Content Marketing Expert Joe Pulizzi interviewed by Hubspot

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 27, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Content Marketing

Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Expert

Great video interview with the author of Get Content, Get Customers by the smart folks at Hubspot. Here’s the permalink. Joe shares great advice on content marketing in this interview for B2B marketers.

At the b2b lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers, we’re big believers in content marketing, fans of Joe and Junta42, and passionate about the need to do it right. So without further ado, we share Hubspot’s great content below.

By the way, we’re huge fans of Hubspot too. If you are a small to medium business looking to grow, we invite you to check out Hubspot‘s inbound marketing software.

P.S I was the featured guest on HubspotTV back on 11/19/2010 - see the photo. (Click the underlined words or image to watch.) HubspotTV airs every Friday at 4:00pm ET. HubspotTV Ogden

Someone I hold in high regard, Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies was the featured guest on HubspotTV on May 6th. (Jill and I teamed up on the Get Back to Work Faster project.)

Without further ado, here is Hubspot’s own unedited post:

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Joe Pulizzi, of Junta42, joins us for episode #16 of Inbound NOW to talk about content marketing and why your company should start thinking like a publisher.
Joe is a content marketing evangelist, co-author of the book “Get Content, Get Customers” and runs the Content Marketing Institute.

In this episode we talk about:

Why its critically important for marketers to start thinking like a publisher.
Some of the biggest mistakes companies are making today with their content marketing and how to avoid them.
The difference between creating content to attract customers and content to retain them.
We take a look into the future of content marketing and where it is headed.

Content Marketing

Joe’s definition of content marketing:

“Like it or not, you’re a publisher today” Joe says.

Brands have to tell valuable, relevant, and compelling stories to attract and retain their customers.

You need to start thinking about how your company can create content on a consistent basis to stand out from all the noise online and become the go to resource in your niche.

Biggest Mistakes in Content Marketing

No Consistency - Companies that have a one off campaign mentality, usually fail with their content marketing goals. Creating this content is an ongoing process and takes time.

Sales Pitchy Content - Trying to jam too much sales jargon into the content is another huge mistake companies make.

Avoid the jargon and answer questions and be helpful in the content that you create. This will help build up your authority in your niche and help foster business along with it.

Focusing Only On One Channel - Connecting with customers in the places where they consume content is key. Have a multi channel approach and make sure to repurpose or re-imagine your content for different mediums.

Content marketing is thinking about the needs and pain points customers and creating content to help resolve those issues.

How to Get It to Work

You can create or hire an internal team to start creating content or outsource the content creation through a variety of channels.

Joe says “I think it really doesn’t matter how you source it. What matters is are you are committed to doing it? Does your C-level marketing team buy into it? And then, are you going to be consistent in doing it and integrate that with the rest of your marketing?”

Where Is the Content in Your Company?

Leverage your customer service teams and your sales department. They are on the front lines on a day to day basis and are treasure troves of content!

Reach out the people in your company who share links frequently via email, find your employees that are active in social media. Pull these people together and start talking about different pieces of content that you can produce.

Collaborate via a shared Google spreadsheet and leverage a content calendar to help facilitate this process.

Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing Start the Same

“Just like everything else. Content marketing, inbound marketing is no different than any other marketing strategy or philosophy.

You have to start with what are my objectives? What behaviors do I want to see out of my customers? How am I going to measure success? You’ve got to at least start somewhere. You might change it along the way, but if you don’t start with where am I going to go with this thing, and what are our ultimate expectations, you’re going to fail.”

Attraction Content vs. Retention Content

Most content produced by marketers is geared towards prospective customers not the existing customers. This makes sense to a point, but Joe says there is a huge opportunity to start creating retention content to build customer loyalty.

“Attraction content is different than retention content. So with attraction content you’re doing all these things. You want to be found on search engines for the right keywords. You’re going to be sending out blog posts. You’ve got content that is being spread through Facebook and Twitter. That’s fantastic.”

Retention content is also a great opportunity to up sell to existing customers.

Producing Content is Hard!

Where to start? With your customers. You need to discover what your customers major pain points are.

Do a survey of current customers, talk to the people in your company on the front lines.

Listen in to social media and do some research.

Editorial Calendar

Joe is a huge proponent of having a content calendar and have it stocked with at least 3 months worth of ideas moving into the future.

Looking Into the Future of Content Marketing

“Over the next 10 years you’re going to see that more and more of the media that’s consumed by you and I are not coming from media companies, they’re coming from brands.

We’re seeing that evolution now. Most companies that I talk to aren’t asking, ‘Why should I do it, Joe?’ They already know they should do it, they’re asking how.”

You need to start understanding why you need to do this and start transitioning your thinking about how you are going to implement this.

Connect with Joe online

For more resources on content marketing check out the Content marketing institute, and you can meet Joe in person at the content marketing world 2011 conference in Cleveland Ohio. You can also check out Joe’s blog at Junta42.com and follow him on Twitter @JuntaJoe

What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

Want to know specifically how Find New Customers can help YOUR business? Check out How We Help You.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He’s presenting at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island on May 26th and appearing on Sales Lead Management Radio on June 9th.

We help companies with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Fearless Competitor passes the 47,000 reader mark!

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 26, 2011

This is truly a “Holy Sh_t!” moment. This itty-bitty blog we started over five years ago has now been read by over

47,000 people.

We’re humbled.

Jeff Ogden is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. We help companies with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Trust and the Big Lie of Lead Generation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 26, 2011

B2B Lead Generation: Capturing Accurate Information on Forms

Last Friday, someone filled out this form to download content. It’s exactly the theme of this post.

(By the way, we no longer deliver the content after the form is completed, we email a link to the content. This ensures they use a valid email address.)

First Name : zxzx
Last Name : zxzx
Email (valid corporate email address is required) : [email protected]
Job Title : Sales Leader
Phone # : sdsd
Web Site URL : dsds

Vince Giorgi writes the blog TouchPoint City and he recently wrote a very

provocative post called The Big Lie of Lead Generation.

I wish to comment about it there.

The big lie Vince cites is this.

People put fictitious information on registration forms on your landing pages. Why? They don’t want to opt in to your telemarketing and email campaigns.

More than 1/2 admit to faking phone numbers. When asked why they put in fake information, almost 3 out of 4 cited “Avoid follow-up sales calls or marketing contacts.”

What’s the marketing take-away here?

It’s not enough to capture information - a people who don’t trust your company don’t provide accurate information. Your brand is important, people must trust it.

This is why you need a good, frequently updated blog (this blog posts 7 days a week) and to be active on social media - listening and sharing.

Becoming a thought leader and establishing a trusted company, like Find New Customers, (who’s motto is “Always be helping”) is key in getting accurate information.

What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

Here’s one of our guest posts, for the Post Click Marketing blog - Marketing to the Connected Consumer in a B2B World by @fearlesscomphttp://t.co/Ju3xq7N #cro #leadgen

How many leads will you need to make your quota? Use our free calculator.

Please note that our wonderful free “cheat sheet” on lead nurturing “The 7 Keys to Lead Nurturing Success” is a small taste of what you get in our terrific white paper, How to Find New Customers.

The Truth About Leads by Dan McDade

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 26, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | The Truth About Leads

Dan McDade of PointClear wrote an awesome book on the realities of business today, The Truth about Leads. (Click the underlined words or book picture to go to the Amazon.com link and purchase the book.)

As the President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers, I always strive to bring my readers great insights on the realities of today. As the accompanying chart shows, 3 out of 4 Chief Marketing Officers cite the inability to “Generate High Quality (Sales) Leads” to be their biggest challenge.

CMO Challenges

I appreciate Dan allowing me to share the first part of the Preface of the book with our readers, as it clarifies the real problem:

“The battle for the success of your company is all about revenue. And it’s being lost.

It’s being lost on the front line; in the back office; and throughout the executive suite. It’s being lost early in the sales cycle and at the close.

Every day I talk to companies that are finding that revenue in coming up short, is being left on the table, and can’t be sustained. Every day I hear executives complain about numbers not being made, despite much effort and huge investments.

What I notice in these frequent conversations: The organizations that are complaining haven’t yet discovered The Truth About Leads — and the role of understanding this truth in the successful quest for revenue.

The Lead: Revered, sought after, valued. At the same time, misunderstood, mishandled, often dismissed. Whether viewed in a lowly or lofty light, the lead is a concept that organizations I converse with have much to learn about, and which is well worth the study.

As I analyze the problem at these organizations, no matter what their size, here’s what I find:

There’s no agreement on the definition of a qualified lead.
Forecasts are thin and/or inaccurate.
There’s no closed loop to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs.
There’s no consensus regarding marketing and sales strategy, including what I call “M2O” - the market, media and offer.
There are no processes or methodologies to track anything other than the number of leads generated, their cost, and total revenue.

Understanding the Truth About Leads is critical — now more than ever — for business to business companies like yours. Time is not making the job of generating revenue any easier. It’s increasing difficult to differentiate your company from the pack and acquire new customers. It seems to take massive investments in marketing and sales, people and time to generate even a disappointing return. Most of the companies I talk with are finding what worked five years ago, or even last year, does not necessarily work today. The processes, alignments, and initiatives that generated returns historically just won’t get the job done.”

For the rest of this great book, click on The Truth About Leads on Amazon.

Thanks for sharing your book, Dan. What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

Click to subscribe to Fearless Competitor on your Kindle.

Are you a business owner or CEO? We have a page for you.

Building a Winner by recruiting flaws

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 25, 2011

Article in the Wall St. Journal with lessons for hiring managers everywhere.

How to Forge a Softball Powerhouse

Hofstra Coach Started with a Broken Pitching Machine and Built a Team to Be Reckoned With

This article about a college softball team has real lessons for companies hiring for senior roles. The bottom line : To win championships, you need to hire differently.

Who wouldn’t want a record like this as a coach of girl’s softball?

Twenty-one consecutive winning seasons. Twelve NCAA Tournament appearances. Sixteen conference championships, an NCAA-record 11 consecutive conference tournament titles and four NCAA regional finals in the past seven years. All out of a program that in 1990 was six bats and a field the Jets used for training camp. If not tougher, these women and this coach have certainly been something.

One small problem. Can’t get the recruits that the big schools get. Bad location. Minimal athletic budget. Long cold winters.

“The Pride doesn’t have the lush climes of Arizona. It doesn’t have the recruiting grounds of UCLA or the budget of Texas. What it does have is Bill Edwards, the craggy 67-year-old program architect who opened his career coaching hockey and football and is now in softball’s hall of fame.”

What’s Bill’s trick? How did win all those championships? The answer may surprise you.

Almost all coaches recruit the best player at a specific position - the best first baseman for instance.

Coach Edwards does it differently, He recruits the best athlete regardless of position - usually the best player is the shortstop, and he moves her to first base, outfield, etc.

But there is another aspect that has major implications for hiring managers. Coach Edwards will take a hard look at a player who just struck out three times in a game. While others schools look for finished products, Coach says “I can fix that.” Asked if there was anything he could not fix, he said “Nope.”

How many business leaders have the attitude that they can fix any flaw?

Think of the impact for hiring managers. They sift though dozens of resumes, looking for the perfect candidate - industry experience, in a specific role, etc. But to win championships like Coach did, you need a lot more imagination. You need the flawed athlete - the potential superstar who is not perfect. He or she may lack industry experience or be in a different role. Because if you fix that small flaw, you’ve got a real star. That’s how you forge championship teams.

What do you think? What are the lessons businesses can learn from this sports story? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He was also profiled extensively in the book Get Back to Work Faster, a popular book for job seekers and advises companies on innovative hiring practices.

The ‘Need Solution’ Buying Phase

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 25, 2011

Lead Generation Companies | The ‘Need Solution’ Buying Phase

In this blog series, we’ve been exploring the customer buying stages as found in the great white paper, How to Find New Customers. If you enjoy this series, we suggest you download this free white paper on B2B lead generation.

The third stage of a buying process is Need Solution. In this stage, the buyer has acknowledged the problem and reached the conclusion that it makes business sense to solve it.

Before we explore how to communicate with a buyer in the Need Solution phase, I invite you to check out this graphic, from Ardath Albee of MarketingInteractions. It shows just how much the buying process has changed. So much of the traditional selling process has moved back into Marketing and away from Sales.

Addressing the “Need Solution” Buying Phase

At this stage the buyer understands his problem and has just come to the realization that he needs to fix the problem.

As a marketer, you now need to share content that helps him understand and quantify his problem. This is a key phase where you can begin to earn trust. This is why content is so important - the right content moves the buyer through the buying processes. Again, think of the goal - to educate him on how to understand and quantify his problem.

Want to learn more about buying stages and B2B lead generation? Download the highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers, sponsored by Marketo. (Click the name of the paper to download it.)

What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

Why is personality so important in B2B marketing? Check out our Personality page.

Why do content marketing?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 25, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Content Marketing

Why do content marketing?
What are the business goals of content marketing?

The data shows that buyers look for content at every stage of the buying process today. But what are the goals of companies engaging in content marketing?

The results are in on this study by Holger Schultz, Director of Worldwide Marketing at Safenet.

Lead generation, Lead Nurturing, and Thought Leadership are the top 3 objectives. Not a surprise to me. What do you think?

What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

By the way, MarketingProfs, DemandCon, etc. Your conference sessions are superb, but I only attend as a speaker now. Sorry.

Click to subscribe to Fearless Competitor on your Kindle.

Want to learn B2B lead generation for free? Check out our Education page.

Please note that our wonderful free “cheat sheet” on lead nurturing “The 7 Keys to Lead Nurturing Success” is a small taste of what you get in our terrific B2B lead generation white paper, How to Find New Customers.

Mark your calendars. I’m appearing on Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) radio on June 9th.

What are you passionate about?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 23, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | What are you passionate about?

BNET listed 10 essential blog topics for every business. My favorite of the ten was to answer the question

“What are you passionate about?”

I started to write it out, then I thought,

Why not hear it directly from me - in just 93 seconds?

Click to subscribe to Fearless Competitor on your Kindle. Catch me live on SLMA radio on June 9th.

(No post tomorrow, Easter Sunday, for this grad of the University of Notre Dame. Enjoy the holiday and all the best to you and your family!)

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. We help companies with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Laugh and Learn featuring @fearlesscomp | Episode 23

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 22, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Laugh and Learn featuring @fearlesscomp

We believe in making Friday’s fun - and hope you agree. We hope you enjoy this episode of Laugh and Learn and tune in each Friday for a new show.

In the show this week, we explore the power of using multiple senses in your marketing content. And we congratulate the savvy marketers at Eloqua for this outstanding video.

We hope you enjoy the show and tune in next Friday for a new episode.

By the way, we’re huge fans of Hubspot and their Friday afternoon show, HubspotTV. Tune in at 4pm today for that show. (I was the guest in a show last November. Just do a Google search for “hubspot TV ogden”)

Keep in mind that this blog publishes several times and day and seven days a week, so you’ll always find fresh content on b2b lead generation and marketing here.

What do you think? We love reading your comments.

Story is more powerful than the Brand

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 21, 2011

Lead Generation Companies | Story is more powerful than the brand.

I’m a huge believer in the power of story-telling in B2B marketing - especially in lead nurturing. Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions just posted about using scenarios in B2B marketing - she explains how powerful story-telling really is.

But just how important is story-telling? What value could you get from telling your lead nurturing campaigns in a story-telling format?

Let’s let Tom Peters, the top management consultant tell you.