Web Content Development: Defining Roles and Managing the Process

Whether responsible for the success of a Web site or merely contributors of content, marketers must understand the skills and processes required for achieving the site's communications objectives.

Yet the role of a content manager and the processes for creating a Web site are often unclear and mismanaged. Sometimes, content simply "appears" when someone realizes the task is left undone. Other times, a copywriter is hired and given a daunting task that he or she is incapable of executing.

Generally, when a company decides to redesign its site, it does not fully include the task of content creation and management into the scope of the project—and it rarely understands the nature of the role, the work process or the necessary deliverables.

This article first defines the role of content manager and clarifies the qualifications. Then, it delves into the details of the content management process and workflow and how they fit into the big picture. It also provides a list of resources to aid in the quest for clear content creation.

Read Marketing Profs article Web Content Development: Defining Roles and Managing the Process

Content Is King. Database Is Queen. We Can Help

As you dive into the world of digital media and marketing, the phrase " content is king and your e-mail database is queen," surfaces over and over.

In many ways digital media and marketing has been falsely spun as being somewhat of a low-cost savior for B2B marketers.

It is true that your cost structure in digital marketing is different than many traditional marketing efforts. It costs nothing to start a Facebook fan page or to open a Twitter account. The delivery cost of hitting "send" for an e-mail deployment is a lot less per recipient than the postage cost of putting a catalog in the mail. We have always needed graphic designers to produce our materials, but now our printing needs are less...yet another cost reduced.

However, by moving some efforts from offline media to digital media, other costs will surface. Or rather, other costs should surface. Without a doubt, a digital marketing campaign will not work without content and without an audience. Without content we are saying nothing and generally speaking, effective digital marketing requires more content - a lot more content - than most offline marketing efforts. Without an audience, we are talking to ourselves and most of us want to grow the audience we are talking to so that we can uncover new opportunities.

As wonderful as we think our products are, our customers do not really care about our products. Our customers do, however, care deeply about the solutions our products provide. So, an entire website full of product spec sheet type of information will not be particularly engaging to your customers and prospects. Don't get me wrong, you need product spec information on your website, but you also should have interesting and relevant content that addresses prospective customers and existing customers in educational and problem solving manners. Research, application stories/notes, case studies, articles, podcasts, videos, webcasts are all ways to help to market to your customers and prospects. Most importantly, it is this type of content that will keep your customers and prospects engaged with you.

Once you have a constant stream of content to engage your audience, how do you build the size of your engaged audience? Your own CRM databases is certainly the first place to start, as well as outside marketing/media partners, trade shows, SEO efforts and much more.

A constant stream of relevant and engaging content and audience growth/engagement....this is not easy, effortless or free. For next to nothing, anyone can start a wide variety of digital marketing efforts. BUT, it takes time, focus and money to engage an audience in a manner that strategically advances your marketing and sales efforts.

The ironic thing is that traditional print-based marketing always has had many of the same demands--constant, engaging content and an audience. Most offline media is more challenging to measure, so often we told ourselves that our efforts worked when the reality was we simply did not know. Since everything in the digital world is extremely measurable, efforts that are not interesting, relevant or engaging to your audience are quickly and sometimes harshly revealed.

How can the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team help you in this area? We are really good at content creation and audience development. Many aspects of our business have changed radically within the last 6-7 years, but the need for great content written by industry experts has not changed. In fact, the need has only grown. In the throes of the recession, many b2b publishing companies made the unfortunate and, in my opinion, unwise decision to reduce costs by reducing the size and quality of their editorial/content creation teams. Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, nor Putman Media as a whole, took this approach. Our editorial teams are stronger than ever and could be a very substantial asset for you.

We have developed a number of content development programs. Some of these programs are turn-key, more "off-the-shelf" type of efforts that are adjusted to fit your needs. Some of our solutions are very customized and are more involved efforts.

We also have a programs to help you to grow and nurture the audience interested in your content--lead generation programs, contextual advertising programs and behavior-based content programs.

To discuss how we might be able to you help, please contact Tonia Becker, Publisher at tbecker@putman.net or 630-467-1301 ext 455.

Google Instant 101

Still wondering how Google Instant—the new enhancement that shows results as you type—changes search marketing?

Well, Google promises to shave 2.5 seconds off each user's search, with the end result of 10-percent faster searches.

In a recent post at the Daily Fix blog, David Felfoldi cites the benefits of this change, according to Google.

They are:

• Predictive Typing. As you type, a prediction is made of what you are seeking.
• Instant Results. As you type, the results appear. Every typed character updates the search results instantly.

How will this affect your efforts? Read full MarketingProfs article

Optimizing Your Webcast Efforts

The pharmaceutical industry has become overrun with webcasts of various sorts. I am not making this statement in a judgmental fashion as I believe webcasts can be a very effective part of a marketing mix. However, I have seen a good number of cases where our clients are not optimizing their energies.

It is more and more difficult to secure an audience for webcasts today - there is simply a lot of competition for an audience. We have undeniably seen the effects of webcast audience competition via Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's own programs and the programs we produce and promote for our clients. Thankfully, we have developed some approaches that have worked quite well and these approaches are continually evolving as our audiences change.

If hosting webcasts is part of your marketing mix, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing might be well-suited to help you to: extend your potential audience beyond your own CRM database and help you to think of ways of creatively extending the value of the energy you expend to produce your webcasts.

If you are interested in learning more about some of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's approaches to working with clients to enhance their webcast programs, please contact Jeanne Freedland, jfreedland@putman.net or Tonia Becker, tbecker@putman.net.

B2B Lead Generation Gone Wild. B2B Lead Generation Gone Bad.

It should come as no surprise that lead generation has become an important force within B2B marketing. In fact, there is a good chance that lead generation efforts are one of the predominant elements within your own marketing plan.

But, what is lead generation really? Frankly, I have become increasingly concerned by some of what I see going on in the pharmaceutical b2b marketing/media space.

Effective and ethical lead generation programs require an offer—some in the digital marketing world call the offer a Unique Value Proposition. In order to capture a prospect’s contact information, you have to give them something. Examples of things you can give include: access to piece of high-level content (white paper, webinar, podcast, etc), a free product sample, a discount, a free consultation session. Your offer is solely limited by your creativity, but the value of your offer needs to be in line with the information you are asking for.

People guard their e-mail addresses and phone numbers carefully and justifiably so. Requiring full contact information to download a product brochure is not an equitable exchange. However, requiring full contact information to access a white paper, a non-commercial webcast - a piece of content that educates and helps someone solve a problem, is an equitable exchange.

I believe lead generation should be transparent. By this, I mean that it should be clear to the user that they are giving X company their contact information in exchange for access to Y deliverable. Enabling registration forms with cookies is great so that repeat visitors do not have to enter their information every time they want to download a piece of your content. But, a cookied registration form still makes it obvious to the visitor that they are offering their contact information.

I am not a tremendous fan of registration-based B2B industry websites as most of these sites do not require registration for a specific download. When registered users select a piece of content to download, they do not have to submit a registration form because the site knows who they are. Although these sites may not violate acceptable privacy policies, I believe that they count on visitors clicking away not realizing that they are providing a company a lead for every piece of content they access.

These sites are sometimes able to give large quantities of “leads” to their advertisers and the advertisers are generally unaware of the very passive action the visitor took to provide the “lead.” Although, I generally do not like a site registration approach to lead generation for industry sites, I would be comfortable with this approach for a specific company’s site if done in a thoughtful manner.

The big disagreement, no make that a huge disagreement, I have with many publishers right now is that many are giving “clicks as leads” and an increasing number of publishing companies are giving “looks as leads.” The analytics and behavior of specific visitors/audience members is quite detailed for e-newsletter subscribers and registered website users. For instance, I can access the specific individuals and their full contact information for anyone who clicks on any link (ad or editorial) within any of our e-newsletters. The same holds true for registered members of our websites. And our analytics technology allows us to identify specific individuals just looking (not even clicking) on specific content areas via “hot spot” technology.

However, I firmly believe that it is a form of identity theft to give this information to our advertisers. I do not and will not do this to our readers. Many of our readers are very loyal and without an audience we don't have much of a business...why would I steal from the very people who allow our business to prosper? And I will not fill our clients’ CRM systems with ill-gotten data.

We all have different views on business ethics and this is my line in the sand on this issue. Serving contextual ads or ads based on past behavior can be of tremendous value to the reader and is a tactic I support and utilize. Giving individuals' contact information without it being transparent to the reader that they are giving their contact information is a tactic I do not support and do not utilize. Period.

A “click” is not a lead and a “look” certainly is not a lead. Eventually, I think there could be federal regulation to keep publishers from doing this kind of thing. However for now, I wonder if we can keep the Feds out of this issue and just do the right thing? Can we apply the Golden Rule to our B2B marketing strategies and tactics? Most of us do not want our identities stolen. Why, then, would we do this to our customers and prospects?

Read Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's Digital Pledge to our audience.

Webinar: What Your Love Life & Lead Nurturing Having in Common?

Continuing on the dating/b2b marketing theme, the following is an Eloqua lead nurturing webcast that I think that you might find helpful. Click here to access the webcast.

Revisiting the B2B Marketing - Dating Comparison

Early in 2009 I wrote a posted entitled B2B Marketing and Dating - A Parallel for Consideration.

I wrote this post because I really do believe that the seduction effective marketing programs demand is in a lot of ways quite similar to dating.

Yesterday I had lunch with a couple of smart clients whose opinions and insights I really respect. That conversations simulated additional thought on the b2b marketing/dating comparison.

It might be easier for many of us to see the comparison I am making if we look at consumer marketing. There is no question that the marketing programs of car, perfume, clothing companies, as well as many other categories are working hard to seduce us.

Is there a comparable seduction required to sell solutions like valves, motors, business software solutions...? I contend yes. Of course, effective b2b marketing needs to be more informational than a perfume ad AND b2b marketers need to tap into different emotions. But, effective b2b marketing still needs to seduce human beings.

For instance, clothing companies targeting my demographic work to tap into the fact that every woman wants to feel pretty, most want to feel thinner, many want to express their personalities via the clothes they wear. So, to a prospective woman customer in her late thirties/forties, clothing companies will likely present a pretty, sensual woman who is thin (but not too thin) and who has a fun, dynamic and sparkling personality. What woman of my age does not want to feel fun, pretty and that she still has "it?"

We all are the same emotional creatures when we walk into our offices...we just tap into different emotions. We want to feel smart, successful, upwardly mobile, safe/we are making the right decisions, less burdened, less stressed, like a hero to our customers and colleagues. I believe most of us often experience quite complex and deep emotions via our professional activities. Career satisfaction study after career satisfaction study clearly demonstrate that our jobs are not "just a job."

I don't know about you, but I can begrudgingly accept not being as thin as I used to be and having a few wrinkles here and there. BUT, I cannot accept feeling that I am failing. I don't think that these feeling are particularly unique to me.

So as b2b marketers we do need to seduce our customers and prospects--can we make them know that they will be heroes, make them more effective/successful, convince them that as solution suppliers we will not let them down?

And....just as when we are dating, can we accomplish this in an appropriate fashion that respects and embraces the emotional beings we all are?

In a dating situation, if we try to move too fast or if we violate our beloved's trust we will experience a lot of rejection and quick cooling of budding passions. Similarly, in a b2b marketing situation if we violate trust, try to move too quickly our conversion rates will suffer horribly....or to look at it another way, many potential customers will abandon potential engagement.

Check out the parable within the B2B Marketing and Dating - A Parallel for Consideration post and let me know what you think.