There are hundreds of guides and blogs about to create content for your website, but I have seen very few on what to put on the most important page. But despite the lack of formal guidance, there is a relatively high level of consistency between the home pages of B2B software vendors – particularly in industry subsectors. In my last…
Category: Content Marketing
What Content Should be on a B2B Website Home Page?
The answer is “it depends.” If you are running a media site and want multiple visits per day from users, then the latest news or opinion articles would certainly be featured. If you are running a retail e-commerce site and want to maximize sales volume from repeat customers, then you might feature new products or items on sale. But in…
Accelerate Your Lead Generation with Content Pre-Order
You are behind on your quarterly lead generation targets. The sales team is screaming that they need more prospects! You expected this would happen. And that is why you started working on a killer piece of content that is sure to be rocket fuel for your pipeline. But, this killer eBook, is behind schedule. It is still 6-8 weeks away…
15 Examples of Non-Traditional Content Marketing Pieces
In an earlier post, I discussed the rapid commoditization of content marketing that is occurring in the software industry. These days everyone has the infographic-style e-books, the animated explainer videos and the interactive ROI tools. Content marketing agencies have emerged to enable even the most handicapped, old-school marketing departments to create compelling content. If you are experiencing this same level…
Why Software Vendors Should “Open Source” IP in Content Marketing Programs
In my last post, I introduced a strategy that software companies can use to differentiate their ideas in the increasingly commoditized and crowded landscape of content marketing. I suggested a rather bold strategy of “open sourcing” some of your Intellectual Property (IP). By IP, I am not talking about the secret sauce that makes your algorithms work. Instead, I am…
The Growing Commoditization of Content Marketing Strategies
As content marketing goes mainstream, it is growing more and more challenging for marketing organizations to differentiate their downloads from the competition. Next generation agencies that specialize purely in content development are leveling the playing field in many of the software subsectors. As a result, even the “dinosaur,” old-tech companies are putting out decent content on a regular basis. Everyone…
What are the Best Topics for Blogs?
It’s simple. Make a list of the questions your customers ask you during sales appointments. These are the topics they are most interested in. These are the topics they are most likely to do a Google search upon. And these are the topics that they will click through in your email newsletters.
Why You Need to Build a Visual Content Factory
We live in the age of Pinterest, of Instagram, of Snapchat and of Vine. Nearly every post on Facebook now contains a photo. And there are thousands of followers on Twitter uploading images on trending topics. Nearly all hyperlinked content, whether displayed in mobile apps like Flipboard or in a newstream on Google+ display images pulled from RSS feeds. Consumers…
Packaging Your Content into Kits
Content marketing leaders are always looking for new resources to support their lead generation efforts. But creating high quality content takes a lot of time. Writing a new white paper or e-book can take several weeks. More importantly, it requires committed time from some of your busiest subject matter experts.
Maximizing the Second Life of Your Content
You pushed aggressively for six weeks to promote a big webinar. Sadly only 500 attendees joined the live session – less than 50% of the 1000 you were hoping for. Was it a failure? Perhaps or perhaps not. It is too early to tell. The live webinar is the beginning, not the end, of the lifecycle for this content (assuming…
