I

THATS GOOD BECAUSE YOUVE FINALLY GOT A WAY AROUND THOSE ANNOYING BARRIERS THAT BUYERS TEND TO ERECT WHEN THEY SENSE OLD-SCHOOL MARKETING.
But its bad because it means youre competing against a tidal wave of shiny new content from competitors, analysts, thought leaders, bloggers and wannabes.

Bottom line: good content isnt enough any more. You need insanely great content thats on-strategy and incites action. And you need to deliver it in a consistent, ongoing program. To do that, you need to step back a little and think about what youre trying to accomplish and who youre trying to motivate. This the era of Content Strategy and it will separate the pros from the amateurs.

because people care about their own problems much more than they care about your products. When you capture your companys expertise and package it up to help your prospects do their jobs, you earn peoples attention instead of simply assuming youll get it. Content also fuels the three most important weapons in the B2B marketing arsenal:

CONTENT IS SO CRITICAL

Search If you dont rank on your keywords, you wont get the trafc. Great content propels you up the search rankings.

Social Content gives you something to bring to the social party you dont want to engage emptyhanded, do you?

Outbound It may be out of fashion but outbound is about to make a comeback. Content gives you an offer for your outbound calls-to-action, driving up response rates.

In short, content is what makes the B2B world go round and the revenue meters sing ka-ching!. If youre not getting good at content, prepare to lose market share. But you cant just churn out pife

HERES A BIG-ASS CHECKLIST TO HELP.

The rst part of the checklist is designed to help you hone your content marketing strategy and build the foundations of an ongoing content marketing program. The second part should help you attack your very next piece.

HELP US HELP YOU.

If you think weve missed anything important or got something totally wrong (how very dare you), do give us your comments. We want to improve this sucker as we go forward.

(And well post updates on how We hope you wont just read the the Checklist campaign is doing on checklist. We hope youll print it out and Velocitys B2B Content Marketing Blog start scribbling away. Use it when youre so do come back). writing your content marketing strategy, developing a new piece or whenever you hit a roadblock. You may need to do this exercise for each product line or one for each region or whatever. But these are the kinds of questions youll need to answer if you want your content marketing to go faster than a speeding bullet and leap over tall buildings in a single bound (or a series of carefully nurtured smaller bounds).

Ones we prepared earlier. You mean you havent read these yet? The B2B Content Marketing Workbook a primer. The B2B Marketing Manifesto a frothing rave. Theres your bedtime reading for tonight. Enjoy. Night-night. Mwah.

START BIG AND WORK YOUR WAY DOWN:

 Capture what the business wants to achieve in the next 6-12 months. Think about what youd need to change to make these goals happen and aim high. This isnt just about business as usual. Prioritise the most important things content can do for you, including: Building awareness Educating buyers  Moving leads along the purchase path (nurturing)  Engaging with all inuencers Serving existing customers Cross-selling or up-selling Generating new sales leads Establishing your expertise
Get buy-in on these. Everything depends on clear goals that everyone agrees on and build them into your analytics! (see page 25).

 Write down what marketing needs to achieve in the next 6-12 months.

For this B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, the goals are: To raise awareness of Velocity among B2B marketers who want to harness the power of content marketing. To nurture people who downloaded and liked the B2B Marketing Manifesto or the B2B Content Marketing Workbook, moving the right ones one step closer to picking up the phone.

SUMMARISE EACH BUYER PERSONA IN A FEW BULLET POINTS AND PRIORITISE:

Persona 1 Persona 4

Persona 2

Persona 5

Persona 3

We like to use short, visual personas that include psychographics not just demographics.

For the Big Fat B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, target persona #1 is: Martha Watton, 43 CMO of a fast-growing 400m software company Ambitious, condent & impatient For more on this check out our Buyer Persona Resource Round-up. A big believer in the power of content Her results from old-style campaigns are attening out

EACH PIECE OF CONTENT SHOULD CAUSE A PROSPECT TO MOVE TO THE NEXT STAGE OF THE BUYING JOURNEY.
Fill in your top personas and use AIDA or whatever buying stages you prefer:

Persona: 1 2 3 4 5

Awareness

Interest

Desire ROI BLOG POST

Action

Some pieces of content can serve in several different cells. But you do need a sense of progression so you encourage people to move along your funnel. Thats what lead nurturing is all about.

For this Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, were targeting senior B2B marketers who are already into the idea of content marketing (like Martha Watton, above) and want to get better at it now. So theyre our Persona 1 and this piece is in the Desire box (overlapping into Action).

Its a follow-up to earlier pieces like the Content Marketing Workbook that was in the Awareness Box and the B2B Marketing Manifesto (Interest). It can be helpful to list the questions that buyers have in each stage of the buying process. Then develop content that answers the questions appropriate to the stage youre targeting. For this piece, these might be things like, How do I best spend my content budget? or How do I decide what content to produce?.

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ANOTHER WAY TO TARGET CONTENT IS TO THINK ABOUT THE EVENTS WITHIN THE TARGET COMPANY THAT MIGHT TRIGGER INTEREST IN YOUR SOLUTIONS (A MERGER? A NEW CRM SYSTEM?):
Personas Trigger: 1 2 3 4 5 CONTENT PIECE

Does each trigger have some way of signaling itself? How can you know when a prospect experiences one?

For the Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, a trigger event may be: A B2B company just hired a new CMO The prospect just had a content marketing success and wants more How are these two triggers signaled? We could look for news of major marketing job moves. But its mainly through search and social including tweets and questions on social forums.

We wrote about B2B Trigger Events here on this post.

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THE BEST CONTENT COMES FROM A VERY SPECIFIC, CLEARLY DELINEATED SPHERE OF EXPERTISE.

This is the zone where you have the most authority. Its where no one has a better claim on expertise than you do. Write yours in a sentence: Our sweet spot is:

Examples:
Were experts in the effect of ratings & reviews on ecommerce (for Reevoo). Were experts in using data to maximize return on web advertising budgets. (for Mediaplex) Were experts at using B2B content marketing to generate revenue (for us Velocity) We wrote a blog post on nding your sweet spot here on the Econsultancy blog.

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FEW COMPANIES START WITH NO CONTENT. ITS IMPORTANT TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAVE SO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR GAPS ARE.
Existing Persona(s) Content 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Buying Stage Notes

Include everything that can be used or re-purposed: blog posts, ebooks, sales decks, videos, archived webinars, etc.

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THEMES ARE WIDER IN SCOPE THAN SPECIFIC TOPICS. THEY REPRESENT A WHOLE AREA YOU WANT TO START OWNING. DECIDE ON YOUR CONTENT SUCCESS CRITERIA AND SCORE EACH THEME AGAINST THEM.
Kind of like this (in priority order): SWEET SPOT

Criterion: 1 2 3 4 Theme: 1 2 3 4 ROI 5 7/10

We always include In our sweet spot as one of these criteria. Also things like likelihood to be shared and hot topic. Or timely, affordable and (god forbid) fun.

For this piece, we could have written something on B2B SEO or marketing automation. But wed already picked the theme thats most in our sweet spot: Content Marketing. So we skipped this one.

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ITS GOOD TO DECIDE ON YOUR SEO KEYPHRASES BEFORE YOU PICK A TOPIC BUT ITS CRITICAL TO DO SO BEFORE YOU START WRITING.
Keyphrase: 1 2 3 4 B2B SOCIAL Topic: 1 2 3 4 SOCIAL 5

Dont forget: long tail terms can deliver the best returns in B2B.

For this checklist, content marketing strategy is clearly the driving keyphrase but were also interested in ranking for B2B content marketing and a few others.

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YOUR EDITORIAL CALENDAR IS ESSENTIALLY YOUR PRODUCTION AND DELIVERY SCHEDULE IN ONE SHEET.
A B C D E F G H J K

If you dont have one, your content marketing will become ad hoc rather than strategic. So have one (even if you stray from it often).

Heres a simple one: Months or weeks along the top. Personas, stages, triggers, topics or a combination down the left. You decide:

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

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Editorial Calendar Q1 2012 | Calendar A: By Content Type | Budget: XXX

V.1 30/1/12

February 06 Feb 13 Feb 3

20 Feb

27 Feb

March 05 Mar

12 Mar

19 Mar

26 Mar

April 02 Apr

09 Apr

16 Apr

23 Apr

Monthly Big Piece

Infographic: Original 2 Spin-off 1 Blog Post: Original 3 Spin-off 3 Article: Original 1 Spin-off 3 Expert Interview 3 Multi-Expert Piece 2 Slideshare Spin-0ff 1

Round-up 3

SAMPLE FIRST QUARTER ROLL-OUT 1 LEGACY

ARTICLE
(blog rewrite)

2
VIDEO DF KEYNOTE

4
VIDEO BURBERRY

6
VIDEO DMGT

8
VIDEO SYMANTEC

10
VIDEO BLACKBOARD

11

12

CREATED
EBOOK INFOGRAPHIC PRESENTATION/ PREZI CHECKLIST INTERVIEW INTERVIEW INTERVIEW WEBINAR POSTWEBINAR REPORT

EMAIL

EMAIL

EMAIL

EMAIL

EMAIL

EMAIL

COMMISSIONED
FORESTER REPORT BLOGGER ARTICLE BLOGGER ARTICLE

CURATED ONGOING COMMENTARY ON 3RD PARTY BLOGS AND VIA TWITTER

For more resources on this, see our Editorial Calendars Resource Round-Up

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FOR EACH CELL IN YOUR PERSONA / BUYING-STAGE MATRIX, YOU NEED TO GENERATE TOPIC IDEAS.

Just as in the themes section above, decide on your content success criteria and score each topic against them:

Criterion: 1 2 3 4 Theme: 1 2 3 4 5

A topic is a theme with a spin and a compelling title. Its where you get specic. If a theme is SEO a topic might be 8 Mistakes in B2B SEO or How B2B SEO differs from B2C or Earning authentic backlinks the sustainable way.

For the Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, we knew the theme was Content Marketing Strategy. The criteria for choosing a topic within this theme were: Very Shareable Practical and How-To Oriented Different from our Content Marketing Workbook Can Produce in 10 Days

The Checklist came out on top quite quickly. It feels right for the stage of adoption most marketers are in now and its a good follow-up to the Content Marketing Workbook that explains basic principles.

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YOUVE GOT A TOPIC. NOW WHAT MEDIUM IS BEST FOR IT?

Prioritise according to things like the size and scope of the topic, the need to gate behind a download form, shareability, etc.  Blog post  Guest post  eBook  White paper  eNewsletter  Checklist  Curated piece  Interview  Customer  3rd party expert  In-house expert  Video  Interview/Chalk talk  Demo/Documentary  Viral/Animation  Webinar  Survey or contest  Widget or self-grader  Slideshare or Prezi  Infographic  Print (remember print?)  Article  Live event  Other:  Other:  Other:

Its good to keep a mix of different media its a lot more interesting than a library of 19 white papers. And try new stuff. Prezi, Pllop, Infographic, iPad magazine The medium can be the message.
For this piece, a checklist presented itself as the obvious medium for a practical, hardworking piece that captures some of our experience in a short form and hopefully really helps B2B marketers in their content marketing efforts. Well no doubt spin this out into blog posts and infographics and stuff. And weve already done a Prezi: The Content Marketing Tutorial. We like Prezi.

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GREAT CONTENT IS AUTHORITATIVE.

Your choice of format will inuence where you source your information (an infographic often needs different kinds of content than a webinar or eBook). So where will you get the goods? In-house experts (list): Existing internal content:

Customers:

Existing external content:

Known sites & resources:

 Desk research (Google, Twitter, Social forums) Original research Crowdsource Commission an expert Bribe an analyst (surely, engage with)

You dont have to consult all these sources before getting started. Once you feel youve nailed the topic, you can keep researching to validate your ideas but you might as well start writing your outline.
The Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist youre reading right now is based mainly on our internal chops weve been doing this for a long time. But we did check in with our friends and marketers we respect (see the section at the end).

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YOUVE PROBABLY GOT A TARGET TONE OF VOICE OR LOOK & FEEL IN YOUR MIND.
Share it with the writers and designers who will be creating the content:  Copy style guide pieces (stuff that kind of sounds like):

 Design guide pieces (stuff that kind of looks like):

You dont want to tie the hands of your creatives (heaven forfend) just give them a sense of where youre aiming.

You might think its hard to get tone and attitude into a checklist like this one but its the little glosses like this one that add that human touch. We hope. On the design front, we aimed for: working doc but kind of fun and engaging to look at.

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THINKING ABOUT THIS BEFORE YOU CREATE THE CONTENT CAN HELP YOU SPIN IT FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT. BUT ITS GOOD AS A POST-CREATION CHECKLIST TOO:
Your own channels Your blog Your e-newsletter Your website real estate Your resource library (where will it t in?)  Cross-promotion in other related content (essential!) Internal alert Email footer Inuencers, bloggers, partners, & mates (online PR) Give them a sneak peek Let them know its live  Give them thumbnails and (tagged, optimised) URLs Write a related story for key media Thank them when they share (duh) Social Media Twitter LinkedIn including relevant groups Facebook Google+ Tumblr Flickr Pinterest Social bookmarking (Stumble, Digg) Q&A Forums Focus, Quora Wikipedia (good luck) Paid media PPC search engines, LinkedIn, etc Banner ads Newsletters & sponsorships Webinar with media partner Cost-Per-Lead programs Direct mail & print media National TV campaign (kidding)

In our experience, marketers tire of a piece of content far before the audience does. Hit it and hit it again. Then hit it some more.

Well report on our B2B content marketing blog about the media we use to promote this checklist. Do come along.

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NO, YOU CANT JUST UNLEASH YOUR SALES ANIMALS ON EVERYONE WHO DOWNLOADS AN EBOOK. YOU NEED TO BE SCIENTIFIC ABOUT IT.

Lead Nurturing Checklist  Meet with Sales to dene a Sales-Ready Lead  Decide how to score leads according to t and behaviour Using lead nurturing will allow  Set up your marketing you to use your content where automation platform* it belongs in a prospects  Map your content to stages journey (instead of just in the buyers journey throwing it at everyone whos in  Design a content ow for your database today). each new prospect segment  Send inbound prospects So a new prospect who might into your new nurture sign up for your newsletter next stream January may get your new piece of content rst to them, *  What, you dont have its brand new! Nurturing does a marketing automation many good things for you but and lead nurturing extending the life of your best platform? content is a biggie. Well Go get one.

Heres a sample 5-step nurture ow for Velocity: 1.  Thanks for visiting our site 2.  Heres our B2B Content Marketing Workbook 3.  Liked that? Check out our B2B Marketing Manifesto 4.  Ready to go? Heres a Strategy Checklist to help 5.  Need content like the stuff youve just experienced?.... We should talk.

BTW By downloading this checklist, youve placed yourself inside our Marketo system. Dont worry, were not going to hound you to the ends of the Earth but if youre the CMO of Adobe and you go and download all our other content and read every web page and open every email you just may get a friendly call. (Opt out is absolutely respected just drop us an email).

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TURN EACH MAJOR CONTENT PIECE INTO LOTS OF DIFFERENT RELATED PIECES, INCLUDING:

Plan your atomization as you create each major content piece and put all the spin-offs into your editorial calendar.

Of course, each of these spin-offs should link back to the mother ship using the right keyphrases as anchor text.

Well atomise The Big Content Marketing Strategy Checklist in lots of cool ways, no doubt. Watch this space (and all the little spaces around it). Our mate Roger Warner calls this versioning for shareability. We kind of like that.

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WORK OUT WHAT SUCCESS REALLY MEANS FOR YOU AND MEASURE IT.
Make sure all URLs are tagged Set up test landing pages, campaigns, etc  Set up goals and custom reports in your analytics  Set up advanced segments (to track each channel and campaign)  Optimise to ramp up what works (and kill what doesnt) Report on campaign ROI

The best content marketers tend to live inside Google Analytics (or their chosen tool). You dont have to master it yourself (go on, its fun) but you do need someone on your team to master it.

Youre our guinea pig If youre reading The Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, youve already been through at least two tests including a landing page that obviously did the job.

New to A/B Testing?

Check out A/B Testing Resource Map here.

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THE BEST CONTENT MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS HAVE LEARNING CULTURES. ITS IMPORTANT TO EXPLICITLY CAPTURE WHAT HAS WORKED, WHAT HASNT AND WHY YOU THINK ITS TRUE.
Identify success factors and capture them Identify what failed Gather evidence to support conclusions Share with the widest team possible, regularly 
Regular, informal meetings to share what youve learned and hear what others have learned are a great way to start to embed this learning in your marketing. They make the whole process more fun, too.

Come learn with us Well share our learning around The Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist so do come back to the blog. Or drop us a line and well send you updates.

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Now take all this priceless experience and put it to work for your next content marketing strategy, quarterly plan, campaign or next piece of content.

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Content Marketing is an energizing discipline. Every marketer will have their own approach based on their unique situation and experiences. We hope this Big Fat Checklist helps you evolve your own best practice. And we hope youll share some of that with us.

Content Marketing is the effective part of B2B. Do it right and your budgets will increase, your sales teams will sing your praises and youll trade in that Ford Focus for one of those fancy foreign jobbies. Do it wrong and your content will have the lifespan of a tweet. So our advice: do it right.

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START WITH WHAT YOUR PROSPECTS NEED TO KNOW.

Not what you need to say.

STICK TO YOUR SWEET SPOT.

Where your company is an undisputed expert.

HAVE REAL IDEAS AND WRITE WITH PASSION.

Condence is the most powerful force in marketing and a bit of attitude and energy go a long, long way.

LESS CAN BE MUCH MORE.

Fewer major pieces of real value beat a rehose of lightweight stuff. Youre building a content brand here: you need to be famous for excellent content thats worth peoples time.

LIVE BY THE NUMBERS.

Theres no excuse for ying blind anymore. Analytics is to digital marketing as air and water are to the human body. And A/B testing is the um the kidney?

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THE B2B CONTENT MARKETING WORKBOOK

This is a content marketing primer. Its good for:

Getting up to speed fast Convincing other people to do content marketing Keeping your content efforts focused Getting ideas for your next piece

THE VELOCITY B2B MARKETING BLOG

A virtual boutique of B2B content marketing goodies.

Bigger than Google. More addictive than Pinterest. Humbler than Donald Trump.

THE B2B MARKETING MANIFESTO

This is a bit of a rant. Its good for:

THE VELOCITY NEWSLETTER

We wont spam you. Just the (very) occasional emission.

Letting go of old-school thinking Raising your sights Reminding you why you went into this crazy game in the rst place

SIGN UP HERE

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No, were not the only content marketing strategists out there. We get inspiration, motivation and sometimes the howling fantods of envy by following: The Content Marketing Institute stuffed to the gills with great content about content marketing. Econsultancy the daddy of all digital marketing communities. If youre not a member, youre stumbling around in the dark wearing the wrong size shoes and a hand-scrawled sign on your back that says, Homer Simpson. Marketing Profs give excellent advice on bestpractice marketing, including newsletters, events and webcasts. And MarketingProfs University offers some really good courses.

FIVE EXCELLENT BOOKS:

Content Rules Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman Get Content Get Customers Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett Managing Content Marketing Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose The New Rules of Marketing and PR David Meerman Scott eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale Ardath Albee

SMART B2B CONTENT MARKETERS AND VERY NICE PEOPLE INDEED WHO HELPED AND/OR INSPIRE US:
Ardath Albee Bob Apollo Ambal Balakrishnan Michael Brenner Kieran Flanagan Ashley Friedlein Ann Handley Michele Linn Billy Mitchell Jeff Ogden Peter ONeill Maria Pergolino Rene Power Joe Pulizzi Robert Rose Liz Smyth John Sweeney Stephanie Tilton Jeremy Victor Roger Warner John Watton Wow. What a group. THANK YOU ALL

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VELOCITY IS A B2B CONTENT MARKETING AGENCY (BUT YOU PROBABLY GUESSED THAT).

Were based in London but have up-todate passports and often nd ourselves in the far-ung corners of the B2B globe, from Silicon Valley to Stockholm. Lets connect Velocitys YouTube channel Our Facebook page Our Google+ page Our Pinterest boards (sheesh) Link up Doug Kessler on LinkedIn Stan Woods on LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter @velocitytweets @dougkessler @nstoneman @rskin11 Or just plain get in touch stan@velocitypartners.co.uk Stan Woods +44 0208 940 4099

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