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Does Your Content Marketing Make You Different?

Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions

Being recognized as unique, different and desirable is what every company strives to achieve to stand out in their marketplace. Unfortunately, this appears to be easier said than done.

Take a look at these three tag lines:

• Achieve Dramatic Cost Savings, Increase Operational Efficiency and Business Agility

• Reduce Costs, Improve Service Delivery, Enable Business Innovation

• Reduce IT Costs, Improve Performance, Do More with Less

Do you see anything unique that sets one apart from the others? If you had to choose a vendor based on this, which one would you choose? And yes, they each sell the same type of solution.

“Only 14% of the ‘unique benefits’ promoted by companies drive enough preference to have a commercial impact.”
Corporate Executive Board

Every single one of us likely has a slew of competitors trying to sell a similar product or solution to the same markets. The problem is that what we think is important and “differentiating” about our products quite often misses the mark for what the prospect is trying to buy.

You’ve all heard the adage that you may think you’re selling a drill, but what the buyer wants is really a hole. We get so wrapped up in our products that we forget that we know too much. We all believe our products and solutions are the best possible choice for solving our prospect’s problems. We know the nitty-gritty details about just why that’s so.

What we forget is that customers don’t really care. They care about what they’re going to get, the difference it’s going to make for them and how certain they are that they’re really going to get what you promise.
Sadly, what we promise isn’t always what the prospect wants. Or we're up at the 30,000 foot view so our messaging doesn’t have any immediate impact that’s easy for the prospect to hone in on.

Which could be why research from IDG discovered that buyers say they only find relevant content 42% of the time. Yep—less than half the time. That should serve as a wake-up call (unless of course you've convinced yourself that your content is well within that 42%. But I'd encourage you to take a look anyway).

If our content is going to serve as a differentiator, we’ve got to think differently about how we seek to establish a dialogue with our prospects. We’ve got to flip our focus to what they’re buying instead of what we think we’re selling. It’s not about the solutions, products or services. It’s about what they enable your customers to achieve that they couldn’t do before. It’s about why that’s important to them.

In case you think it's not that big a deal, IDG also found that the lack of relevant content perceived by buyers is responsible for reducing the vendor's chance of closing the sale by 45%!

That’s a big deficit. And one we can't afford to allow to continue.

 

Join B2B marketing and lead generation experts Ardath Albee, Brian Carroll, and Scott Mersy at the Genius.com Webinar,

Broad Reach + Intelligent Lead Nurturing = Increased Revenue: 3 Steps to Success

— Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 10:00 AM PST

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Introducing Ardath Albee's New Book,

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

A comprehensive guide to help marketers drive decisions to buy in their favor. Power your eMarketing results by mastering how to: • Build a foundation for eMarketing strategies based on buyer perspectives; • Use a buyer synopsis to develop personalized content; • Transform prospect engagement with natural nurturing; • Create a contagious content structure for competitive differentiation; • Generate increased pipeline with attraction marketing; • Facilitate faster prospect progression to sales readiness; • Perfect the transition of sales-ready leads to your sales force; • Measure the impact of eMarketing programs against business objectives To visit this book's Web site, click here . . .

Ardath Albee (Ardath@marketinginteractions.com) is an expert at creating contagious content and e-marketing strategies that engage prospects-from initial attention until they're sales ready. She has a unique ability to develop content strategies that work hand-in-glove with overall corporate and product positioning to deliver hard hitting e-marketing programs and tools that compel customers to buy. Ardath helps her clients generate more opportunities by optimizing how they leverage marketing automation and CRM technology investments. Her clients include Covad Communications, LANDesk and Silicon Graphics. Visit her website and industry-leading blog to learn more: www.marketinginteractions.com.