Your Inbound Strategy

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It might surprise you to learn that everything we've covered thus far in this guide has been foundational material. I haven't yet given you ways of developing a successful strategy, and this was intentional.

 

After all, there's no point in learning how to run until you can walk. Well, guess what? You're now a walker, and it's time to run!

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Remember how inbound is all about providing value?

 

Well, to whom are you providing value? Your customers! It should be obvious that to execute a successful inbound strategy, you need to understand who your customers are. 

 

So you should begin by drawing a picture of your customers, right?

 

Not so fast!

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Define Your Content Marketing Goals

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Content marketing is a major part of an inbound strategy. In some cases, content marketing might be your entire strategy. However, it's not ideal to have it this way. Content should be augmented with an event-oriented strategy such as webinars or conferences, etc. 

 

The problem with content marketing is that it's tough to measure its ROI. Much like inbound marketing ROI can only be measured over a long period, content marketing's returns can be nebulous.

 

The metrics are qualitative, and this throws conventional digital marketing frameworks into disarray.

 

Many digital marketing leaders cannot handle a world without metrics. They live and die by their CPCs, CPAs, and CLVs.

 

This is why you'll find the average marketing agency pushing paid ads and outbound as a viable marketing strategy. However, outbound tactics are not always a good fit for B2B companies.

 

They're an especially poor fit for companies that have highly technical products. Before going down the content route, companies must define their goals and create a framework that helps them achieve said goals.

 

Let's return to our AR automation company as an example. The CMO and executive team would like to drive sales right off the bat and become cash-flow positive quickly.

 

There's a good reason for this.

 

Their VC backers are breathing down their neck, and if the CMO cannot deliver triple to quadruple-digit growth within a year, they're out of a job.

 

Thus, the best way to begin is to focus on bottom-of-the-funnel content and activities that generate strong SQLs. Ideally, prospects will screen themselves through their actions and engagement, giving the sales team highly-qualified leads.

 

Here's a brief list of goals at which our company can aim:

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1. Prioritize conversions

2. Target bottom of the funnel prospects

3. Measure appropriate metrics

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The third point in that list is critical.

 

The company must measure metrics such as conversions on content instead of traffic and page visits. The latter is irrelevant to sales. Sure, they provide data, but a prospect who will likely click the "Request callback" button is unlikely to spend a huge amount of time on the page.

 

I'll explain why this happens in a later section when discussing the B2B buyer journey. For now, just understand that page visits, unique visitors, etc measure awareness, not engagement.

 

Tools such as heatmaps and click maps are also useless when your goal is to drive sales above all else.

 

So what should you measure? For starters, you should measure how many people entered their information on your forms.

 

How many engaged with your sales-oriented email newsletters? How many of those people requested a callback? Out of those people, how many converted to sales?

 

You can sense a pattern here. Conversion matters above all else in this scenario. You're not looking to become famous. You just want sales.

 

Your content should be tailored to appeal to people close to making a buy decision or those in the market looking for a new solution.

 

If a prospect is happy with their current solution, the AR automation company should not waste time trying to convince them to change.

 

Instead, they should focus on attracting people who have indicated they'd like a change. You might be wondering how our company could do this?

 

This is where creating content for every stage of the funnel comes in. I'll explain this in great detail in a later section. As of now, we're still at the goal definition stage, and it's important to understand how our goals drive the framework. 

 

If your goal is to increase awareness, you'll create different forms of content and measure other metrics from our AR automation company. If you'd like to increase awareness and sales, your framework will look very different.

 

The more goals you have, the more you'll have to invest in your B2B inbound framework. You'll have to create more content and address more topics. Thus, your content strategy will expand with your inbound marketing framework.

 

Now that you have goals in place, it's time to focus on your customer.

 

KYC or The Art of Creating Perfect Buyer Personas

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Marketers love buyer personas. Some marketing teams take this practice to ridiculous lengths by diving into granular details such as how their persona likes their latte or how often they yawn before going to bed.

 

Some firms construct ridiculous-looking images and cards to indicate who their personas are, giving them names like "Krazy Karen" or "Soliloquizing Steven" and so on.

 

Creating a buyer persona is all about hitting the right level of granularity. Once again, let's check in with our AR automation company. Who are their customers, and what are their qualities?

 

There are multiple ways we could figure this out. We could target companies across all industries but below a certain size.

 

Alternatively, we could target companies that belong to a specific industry. The broadest option would be to target every company out there.

 

However, the current state of the AR automation company plays a big role in determining this. If our company has 20 employees and has a relatively small marketing budget (VC-backed or not), it is unrealistic to target everybody.

 

Narrowing down is the key. For this exercise, let's assume our company will aim at B2B small businesses in zip codes within 100 miles of their (the AR automation company's) location.

 

Running a simple search through databases such as Zoominfo will yield a list of businesses.

 

We can refine this list by requiring our prospects to generate at least $500,000 per year in revenues. This gives us enough room to assume they have the budget to adopt our product.

 

So who is going to make the buy decision at these prospective companies? Here's where B2B inbound marketing diverges from B2C.

 

A B2C company has to convince a single prospect. If you're selling wallets online, you don't have to convince the prospect's partner or neighbor. However, your prospect companies don't work that way.

 

They have processes, purchasing departments, CEOs, and board members. A company is an organism that requires patience when dealing with it. The larger the company is, the more bureaucratic it will be, no matter how "cool" or "Silicon Valley-like" its culture is. 

 

In our example, we're dealing with small businesses that will likely have between 10-20 employees. If they're a SaaS firm, their headcount might be lower.

 

This is good news.

 

It means there's probably 1 person or 2 people at the most in charge of signing off on purchases. One of the people will definitely be the CEO. In companies of this size, they'll also likely be the Founder.

 

The other person will likely be the one who benefits operationally from the tool. In our product's case, this will be the CFO or the person in charge of reconciling accounts and bookkeeping.

 

Remember, we're dealing with small companies, so employees will likely wear multiple hats. 

 

We've made great progress so far! We know the broad categories of roles we're looking to target. It's now time to dive deeper into what these categories (personas) need and figure out how to solve their problems.

 

Let's begin with the CEO.

 

Creating a Persona

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CEOs are all about increasing their business' bottom lines, and reducing costs is a great way of achieving this. Since they're most likely the founders of their business (in our example), they'll have a great deal of loyalty towards their employees.

 

This is an important point to note since the "automated" nature of our product will likely cause them to believe they'll have to lay off people. 

 

The average CEO is an extremely busy person. They're not going to dive deep into technical subject matter, even if they're familiar with it.

 

After all, CEOs of small businesses fight fires all the time and cannot afford to spend time dissecting a single product. They'll delegate this task. If we want to capture their attention, we need to get to the point quickly and tell them how we can solve their problem.

 

All of this gives us enough data to create our first buyer persona. Here are the relevant details of our CEO buyer persona:

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1. Is likely the founder of their company

2. Is busy

3. Likes getting to the point in simple language

4. Is not interested in hypotheticals and needs hard data to be convinced

5. Does not want to disrupt their employees' lives via automation

6. Pain Points/Desires:

   1. Wants to improve bottom lines

   2. Wants to increase AR efficiency

   3. Wants to reduce hours spent chasing bills

   4. Wants better cash flow projection reports

   5. Wants to gain a deeper understanding of working capital levels at any point in time

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That's all there is to it!

 

You don't need to know what kind of car they drive, what their outlook on the economy is, or whether they're a dog or cat person (unless your product is cat or dog-based.)

 

Our AR automation company now has its first buyer persona.

 

What if You Don't Know Your Customer?

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You might be wondering: What if I don't know my customer? What if I don't fully understand their pain points? These questions are common in most marketing departments. Surveying prospects and monitoring secondary social conversations is a great way to understand their pain points.

 

As a reminder: We're looking to discover pain points because we're aiming to solve those issues and provide value.

 

That's the B2B inbound marketing ethos.

 

Let's begin with the first method, which is surveying your customers and prospects. These days there are a variety of tools that help you create great quizzes and forms your customers can fill.

 

Their answers are valuable data you can use to plan your marketing strategy.

 

For instance, let's say you don't know what the average CEO's pain points are or would like to go granular with them.

 

You want to know whether they view bill collections as a pain point in their business and what features they'd like in an automation product.

 

You can conduct a brief interview with them and have them fill out answers.

 

Conducting interviews like this is also a great way of letting them know your product exists. They might not buy your product immediately or even in a few months. However, they'll know you exist, and that's a huge plus.

 

Not only do you get to know your customer, but you also spread awareness.

 

Personas to Pricing

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One of the most important goals of persona creation you must aim for is figuring out what prices you can charge. Put another way, how much will your customer pay for your product?

 

Many B2B companies charge ahead with pricing plans but neglect matching those prices to market expectations.

 

For instance, you might have figured out that AR automation saves your prospects up to $2,000 per month. However, this doesn't mean they'll pay you $2,000 for your product.

 

Figuring out your pricing strategy is a different topic from inbound marketing. However, persona creation straddles both worlds.

 

Nailing pricing is important in the B2B world. Charge the wrong prices, and your prospects will view you as clueless.

 

Worse, if you charge too little, you'll hobble yourself, earn a loss, and spread awareness of your product for the wrong reasons.

 

One way of figuring out pricing is to ask your prospects. How much is too much?

 

Even more important, how low can you go with your prices before prospects feel there's no value in your product? For instance, if you spot jewellery priced cheap, you'll likely believe the product is cheap. This isn't to say AR automation is akin to jewellery.

 

It's just that prices and value are linked in our minds inextricably.

 

Connecting these answers to your pricing model outputs will help you enter the market at the right levels. Remember that each persona will have different value decisions, and your pricing must reflect this.

 

These different value propositions are why SaaS companies create pricing tiers. Often, their tiers are named after customer personas.

 

What to Ignore When Creating Personas

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There is a danger of digging too deep and recording all sorts of useless persona information. For instance, should our AR automation company care how tech-savvy their personas are? Well, this depends on the persona.

 

The CEO persona will probably never use the product daily, and their tech-savviness is unimportant. However, the AR department professional will use it every day, and understanding their tech-savviness is essential.

 

Given how prominent Excel is in the financial world, designing our product to have an Excel-like feel is a prudent product decision.

 

In fact, we could use this feature to highlight the ease with which an AR employee can use our product. As you can see, data relevance changes depending on the context.

 

For some products, the type of latte the CEO likes might be relevant. In our AR automation case, it isn't.

 

There are a few red flags to watch out for when creating your personas. If you're getting bogged down trying to figure out which social media platform they use the most, you're probably too granular. This advice extends to all data points. 

 

If you find yourself debating the exact percentage allocation of time spent on a platform or the third decimal point of a statistic, you're getting lost in the weeds.

 

Marketing might be highly analytical, but this doesn't mean you extend it to every function within it. You're still dealing with human beings and constructing a strategy to appeal to them is the ultimate objective.

 

Some teams use this illusion of accuracy to convince themselves they're doing a good job. However, they're merely missing the forest for the trees.

 

Avoid veering to the other extreme and ignoring data outright. For example, let's say you're trying to figure out the AR team member's persona and don't have hard data.

 

Do not fill in the blanks using your intuition or feel. Try to collect as much data as possible and create a strategy based on those incomplete assumptions.

 

This advice will sound strange. However, once your sales team begins interacting with prospects, have them gather feedback and fill your profile.

 

Remember that your personas need to reach a minimum threshold to initiate a B2B inbound marketing campaign. Perfection isn't your goal here. What you must instead aim for is creating a repeatable, iterative process.

 

That's right! Persona creation isn't a one-time job. You must revisit your assumptions regularly and make sure your content and other channels are hitting the mark.

 

Create a B2B Content Strategy for Every Funnel Stage

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You've defined your inbound marketing goals and figured out your personas. It's now time to start appealing to these people and get them to help you achieve your goals. When speaking of inbound marketing campaigns, there's only one way to execute your way towards your goals.

 

It is by creating content. Content can be written, in image form, video, or auditory. Every version has its advantages, and what's more, different formats appeal to different funnel stages.

 

For instance, someone deep in your funnel might want an in-depth written explanation of your product instead of a quick video. 

 

In this case, written content works better since it allows the prospect to move at their own pace. A video that is an hour-long tends to produce a negative reaction.

 

For instance, how often have you committed to watching an hour-long video in advance? Typically, our attention wanes around at the 7-minute mark.

 

So what should your B2B content strategy look like, and how should it fit into your larger inbound marketing campaign?

 

 B2B Content Strategy for the Top of the Funnel

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As you've previously learned, the top of the marketing and sales funnel is full of prospects who are getting to know you better. Some of them will convert to customers, while some of them are tire-kickers who have no interest in purchasing your product.

 

Content at the top of the funnel is thus directed at spreading awareness. Its objective is to direct interested prospects deeper into your funnel and allow the tire kickers to filter themselves out.

 

Let's see how this applies to our AR automation company.

 

Someone who searches for "what is AR automation?" is definitely at the top of our funnel. This person is explicitly asking for information about this topic, and their question is general.

 

Similarly, someone who searches for "AR automation benefits" is at the top of the funnel.

 

This person intends to understand how AR automation helps their business. So far so good, right?

 

Well, here's where B2B companies hit a snag. Search volumes in the B2B space are a fraction of what they are in the B2C realm. After all, no one is sitting around all day searching about automating their order to cash workflow. Instead, they search for highly targeted terms they know will take them to the right place.

 

For instance, a search term like "accounts receivable software" will be classified as a "high sales intent" keyword if we were in the B2C world.

 

After all, the prospect has explicitly asked Google to give them a list of software that they intend to review and purchase.

 

However, in the B2C world prospects can easily search for information related to every aspect of their products. They're bombarded on social media with content and this changes their search intent. In the B2B world, there is no introductory material (or very little of it.)

 

For the most part, prospects don't know where to go. Imagine a small business owner who wants to reduce the time it takes to process invoices and payments. They won't even know what to type to search for a solution. 

 

Thus, they'll type a seemingly high intent keyword to expand their awareness. This is because they know that the search results related to that keyword will definitely give them a list of resources they can learn from.

 

Many B2B content marketing teams stumble with these seemingly high intent keywords. They tailor on-page content to appeal to bottom-of-the-funnel visitors. However, a sizable portion of traffic arrives from top-of-the-funnel prospects too, and these people are left unattended.

 

The thing to do is to cater to both funnel segments. For the ones at the top, leave helpful links to glossary pages or explainer videos. Leave links to blog posts that explain who you are and what you do, and so on. Design the rest of the page to cater to the people at the bottom of your funnel.

 

Note that your content can take any form. What's important is that your content should be helpful. Our AR automation company will thus use "AR automation software" as a top and bottom-funnel keyword. We will create blog posts with this keyword on the page and describe what AR automation is.

 

In these articles, we'll display our expertise by empathizing with our prospect's issues. We'll also create a helpful glossary of terms that serves as a reference.

 

Our product pages and bottom-of-the-funnel content will be embedded with this keyword naturally. However, we'll leave links on those pages to content that speaks to people at the top.

 

Our content at this stage of the funnel will be short and sweet. No waffling around asking them to subscribe or like etc, as the average Youtuber does. Instead, we create helpful explainers and leave links to more detailed content that appeals to people who want to move deeper into our funnel.

 

The ones who don't will not click our deeper funnel links and will thus filter themselves out. All of these activities must be backed by measuring your metrics and tailoring content in response to them. I'll discuss metrics and analytics later.

 

For now, let's move onto the middle of the funnel. You'll find that it can be a tricky place.

 

B2B Content for the Tricky Middle

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The middle of the funnel tends to be a murky place that lacks definition. A big reason for this is prospects are beyond the awareness stage here but aren't ready to turn themselves into customers yet. 

 

Your objective is similar to the one at the top: Entice your prospects deeper into the funnel and allow those who are not interested to filter themselves out.

 

How do you entice people deeper, though? At this stage, short and sharp content isn't going to cut it. You'll need to demonstrate a deeper understanding of your prospect's issues, dominant topics in your industry, and so on. You'll have to exhibit authority and show people you understand what you're talking about.

 

Our AR automation company, for instance, will have to talk about best practices and dissect issues that affect its prospects. A CEO (one of the personas we're targeting if you recall) will want to understand the effect on their bottom line.

 

Their subordinate, the one they hand research tasks over to, will want to see our understanding of day-to-day processes.

 

The keywords these people search will indicate their interests. For instance, "accounts receivables management" covers a lot of ground. However, the intent behind this keyword indicates knowledge of AR processes and a desire to make them more efficient.

 

Once again, B2B prospects don't behave like their B2C counterparts. They're not going to telegraph their intent via keyword searches. We'll have to create a ton of ancillary content related to single keywords and lead our prospects along a journey.

 

For instance, we can create a blog post about AR best practices. We can also talk about issues that hinder AR efficiency, such as using paper checks, manual cash application methods, and so on. We can create a series of videos surrounding these articles and introduce the prospect of automation.

 

We can talk about these issues on our podcast and plug our product. We can get involved in a conference and spread the word, although some marketers will consider this an outbound approach due to the costs involved.

 

Either way, the middle is where we want to go deeper into issues.

 

Once again, all forms of content work here. It's just that they need to be longer and have more meat to them. It isn't enough to simply define what AR is. We need to talk about issues in invoice-level reconciliation and dispute handling.

 

Some content teams make the mistake of gating this sort of content. Gates are a great lead collection method but they can turn into a vanity tool quickly. Someone who fills out information in a gated form isn't automatically a lead.

 

Their actions qualify them as leads, not some data on a form. Many B2B companies insert aggressive CTAs here that miss the mark. Your prospect isn't ready to buy as yet.

 

They're thinking about it. Get too aggressive, and you'll come across as a pushy salesperson asking for the sale before the customer is ready.

 

However, you also want your prospect to qualify themselves as quickly as possible. This shortens your sales cycle, after all. The way to do this is to create a go-to resource that lies deep in your funnel and point your prospect to it. 

 

Your CTAs should focus on providing help, not selling. "Learn more" is better than "Call us." Sticking with our AR automation example, we can highlight a research report we published that dives deep into how much money our prospects can save by using our product.

 

"Learn more" we'll say, and guide them deeper.

 

Anyone who doesn't want to learn more will show themselves out. 

 

B2B Content Marketing for the Bottom

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The bottom of the funnel is the most productive portion of your entire inbound marketing strategy. It's where prospects have qualified themselves and are thinking seriously about purchasing your product. Here, you can get aggressive with your sales mentions and freely brag about how awesome you are.

 

It's also where gates make the most sense. However, many B2B content gates get it wrong by asking for too much information.

 

They ask for everything from the prospect's name to their favorite flavor of ice cream. Sure, your sales team will want this information to contact the prospect, but you need to exhibit patience.

 

Patience will help you qualify your prospects even better and help your sales team close sales with greater frequency. If your sales team has ever complained of low-quality leads, then patience is what's lacking in your funnel.

 

So what does patience look like? For starters, it looks like a minimal gate on your deep funnel content. This will disturb many CEOs and marketing teams. All that effort you put into creating the report, and I'm asking you to impose a minimal gate? Heresy!

 

Bear with me. Ask for your prospect's name and email address, and let them download the report or case study.

 

A few days after this, send them an email with supplementary content. Let's walk through an example.

 

A prospect for our AR automation product downloads a report that talks about cost savings. We email them our thanks and send them additional links to our blog. Our tone in this email is personable.

 

It doesn't read like a script or a template. We end the email by mentioning we'd love to hear about what they think, and would they like to hop on a call to discuss their needs?

 

Anyone who agrees to a callback is as solid a lead as a sales team can hope for. Think of the steps they've gone through before agreeing.

 

They've visited your website, your blog, browsed your content, given you their email, and finally said "Yes, call me." 

 

Compare this to the traditional gated form that asks for a phone number outright, and it is easy to see which method works better. The patience you display in holding back and qualifying your prospect one last time will increase your sales conversions immeasurably.

 

As far as content goes, the amount of deep funnel content will be low compared to the previous stages. At this stage, you want to address the so-called pillar topics surrounding your industry. These topics cut to the core of what you do and how you solve issues.

 

Our AR automation company will discuss the disadvantages of manual processes and publish reports highlighting cost savings. We'll also publish case studies involving clients we have previously helped. We'll publish technical papers that indicate how easy our solution is to adopt.

 

We'll create an ROI calculator on our product pages that displays relevant numbers.

 

We will host webinars that double as lite versions of sales demos. All of these content channels are deep and immersive. There's only so much we can publish, and that's a good thing.

 

After all, we aren't trying to solve every issue in the world. Just AR efficiency.

 

These are evergreen content. Our sales team will use them to help answer questions. Most importantly, the rest of our website's content will revolve around these pieces of content. They're satellites to these pillars.

 

The pillar and satellite model isn't just to delight your prospects. It delights search engines as well. The internet is a messy place, and a search engine's primary objective is to figure out what your domain is all about.

 

The search engine's spiders will crawl your website and gather a list of topics you're talking about.

 

A cluster of pillar pages and a bunch of satellite pages pointing to those pillars will quickly let the spiders know what's the most important topics you're talking about. The more you link to your pillars, the faster the spiders figure you out.

 

In turn, this boosts your searchability (yes, I made up a word,) and you'll show up more often in results.

 

We've finally reached the bottom of our funnel! We're all done, right? Not quite, unfortunately. There are still 2 key steps we must execute.

 

But before that....

 

A Word About B2B Content Marketing Strategies

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Clients looking to get their B2B content strategy rolling often ask me this question: Do you do SEO? How is it different from content marketing? 

 

The short answer is: SEO is a component of content marketing. All SEO is content marketing, but not all content marketing is SEO.

 

In the B2B space, SEO occupies a much smaller portion of content marketing than in B2C. This is because, as you previously learned, B2B prospects don't search for solutions on the internet as frequently as B2C prospects do.

 

Content marketing thus needs a robust strategy that creates a path for prospects to follow. I mentioned previously how bottom-funnel keywords can behave as top-of-the-funnel keywords as well. You must create a coherent path for your prospects as I've described in this section.

 

More importantly, you must get your prospects to qualify themselves as quickly as possible. This is why the final step, involving patience, is so important. A good B2B content marketing strategy implements patience and creates a path based on understanding the prospect's issues.

 

Everything you've learned thus far helps you achieve these goals. Do not get fixated on mere SEO, whether you're B2B or B2C. Content marketing is so much more than that. The section on metrics and measurement will make this point even clearer.

 

However, before you get down and dirty with metrics, you must execute an important step.

 

Promoting your B2B Content

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Most companies that reach out to me for help tend to have one common issue: They don't have a clue about content promotion. This issue is always present, whether the content they've created is excellent or garbage.

 

Promotion is extremely important. The nature of the internet these days lends tremendous weight to promotion. You see, search algorithms aren't smart enough to decide which piece of content is high quality and what is trash.

 

They use a shortcut to measure quality instead: Who's talking about what.

 

Social shares and tweets thus play a major role in search rankings. Thanks to increasing familiarity with Twitter and its hype-pushing algorithm, people have become accustomed to following whoever shouts the loudest.

 

Perhaps this was always the case, but social media has exaggerated this phenomenon.

 

All of this leads me to the most important point (and this is disheartening for me to say as a writer): A well-promoted piece of trash will always outrank a "Crime and Punishment" quality but poorly-promoted content. 

 

I'd love to say that prospects punish poor content, but they don't. Does this mean you should not produce high-quality content? Far from it.

 

Your content should strive to solve issues as much as possible. 

 

However, understand that at some point, you must draw the line and devote resources to promotion because you'll face drastically diminishing returns. This explains why much B2B content is similar, yet companies do not cry about decreasing sales.

 

Aim for a quality threshold that puts you above your competition, and then start promoting your content. Don't aim for perfection. Be above-average.

 

Backlinks or, How Google Knows What's Worth Mentioning

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Bitcoin is being pushed as digital gold these days, but every marketer worth their salt will tell you digital gold was created long before 2011. Backlinks are a treasured asset and form the core of your promotion strategy.

 

A backlink is a simple thing: If someone else links to your web page, that's a backlink. Google has 2 kinds of backlinks: Dofollow and Nofollow. As much as possible, you want to gain the former. The latter is nice, but it isn't going to add much value.

 

So how can you earn B2B backlinks?

 

First, understand that backlinks in the B2B world don't matter for overall promotion as much as they do in B2C. This is because your prospects are not spending their days on the internet searching for product information.

 

They're gathering reviews from websites like G2 and other customers of yours.

 

My point is, backlinks are important but don't try to score a link from every single resource out there. There's something else to recognize when trying to earn backlinks in the B2B world.

 

Some of the best backlinks come from trade publications. These publications will charge you for placement.

 

For instance, our AR automation company might want to score a link from a publication like The Financial Brand. However, this publication only allows company mentions and links when paid for.

 

Similarly, publications like INC, Entrepreneur, etc demand upwards of $2,000 per article and a backlink.

 

Our AR automation company is a startup, and running after these huge publications doesn't make financial sense. The thing to do is to look at smaller publications and build a decent SEO profile so that Google understands that it can trust us.

 

This means we'll produce content surrounding issues in the AR processing space and slide in a link to our product page in there.

 

Another technique to score a high-quality backlink is to create a partners page and link to them. For instance, our company uses an ERP system developed by a startup. We create a "Partners" page and link to their website.

 

They do the same and link to us. We could do the same with our "Clients" and score good quality backlinks.

 

Finally, we can promote our articles on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn,) hope people share them, and we gain some traction. The AR automation space is small, and there aren't any influencers promoting its benefits. So what should we do to gain more shares?

 

Well, we can highlight research reports and other relevant data produced by another entity and send them an email, thanking them. If they like our content, they'll almost certainly link back to us.

 

We can also send a link to our content to potential clients and let them know that they might find it useful. Our existing customers could also find it valuable and link back to the article.

 

Backlinking is a time-intensive process, and there is a lot of rejection involved. So go easy with it and set up a repeatable process. Over time, you'll earn backlinks and receive a huge SEO boost.

 

The good news is, backlinking isn't as critical in B2B as it is in B2C, so don't sweat it!

 

Social Media

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Social media is a no-brainer, and in B2B circles, sites like LinkedIn, Youtube, and Twitter are great for content promotion. Twitter is particularly interesting since the platform has multiple industries that are well-represented. 

 

Just don't get caught up in the drama that exists everywhere on that platform (looking at you, Marketing Twitter!) Twitter is also a great place to identify influencers and let them know you exist. Often, you might find that influencers aren't around in your space, as in our AR automation example.

 

In such cases, you must find a way to link to complementary topics. For instance, is someone talking about improving business efficiency through digital transformation? Send them a link to your article and explain that AR automation is a perfect use case. Is someone talking about AP automation?

 

Push AR automation in there too!

 

You'll have to get creative promoting your work like this, but it's worth it. You never know where your next lead will come from, so don't be shy when promoting your content. Promoting your content on LinkedIn and Youtube works the same way.

 

LinkedIn Groups are a great way to share work with like-minded professionals and gain traction. Again, if there isn't a group dedicated directly to your product, look for complementary groups.

 

Similarly, on Youtube, your topic might not have a huge audience, so decide whether you would like to be present on that platform or not.

 

For instance, AR automation isn't exactly a trending topic on Youtube. It's safe to say we can stay away from Youtube for now and not cause any harm as far as content promotion is concerned.

 

Secondary Social Conversation Sites

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When it comes to social media marketing, primary platforms hog all the attention. Primary platforms are the ones where you're present and interacting with your prospects directly. For instance, anyone on LinkedIn can ask you a question and receive an answer. Twitter works the same way.

 

However, many conversations on the internet take place on secondary social venues such as Quora, forums, and Reddit. In some cases, Discord and Twitch are also viable platforms, especially if your product is related to gaming.

 

On these platforms, users emphasize answers and discussions with other individuals, not brands or companies.

 

Promoting your content here via helpful answers is a great way to receive backlinks and direct traffic to your content. Just don't get too promotional with your content. For example, AR automation isn't receiving too much attention on Quora. However, there are a few topics in there that look interesting.

 

Answering these questions and leaving a link to your content is a great way of promoting it. 

 

If there's one thing you should take away from this section, it is this: Promotion isn't a matter of doing "one thing" correctly. There is no magic key that unlocks traffic and attention. Instead, it is a series of little things that you must execute over and over.

 

With time, you'll receive rewards for your efforts. Your focus must be on creating the right processes, not the result. After all, no one ever won a game by looking at the scoreboard all the time!

 

Monitoring Content Metrics

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Much like with content, the metrics you pay attention to will change depending on funnel position. For instance, unique visits to a page is a great metric for top-of-the-funnel content. However, it doesn't make much sense for bottom-funnel content. 

 

After all, who cares how many people visit content that leads to sales?

 

You would be more interested in measuring how many visitors turn into customers. Let's look at how you can figure out which metrics are relevant to your content strategy.

 

Connecting Metrics to Goals

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Way back in the inbound marketing process, you defined a series of goals you wanted to achieve with your content. It's time to recall and use them to figure out the metrics you must use. Our AR automation company prioritized bottom-of-the-funnel content since sales and growth were essential for the CEO and CMO.

 

This means our company has been publishing insightful content aimed at people looking for solutions. We aren't interested in how many people have heard of us as long as our ideal customers know we exist.

 

Given these circumstances, which metrics make the most sense to measure? Is tracking unique website visitors important? To some extent it is. We'd like to see a steady stream of traffic, after all. However, this metric doesn't line up with our goal. How is traffic connected to sales?

 

You might think that increased traffic will lead to more sales, but traffic has to convert. Thus, there isn't a direct link. After all, many B2B websites boast huge traffic numbers but disproportionately small sales. Instead of traffic, we want to focus on how well our content is converting.

 

If you read my treatise on patience in previous sections, you'll remember that our company had placed small gates on deep funnel content and was following it up with newsletters to qualify prospects. Which metrics can tell us how successful our campaign is?

 

For starters, the number of content downloads and emails we collect is a good metric to track. We should also track the number of people we directly sent our content to and the percentage of those prospects who signed up using our gate. 

 

Next, we should track email statistics. Open rates, bounce rates, response rates, and link clicks are relevant metrics here. Each metric tells its own tale, and your marketing team must figure out the story by connecting the dots.

 

This is where content marketing becomes hard. It is one thing to create great content, but you need a great strategist to make sense of the data.

 

For instance, let's say our AR automation company is getting many downloads. 90% of the people we sent the resource to ended up downloading it.

 

However, 10% of our emails bounced. This means 80% of our initial audience are still interested in our resource. Half of this group didn't respond, which leaves 40% of our initial audience for us to close a sale. Within this group, 10% rejected our advances and didn't request a callback, and a further 10% responded negatively.

 

Is your head spinning with percentages and numbers yet?

 

The bad news is we're just getting started. Your sales team will handle the ones who responded positively and will likely close a sale. However, the marketing team's job is still unfinished.

 

They need to answer the following questions:

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1. Why did 10% of our audience enter invalid emails? Is this in line with industry benchmarks?

2. 4% of our audience responded negatively. What are their demographics? Does this data change our persona assumptions? What are the patterns in these rejections?

3. Can these rejections be salvaged? Should we ignore them since they're irrelevant? Can we scale our product by ignoring these people?

4. Regarding the 4% that didn't respond: Are they to be grouped under the negative review umbrella or do we need a new category for them? Are there any trends within that data that can point to insights or changes needed to our personas?

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All of this is before we examine analytics data and dissect buyer journeys. For instance, did the 4% who rejected us have a poor browsing experience? Did we share a bad link on a bad channel? Did they prefer video to text or vice-versa?

 

You need to get down and dirty with your data to answer these questions. It is also why your content strategist must be a data nerd, curious, and inquisitive about what stories are hidden in your data. 

 

Once these questions are answered, you need to make necessary changes, and start the content creation process all over again. Truth be told, metrics measurement is an unstructured process. There isn't a template you can follow to success.

 

A lot of it is simply feeling your way forward and drawing conclusions. You will often reach the wrong conclusions. This is fine, it is a part of the process. However, iterating your efforts is key. This is a fancy way of saying you need to repeat analysis over and over.

 

If you've assumed the right things, you will see content performance improve. If not, it's back to the drawing board!