Syndicate your content to liberate assets and drive growth
Delve into the internal shared drives or website resource libraries of any B2B organisation in the tech sector, and you’ll stumble across examples of these five marketing assets:
• E-books
• Blogs
• White papers
• Videos
• Surveys and research studies
Ok, you could argue the B2B Marketing Five is actually six or four in your organisation, but you get my point. There are certain core assets that every firm is producing on a regular basis – and that, in my experience, are being under-exploited.
Maybe your e-book gets an occasional extra outing in a nurture email cadence. Perhaps your blog is reshared a couple of times on LinkedIn. But other than an initial push when the content is first published, your valuable assets – representing a significant investment of time, money and effort – are left to languish in the graveyard known as your website resource library; or wherever good assets go to die in your firm.
An appeal for credible content
B2B buyers are hungry for good quality content. High-value, complex purchases require detailed research. The number of buying interactions – defined as “any activity to gather information about an offering or vendor” has leapt from 17 in 2019 to 27 in 2021 .
77% of B2B buyers complain that they find making a purchase very complex or difficult .
With all this in mind, why aren’t B2B firms making more use of content syndication to help prospects access their expertise with minimum effort? I’d argue it’s because content syndication is still seen as something of a black box. Or as a tactic that was tried and didn’t work!
Condemned to failure
Content syndication is the hosting of content on external, third-party sites to increase your audience reach and, frequently, to encourage prospects to provide contact information through opting in or filling in forms to download assets. It promises much to the B2B marketer. When implemented as part of an integrated lead generation program, it can maximise investment in existing marketing content by opening up new audiences and delivering a steady stream of marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
But the reality often falls short.
Two decades of experience running lead generation campaigns for hundreds of brands here at The Marketing Practice has helped us identify common pitfalls, relating both to the content and to the leads generated.
Content crimes
Underperforming content syndication is often down to a mismatch somewhere in the process. Your e-book on threat protection might be perfect for Enterprise IT decision-makers – but a traditional IT publication may not have the ability to segment and target the right audience for you. Or maybe it’s a case of the right audience but the wrong asset: your product data sheet is being syndicated to C-level influencers, say.
If content is being distributed to the wrong audiences in the wrong places; if syndication is expected to deliver against a goal it’s not designed for; and if consideration hasn’t been given to how leads are generated compared to the purpose they’re expected to fulfil – then results will be disappointing, to say the least.
MQL misdemeanours
What happens to your new leads? Are you passing them directly on to the sales team and expecting them to be able to book meetings with these potential new prospects?
Too often, we see poorly validated leads entered into an organisation’s CRM for the sales team to pick up. Without a nurture plan, to warm that initial lead through the six touchpoints which, on average, are needed to convert it to a sales qualified lead (SQL), the investment is wasted.
Set your content free
As well as aligning content and audiences, and establishing a lead nurture process, success in content syndication means navigating the landscape of available partners.
There are hundreds of content syndication partners generating leads for B2B tech firms globally. These cover editorial websites, social media, resource libraries such as IDG Connect and Infotech Crowd, and dedicated lead generation businesses fuelled by a data. As an agency, we’ve developed an in-depth knowledge of the marketplace, to help advise clients on the partners best fitted for their objectives and markets.
If your content has been locked away in your ecosystem for life without parole, get in touch. Together we can release your assets to drive business growth. Free the B2B Marketing Five!
