Keith Goodwin | Super Spun Article

Building Marketing Soldiers

April 23, 2019 By Keith Goodwin Leave a Comment

This next offering was supplied by The Hoth. Normally I anticipate checking out one of their articles simply because they’re extremely educational. I think you will get something out of it.

Do you ever feel like you wake up every day, just to get on the same, painful, sales-grind hamster wheel?

When you talk to your prospects on the phone, are there some questions that you keep answering over and over?

It’s pretty common, and it’s a lot of work!

But there’s a better way…

What if you could build “marketing soldiers” that go to battle for you every single day… for YEARS… attracting and converting clients?

How To Build Marketing Soldiers

Here’s how:

Whatever you’re saying on the phone to “sell” your prospects, write it down and make it into an article.

The answer to every objection and question, how your product or service or industry works, turn it into a piece of content, then post these to your blog.

Each one of these pieces of content will become little “marketing soldiers” that will keep working for you 24/7 for YEARS.

Since you’re answering the questions that your customers are bringing up over and over, your prospects are going to find them, read them, and get to the purchase a LOT faster!

You won’t have to repeat yourself, and prospects will start coming to your calls ready to purchase since they already got their questions answered through your content!

Multiply Your Results

But the cool thing is that this is not just a content strategy…

This is a strategy for EVERY channel, and you can EASILY multiply the results:

This is an SEO strategy (They will rank in Google)
This is an email marketing strategy (Put them in an autoresponder and drip them out.)
This is a social strategy (Post them on social and discuss.)
This is a paid traffic strategy (Run Facebook ads to them)
This will make prospects find you.

This will make your prospects understand you.

It will position you as an authority…

…And it will make closing deals 10000X easier, thanks to your hard-working, unpaid, “marketing soldiers.”

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Finding The Right Keywords For Your Article

April 22, 2019 By Keith Goodwin Leave a Comment

The Hoth provided your next written piece. These people invariably supply information of the finest quality & are generally among my current favourite blogs. I hope you get something out of it.

I’m going to show you how you can take an SEO-first approach that will help you prioritize topics for content – even topics you never thought of!

Here’s how to find every single keyword indoor industry, and it’s actually quite simple…

Let’s say you want to rank for every single keyword in your industry. How would you find all the keywords?

The magic sauce is called a content gap analysis.

Here’s how it works:

First, you want to go and identify all your top search competitors. You do this by making a list of all the top sites in your industry that have the best content.
Next, you’ll want to find out all the keywords that they rank for.
Then, you’ll want to exclude any of the terms that you rank for already (you already have a page for these).

Now I have a list of every single keyword that all my top competitors are ranking for that I’m not…yet.

What do you do with this list?

This just became your website’s newest list of topics!

Now, you go through the list and create articles on all these keywords!

When we run a content gap analysis for a client on our managed SEO program, if the vertical is big enough, we’ll usually come up with OVER 1000+ topics that we can write on.

This is an insanely powerful process to run and I think you’ll be surprised at what comes out!

Want us to do this for you?

Check out our Managed SEO Service, HOTH X, where it is part of the red carpet treatment!

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Outstanding Customer Experience: The Operational Side

April 21, 2019 By Keith Goodwin Leave a Comment

Kapost provided you with the following blog post. I always take pleasure in checking out 1 of their blog posts simply because they’re surprisingly revealing. You are going to get something out of it.

Customer experience may feel like the latest buzzword, but expectations and trust are two factors that weigh heavily for a B2B Buyer. The State of the Connected Customer Report from Salesforce in 2018, found that 81% of B2B buyers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Raising the bar, 73% of them say their standard for good experiences is higher than ever.

Considering nearly all experiences a company provides are fueled by content—how we create, present, distribute, and manage it at every touch point of the customer relationship has an impact on our company’s growth.

It wasn’t long ago that content was an open market. I remember when it was true that if you published it, your audience would come get it. What’s interesting is that there’s no shortage of B2B buyers requesting content. But the consumption gap between the time the content is requested and making the time to read it is increasing, according to Netline’s 2018 State of Content Consumption and Demand Report.

This could be for any number of reasons. It could be a lack of time. It could be discovering the content isn’t what was promised, or maybe that the content is repetitive to what the audience has read from other vendors. It could be all three.

With a decade or more of content marketing under our belts, it’s time for companies to formalize their content operations to ensure they have the capacity and ability to keep pace with buyer and customer expectations. One-off, ad hoc content efforts are only compounding the fragmented experiences that your audiences are rebelling against.

The Need for Formalized Content Operations

Kapost recently published the Content Operations and Strategy Hiring Handbook to help companies take a considered and informed approach to doing so.

Consider this definition of a content operation to understand just how much value formalizing the process can bring:

“A content operation orchestrates the activity of all revenue teams—breaking down silos, ensuring all content contributes to strategy, and managing content complexity across many teams and channels—so that businesses can create a cohesive, personalized journey.”

What I like about their definition is the acknowledgment that content gets created and used by many teams across the organization. What they’re really saying is that it all needs to be coordinated for the sake of providing relevant journeys throughout the customer relationship or lifecycle.

The other key point about a content operation is that it’s not strictly relegated to marketing. A content operation is about the strategy, orchestration, and management of ALL customer-facing content, whether it comes from marketing, sales, product, service, or other departments. This means your onboarding programs, partner and channel programs, product marketing, customer success programs, and more.

Orchestrating Content across the Lifecycle

The way content has been handled to date has not been at its best from a consumption perspective. Buyers don’t care which team is producing the content. What they care about is the relevance, the usefulness, and if it meets (or exceeds) the expectations set for it. A problem can occur with content created by various teams across the organization that don’t collaborate. When mixed together during the customer experience, the result is often like whiplash for those on the receiving end.

This happens because stories aren’t coordinated so your buyers and customers experience that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde phenomena. Gaps exist which require your audience to take major leaps of faith to get from where they are to where the next piece of content is asking them to be.

In the handbook, Jessica Bergman at Salesforce makes an excellent point: She said you need change agents on your content ops team to help those across the organization understand “…how each piece of content plays a part in your content strategy and customer journey.”

There’s an art form to storytelling across the customer lifecycle, as well as a strategy and purpose. Creating continuous engagement and trust requires persistent relevance and smooth transitions. A content operation with visibility into all the content being created, distributed, as well as leading a collaborative effort to ensure content matches up to strategy and story can transform the quality of the relationships built across your company with your customers.

A side benefit is that it also reduces redundancy because a content operation also functions as a system of record to preclude reinventing the wheel. Rather, you’ll find stronger experiences can be built because teams are freed up to add to the story that’s there, instead of building it yet again in another version that varies from the others. Confusion is reduced, cohesion escalates.

Don’t Leave Customer Experience to Chance

Customers expect a lot from the companies they do business with but they’re finding they fall short:

45% say companies miss delivering on their expectations for great experiences
44% say they don’t think companies have their best interests in mind

There’s clearly a gap in experience and in trust. To close the gap, we must find a way to deliver relevant, valuable content and experiences consistently at every interaction. When we’re able to do so, the trust will grow.

If the future rides on the quality of customer experience then establishing a content operation can help your company refine your efforts—taking what you’re already doing and raising the quality to a level your prospects and customers will embrace against alternatives. And that’s what we all should be striving to achieve.

Kristin Fallon at GE summed it up well in her contribution to the handbook:

“Aligning a team around content operations gives savvy organizations a competitive advantage to balance both centralized and decentralized content marketing, ultimately delivering the best CX in the most effective way possible.”

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Excellent Customer Experience: It’s The Journey, Not The Interaction

April 17, 2019 By Keith Goodwin Leave a Comment

New post received from Kapost. Quite possibly 1 of the most effective suppliers of free info on-line.

The responsibilities of marketing leaders have continued to expand as the function has evolved from cost-center to an accountable deliverer of results. But the latest corporate imperative—customer experience (CX)—has put even more responsibilities on the shoulders of marketing leaders than ever before.

According to Gartner, 81% of marketing leaders believe that their companies will mostly or completely compete on the basis of their customer experience within two years. This CX priority is not just a marketing priority but is the decisive factor for the entire business. And marketing leaders are charged with orchestrating the entire CX, both within their department and across the business.

But, how are most marketing leaders faring with this imperative? The same Gartner study states that “only 22% [of leaders] say their CX efforts have exceeded customer expectations.” Over four in five say CX is the basis of competition, but less than a quarter is where they want to be. That is a huge gap around this immense responsibility for marketing leaders.

Why Is This Gap so Large?

To understand how we have encountered this challenge as marketing leaders, it’s helpful to look back at where we came from. Forrester publishes a set of trend predictions of B2B Marketing every year, and there’s a tremendous contrast between those of today and of those from half a dozen years ago.

In 2012, their headline was, “New Technologies Go from Cool to Critical.” The article discussed soaring purchasing and implementation of new digital marketing tools, whether it be marketing automation, mobile, social, and so forth. Further along, came a sub-section on content entitled, “Marketers Will Find Creative Ways to Meet Demand For Thought Leadership and Content.” It explained that the “explosive adoption of mobile and social, along with the expanded use of marketing automation, will greatly increase the volume and variety of content that marketing teams must create.”

Such has been the story for marketing leaders over the last decade. We have encountered the digital revolution and we’ve made enormous investments of time and money into technologies to manage the new digital interaction we must have with customers. And correspondingly we have “greatly increase[d] the volume and variety of content that marketing teams must create” to feed these new technologies and power the engagement in all of these new channels.

There’s no doubt we have made tremendous progress in the intervening years. We have stood up innumerable new digital channels, supplied them with plentiful content, and driven high levels of interaction (views, likes, opens, etc.) at these new touch points.

But for how far we’ve come—the gap between how critical CX is and how effective it is remains wide. How so? Could it be that in our zeal to respond to the digital revolution we have created a new set of problems that are holding us back?

Customer Expectations Must Define the Experience

Let’s see where Forrester says we are today. Their 2019 B2B marketing predictions article has quite a different title: “B2B Marketing Leaders Embrace Omnichannel Design and Execution.” The article defines “omnichannel” as the “coordination of traditional channels (marketing, selling, fulfillment) and supporting systems to create a seamless and consistent customer experience.” Forrester’s B2B Sales & Marketing conference in October 2018 focused on this issue in one of its three themes, “From Solos to a Chorus of Coordinated Content.” Forrester explained here:

The business consumer does not tolerate inconsistent messaging and disconnected content. In this theme, we’ll help attendees grapple with the challenges of operationalizing compelling messaging in content across both sales and marketing.

What a contrast to where we were in 2012! No longer is the focus on standing up new digital marketing tools and channels, feeding them volumes of content, and driving engagement. Instead, the focus now is on the coordination of not just marketing but also sales and fulfillment on consistency in message, in content, and in customer experience.

Unlearning Bad Marketing Habits

The priorities we had in 2012 had unintended consequences that created these new challenges we face in 2019. As marketing embraced digital, it greatly increased the complexity of the marketing organizations. New functions—such as demand generation and social marketing—were created to manage a plethora of new channels (web, blog, social, email, video, etc.) all with their new tools. Thus, the already complex B2B framework of different product lines, business units, regions, sales, and fulfillment became even more siloed and internally fragmented.

Faced with goals of driving engagement for their tool, with their channel, in their region, and their business unit, each silo created their own content more often than not with their own take on the message. Marketers understood the importance of collaborating across silos, but the complexity of doing so in yesterday’s paradigm was overwhelming. And as a result of this internal fragmentation, externally our customers increasingly encounter disconnected interactions with an inconsistent storyline.

In our eagerness to maximize engagement at every interaction across all of our new channels, we lost touch with the end objective: guiding customers across their entire journey and driving revenue. The whole had become less than the sum of its parts.

While we drive high interaction across our different channels, the core story we’re trying to communicate is being lost. And our customers are buying our full story; views, likes, and opens are not ends in themselves. Like the individual instruments all playing their own tune during the orchestra warm up, our customer experience can arrive discordant and ineffective with our customer.

Rather than maximizing the volume of each musician, marketing leaders must prioritize the coordination of the various instruments playing the full piece together.

So, while the pendulum swung far towards maximizing digital interaction and content volume over the last decade, we now see in Forrester’s call for a chorus instead of solos, how the pendulum is starting to swing back towards managing the entire journey. Not towards content volume but to content alignment and consistency. We need to prioritize the forest of the entire customer journey, not just the trees of every interaction.

Who Will Win CX?

And in this understanding is how we close the gap on CX, the greatest challenge facing marketing. To date, we have built out our digital infrastructure and driven engagement across these new channels. That is great progress. But now we must have our new channels—as well as our sales and post-sale experience—all work together in telling a consistent story in one voice across the entire customer journey.

Who then will win the CX race? Which marketing leaders will be able to orchestrate the CX that is pivotal to their company’s success or failure? And who will fall behind?

The winners will be the leaders who are quickest to recognize and respond to the new swing of the pendulum. These leaders will no longer try to squeeze results by optimizing engagement and interaction channel by channel, silo by silo. They will recognize that the infrastructure is now in place but then choose to prioritize the work of having the various teams and the various touch points all work together—speaking in one voice.

They know that a customer experience that provides a consistent story across the entire journey is the one that wins the CX race.

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Proper Distribution Of Your Blog Content To Improve Impact

April 15, 2019 By Keith Goodwin Leave a Comment

Another piece of content freshly shared by Kapost. Most certainly one of the most reliable providers of free information online.

We all know it: attention spans are spread thin. Even if you write the most engaging, informative, and value-rich blog post, you may struggle to attract readers. Hitting the “publish” button isn’t enough for connecting with your target audiences.

Remember that you’re reaching out to tired eyes who rely on social feeds and search engines to find information. These platforms are competitive and often require marketers to invest in some form of paid advertising to gain attention. Sometimes, paid channels ignite visibility and a direct funnel into a sales process.

But often, awareness-building efforts have little connection to the transactional outcome that you’re looking to steer forward.

One way to gain efficiency with content distribution is to look beneath the surface for opportunities. At the end of the day, content marketing is a way for companies to build relationships with people at scale. The text that you type into a Google doc (or content marketing platform like Kapost) is valuable knowledge. You’re educating and inspiring your readers with information that enriches their lives.

Blog Distribution Techniques

Think back to how human interactions happen in real life. How many times have you:

Discussed something interesting you’ve read when going to lunch, coffee, or drinks with a friend?
Asked for reading material or suggestions?
Talked about something new you’ve learned?
Shared information that your companion may enjoy?

These conversations happen every day, beyond friendships. They’re part of everyday interactions at the office. And let’s say that your company relies on a B2B sales model. Relationship-building is an important outcome of every conversation. Content fuels human bonds in a way that makes conversations more meaningful.

Here are six ways to continue your blog distribution after you hit publish:

1. Email Outreach Campaigns

With outbound campaigns, sales reps often feel pressure to close deals. This crunch can result in messaging that leaves your prospect feeling less than enthusiastic. Time is valuable, and nobody wants to spend their minutes reading sales pitches. Instead, share a blog post, case study, or eBook that’s educational. Seek to initiate a positive, engaging relationship that outlasts the transactional value of the sale you’re looking to push.

2. Follow-Up to Sales Conversations

For your company’s sales reps, timely and consistent follow-ups are essential. But it’s tough to initiate conversations that “feel right.” There are only so many times that prospect-facing teams can say, “I know you’re busy but I was wondering if you’d like to touch base.” Make your company’s follow-ups more interesting and informative by sharing interesting content. Add value to your prospect’s day.

3. In Industry Groups

Membership-based industry groups are springing up in all corners of the internet. Some of these platforms are part of a publisher network (i.e., Skift, Innovation Leader). You might have also come across these communities as groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. These networks create space for people to ask questions and seek answers.

Chances are, many people in your company are part of their own groups. Equip them with blog content that’s relevant to these conversations. Blog posts provide a natural way to participate in online conversations while adding value. This distribution technique connects question-askers with feedback and answers.

4. On Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

As a content marketing leader, one of the most important roles you can take on is facilitator. There may be a group of people within your company who are interested in sharing knowledge and educating their own networks.

One example blog to reference is Dun and Bradstreet’s. Team members from various departments participate in company dialogue by sharing insights. Even team members who don’t write can support their peers by sharing this content.

5. In Email Signatures

Brighten up any message in any email with a link to recent conversations. This gesture shows that your company cares about educating and maintaining genuine relationships with every interaction—something that blogging supports. Find unexpected ways to spark dialogue.

6. Integrate into Your Product and Support Platforms

If you’re selling a digital product such as software, and your company offers online support, there may be ways—from a user experience perspective—to incorporate content. Product experiences, especially for customers that rely on your company, can feel status quo. Customer support can often be a frustrating experience. One way to shift the tone of the experience is to share knowledge from your blog.

Long-Term Business Value

The benefits to these methods are that they have compounding value. As more people discover your content, even in a grassroots way, you’ll begin to build a follower base. More eyeballs eventually amplify into even more attention. The more your audience cares about your content, the more you’ll increase your orbit of people who are likely to become your best customers.

While paid advertising is a valuable part of your marketing mix, it may not be as efficient as a direct referral network. Blogging helps people-to-people relationships grow. This evolution translates into sales.

The Content Marketer’s Role

To make these techniques successful, content marketers need to think beyond writing and editing as core job responsibilities. You’re a coach too, teaching non-marketers in your business the value of creating content. You need to be encouraging, structured, and available to answer questions. You’ll also want to create feedback loops that highlight your customers’ success.

Final Thoughts

The distribution process is a jigsaw puzzle. As with any marketing initiative, it’s important to go through a process of testing and validation. You’ll get a sense of how interactions translate into long-term value for your business. This perspective provides fuel back to your content strategy in terms of idea generation and finding ways to expand upon core marketing initiatives. Get creative, be precise in the guidance that you give, and get your entire team on board to support sharing.

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