The bar for great B2B content marketing is being raised since brands have become publishers and no longer need to rely on traditional media sources for exposure. Unfortunately, budgets and resources don’t always match the required output.
Not many B2B marketers realistically have the budget to hire journalists to compete with industry publications. Even those that do, are still struggling to create engaging content on a consistent basis, improve content effectiveness and provide a variety of content.
The wisdom of your community is a bank rich with useful marketing content and can help scale a B2B content marketing program. In his session at MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, TopRank CEO Lee Odden made the case for why adding participation to your content can help solve the problems above, and three examples of content co-creation in action.
6 Advantages of B2B Content Co-Creation
Lee describes participation marketing as the democratization of content creation and promotion by co-creating content with subject matter experts, influencers and your community. Content co-creation has many benefits such as:
- Authenticity: A content program that includes advice from multiple sources can provide inspiration and advice from real people that understand what your audience is going through.
- Quality: By tapping into subject matter expertise, the quality is often above and beyond what copywriters on your staff are able to produce, as they may not have the deep expertise of other experts.
- Variety: Again, internal resources may be proficient in creating certain types of content, while enlisting co-creators can create additional opportunities for variety in content type and information.
- Engagement: When you collaborate with other people you are actually creating a relationship with them. Additionally, there are the marketing benefits of creating engaging content for your audience to consume and share.
- Reach: The participation can inspire amplification and action. If you create a good experience for your co-creators then they will be inspired to share on their personal and professional networks.
- Scale: Increase in the quantity of quality content by breaking content creation out of the silo of marketing and including other departments and groups inside and outside your business.
How to Approach Participation Marketing
Create A Project Brief
As with any content program, the essential first step is to create a brief that describes:
- What is it?
- How does it solve a problem for customers?
- What do they do next?
- How will you measure success
Picking Your Co-Creators
Customers, internal and external subject matter experts, industry influencers, creators and your online community are all prime candidates for content co-creation.
Always strive to understand what makes your contributors tick and find a way to create mutual value. Make it easy and exciting for people to participate and even consider creating some incentives for participation.
Sample B2B Content Co-Creation Ideas
- Case Studies
- Contests
- Surveys
- Testimonials
- White Papers
- eBooks
- Guides
- Blog Posts
- Events
- Expert Resources
- Social Content
Examples of Co-Created Content in the Wild
Community Sourced FAQs
Dell’s IT Ninja – This is a community created website that includes over 7,000 software tips, 350,000 software titles and commonly asked questions. This website has approximately 500,000 visitors each month.
Co-Creation to Drive In-Store Purchases
Kraft Foods – Kraft Foods wanted to find a way to sell more of their products in Target stores specifically. They recruited 180 food bloggers to create and promote branded that included Kraft products and included a coupon that was only redeemable at Target. Their ROI on the program was 3,100% and their per recipe cost dropped from $500 to $200.
B2B Partner Content Library
RingLead – This company partners with other companies that have credibility and offer complimentary solutions to create a content library. They treat contributions from other companies as ingredients. The information is categorized and used in more of a modular approach.
Small Business, Big Game
Intuit – Another great example is Intuit’s Small Business Big Game. Small business owners are asked to enter videos explaining why they want to win a commercial for their business during the Super Bowl. The people that submit are then invited to get lots of shares on their submission. Part of the program includes giving tasks to the businesses to answer questions about their small business. So, they are essentially micro-blogging information that can be useful to other small businesses that could use Intuit’s products. This program had thousands of entrants and millions of votes casted for the entries.
B2B Influencers Co-Create a Content Marketing Wonderland
Content Marketing In Wonderland – For the past few years, TopRank Marketing has partnered with Content Marketing Institute to promote their conference, Content Marketing World. This event is ripe with influencers that can easily become contributors to a co-creation asset. We created a series of eBooks that functioned as the hub and were supported by other content assets. Other people, who were experts in the topic that they contributed to, created 80% of the content.
To help marketers all across the content marketing globe put these essential marketing pieces together, TopRank Marketing and Content Marketing Institute with sponsorship from Curata, are published a series of eBooks: Content Marketing in Wonderland.
Along with the eBooks, TopRank Marketing published infographics, speaker interviews and quotes shared across the social web. You can find all of these content marketing goodies at TopRank’s B2B Marketing blog.
Who are these content marketing experts?
To create these eBooks of content marketing wisdom, we’ve collected insights from major brands and thought leaders that presented at the #CMWorld conference. These world-class content marketers have included all-new ideas, strategies and practical advice to help make your content marketing world a successful one.
The program involved 40+ marketing industry influencers from major brands including: Altimeter Group, Caterpillar, Indium Corporation, charity: water, Bittorrent, Bed, Bath & Beyond, SAP, John Deere, Lattice Engines, Kapost, Progressive Insurance, Boeing, MarketingProfs, ExactTarget, Copyblogger, Red Hat, Facebook, EMC Corporation, Cisco Systems, Tumblr, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Dell, Content Marketing Institute, NewsCred, Kraft Foods and more.
Objectives:
Develop an opportunity for influential speakers to participate in content creation that would promote their presentations, the CMWorld conference and create a useful and infotaining resource for all marketers interested in content marketing.
Implementation:
Influencers were drawn from the roster of nearly 200 speakers for the event. Based on identified criteria and data collected through a mix of tools including Traackr and Buzzsumo (both provided to TopRank), influencers were identified, qualified, recruited and engaged to provide advice according to one of 4 themes (Content Marketing Strategy, Audience Development, Visual Content, Content ROI) that coincided with the programming of the event.
Insights provided by the influencers were compiled according to theme into 4 Visual eBooks. Each eBook was complemented by a long form interview with select influencers and posted on TopRank’s Blog. Each Visual eBook was also supported with an infographic (4 in all) featuring Tweetable quotes from each influencer.
Content Assets Included:
All assets were supported with social shares on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ from participating influencers, CMI, Curata and TopRank Marketing.
Performance:
Primary objectives for the program were conference awareness and speaker/influencer exposure measured by page views, and leads for the underwriting sponsor. Leading up to the conference (mid Sept), the eBooks earned thousands of social shares, over 145,000 views on SlideShare and 20,000 page views on TopRank’s Blog. By the time the conference was held, there were 2,000+ PDF downloads, 800 leads and 200+ event referrals.
All campaign assets remained live for several months after the campaign and the total views, downloads and leads were:
- 218,971 Total eBook Views:
- 4,023 Total eBook PDF Downloads:
- 1,040 Total Leads Captured
The net result of the program was substantial and sustained exposure for the conference, speakers and sponsor leading up to and after the event. Of course TopRank Marketing benefited from exposure through virtually every single content asset, social share and download resulting in numerous inquiries and several ongoing consulting engagements and projects. Overall it was a successful campaign and is the reason we’re producing another conference eBook program for CMI in 2015 – the 5th year in a row.
Keep Your Participation Marketing Accountable
If you focus on an attract, engage, convert model, it provides a simple way to keep your content accountable to business objectives. The best content marketing is the kind that informs people and leads them to the logical conclusion that you are the best answer for their needs.
To learn more about co-creating content with industry influencers, creators, employees and your community to help your B2B company become a Best Answer Brand, reach out and let’s talk.
