Imagine if you were to merge your business with the largest media company serving your industry. Overnight, you’d seemingly have the attention of all of your ideal prospects, branded with your company name. And, you’d have the opportunity to present your services to said prospects at the most opportune time.
Believe it or not, to be a successful B2B organization these days, this is essentially what needs to happen. Minus the mandatory prerequisite for the massive media company merger.Putting it slightly differently, instead of continuously promoting your products and services, consider adopting the perspective of a media company instead: Content.
When you’re able to drill down into the details of what your customers would benefit from most in your sector, your content will help sell them on the idea, purely based on your experience and expertise. And what better way to help manage and organize this content than with tools like Hubspot which are built and designed on this exact principle.
As a certified HubSpot consultant a large portion of my time is spent coaching and advising B2B companies and stakeholders on content. I often find that they purchase and apply a HubSpot license to their organization, and expect it to be the key for their success, only to find that magical solution doesn’t exist within the license itself and it won’t magically start generating leads for them. In my experience, it’s important to help them realize that HubSpot Marketing Hub works best when combined with a pre-existing quality content marketing plan. Like toothpaste and a toothbrush, it doesn’t make much sense to use one without the other.
What content to create
It’s all well and good to simply create content, but how do you know what content is needed? This is where having good communication channels with your frontline staff comes into play. Whether it is customer service or sales, the questions and comments they receive most often make for the perfect jumping off point for quality content creation. The only thing is, in these moments, don’t sell to them with this content. (What? Really?) That’s right, sales conversion rates are not the goal in these moments, instead speak to customers and prospects like the valued customers and prospects they are. Shift the focus for a moment from sales, to providing a different kind of value to your audience: coaching them to succeed.
For example, an accounting firm writing content which only focuses on promoting services will quickly become “background noise” to potential new and existing customers . Instead, find ways to coach customers to success by creating content about the most frequent questions posed by the audience. Consider the shift in value for content created around “items I can write-off my taxes”, or “how much is the tax write-off on my car?” Or if your clients don't have time for morning traffic....how much is the tax write off on a private jet?” (Which it turns out can actually be 100%, who knew!)
How to structure your content plan
Now that you have a new perspective on the kinds of content your business needs, it’s time to structure the content planning itself. It’s worth noting that high-quality content creation takes a lot of time, dedication, and attention to detail. Especially if you are publishing on multiple channels like your blog, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. So how can you make all of this manageable and avoid overwhelming your marketing team? By repurposing your existing content.By starting with the long form content you’ve created in the past, it’s a solid starting point for other, more relevant topics and pieces that are to come. . Gary Vaynerchuk (love him or hate him) created a pretty good PDF on this exact topic, fittingly called ‘The Garyvee content model’ where he breaks down creating 30+ pieces of content from a single keynote.
How to use the Garyvee content model
Now, you may not be giving keynotes as much as Gary Vaynerchuk does, or even at all. So how do you put this plan into action? Everything starts with longform content. This means creating blog posts, YouTube videos, or podcasts. Once you have this piece of long form content, this serves as the foundation for the next steps in the planning and content creation process.
Let’s go back to our accounting firm example to show you the different steps:
- Record a podcast interview with the head tax consultant about tax write offs. Film this as well.
- Release podcast episode
- Publish video version of this podcast interview
- Write a blog post summarizing what has been taught in this podcast episode
- Take the 3 main ideas from the blog post and create 3 LinkedIn posts from them
- Take the 5 most interesting clips of 15 seconds (IG Stories limit) to a couple of minutes and post these on Instagram Stories and TikTok
- Take 5 interesting quotes from the interview and create Instagram Feed content with them
Each of these steps and content types may not be relevant for your business, but the potential for creating consistent, scalable, high-quality content is still the same. Depending on the podcast or the video type and features, there may even be other opportunities to create more content out of it. But I believe the example above is an optimal starting point for B2B companies that are looking to modernize or adapt their approach to content creation .
How does HubSpot help with your content plan?
HubSpot is a great tool for maintaining a global picture of your customers and target customers. But it is only as powerful as the content you create. The core principle here is that by creating content that provides value to prospects and customers, a kind of credibility is established that will resonate with and be memorable for the consumers of said content. Over time, these consumers will come to trust the brand as a result of the high-value content it creates, and possibly convert to a loyal, paying customer. From here, the magic we needed before in HubSpot will come to life by providing enhanced insights into marketing success, sales progress, customer service feedback and changes, etc. The management console itself becomes a constant feedback loop and sounding board for future potential content and marketing management.
Keeping in mind that most millennials hate answering the phone, let’s focus on how to get their email address. Once you get their email address (and if they accept cookies on your website) you can now see other content on your website where they find value, and can provide with even more valuable insights and content tailored to their needs
One of the most straightforward ways is to create valuable, actionable content. Think of something like a checklist for applying the best tax write-offs of 2022. A content piece like this would have a high value for most of our accounting prospects and clients as these rules change from year to year, and having it all compiled in an easy-to-use checklist makes all our lives easier. Once they’ve signed up for it, we not only receive their email address for future reference, but they receive something of value for them and their organization.
Now these people are hearing from you more often in the form of higher-quality content which provides insight and credibility. A next step for those who engage most would be to add a call to action in an email to book a free 15-minute call for any questions regarding tax write-offs. And from this moment, we’re building a relationship through high-quality content and brand loyalty that your sales team can use to help drive growth and engagement.
For more insights on creating top-quality content for your organization, and my experience with Hubspot as a certified Hubspot consultant, feel free to reach out to me for a free getting started session where we can talk about anything you’d like to see change or grow for your business.
