Last time we pointed out that B2B marketers must also become “publishers” and “editors”. Your task is to communicate content that assists and accelerates the selling process. These productions include:
- Case Histories or Success Stories
- Project Profiles
- Application Tips or Notes
- Market-Specific Technical Information Bulletins
- Feature Stories
- White Papers
- Technical Papers
Once written, the content can be presented to your audience using a variety of media, depending on the preferences of particular audiences and the complexity of the sales cycle. You will benefit from higher quality news releases, blog posts, e-blasts and web content along the way. Let’s review these productions in more depth.
Case Histories/Success Stories. These are, at their core, how your products/services solved a problem for the customer. The more universal the problem, the more relevant to your audience. Case histories follow a common format: customer background, their problem, your analysis, your approach, your implementation, the results (with as many metrics as possible) and the business impact (with customer quotes, if allowed). Photos, tabular data and colorful diagrams enhance attractiveness to engineers. The best case histories are those with before/after numbers, permission to publicize along with company and personnel names and in-plant photos. If permission is denied, they can be sanitized of specific customer references and used generically. Once completed, they should be shopped to trade publications, published on your website, laid out in a common format and printed for use as handouts, set up as screen-resolution .pdfs for sales reps to share and email and provided to trade show exhibit visitors on flash drives.
Project Profiles are particularly suitable in cases where a project has been completed, but it is too early to get a case history, or the project is new and there is no before/after comparison. Content should include photos, summaries of the scope and content of the project and descriptions of major subcomponents.
Application Tips and Notes are suggested uses of your products that no one has implemented (yet), ideally that your market intelligence and strategies conclude that should work and be growth areas. These may be a single application or multiple applications within a common process. These can be used alongside case histories by the sales force to promote specific solutions.
Market-Specific Technical Information Bulletins are grouped case history and application note content aimed at vertical market segments. Their purpose is to raise awareness of the depth of your technical base within the vertical industry, that you understand the function of your product within the context of the industry’s process; and that you are an experienced source of problem-solving value and therefore a trusted vendor partner. To the customer, you are much more than simply an “ironmonger.”
Feature stories often cover optimization of a particular process with the aid of your technology, describing the extent of improvement in efficiency, productivity, quality, controllability, etc., available. Similar to a white paper, they are less formal and often more highly illustrated. The most trusted feature stories are not hard-sell or proprietary. They may link to or cite product information on your website.
White papers should appear and read as though they came from your R&D department. Naturally, any intellectual property disclosed should already have been protected. White papers show how your technology attains the results you claim in other marketing materials. Their purpose is to raise the level of confidence in the effectiveness of your solutions to critical decision-makers involved with highly considered-purchase products. Avoid the temptation to re-package a feature story or case history as a white paper, even though an on-line media representative may allow you to. These usually do not have enough technical “meat” to satisfy the reader’s purpose.
Technical papers are usually peer-reviewed works destined for presentation at an industry technical conference and subsequent publication in conference proceedings and technical journals. They may center around a technology introduction with lab or beta installation data, or review the state of the art of some class of technology, or review statistical results from a number of sites to affirm performance. A literature review, experimental design, study methodology, analytical methods used, results and analysis of results are normal components of these works. Most R&D people and engineers are not natural writers; many outstanding papers will not see the light of day without the initiation, help and support of the marketing (publishing) department.
A Few Practical Tips
With the slimming down of publication editorial staffs, opportunities abound for contributed editorial, even from “suppliers.” However, always start by considering the sales cycle for your products across vertical markets. Every production should have the purpose of moving a prospect in some way toward a closing pitch by the sales rep. Always be willing to repackage content you intended for an outstanding piece of one kind into a more useful production of another kind. Be ready to kick a weak piece back to the author for more meat, without which the selling purpose will not be effective. Always seek to have your productions reviewed by the marketing and sales team for their estimation of “in the field” effectiveness, as early in the process as possible. And finally, always write from an outline that reflects a clear statement of the purpose and strategy behind the piece. That way, the information will be clear, concise, logical…and persuasive.
