critical to nail out what the goals are, too, right? Second was, how, when, and where do our buyers consume the content? Because we want to get the content in the right hands at the right time, right? The next one is, what content do we have versus what do we need? And then we'll look at, what trigger events put our buyers into the marketplace? So as we look at the buyer journey, too, and we do the buyer processing map, what's the trigger event that moves them to the next stage?

Speaker 2: So I think, Drew, just to interrupt you there, I think it's good to show the six-step revenue growth methodology and the internal alignment and what we've been talking about the entire segment is really looking at, how does this connect with sales and product and market research and the entire revenue growth value chain? Let's go back to question number two. You said, when and where and how do our buyers consume content? How would I find that out?

Speaker 3: It's in market research. So you're doing market research, doing buyer surveys, going through and doing that as well, too, getting the voice of the customer. We've heard that on an earlier SBI podcast.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So that's the market research, right? And we said that was step number one in terms of the revenue growth methodology. And then your third question was, what content do we have versus what we need? Where would that come from?

Speaker 3: I think that comes from sales. So sales are out in the moment of truth, right? They're the ones that are actually taking the content that's created in a sales process, right? So you've got two different versions of it. I'll get it back up for a second. So one is, you've got marketing-generated content that's going out over the web, too. And then you also have sales that's taking marketing content and driving that as part of the sales process when they're engaging one-to-one.

Speaker 2: Some people call that sales collateral.

Speaker 3: Yeah, sales collateral, sales enablement, right? Getting the right piece of content in the right hands at the moment of truth. So that feedback has to come from sales, right? They need to tell marketing what they need in order to be successful.

Speaker 2: Yep. So I think our viewers are starting to get a hint of how all of these things are interlocked with one another, right? Right. In terms of the revenue growth value chain. Question number four you posed, what trigger events put our buyers in the market? Where would I find that and where would that sit?

Speaker 3: Well, that's going to sit within marketing when you look at knocking out the buyer processing map and identifying that, too. So you're looking at the buyer journey and the specific steps that they go through in order to reach a buying decision.

Speaker 2: Yep. Great point. Market research again, once again, right? Yep. Absolutely. So marketing would be in charge of the market research, understanding the buyers, and what are the trigger events. And when we talk about trigger events, those are the things that propel the buyers into the market to buy the products and services of many of their clients. It's stimulating. It's stimulating. Right. It's another way of saying that. Okay, so sorry.

Speaker 3: Keep going. I cut you off. Okay. All right, so that's just marketing planning, how they want to release it, when they want to release it, to make sure they're matching it with seasonalities as it may come up as well, too. Makes sense. Then you look at the content production schedule that needs to be met for the goals again. So once again, in the marketing planning section. And then how do we get the content in the hand of our buyers? We talked about this a little bit earlier, too. So it's really what's the distribution channel, right? Is it going out via the web? Is it downloadable or is it in the hands of the sales rep?

Speaker 2: And that's buyer segmentation. Once again, in market research, I would find out how do my buyers like to consume content? Do they search it on the web? Is it direct mail? Is it social media? What are the channels that they're listening to, right, that the organizations need to tune into to disseminate the right content so that it differentiates it from the competition in the marketplace?

Speaker 3: Correct. And the last two questions on there is how do we promote the content that we create? So that's how are we getting people to read what we're actually producing as well? And then how do we test and constantly improve? So how do we become agile and keep iterating as we go through the process?

Speaker 2: Yeah, completely agree. And I think hopefully what people are starting to see is this whole concept of strategic alignment, you know, market, corporate, product, marketing, sales, and talent, and how they're all interlocked and interrelated.

Speaker 3: Yeah, but you just hit one. You hit product. And we didn't discuss that, right? So product needs to tell marketing, here are the advantages of the products, right? Because that knowledge of the product, in order for marketing to create great content, product needs to be feeding it again. So once again, we're talking about the interlocking of all the different strategies.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And is that a waterfall effect, meaning we build products, we get ready to launch them, and then we let marketing know, here are the products that we're going to launch. We need you to build the message.

Speaker 3: No. It's got to be done in an agile environment, right? Yeah. So it should be done all working together as we go back. Once again, you hit it, starting with the market research, in alignment with our corporate strategy, and then building it all through the rest of the functional strategies.

Speaker 2: Yeah, completely agree.

Speaker 3: So Andrew, can you explain to our audience how they can put all this to work?

Speaker 2: Yep. So here's what you do. You download the 2016 SBI Research Report, and you can find that at salesbenchmarkindex.com forward slash 2016 dash report. Review pages 27 through 34 with the functional leaders. This is going to highlight the six-step revenue growth methodology that we've discussed today.

Speaker 3: Okay. So we always end our show this way. Big question of the day. Pretender or contender?

Speaker 2: I think Heidi's a huge contender.

Speaker 3: Yeah. She did great. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Contender. I mean, there's no knockout for Heidi. Excellent material. I think it should be expanded to cover the other functional strategies too, and then also talk about the proper sequencing as well, right? But what does this mean to our audience? Well, you can't make your number if you don't have strategic alignment across the organization. This is why you care. If you feel you may not be in strategic alignment, you can have one of our experts lead you through a workshop which will detail how to do this. Go to salesbenchmarkindex.com forward slash 2016 dash workshop, and you can request a workshop. Andrew, once again, as always, thanks very much for going to the rounds with me. I greatly enjoyed it, and I know our audience did too.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. We didn't have to go to blows today, so you made it alive.

Speaker 3: Not today. And thank you, our audience. You're the most important for tuning into our show. This show has become very popular, and with its popularity comes the opportunity to discuss great content like we did today. So until next time, we wish you much success as you try to make your number.

Speaker 1: This has been the SBI Podcast. For more information on SBI services, case studies, the SBI team and how we work, or to subscribe to our other offerings, please visit us at salesbenchmarkindex.com.