Create relevant messaging and storylines across the Continuum to deliver compelling buyer-driven experiences that get you on the Day 1 list.
Buyer Engagement is Stronger with the Full Story
B2B companies often approach brand and demand as separate things. But they work better as a integrated approach to buyer engagement.
A problem-to-solution journey is only successful if you help your buyers get through the whole thing from beginning to end.
Therefore, you need a story built for the long haul of a complex sale. This is even more important with buyers in the driver’s seat who may remain anonymous for longer periods.
Storylines make sure you have all the “chapters” in play with a plan to help your buyers learn what they need to know from start to finish.
Storytelling is the key to successful content marketing.
Random, one-off acts of content are not going to improve marketing performance. One-off content is not content marketing. Content marketing is connected storytelling that pulls prospects forward in their quest to solve a problem or achieve an objective.
B2B Buyers are self-educating. Most of them think they can learn everything they need to know to create a vendor shortlist on their own.
But they’re spending more time trying to deconflict the information everyone on the buying committee brings back. Put a variety of perspectives in the room and your content has a big job to do.
Your buyers’ context changes with every step and stage of their buying process. New information can confirm assumptions or introduce new ideas. You want your company’s expertise and ideas to be their anchor for how best to solve the problem. Your content needs to grab their attention, provide new insights, calm the chaos and overwhelm of “too much information,” and keep them engaged and gaining momentum toward purchase.
Even more important; your content must provide enough value to serve as an enticement toward engagement with your sales reps. Getting prospects in sales conversations is a primary objective of digital content strategy.
Storylines Put your Brand-to-Demand Strategy in Play
Storylines address mind shifts and context changes at every step of the buying journey, including:
- Why should I care? (About the problem)
- What do I need to know? (To solve the problem successfully)
- What’s in it for me/my company? (Outcomes from the capability to solve the problem)
- Will it work? (Use cases and evidence)
- What if…? (How to minimize risk)
- Why you? (Validation they’re making the right choice)
- Will it scale? (How they get more value beyond solving the original problem)
A Brand-to-Demand Storyline includes:
- A focus on a problem-to-solution story for a buyer persona
- Themes and flow across 8 to 12 touchpoints
- Content briefs for developing each content asset
- Suggestions for see-also content to extend engagement
Content Experiences: The Natural Nurturing Programs that Drive Sales
Campaigns that stop and start and quarterly themes are no longer effective. If your buyers take 6 months or more to make a decision and your campaign runs for one quarter, how many sales will you make? Rather than providing marketing programs on your timeline, high-performance content marketing must be aligned to the buyers journey. But – it also must allow for non-linear access, allowing your buyers to choose their own “adventure.”
Share a serial story that builds your buyer’s confidence and momentum. Nurturing is business storytelling at its finest—from generating awareness of the problem and mitigating risk to making a purchase decision. And it’s important to understand that “nurturing” doesn’t just mean via an email campaign. It applies to every interaction on every channel. That’s where storylines help you shine.
Relevant Buyer-Driven Experiences Bring Big Advantages
Consistency of experience is hugely important. Even more so when buyers are in control.
This means whether your buyer or customer is in a nurture stream, visits your website, reads your blog, follows you on social media, listens to your podcast, or attends your webinars or user events, the story must resonate with every interaction.
If it doesn’t, they’ll be gone in a click. This doesn’t mean saying the same thing, in the same way, repeatedly.
When your personas give you the foundation for the buyer-to-customer story, you have what you need to create “chapters” in infinite ways that resonate powerfully along with each context change buyers’ experience as they learn more.
Your brand gains strength by creating memory structures that build mental availability once the problem you solve becomes a priority. Demand follows naturally. And so does your place on the Day 1 list.
Get in touch today, and let’s get strategic about your content marketing.
