Content Creation for Technology Marketing
How much of your marketing investment do you spend creating content? Have you even thought of content creation as a marketing tactic?
It’s an interesting – and useful – way of looking at your marketing program. Publishers and web experts have long claimed that “content is king”. Yet marketers are just beginning to realize the significance of this. (And I blame the lack of prior awareness of the importance of content as the reason we all see so many horribly written websites, case studies and other marketing tools today).
Providing interesting, relevant content can make or break your website and your traffic or prospect conversion efforts. In an ideal world, your content would be so fascinating and useful people would keep coming back to your website and marketing materials over and over again. Think about it. The prospect nurturing process would be infinitely easier.
If you’re interested in comparing yourself to other technology marketers, Junta42 (a custom publishing company) and BtoB magazine just finished a survey of content spending habits. They found that business-to-business marketers are spending nearly 30% of their marketing budgets on custom content. (29.4% to be exact).
Here’s where your fellow B2B marketers are spending money developing content (the percentages refer to the ratio of marketers using these tactics):
•E-mail newsletters (69%)
•White papers (50%)
•Case studies (48%)
•Custom events & road shows (39%)
•Internal communications via Intranet (36%)
•Webcasts/webinars (31%)
•Employee newsletters (29%)
•External newsletters (28%)
•Blogs (28%)
•Microsites & online portals (27%)
•Online videos (22%)
•External custom magazines (18%)
One thing that disturbs me about these findings is the absence of website pages themselves. Anyone who knows me knows I believe that websites are the hub of any good technology marketing program. Why are marketers not budgeting for content development?
Granted, most whitepapers, case studies, webinars and online videos will wind up on the website. And blog content ties in there as well. Microsites and online portals I assume are not the company’s main website.
So, where the heck is web page content coming from? Maybe it’s more a fault of the study than it is a fault of b2b marketers. I hope so. If your web page content is bad, who’s going to want to sit through your webinar?
Technorati Tags: website, content, conversion, technology marketing, business-to-business marketing
This article was first published May 6, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog
How much of your marketing investment do you spend creating content? Have you even thought of content creation as a marketing tactic?
It’s an interesting – and useful – way of looking at your marketing program. Publishers and web experts have long claimed that “content is king”. Yet marketers are just beginning to realize the significance of this. (And I blame the lack of prior awareness of the importance of content as the reason we all see so many horribly written websites, case studies and other marketing tools today).
Providing interesting, relevant content can make or break your website and your traffic or prospect conversion efforts. In an ideal world, your content would be so fascinating and useful people would keep coming back to your website and marketing materials over and over again. Think about it. The prospect nurturing process would be infinitely easier.
If you’re interested in comparing yourself to other technology marketers, Junta42 (a custom publishing company) and BtoB magazine just finished a survey of content spending habits. They found that business-to-business marketers are spending nearly 30% of their marketing budgets on custom content. (29.4% to be exact).
Here’s where your fellow B2B marketers are spending money developing content (the percentages refer to the ratio of marketers using these tactics):
- E-mail newsletters (69%)
- White papers (50%)
- Case studies (48%)
- Custom events & road shows (39%)
- Internal communications via Intranet (36%)
- Webcasts/webinars (31%)
- Employee newsletters (29%)
- External newsletters (28%)
- Blogs (28%)
- Microsites & online portals (27%)
- Online videos (22%)
- External custom magazines (18%)
One thing that disturbs me about these findings is the absence of website pages themselves. Anyone who knows me knows I believe that websites are the hub of any good technology marketing program. Why are marketers not budgeting for content development?
Granted, most whitepapers, case studies, webinars and online videos will wind up on the website. And blog content ties in there as well. Microsites and online portals I assume are not the company’s main website.
So, where the heck is web page content coming from? Maybe it’s more a fault of the study than it is a fault of b2b marketers. I hope so. If your web page content is bad, who’s going to want to sit through your webinar?
Thu, Nov 5, 2009
Conversion Optimization, Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum