CMO.com

Among myriad responsibilities, CMOs are charged with generating marketing ROI and driving sales for their organizations. They generally accomplish this by acquiring new customers and selling more to current ones by means of advertising--typically some form of print, broadcast, and/or online.  However, changes in technology and consumer behavior have made this once-simple process a good deal harder by diffusing audiences and creating endless media and information choices for consumers.

 

Here, then, is an alternative approach for CMOs to consider: Create original content and share it via your company-specific media channels. Doing so can improve ROI by reducing advertising costs while increasing the effectiveness of marketing outreach.

 

What follows is a look at just some of the variety of ways company-generated original content can help a CMO accomplish the marketing mission at different stages of the marketing life cycle: acquisition, retainment, and re-engagement.

 

Acquisition: Marketers are constantly under pressure to produce new sales leads.  Many sales-compensation plans are based on breaking new business, so filling the sales pipeline is often a pain point for CMOs. Qualified prospects, however, especially in the B2B world, can be attracted through the use of relevant information and content they can use in their jobs. Business decision makers don’t need to rely only on trade publications (what few are left) and Web sites when they can get high-quality original content straight from you. 

 

If the content-creation talent doesn’t exist in-house, then you should be looking at custom media companies and freelance writers. With all the cutbacks and layoffs from media companies during the recession, you can find some very talented writers now at custom media companies or freelancing instead of working for large magazines and newspapers. 

 

Another type of original content is white papers. These have been around for years and, frankly, are showing their age. So spice them up by making them interactive. E-books and interactive PDFs can bring your content to life with the addition of embedded video and Web links.  Even better are Webcasts, virtual shows, and briefing centers through which you can actually interact with prospects as they consume your information. Technology companies, such as IBM, Oracle, and HP, conduct hundred of Webcasts every year to generate high-quality sales leads.

 

Key to all this is that you must be sure to inform and educate; don’t sell overtly under the guise of content. By providing relevant and objective information, you build trust as a resource. A thinly veiled sales pitch will either be ignored or, worse, seen as deceptive. Take the high road, produce top-notch content, and rely on the “halo” effect to help generate leads. 

 

Retainment: Your job is to hold onto existing customers and maximize the revenue you get from your current customer database.  Relevant content can be used to change the nature of the relationships with those you already have as customers. Right now they may view you as acompany that only sells products to them when they need it. When you become a trusted source of information, the nature of that relationship changes--you build a permission-based relationship with your customers, and they will soon welcome communication from you rather than seeing it as just another sales pitch. With such a relationship, you are less likely to see customers defect to a competitor and more likely to see incremental revenue. Such customer outreach can take many forms: corporate magazines, newsletters, micro-sites, Webcasts, and live events and conferences.  If you don’t know which platform is best to reach your customers, then ask them though some basic research. However, the platform is not as important as the content itself and the attendant relationship-building.

 

One real-world example is BBVA Compass Bank and its corporate magazine, Blueprint, which is targeted at small and midsize business (SMB) executives who reside in the BBVA Compass “footprint”--Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas. Each quarterly magazine’s print run is 38,000--15,000 of which are delivered to all current business customers; the balance is used by bank representatives for sales prospecting.  There is also an accompanying Web site that is frequently updated.  Blueprint’s content contains important economic and business information to help SMBs grow and run efficiently.  For BBVA Compass, not only does this program help hold onto current customers longer, it also to drives more revenue from their existing bases of banking customers through smart cross-product news and content.