You Can Do Better Than “Somewhat” Effective Marketing

Would you go to a restaurant that a friend told you was “somewhat” good? How about a movie that was “somewhat” entertaining? Looking for a new TV show to watch? I’ll tell you about a few I enjoyed... somewhat.

It’s not exactly high praise, is it? So when 51% of b-to-b marketers recently called their content marketing just “somewhat effective,” with only 14% saying their content marketing was “very effective” — the rest saying “somewhat” or worse — maybe it’s time to take a look at how to get your content marketing back on the right track.
The survey results:

Let’s imagine what kind of content marketing effort might fall under each grouping — this way, we’ll know what not to do, and how to get to “Very Effective.”

Not Effectively at All:

• You run fast and loose with the concept of content marketing.

• You make 3 or 4 Twitter posts to “check out your website” each month, whenever you remember to.

• Your e-mail content plan is to talk exclusively about your products and services, once or twice a year, to a contact list you bought three years ago.

Somewhat Ineffectively:

• You have a blog that functions like a PR outlet: occasional announcements of new product lines, sales, and the like.

• You’ve never met a promotional phrase you didn’t like.

• You’re on all four big social media platforms, but you ignore interactions (and potential customers).

Neutral:

• You create some interesting content, but you apply the “80/20” rule the wrong way, talking about yourself 80% of the time.

• All of your content is focused on the bottom of the funnel. It drives some sales for the few prospects who are ready for it, but you’re missing a lot of top-of-funnel lead opportunities.

Somewhat effectively:

• You create content valuable to existing customers – industry news, innovation updates, solutions to problems — but you’re still not connecting with many top-of-funnel prospects.

• Your email communication is uneven — customers look forward to most of them, but get turned off by just a few too many sales pitches.

Very effectively:

• You’ve researched specific issues that face your ideal prospect, and you craft useful blogs, white papers, and other content around them.

• You’re not afraid to create educational content that doesn’t mention your company at all, besides authorship.

• You have content everywhere your prospects look, so you connect with them at all stages of the buying cycle.

As more b-to-b companies embrace content marketing, it’s important to make sure that it actually works — sub-par content may already be leading to a backlash. It’s not so big a jump from “somewhat effective” to truly doing it right — and both you and your customers will see the benefits.

Great Content Marketing starts with the fundamentals — download your free white paper to find out what they are.