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I wouldn’t have put it so baldly but I like it that this guy did… “this guy” being Barry Feldman in his blog post “The Most Valuable Lesson a B2B Marketer Will Ever Learn.”

In B2B marketing, your value proposition can be about two things. Only two. Dos. Deux.

1. Time
2. Money

Quite true. All of the Best-in-Class, Next-Generation, Advanced, Market-Leading, Award-Winning, Best Practices, ad infinitum terms aren’t going to make one whit of difference if your value prop isn’t about saving time, saving money, or making money.

Want to differentiate your company in the way you do business? You should, or die trying. Want to differentiate your company in how you articulate your message? Definitely a smart line of thinking there…But sorry, in B2B, you can’t differentiate the value proposition. If you do, there’s simply no value to your proposition.

Interesting stuff.

You don’t have to be General Electric to do effective content marketing. Sure GE has an incredible content marketing machine, but even small teams and solo practitioners can strategize and produce lead-generating marketing content. The key to creating a content marketing plan for any organization is an integrated cycle: strategic planning, content creation and distribution, engaging in conversation, and measuring results.

•    Set marketing goals and objectives. Decide what you want to accomplish with a content marketing campaign and how to measure it. Draw up your buyer personas for your sweet spot and ideal prospects.

•    Create new content and leverage existing content. Collect your existing content, decide what you can leverage, and identify gaps that require new content.

•    Optimize content for search and curate for reuse. Revise both new and existing content for keywords and updated messaging. Break content into pieces to increase reuse. Curate your content so you can easily identify content for future campaigns. This is where an expert B2B marketing writer comes in to the picture.

•    Distribute content and engage in conversation. Distribute through your channels including social media, website, email lists, blogs, and publications.  Track and engage your commenters. Measure results and adapt content to next cycle.

•    Measure results by your goals and objectives, adapt content accordingly, and begin the cycle again.

This cycle stays the same no matter how large or small your team might be. The difference is quantity: more resources can create more content. There need not be any difference in quality or meeting your goals and objectives as long as you have reasonably assigned your resources.

The rules of content marketing are changing. I go by 6 rules that I’ll be blogging about over the next few weeks.

Rule #1: Changing Sales Cycles Need a Lot of Content

The Sales Cycle is Really Different from What it Used to Be

B2B has a longer buy cycle than it used to. Customers want to consume a lot of content before they ever want to talk to you. Sales is still vital of course — there is a lot of competition to close that deal  — but this shift means that the content customers are looking for is critical in the marketing/sales cycle.

Good marketing content is content that sells you and your products. But what makes content good? There are so many types of marketing assets, plus different ways that prospects consume information, plus optimizing and promoting the assets for inbound and outbound marketing.

But too often these choices are left up to a roll of the marketing dice. “We need a white paper (who is your audience and how will you introduce it to channels?).” “We need to make a video (because everyone else is doing it).” “Let’s do a webinar (even though we have no clue how to promote it).” These can be great assets if you are making smart decisions and digital paperweights if you’re not. So how do you strategically decide which content you should create first? Where do the gaps exist? How can you promote your created assets so people can respond to them?

This is where content creation and consulting come into the picture: using consultants for high ROI when it comes to your content investment.

• Know who your customers are and the kind of content they want. Remember that your ideal customers are not the blue-sky early adopter types who just love your product. They’re good for PR and proof of concept but they will never be your customer base because they’re always on to the Next Big Thing. Your ideal customers may be SMB owners, IT organizations, records managers, compliance directors, C-suite executives, service providers or MSPs: these are the businesses that will make you a success if you can reach out and convince them. You will also need to know how they prefer to consume their content and at what stage of the sales cycle. For example, IT consumes information differently from the C-Suite and you are probably marketing to them both.  Understand what they want to know when they are researching, their motivations, and what convinces them to take action.
• Specify your top 1-3 current marketing initiatives and their content gaps. Examples include brand awareness, positioning, lead generation, reference customers, or shortened sales cycles. Which initiative will have the best return on investment with content assets? If you only have technical white papers and are marketing to IT, great. If you only have technical white papers and you’re marketing to business decision makers, good luck.
• Create the content. If you have existing content then great, update it as needed and start it working for you. If you need to create new assets, prioritize content creation by need, cost, time to create, and expected ROI. Don’t automatically go with the cheapest or easiest option. If you can quickly create a podcast and get it out there while you create more in-depth assets, then fine. But do not spend a year recording throw-away podcasts when what your customers really want is a strong white paper.
• Develop a landing page specifically for the content’s link. Linking to a well-designed home page is all right for blog entries, but don’t promote a link to your home page from a major content asset. Send your content consumers to a landing page created specifically for the asset. For in-depth content such as white papers or research reports you may safely include an information form with minimal questions. Most readers expect this with downloads. If the content asset is short like an infographic, you probably will not want to capture information but you should include a strong call to action on its landing page.
• Promote the asset. Content works well for outbound marketing when you are actively pushing prospects to the asset. And content is particularly attractive with inbound marketing, the process of getting your customers to come to you because of the quantity and quality of your content. This is why it is vital to promote new content using search engine optimization and multiple media channels.

Stay tuned for Rules #2-5.

If you are using old-fashioned marketing methods like cold calls and email spam to suspect lists, it’s time to ratchet up your marketing.

There is a lot to marketing and it can get as complex as you want it to be. But starting simpler is always better because it will build you the foundation of more sales and more recurring revenue. Once those are in hand you can continue to add service levels and branch out to even more customers.

• Build In-house email lists. Not spam lists, but internal lists you have compiled through networking, trade shows, sales calls, and marketing leads. Collect them from your CRM, email contact lists, and the business cards you stuffed in your drawer. Once they are all in one electronic place, reach out with emails and phone calls and announce your cost-effective new service offerings.

• Create a marketing newsletter. Informative email marketing to your in-house list is a great way to nurture prospects and retain existing clients. Concentrate on the benefits of managed services for your prospects and on additional high value services for your customers. A monthly newsletter coupled with weekly or bi-weekly blog posts will go a long way towards branding, positioning and lead generation.
• Write a company blog. If you don’t have a blog, get one. No need to post every day; blogging a couple of times a week will help to build your business and generate leads. You will also have a flow of information to offer in your LinkedIn status and Twitter updates. Offering a free download to your blog readers for their name and email is a great way to add them to your in-house list. And compile your weekly blog posts into your monthly newsletter for even more content leverage.
• Track your marketing. Even simple CRM systems can help you track where the majority of your new business came from such as referrals, direct sales calls, a download, or a newsletter subscription. Also ask what activities you consistently did that did not produce business? Maybe that trade show you attend every year isn’t worth the time and expense you put into it. Also ask what activities you did not do that you should have.

Get serious about your marketing. Plan the highest return activities and do them faithfully to get the business that you want. Consistency and quality are the single biggest indicators of marketing success.

I’ve noticed uncertainty and misplaced expectations when marketing professionals look to hire a B2B copywriter. At worst, the result is a bad fit between company and writer. At best it’s not making the most of what could be a great relationship.

Myth #1: Go cheap or go home.
Money is not always an indicator of quality by any means. However, charging too small an amount is a dead giveaway that something is wrong. Going to cheap services like eLance or oDesk doesn’t even work for content mills anymore. It’s not going to work for a legitimate B2B business that needs good, reputable content to attract the right customers. (A writer who charges $15 for a blog post is going to give you that exact value.)

Myth #2: The copywriter should be able to read my mind.
Sadly, there is no International Brainwave to replace upfront discussions with your writer. It’s true that the more experienced a writer is at a) writing, b) your industry, and c) your company, the less upfront time you’ll have to spend with them. But every company is different, even the ones competing against each other. You will need to discuss your key positioning, top marketing statements, differentiators, customer segments, and what you hope to achieve with a piece of content.

Myth #3: The writer should give me an hourly rate so I know what I’m paying for.
A very, very few writers may give you an hourly rate. Here’s why: the better the writer is, the better and faster she is. The better she gets, the more value she gives – but if she’s charging hourly, the less money she makes! Um, no.

Myth #4: I can’t afford a writer and will do it myself.
It’s not that you can’t do it, many marketers are good writers. The question is: what do you have to give up in order to write that blog post, article, email, or white paper? Chances are you’re going to give up your most strategic functions; the ones that you don’t have to do every day, but that if ignored will get you in real trouble. What kind of money have you saved? To the contrary, you have lost money by losing opportunities. Let a writing professional write your content for you while you concentrate on your highest value activities.