Here's the deal.
A few years back, the agency Alan asked 200 business decision-making leaders how they felt about B2B marketing, and 82% of them agreed that B2B marketing was "boring, predictable, and repetitive."
Many even agreed that even though they fell into that category, they didn't know how they could break out.
From my experiences consulting with Fortune 1000, and working in-house at companies like Shopify Plus and QuickBooks, this is for 3 reasons.
- Marketers aren't confident enough
- Leadership needs investments to be de-risked
- Decision-makers don't trust the execution.
Let's break these down one-by-one, over the next few emails, shall we?
Marketers aren't confident enough
In that same study, 53% of marketers said they felt like they worked in a risk-adverse culture, and 33% felt their company didn’t understand building a brand narrative.
But 100% of the CEOs, CFOs, and COOs unequivocally, and unilaterally said that "marketers need to tackle risk aversion."
100% also said it was marketers that needed to lead the conversation.
Let that sink in.
Leadership wants pushback.
Honestly, I had to re-read that a few times, because I've had plenty of experiences where really good ideas get shot down even when others acknowledged their potential.
But in retrospect...
I also wasn't approaching these conversations with the level of confidence or authority that would inspire trust.
Over time, I was primed to lower my status while also asking for 10, 20, $30,000 investments, and expecting to get my totally-awesome, completely differentiated, game changing idea™ out into market.
I imagine to leadership that looked like a teenager asking their parents to borrow their credit card and saying "I prooooooomise won't spend it all on Xbox."
I don't know how we got here, but many of the content marketers I know have become numb to the work after years of feeling beaten down and forced to crank out keyword stuffed articles they know brings little to no value to the person on the other side of the screen.
But we seriously need to snap out of it.
Rosie Guest, the CMO of Apex group says this about the mentality:
B2B marketers are so used to being subservient to the business in a very different way to the way they are in B2C...
They need to shift from the subservient position to a more authoritative one and to do that means you have to lead the conversation.
Not, asking what do you want to do but, 'this is our marketing strategy'.
That's a nice sentiment Rosie, and one I wholeheartedly agree with, but it's going to take a lot more than making an @channel announcement in Slack that you're taking over.
It takes time, a little strategy, and a lot of planning, to gain the confidence necessary to earn a seat at the table.
We have to acknowledge our part in the problem
That's a tough pill to swallow, especially when it seems like you're always reacting and not respected, but let's look at the data.
First off, our own State of (Dis)Content Report found that the majority of content marketers aren't doing their audience research "nearly enough"
From experience, I know not having enough audience research makes it difficult to create a defensible content strategy.
I also know from our study that plenty of people say it's not a company priority, not their responsibility, or they don't have the time to do it.
If you've found yourself in any of those scenarios, you'll have to excuse me for saying this, but waiting for someone else to get you what you need is just relinquishing your power.
You. don't. need. permission. to. learn. about. your. audience.
There are plenty of ways to learn about where they spend their time, what they value, what keeps them up, and how do they go about winning.
I've linked to two resources at the end that should get you on the right track.
So ok, let's say you go rogue and do the homework and you have some idea of what to do with it.
You have another hurdle to overcome.
In last year's State of Content Marketing report, Content Marketing Institute found that nearly half of content marketers claim that "measuring results" is one of their biggest challenges.
This doesn't help that the whole world seems to have imploded when it comes to measurement in the last year, so everyone is looking in different directions to find ways to show their worth.
What is "results" anyway?
Is it traffic?
Leads?
Something else?
This is part of an identity crisis content folks have been having since as long as I've been in the field.
My ideas about "results" as it relates to content marketing have always been centered around scroll depth, pages per session, return visits within a 60 day time period, session time, and sales cycle length.
Traffic and leads are important to be sure, but there are so many paths to get them.
Truly effective content, in my mind, is the stuff that keeps people scrolling, clicking, and coming back for more.
After all, how will you ever get into the consideration set if people aren't engaged and coming back?
And thirdly—and most importantly—the majority of content marketers (71%) say their content strategy is moderately to ineffective.
Among those who answered their content strategy was only moderately effective, some of the reasons given were:
- Lack of clear goals (42%)
- Ineffective audience research (29%)
- Unrealistic expectations (23%)
"Lack of leadership (no clear direction)" was also one of the patterns that appeared for the 26% of people who answered, "other".
Given that the Alan survey showed that 100% of decision makers believe marketers need to "tackle risk aversion" and "educate on brand," and my own experiences consulting with Fortune 1000s, what this really looks like is a case of the blind leading the blind.
Leadership says they want marketers to step up and set direction, and marketers are waiting to be given a direction...
...and because neither are setting goals or doing audience research everyone operates off "big ole' keyword list" and defaulting to traffic, downloads, and trials, because it's the "safest" bet.
While it might not seem like leadership wants to change anything, keep in mind, their job is to de-risk any move they make, and most may barely have a surface-level understanding of what we do.
Fun fact: I once had a boss who said to prepare for managing me, he took a course on content marketing.
When I asked where he found it, you know what he said?
Udemy.
🤦♂️
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So what can we do about it?
I obviously don't know your specific situation and I'm not the type of person who likes to pretend to have all the answers.
There are also plenty of leaders who say they want something, but when it comes down to it...not really.
What I can offer though something that's worked for me in many different contexts, and hopefully it can work for you too.
1. Define what "customer research" actually means
When most content marketers say "I need time to do customer research" what leadership hears is "I'm going to eff off on social media" especially when there isn't a clear process defined, timelines given, and expected outcomes.
That's why I developed The 8 Layer Market Research which will help set up guardrails for leadership, and help you identify gaps in:
- Your own brand narratives
- Customer motivations
- Competitor messaging and channels, and...
- Potential distribution outlets
And keep track of everything in real time.
Once you've collected the research, you can then answer the more important question, "now what?"
2. Create a shared language
This is what The Narrative Design Toolbox is being designed to solve.
If leadership teams want marketers to step up and educate the company on brand, we need to stop complaining and find ways to get others involved and teach them our language.
Sales and performance marketing teams have a fairly easy language to understand.
Make calls, earn money.
Spend $1 get $5 back.
When you can't name the principles you're operating off of, as long as they have a keyboard and form coherent sentences, they'll forever feel like they (or AI) can also do your job.
3. Validate concepts first
One of the smartest things I ever learned in my career was to validate big swing ideas by securing distribution first.
When you can say, "Here's are A,B, and C concepts. They're based on what we found in D, C, and E research."
"We want to trigger 1, 2, 3 specific emotions by leaning on 4, 5, and 6 specific principles."
"We're going take [timeframe] to pitch here, here, here, and here, because we want a combined reach of X before we spend the resources in production.
If successful, we're expecting it to get between Y and Z result."
It won't happen overnight but...
See how that approach can de-risk the investment and inspire more confidence?
It's been so easy to say that "Leadership doesn't 'get' content" or that "nobody wants to invest in storytelling," but the research is showing that's simply not true.
1. Everyone, including leadership, has taste, and
2. Of course they're going to default to "what works" if they don't see a possible path for short-term success while working toward long term goals.
In my next email, we'll talk more about what we can do to de-risk investments, and small changes you can make (that you don't need permission for) that can make a big change and start building your authority.
Until then...
