Content marketing is supposedly the pill to cure all ills for B2B professional service firms – right? Then why is it that so many content marketing campaigns fail to live up to expectations? Why do so many content marketing programs under-perform? Why is it, in a survey from MarketingProfs, that 62% of marketing leaders ranked their content marketing efforts as mediocre instead of outstanding?
If you’re from a small, medium-sized or even a large B2B professional service firm and you’re struggling with content marketing – you’re not alone. I speak with marketing and sales leaders all the time who are trying to figure this out. It takes a lot of focus and the right approach.
A free resource
If you’re struggling with content marketing, I can tell you how to fix this. In fact, I’ve designed an Action Guide that contains 7 easy-to-follow steps that help you develop a content marketing program that consistently yields ideal clients. Here are the steps:
Step 1: understand how Content Marketing impacts the sales funnel and client acquisition
Step 2: identify a list of the ideal client’s top 5-7 goals, opportunities and challenges
Step 3: create concepts for 5-7 deep-dive content marketing pieces
Step 4: build production-level content pieces
Step 5: gate content on a landing page and score items in your marketing automation tool
Step 6: build a list of prospects who will benefit from the content
Step 7: build automated campaigns that pull prospects toward a conversation
I promise you that if you follow the principles I outline in this Action Guide, your content marketing campaigns will generate new clients and they will close quickly.
Now if you’re wondering how I know what works and what doesn’t work, please allow me to explain. I’ve bet my entire career, my livelihood and my company’s success on content marketing. That’s a big bet. We do not advertise The Shattuck Group at all. Most deals do not come through referrals, unlike many professional service firms. We get our deals from content marketing and lead nurturing. And it works.
The proof is in the puddin’
In fact, let me tell you a story about how well this works. A few years ago I submitted an article to an online magazine. I do this all the time and this is what I would call lead nurturing – giving away great content for free. A prospective client read the article, liked what he saw and then came over to our website. He watched a few videos, registered for a Guide Book, and then called me up. That six figure relationship is still going after seven years. It still yields six figures a year.
Another prospective client went online in search of quality information about marketing automation. Through a long tail search she found our website and a Guide Book I’d produced on that topic. She came to our website, registered for the Guide Book, read it and then reached out for a phone call. That relationship is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s still going too.
Why content marketing works for us
I could give you even more stories, but I think you get the point. So you might be wondering – why does this work for us when it doesn’t seem to work for so many other companies? I’ll tell you why. There are three important reasons.
First, the content was exactly on-target for specific goals that these people wanted to accomplish.
Second, the content told them exactly how to accomplish the goal they were trying to achieve. The content was rich with ideas and insights, many of which they had not encountered before.
Third, the content was gated at just the right level so they felt comfortable filling out the registration form. This let me know they work looking at us. But more importantly, their form submission was an implicit acknowledgement of an emerging relationship. It was their way of saying, “I know I’m giving you my contact information and I know you may call me, but I’m okay with that. The content is worth it.”
Next steps
These three principles are just the beginning of the rich insights that I’m going to share with you in our free Action Guide. In fact, this Action Guide is a perfect example of content marketing. It includes a step-by-step approach across 7 videos, each with their own Action Plan that you can download. And it’s all free.
If you’re struggling with content marketing, this Action Guide could be just the thing you’ve been looking for. I built it for people just like you. I promise you that if you follow the strategies outlined in this Action Guide, your content marketing programs will generate ideal new clients and they will close quickly.
About the author
Randy Shattuck is a senior marketing executive and founder of The Shattuck Group, a full-service marketing firm that specializes in growing professional services firms.