8 Steps Towards a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

As marketers, we are unleashing increasing amounts of content into the marketplace. And as consumers we know that we do our best to ignore most of it! So how do we ensure that the content that we produce stands out from the crowd, and does so on a consistent and cost-effective basis?

That was the topic for a B2B Marketing panel discussion at the Paramount in Centre Point at the beginning of this week, sponsored by Waggener Edstrom. Other panellists besides myself were Prelini Chiechi from Lithium Technologies, Sue Pryce of Unipart Logistics and Nic Shaw from Waggener Edstrom.

In a lively debate some common themes emerged that thought were worth sharing:

1. Marketing needs to focus on more than just Demand Generation. In order for our DG activities to be landing on fertile ground, marketing needs to invest in market conditioning activity (aka thought leadership). One of the negative impacts of the current obsession with ROI of everything is that important non-DG activities are overlooked. Unless this can be overcome it will be difficult to make a case for the validity of content marketing activities (other than as a direct component of lead generation programmes)

2. It's Not About You! This was the morning's recurring theme. The value of our content is measured by the recipient - period. Consequently anything we create must have the customer/prospect in mind. We should audit the content we have to determine where it would fit in a buyers' journey, and challenge ourselves on whether it really adds value to the customer or actually really only serves our own agenda.

3. Content = Creation + Curation. Given that we are trying to build a relationship on our prospect's terms, it's essential to think about curating and sharing other people's relevant content Not only does this reduce our workload but it increases the potential value to our readers.

4. Be Interesting. We are looking for the sweetspot at the intersection of the buyer's passions and our expertise. Having done so we can take an authoritative and individual stance - one that is not the same as the rest of the crowd. And when it comes to standing out from the crowd, give some thought to visual design - unless we can grab our reader's attention everything else is wasted.

5. Keep Delivering. We can't treat content as a one off tactic - we are trying to build a relatiionship with the reader and that can only happen if we are persistent in the frequency of your delivery, and consistent in the quality

6. Integrate across all channels. Of course we need to ensure that your content is made available in the delivery channels that the consumer prefers - be that mobile, blogs, video, social, podcasts. But also we need to ensure that the experience we offer in our content is replicated across our functions. What a shame if we produce some outstanding, engaging content only for the experience to be ruined by a an over-aggressive telemarketing follow up - "I see you've looked at our video about the challenges that CMOs face around data, now would you like to buy our fancy database software?"...

7. Listen. Listening and measurement shouldn't just occur at the end of the process - we can use it across the spectrum from initial research onwards. Don't plan too far in advance, since our listening exercises will almost certainly make us want to adjust our plans significantly

8. Skills Gap. Creating compelling content - whether text, video, or other vehicles - is not simple. Above all it requires an understanding of the pressing challenges of the intended reader. It's unlikely that this skill will be found in our most junior staff members, yet it's surprising how often that is exactly the individual we ask to take ownership for these tasks.

I'd love to hear from you about your content marketing challenges - perhaps I can help...

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11 Tips for Getting more productive with email (and work)

Earlier in the week I presented a webinar for B2B Marketing Magazine on the subject of becoming more efficient with email and indeed with work in general. You can find the full slide set here

My talk focused on 3 key areas:

Approach to work. In our hyper-connected world it's so easy to become overwhelmed by stuff and lose control. It's not better time management we need, it's better attention management - we can't do everything and need to have a systematic approach to how we choose to focus our attention.

Email management. Like it or loathe it, much of our business communication centres around email. But an ever growing inbox is a common source of significant stress. Fortunately there are some simple techniques one can use to ensure you maintain control over your email rather than the other way around.

Email alternatives. Much of the problem with our current use of email is that we use it for the wrong things. Task lists, project management, collaboration, broadcast communications, etc are all better handled through other approaches such as collaboration platforms and list managers.

Here's some top tips that I use to maintain control:

1. Audit how you spend your day. Simply documenting how you spend your day will help you focus on whether you're spending it on the things you should be.
2. Get yourself a trusted systematic approach to managing your work. I use GTD - others are available. 
3. Book time in your calendar to get work done. Stop being distracted by other people's priorities. If you have something on your agenda, put it on your agenda!
4. Disconnect once in a while. Stop surfing and looking for distractions - focus on the single thing you want to accomplish right now.
5. Go work in a coffee shop. Changing your environment for a while can have a major impact on your productivity
6. Process your email, don't live in it. Change your relationship with your inbox. You simply go there on your terms to decide what needs to be done with each mail - delete, action, file, read, delegate. Then get out and close it down.
7. Filter your email. Much of your email you regularly file, delete or forward - so get some help to do this for you automatically.
8. Turn off notifications. You've go important work to do - you'll get to your email when you're good and ready.
9. Minimise use of folders. Your email already has a search facility - there's no need to manually file mail in multiple nested folders. It simply creates additional unproductive decisions for you to make.
10. Write shorter emails. Is it clear what the recipient needs to do? Does the subject line make it clear what's required? You know how your heart sinks when you receive that 2 page email - don't do it to others!
11. Don't copy the world. Think before using reply all - it will actually make it less likely that anyone will feel ownership if you put multiple recipients. Copying too many people usually indicates that you're probably using the wrong tool

There's plenty of links here that expand on these ideas with tools and helpful videos.

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The ROI of Brand Advertising - the warm up before the big match

I was delighted today to read a release from my ex-employer that they have just signed a 5 year deal with the Rugby Football Union (RFU) to be their official Analytics Partner. Among other things, this extends the types of data-rich viewer experience that has been pioneered on the Wimbledon.com website with IBM Slamtracker to the Rugby Fan (via IBM TryTracker). It will be fascinating to see how the insights translate into the arena of Rugby. First chance for us all to see it will be on the opening Six Nations games this weekend via the RFU website.

I have to declare an interest. Having been at the centre of the IBM Rugby World Cup sponsorship with ITV  in 2011 it's very gratifying to see the conversations started on the back of that campaign turning into significant strategic business. Of course, there's been some outstanding engagement from the sales teams since then, and certainly the transfer of Ian Ritchie from the All England Tennis Club to be the RFU's CEO last year won't have done any harm. 

As a marketer the challenge with any significant brand campaign is always getting past the ROI hurdle. However forward thinking marketers know that there is always a balance to be struck between building a favourable selling environment (aka making a market) and capturing the demand from that market. While we often like to think that Demand Generation is all that matters, that simply is not the case - or perhaps more accurately we should view our branding activities as the warmup to the actual match. And we all know the risks of starting the game without some limbering up. 

So did the advertising campaign deliver a decent ROI. Today, 16 months after the campaign finished, I think we can say unreservedly that it did. However, as Adam Sharp of CleverTouch  remarked a while back - if your average sales cycle is longer than your campaign length, measuring the ROI is always going to be a challenge.

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Surviving 2013 - Part 2. The Tools!

Following from my last post I wanted to share with you the setup I use for getting work done. Of course it's based on GTD and follows a couple of principles:

• I don't DO email, I PROCESS it. The two are quite different - the purpose of processing email is to clarify whether it contains something to do, something to be filed, or something to bin.
• There are many more sources of potential tasks beyond email (eg meetings, phone calls, and even  my own occasional ideas!). I want a system to gather them all together
• The email inbox is like a toddler - it wants constant attention, and continually distracts you from what you want to be doing. Sometimes harsh medicine is called for - leave it alone for a while! Seriously I am the world's worst person for constantly checking to see if new email has come in to distract me. Consequently keeping my email inbox and my workflow system separated from each other helps keep me focussed

At the core of my system are two tools:

Toodledo. This handles my Workflow Management. It is not quite a "pure" GTD system, but comes close enough for my purposes. I manage my day from here, and ensure that tasks arising from email and all other sources are passed into my Toodledo Inbox, from where they can be classified into one of several GTD-style lists (eg Actions, Someday/Maybe, Waiting, etc) and a context applied (I tend to use only 3 - @work, @home, @errands).

Evernote. This is my Reference Store of stuff that I may want to refer to again at some point in the future. I use this for things to read, clips from the web, scanned documents, meeting notes, business receipts, recipes, etc)

Around these two I deploy a number of tools to help things get into my workflow from either a PC or iPad/iPhone. It's taken quite a lot of research and trial/error to get to this point, so I'm happy to share this all with you in the hope that your journey might be quicker. Do let me know how you get on.

More details, as well as links to a number of tools and resources are contained in the slideshare below.

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My GTD Workflow Setup from Pete Jakob

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7 Work Survival Tips for 2013

"I'm terrible at todo lists. I write things down in a notebook but nothing ever happens with my notes..."
"When I'm juggling lots of things at work I  sleep badly..."
"I have hundreds of emails in my inbox. I've no real idea of what lies in there, but if it's important they'll come back..."
"I have my best ideas in the most inconvenient places, at the most inconvenient times..."
"I spend too much energy thinking about today's challenge and have little energy left to think about the things that really matter to me..."
"When work is really busy I forget to pick up the milk..."

Any of these sound familiar? If so, please read on. I was in the same place a while ago. I'd struggled for years with writing todo lists on scraps of paper, in special books, or even capturing the lists digitally. Then I stumbled across an approach called Getting Things Done (often called simply GTD) developed by David Allen and examined in his book. This approach has helped become more productive in my work, but has also had several unexpected consequences - it has reduced my stress levels, helped me sleep better, and perhaps even helped me become a slightly better husband/father. Perhaps it can help you too..

I'm constantly surprised at how few people are aware of GTD as there is nothing else I've come across that helps me deal with the multitude of things that occupy one's phsyche. Personally I think this is something that should be taught at school as it is a life skill that most of us could do with learning and practicing from an early age. Perhaps everyone else is simply more organised than I am...

GTD Workflow. Taken from http://www.toodledo.com/info/gtd.php

The core workflow  of GTD is very straightforward, and is summarised well  in this page from Toodledo. It starts with collecting all the things that occupy your attention (aka "Stuff") into a single collection point.
Then there is a step to decide what to do with each piece of stuff - is it a task that needs to be actioned, or can it be binned, filed away for later reference, or stored for consideration at some point in the future? The tasks themselves will then need to separated into tasks that will take only a couple of minutes to complete (in which  case, just get on and do them rather than have them clog up your system) and tasks that you choose to do next, or at a specific time in the future, or tasks that need something else to happen first before you can execute (eg waiting for a colleague to provide some information).
Of course, sooner or later you have to get on and perform some work - GTD doesn't magic any of this away for you! There is one final aspect that is the glue that holds the GTD approach together. This is termed the weekly review - a review of all your various lists to ensure it is fresh and that nothing is falling through the cracks, and to identify any changing priorities.

I've been a student of GTD for 4 or 5 years now at different levels of depth. One of the good things is that you can apply the methodology in as straightforward or sophisticated way as you want/need, and it is totally independent of the technology that you choose to use - indeed it can be implemented in paper if that is your preferred tool (it isn't mine!).

I'll cover my specific GTD setup in a future post, but as with so many things, the technology is not the most important thing - and is very much a personal choice. It's the method that's important - and even that needs to be able to be tuned to the way that works best for you.

Through may study and practice of GTD there are a number of things I've learned that I'd like to pass on to you - if it encourages you to explore just a little more, then please let me know.

1. You've got to have a system

You've got to have a system - as Harry Hill used to say. When you have a single system that you trust that can be used to manage the workflow of all you stuff (both home and work related) then it becomes a close friend that you can depend upon. Note that I say it can be used for home-related activities as well as work. I had never considered "Fix the bedroom blind" as a todo list item or "Grow Vegetables" as a project, but they are. And through the concept of contexts, GTD allows me to keep all of my activities in one workflow, while having the ability to only present to me the activities that are relevant to the context or mode that I am in - be that in the office, at home, out shopping etc. Curiously some of the greatest benefits have been at home where it has allowed me to increase the odds of completing the necessary chores and maintenance tasks around the home.

One challenge with ideas is that they don't all occur when you have a pad and pencil in front of you. One of the core principles of GTD is to collect all your stuff into a single collection point. So part of the answer here is to always have a piece of paper at hand wherever you are. Thus I have small notepads in my suits, by my bed, in my car etc. Increasingly these are being replaced by technology (usually my iPhone/iPad so that I can input directly into my system. But the approach of capturing the idea into your system so that you can forget about it is immensely powerful and a major stressbuster.

2. Processing and Doing are Not the Same

For many of us, the major source of potential tasks is our email. Many of us our email inbox as a todo list. I believe this is a mistake for 3 reasons:

1. Not ALL your tasks come via email
2. You spend too much time being distracted by the latest incoming mail, rather than taking control of what YOU wish to accomplish
3. You are missing the joyful feeling that comes from having an empty email inbox

I have now learned to separate Processing from Doing. When I am processing email I simply ask myself whether there is an action required this mail, or whether it should be filed/binned. Only if the item can be completed in a minute or two will I actually do it. That way I can process my email very quickly and get out of my inbox quickly. Again - it helps me feel in control.

3. Adieu to Due Dates

Most convention action list methodologies assign a due date to every action. The trouble with this is that you spend an inordinate amount of time resetting due dates. As Douglas Adams said "I love deadlines. I like like wooshing sound they make as they fly by!" 

In reality most things in your todo list that are "overdue" really aren't. They are merely a result of you imposing unreaslistic expectations on yourself regarding what you might achieve in a day - and of not taking account of your energy levels, how long tasks will actually take, unscheduled interruptions etc. Of course some things have a clear deadline (Christmas is always December 25th) but otherwise don't bother. It frees you up to celebrate what you've achieved rather than beat yourself up about what you havent't. 

4. Keep things Moving with Projects

The GTD definition of a project is simple - anything that requires more than one step to be completed. I have always struggled with use of projects as opposed to actions, but finally think I am making progress. For me I've slightly revised my definition to be anything that I can usefully ask myself the question "What's the next action?". A useful tip I've learned is to define the project title in terms of the end state or goal. Therefore projects become "Secure a contract with client X", "Achieve 100 visitors a day to my website", "Provide vegetables for every month of the year". Projects can be as tight or lofty as you wish :- New Year Resolutions, Ambitions, Habits you wish to kick/develop - all these can be viable project candidates.

5. Get Yourself an Elephant

An Elephant never forgets -it turns out there is a lot of truth in the old saying. But if you find that carrying an elephant around with you is a little inconvenient, then perhaps opt for a computer. Whatever you do, don't rely on your brain. Don't get me wrong, the human brain is a fantastic thing that we understand next to nothing about (BTW - read David Eagleman's Incognito if you want a cracking read on how little we know about brain function). But if we task it with trying to remember multiple different things it struggles. Studies show that it has difficulty beyond two tasks, so why give yourself that stress.

There's no getting away from it - computers are great at remembering things. And as we increasingly adopt Cloud-based applications, it becomes easy to access the things we need from a smartphone in your pocket. Thats's why I increasingly rely on computers to store stuff I need to remember and to do - so another worry is dealt with. At the very least - it's a good backup strategy for your brain!

6. Get Out of Your Inbox

Have you noticed that declaring how many unread emails you have seems to have become a chestbeating macho exercise these days? If it somehow empowers you to display how out of control you are, then I'm pleased for you. For me it has always been a potential cause of stress. And when I look at my inbox and see nothing there I feel lighter and more carefree!

The secret is simple. Be clear about what your inbox is and isn't. It is not a workstack - it's simply a collection of potential attention-grabbers. Email is not work - although it may include work. It may also include junk, information to be stored, etc. It needs to be processed - not lived in. I find if I stay stuck in my email inbox for extended periods it's like asking to have your focus distracted from the work that you want to be doing. So turn off your new email alerts, and process your email no more than a couple of times a day - then get back to work.

While on the subject of email, let me tell you what I've learned about mail folders. I've learned not to bother. Rather than file things in multiple email folders, I now tend to store anything I might want to refer to in the future within a single folder/archive. Most email clients (I happen to use GMail these days) have good search capabilities that are quicker at finding stuff than I am by rooting through individual folders.

7. Get Ready for the weekend with a Weekly Review

Any machine needs regular maintenance. In GTD this is the function of the weekly review. It's a simple, structured meeting with myself where I clean up my system - glance over what I've achieved, what I want to accomplish in the next few days, reclassify items that have become more/less important for me, identify a few new things to get done, etc. Personally I like to do this at the end of the week on a Friday afternoon so that I can clear my head for the weekend and know that I'll be ready to pick things up again on Monday.

I have also discovered that when I'm feeling out of control it's often because I have skipped a weekly review. It's always an hour well spent that leaves me feeling more relaxed.

I hope this article has stimulated you to explore the Getting Things Done approach and to experiment with it. It's not for everyone - it assumes that you want to get a llittle more control back into your life, and it seems to me that not everybody puts a priority on that.

But what will you do with the time and energy that you wrestle back? More work or something else? Now there is an interesting question...

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Lessons from the (Marketing) Garden: Make a Plan!

Over the Christmas break, in between the sprouts and mince pies, I started to think about my vegetable plot at the bottom of my garden. Those who know me well will know that I'm a keen gardener - I say keen rather than good, since I garden with more enthusiasm than competence!

This time of year that's not much that you can do outside and the ridiculously soggy weather has made it very challenging. However I did manage to turn the compost heap and clear a couple of raised beds before being pulled back indoors by the magnetic attraction of cold turkey and chrain sandwiches.  

However it's useful to a have a period of relative inactivity between seasons as it provides an opportunity to pause and reflect on last year's efforts and plan forward for the year ahead. So rather than dive straight into planting seeds to early (they'd only rot at the moment in any case) I spent a happy day thinking about what to plant in each of my raised beds and ordering seeds from a couple of websites for delivery over the weeks ahead. Being a technologist at heart - I snapped my plot with my iPhone, labelled the beds using Skitch and clipped the web pages of what I'd ordered into Evernote. That way I'll be able to keep a record of how the year progresses, along with links the the information found on the back of seed packets regarding care after sowing (usually I find the packets become illegible after a few weeks in the greenhouse).

But now I have a garden plan for 2013. But it's only a plan. One of the most memorable quotes I heard last year (via  +Bob Apollo) came from 19th century Prussian Field Marshal von Moltke - "No plan survives first contact with the enemy". So we'll shortly deploy cloches, nematodes and compost and revise the plan as the year progresses - or discard it altogether. But for a brief moment I feel prepared.

When I first started in B2B marketing, the marketers year seemed a little more seasonal (and the summers were warmer!). December and January were relatively quiet and we used the time to write plans and spend time swapping ideas with our colleagues. But these days the pace appears to be unrelenting - this "always on" world seems to demand that we're constantly doing something. As a result we do far to little thinking, reflecting and planning and I'm convinced our the quality of our marketing (not to mention our energy levels) suffer.

So instead of wasting too much time reading everyone's technology and marketing predictions for 2013, step away from the laptop/tablet for a little while and do some thinking about what you want to achieve. I guarantee you'll feel better - and if you are already too out-of-control to plan, then perhaps I can do a little thinking for you...

BTW - in case your interested here's the Garden plan:

Bed1: Peas, Lettuce

Bed2: Parsnip, Rocket, Broad Bean

Bed3: Alpine Strawberries, Chard

Bed4: Broccoli (purple) and Calabrese

Bed5 & 6: Cut Flowers

Bed7: Cabbage, Cauliflower, Pak Choi

Bed8: Asparagus, Strawberry

Bed9: Raspberry, Gooseberry, Currants

Bed10: Courgette, Sweetcorn, Spinach

Greenhouse: Tomato

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5 Steps towards Customer Intimacy through Marketing Data

All of a sudden it's very trendy to talk about data and analytics. Of course there's very good reasons for this - the data that you capture potentialy provide an enormous amount of insight about a client's actual and likely behaviour. However most of us are failing to capitalise on this potential.

Whilst it's very easy to get excited by the latest software technologies that promise to revolutionise our marketing worlds, a simple truth remains: Unless you focus on the basics of your marketing data, no end of automation or predictive analysis is going to deliver the improved results you have promised.

The bad news is that your data is probably in something of a mess. The good news is that most of your competitors data is in a similarly poor state. It simply hasn't been a focus area for marketers until relatively recently - but now, as our industry re-learns that marketing is all about serving customers, we are starting to revisit what we can learn from the signals that our clients and prospects are already providing. And they do this every time they engage with us, talk about us, buy from us, ignore us or even complain about us.

Last week I participated in Marketing's B2B Marketing Transformation conference in Hatton Garden, London, along with some excellent speakers from Google, Dell and SimplyBusiness to name three.
I outlined a 5 step approach to getting your arms around your marketing data:

1. Capture the Right Stuff

It starts with capturing the data that will help you serve your clients better. Are you gathering insight about their interests, the people who influence them, the places they look for insight?

And if you are currently looking to identify new strategic investment areas for next year, you had better ensure that the data that you are capturing will help support that strategy. It is also important to have a good dialogue with the sales function so that you can minimise the amount of useful data that is being recorded on individual laptops rather than being shared for the common good. The same applies to external list purchases - you should never buy in a new list without figuring out how you are going to integrate it with the rest of the data that you have.

2. Organise it to be Useful

In order to be usable for analyis or outbound marketing activity, you will need to structure the data so that you minimise the amount of unnecessary variation. Creating a data dictionary is a good place to start to see the scale of the problem. This is simply a table of all the available fields along with all the potential values for each field. Then you can start to introduce standardised fields for key areas such as job roles, territory assignments, country etc. For example, you may want to group Marketing director, VP Marketing, CMO, and Head of Marketing all under a single job role of "Marketing Leader".

Remember - it's an order of magnitude less expensive to capture data correctly at the entry point than to resolve and correct later. Examine your forms and other capture points - ensure that you use dropdown menus to minimise data capture errors/variance and use mandatory fields if there are specific fields that you will need later on for targeting and analysis. All this would be second nature to a systems person - but most marketers today do not have any background in systems.

Increasingly people are starting to look at Social Signon systems as way to ensure that (normally correct) information from LinkedIn etc is shared, without the need to present further forms. After all, 88% of us admit to having deliberately submitted false information into a contact form - I guess the other 12% just don't admit it!

3. Fill in the Gaps

The client is not the only source of information - and we all have a loathing of long contact forms. We can supplement the data we've gathered with information from 3rd party sources such as D&B, Experian or Jigsaw.

Furthermore, integrating with data from social streams is an emerging area of marketing data enrichment. And don't ignore any opportunities to augment your data with useful insights from your customer service systems or from your channel partners.

4. Get Creative

In my corporate career, I was frustrated that the dialogue between the marketing program teams and the data analysts was only ever along the lines of "Give me a list of all the IT Directors in the Finance Industry". Too late and too dull.

Instead of basing our outbound campaigns purely on demographic and firmographic data, you will get much greater ROI if you combine that with behavioural insight - have they declared specific interests via some form of  a preference centre; or have they already displayed an interest in the particular topic by their engagement in a previous activity? The big learning I took away from those experiences was that it's never to early to involve the data analysts in the campaign planning process - you will almost certainly make your campaigns more effective and less wasteful.

5. Keep it Clean!

In an ideal world you would be able to go to a dashboard that gives you the key metrics around the health of your marketing data whenever you choose to view it. However in my experience most people don't have this luxury yet (although it is a feature of several marketing automation platforms). Therefore some element of a database audit is required. Sound scary? It really isn't. It starts with looking at the completeness of key data fields (ie is there data in them or not?) and then looking at the validity of that data (ie is the data any good or are the name fields full of "Micky Mouse"?)

For many, an audit might be the first place to start on your marketing database journey of discovery - at least it will inform where you have the greatest challenges.

And how often should you be auditing your data? Ideally it should be a constant part of your management system, but at the very least it should be done whenever there is a significant change in the business - eg a change in strategy, an acquisition of another company, a change in the pattern of marketing results, or a significant spike in opt-outs.

Love your Data in 2013

The bottom line is that we are all trying to get closer to our customers. This means that we need to looking more closely at the data that we have about them, and developing our skills to turn that into analysis and insight and ultimately revenue.

The full presentation from the conference is below. What's your data resolution for 2013?

Leveraging your marketing data from Pete Jakob

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