After hearing about the B2B Content2Conversion Conference, which is co-located with the Demand Gen Summit, from a client (thanks Paul), I decided to head out to Scottsdale to see what it was all about.
What I learned at C2C made the trip well worth it. The conference was full of takeaways and great connections.
By the Numbers
These compelling stats really moved what I know to be true from my own clients’ experience to hard facts based on industry data. I found it interesting that:
- 43% of marketers say it is important to experiment with new content types.
- 88% of buyers say they want shorter formats.
- 84% want interactive/visual content.
- 96% suggest vendors package related content together. Buyer’s online behavior can be compared to binge watching House of Cards or Breaking Bad.
- 54% of marketers are not measuring impact of content but interested in doing so.
- 85% of buyers say they share content via LinkedIn while 62% do so on Twitter.
- 68% of buyers share webinars.
- 76% of B2B buyers prefer different content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
David Meerman Scott’s keynote in one pic
Your New Boss
David Meerman Scott, best-selling author and marketing strategist extraordinaire delivered a rousing keynote. The talk was titled “The New Rules and Realities of Sales and Marketing.” But what I got out of it was that now is the time to be bolder than ever. Regardless of your title or role, all marketers from the CMO to the intern have a new boss — the customer.
Here are some of the keynote highlights:
- Understand what your prospect’s concerns are and address them via content (sounds obvious, but rarely done).
- The biggest barrier to doing the kind of marketing that works today is fear.
- B2B does have to mean Be Too Boring.
- Scott cited Raytheon as a company that is doing a great job with content. Among other things, they hire journalists.
- Make it easy for buyers to find content and don’t make people fill out forms to check out your content. Which leads to…
- The “calculus” of lead generation has changed. Instead of gating your high value whitepaper, give it away. But, follow it with a secondary offer with registration. This is easier to do after you have proven value (with the first offer). Plus the interest in the secondary offer will likely demonstrate more interest.
Scott’s was just one of the many insightful talks at the conference. Some more bites of wisdom included:
- “Resource Centers” are where content goes to die. No one wants to look through a resource center. They want to easily find they content they are looking for and then easily find related content. @uberflip
- Great content isn’t enough. You need to have a great content experience. (Think about how your content is displayed and what else is on the page. Stop blaming the limits of you’re CMS. @dglix
- Different people prefer different content forms (video, social media posts, e-books, webinars, etc). So, divide and re-purpose content in different media. @dglix
- Stop ad hoc/reactionary content creation. It is inefficient and exhausting. Instead, create content paths where the storyline builds over time. @rpyoung_
My Personal Takeaway
Listening to the speakers and speaking with attendees felt like validation of what we have been saying at RSL Media for some time: brands need to have their own content platform(s) with great content and great experiences.
If you want to read more about the conference, I tweeted my experience on RSL’s twitter steam.
The coolest thing I saw at C2C? This guy’s t-shirt:
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