Reprinted from the Savvy B2B Marketing blog with the author’s permission.
Over the holidays, I was on a cleaning rampage. I organized my basement and in the process, I got rid of boxes of books, and a minivan full of miscellany. It felt great!
Similarly, I think it’s a good idea to occasionally “clean house” with your B2B content. Instead of only creating content, it’s a good idea to take a step back and go through a similar exercise with your B2B content to determine:
- What is essential to keep?
- What needs to be updated and/or repurposed?
- What is no longer needed?
Why is this necessary?
Lots of content does not equate to usefulness:
I am reminded of a staggering stat I read in Jeff Ernst’s eBook, The New Rules of Sales Enablement {http://www.savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/101751/create-content-sales-will-love-tips-from-the-new-rules-of-sales-enablement}: Salespeople ignore 90 percent of the “stuff” that the folks at corporate give them. One of the main reasons is that there is simply too much info and they don’t know where to look (your customers experience the same phenomenon).
I also continually come back to a quote from Malcolm Gladwell: “We have come to confuse information with understanding.” Readers don’t really want a laundry-list of resources, but rather they want it to be easily educated.
Your first impression counts—make it a good one
You won’t be doing yourself a favor if you have a bunch of half-hearted content. If your readers invest time in one or two pieces that are just “so-so,” you’ve probably lost them for a long time.
Too much content can be difficult to manage
In a previous life as a marketing manager, I worked with a product line that was very mature that had a lot of content. And what did this mean for me? I had a lot to keep track of and update. My time could have been much better spent.
So, in the spirit of simplification and focus, here are my suggestions about how to approach content clean-up.
Make a list of all of your content
Scour your website and compile a list of all of your content: webinars, white papers, customer success stories, sales presentations, etc.
Look at download and/or conversion rates
It’s useful to see how many people are downloading your content and, even more importantly, what is happening with the leads you collect. This way, you can see what is resonating with readers and what isn’t (and apply these insights to future projects).
Determine what to keep
If you have content that is working well and generating the kind of downloads you want, great. Keep this and even think about promoting it more. You may even want to repackage this content in a way that can attract new users.
Decide what needs to be updated or removed
You will likely find that you have content that isn’t quite meeting expectations, and it’s important to figure out why. In general, there are two reasons your content isn’t working:
- It doesn’t address the informational needs of your audience. Be honest with yourself: is it really something your ideal readers would read—and pass along?
- You aren’t promoting it in a way where your readers can find it.
Depending on what the issues are, you may want to update the content or remove it from your website.
Organize the remaining content
Once you have an updated list of content you are going to keep and update, make sure it is organized in a way that your sales reps and clients can use it.
Michele Linn is a B2B marketing consultant at Linn Communications, specializing in creating buyer-focused content.
Do You Really Need All That B2B Content?
Reprinted from the Savvy B2B Marketing blog with the author’s permission.
Over the holidays, I was on a cleaning rampage. I organized my basement and in the process, I got rid of boxes of books, and a minivan full of miscellany. It felt great!
Similarly, I think it’s a good idea to occasionally “clean house” with your B2B content. Instead of only creating content, it’s a good idea to take a step back and go through a similar exercise with your B2B content to determine:
Why is this necessary?
Lots of content does not equate to usefulness:
I am reminded of a staggering stat I read in Jeff Ernst’s eBook, The New Rules of Sales Enablement {http://www.savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/101751/create-content-sales-will-love-tips-from-the-new-rules-of-sales-enablement}: Salespeople ignore 90 percent of the “stuff” that the folks at corporate give them. One of the main reasons is that there is simply too much info and they don’t know where to look (your customers experience the same phenomenon).
I also continually come back to a quote from Malcolm Gladwell: “We have come to confuse information with understanding.” Readers don’t really want a laundry-list of resources, but rather they want it to be easily educated.
Your first impression counts—make it a good one
You won’t be doing yourself a favor if you have a bunch of half-hearted content. If your readers invest time in one or two pieces that are just “so-so,” you’ve probably lost them for a long time.
Too much content can be difficult to manage
In a previous life as a marketing manager, I worked with a product line that was very mature that had a lot of content. And what did this mean for me? I had a lot to keep track of and update. My time could have been much better spent.
So, in the spirit of simplification and focus, here are my suggestions about how to approach content clean-up.
Make a list of all of your content
Scour your website and compile a list of all of your content: webinars, white papers, customer success stories, sales presentations, etc.
Look at download and/or conversion rates
It’s useful to see how many people are downloading your content and, even more importantly, what is happening with the leads you collect. This way, you can see what is resonating with readers and what isn’t (and apply these insights to future projects).
Determine what to keep
If you have content that is working well and generating the kind of downloads you want, great. Keep this and even think about promoting it more. You may even want to repackage this content in a way that can attract new users.
Decide what needs to be updated or removed
You will likely find that you have content that isn’t quite meeting expectations, and it’s important to figure out why. In general, there are two reasons your content isn’t working:
Depending on what the issues are, you may want to update the content or remove it from your website.
Organize the remaining content
Once you have an updated list of content you are going to keep and update, make sure it is organized in a way that your sales reps and clients can use it.
Michele Linn is a B2B marketing consultant at Linn Communications, specializing in creating buyer-focused content.