EP:10
EP:11
The 6 Pillars of B2B Content | B2B Podcast - Content Wars EP11
Most B2B companies create content in silos, thinking only about their next campaign or one-off project. If you want content to work at scale, it needs to be a system. In this episode of Content Wars, we break down the six core pillars every B2B company should have in their content mix, and how each one can help you transfer your message to the right audience every time.
💡 Key Takeaways:
➡️ Why most B2B content strategies are incomplete
➡️ The three “go-to-market” pillars you must have to sell effectively
➡️ How to create brand content that builds emotional connection
➡️ Using content for internal communication and training
➡️ Turning one-time ideas into an ongoing system
⏰ Timestamps:
0:00 – Why thinking in content “pieces” is limiting
4:20 – The six pillars overview
6:05 – Pillar #1
11:40 – Pillar #2
19:15 – Pillar #3
24:30 – Pillar #4
31:50 – Pillar #5
37:45 – Pillar #6
43:20 – How to analyze your content mix
💡 Key Takeaways:
➡️ Why most B2B content strategies are incomplete
➡️ The three “go-to-market” pillars you must have to sell effectively
➡️ How to create brand content that builds emotional connection
➡️ Using content for internal communication and training
➡️ Turning one-time ideas into an ongoing system
⏰ Timestamps:
0:00 – Why thinking in content “pieces” is limiting
4:20 – The six pillars overview
6:05 – Pillar #1
11:40 – Pillar #2
19:15 – Pillar #3
24:30 – Pillar #4
31:50 – Pillar #5
37:45 – Pillar #6
43:20 – How to analyze your content mix
Transcript
Nathan Yerian: If your audience doesn't understand what you sell, they will not buy it. You got to have a full round story about what is this thing, what is its value, how does it fit into my life and what problem does it solve for me. If your audience has a clear understanding of that, it drastically increases the likelihood that they're going to think about you when they have a problem. So I had a conversation with one of the marketing agencies that we work with and they were working with a new client and they were trying to justify where that client needed to create video content or really just content in general and they were asking what's a good place to start and then after we start, where would that go content wise? How would we graduate to the next level, the next level, the next level with that client so that they could experience the full benefit of content across their organization?
Adam Marquardt: This is one of the most common problems that B2B organizations run into is they don't think about content as a whole. They think about it as individual pieces or they think about the current need as just one off video and we've talked about that in other episodes but realistically this is what drove us to essentially create the content stack that we operate off of today. Exactly.
Nathan Yerian: So I kind of ran her through that and said, okay, hey, look, let's start at the beginning and let's look at content as a whole and look at the opportunities for a B2B company and where should you have content and then let's back into where are we going to start and then how are we going to graduate to that level of content. So after going through that with her, I thought it would be a good idea for us to just kind of go through and tell the class how do we think about content and what's the actual opportunity if you were trying to do it at scale and really maximize its use across the organization?
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think if you have the opportunity to kind of break it down and say, hey, are you creating content in these six, we'll call it buckets or these pillars, if you're not, there's an opportunity there and not all six are going to apply to everybody but I think that the core three, maybe four, should be something that every B2B organization adopts as part of their overall content strategy because it will really cover all the bases that they need to for the marketing perspective but then as we'll talk about in a little bit, also expanding that into other places of the organization.
Nathan Yerian: Right and that's something that I think it's left behind a lot. You could separate it out and people are like, oh, I'm so worried about creating that piece of marketing content. They forget that there's other audiences other than the person that is going to buy next. So let's just dive in and look at each pillar of content and how it fits into a system to allow you to effectively communicate your message to all of the different interested parties.
So the very first one and this is one that I think a lot of people in the B2B space already know is going to be your thoughts. I think a lot of people are going to call it thought leadership, whether you have a leading thought or not, I think is something that's left to be discovered. The idea that your organization thinks something is important. The market in general needs to understand how do you think about the industry, the problems the customer faces, the different aspects of the way you go to market and why you do those things, why you create the things that you create. There's people within the organization, whether they be the leadership or the subject matter experts that have expertise and experience and new ideas that they're forming probably on a daily basis. So being able to capture those thoughts and communicate them to an audience is going to be important.
Whether that looks like social content or it's webinars or it's whatever, it doesn't really matter, you need to have some aspect of thought leadership as part of your content stack.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think that's where a lot of people get hung up is they have these experts and they just kind of put them in a corner and they don't leverage that expertise. But every day, whether it is somebody that is actually on the sales side handling objections or whether it's somebody on the product side or some other form in between, they really have a unique perspective as far as what they're seeing, what changes are happening in the industry, what new innovations are happening. And all of these things are great, would be great ammunition for being able to create content in that thought leadership or that what you think space or pillar to be able to maximize being able to get your thoughts and your perspective out in front of your target audience.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, there's also an overlooked component many times that if you're involving your leadership or your subject matter experts or whoever it is, you're not only creating content for the company, you're also creating content for them, their personal brand. If you do it correctly, you're going to be able to get a lot more reach out of that message and actually increase the status of the people that you want your market to listen to. So there's a greater opportunity than just, hey, we're going to create company content when you're talking about the thought pillar.
Adam Marquardt: We actually just ran into this with a client where they said, hey, our core focus over the next three to five years is going to be focused on hydrogen and we want to go down that route.
And it's like, great. I know that with that is going to come new product innovation, new industry trends that are shifting and happening. What is influencing that their perspective on it, how they're approaching the changes to their product, why it matters, but all of those things of their unique thoughts on this category that they're pursuing as a company is going to be extremely impactful to create content around because if they do that right, they essentially will be the leader in that space.
Nathan Yerian: And I think talking about product, that's going to lead us to that next pillar. So the next pillar is your product pillar. What is it you're selling? And it doesn't have to be a product. It could be the product or service.
What is the actual thing we're trying to sell to the market? And this is another space that I think a lot of B2B marketers are very used to. They're very used to creating product content. Now what I will say is that most are used to doing it in a promotional way. It isn't necessarily a very sales-focused way. I would say maybe approach it a little bit differently and pretend as if you are target audience that may potentially buy this, not right now, but may be interested in buying it in the future to solve whatever their problem might be and approach your product content in a way that gives them all of the information that they would need from a multitude of angles. So if you're taking an individual product, you might have a product demo.
That's fantastic. You might interview the creators of the product and talk about what was the process to create this. You might interview them and talk about the problem that it solves in the market and the need to create that product. You might sit down and just create a list of the different features or the different benefits or depending on the product or the service, there's a number of things that you could do to really demonstrate the value of that product and tell its story in a complete way.
And the answer isn't do one and be done. The answer is show that product in as many lights as possible and turn it into as much content as possible because if your audience doesn't understand what you sell, they will not buy it. So you got to have a full round story about what is this thing? What is its value?
How does it fit into my life and what problem does it solve for me? And if your audience has a clear understanding of that, it drastically increases the likelihood that they're going to think about you when they have a problem.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah. And you hit on a really good point talking about content for future buyers, right? So so many pieces of video content that I've seen people create is very, like you said, very sales focused.
They almost act as if it's a short term impulse buy and it's not. Most of these things in B2B organizations have a longer lead time, sometimes 12, 18 months, sometimes longer. And the reality is if you can create content and I'm not going to go through it today, but if we're talking about just the different stages of awareness from unaware to having a solution that they know of, everything in between there is fair game for being able to create content around for the buyer that isn't ready today, but might be ready in 18 or 24 months, the more you can educate them, the more that you can soften the ground for the sales team, it's going to make a load of difference. You're not going to be having people come to you that are needing as much information from sales. They're going to be ready to buy and now you're just consulting them of what makes sense for them because they already have the background. They already have the knowledge that you've been basically priming them for that time.
Even though they weren't ready to buy right when you posted that thing, you've been slowly trickling out information that has helped them really understand who you are, what you stand for, and these different value points that are going to really drive home what you offer in a way that makes sense.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, and if you look at all of the most recent research, everybody's saying the same thing. Buyers are not making impulse decisions. They're doing a lot of research. They're not involving companies as much as they once did. They want to do independent research. So creating this content is the fuel for them to do the research. If you answer every single question that you probably think happens in the sales process, if you answer that before the sales process, or I should say before you're involved in the sales process, it becomes part of their buying process, which is what you want. You want to be able to educate your potential buyer about why you're the best solution before they talk to you and that's where the product content pillar comes in.
So the third pillar of content is proof. That's cool that you think some things. That's cool that you create some kind of product or service. But where's the proof that any of this actually does what you claim that it does? In most instances, that proof is not going to come from you. It's not going to come from your engineering team.
It's not going to come from your manufacturing floor. It's going to come from the people that you actually work with, that you sell to, and that have experienced some sort of impact or some sort of change based on them exchanging their dollars with you for your product or service.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, that transformation is really, really powerful because of course the sales person is going to say, we're the best, we're the fastest, we're the leader in this space. But the reality is when you can see a customer and they had a similar problem or they're in a similar position and they had an outcome that you haven't yet had but you want to have, that has a lot of weight because you're essentially now saying, okay, you can say it but now you've proven it to me.
Nathan Yerian: And that's what it's about. So when we're looking at that type of content, it's easy for the marketing team to say, hey, we don't really have access to our customers in this way. There's a lot of B2B organizations that the customer is kind of sales territory and that's not necessarily accessible to the marketing team. That's something that you need to bring the sales team into. They need to be part of the content creation process. They need to understand what you're doing, what you're up to. Why are you doing this? Because at the end of the day, if you're creating your thought content and you're creating your product content, these are things that are going to help them. And arming them with not just go-to-market content where you're saying, hey, we're going to take these testimonials, case studies, whatever they're going to be and turn it into marketing content.
Well, guess what? This is also sales content. When you're talking to a prospect and you want to show them value, when we can show them the value that you have provided to your previous customer, they're going to buy. In fact, we had a client in here last week that literally won a $10 million contract based on a case study video that we did for them. She was in here, she said, yeah, I mean, we sent them the case study video, they saw the value, they were willing to meet with us, we closed the deal, it's $10 million. I mean, I'm not gonna say the video did all of that, but at the end of the day, if you talk to your sales team about that type of approach of bro, wouldn't it be awesome to show your potential customer the value that you could deliver prior to even really engaging in that sales process all the way, I think that's gonna be a pretty big door opener, don't you?
And any serious sales person is gonna say that it would. They want that type of content. So don't let boundaries kind of get in the way, you need customer content, you need proof, don't work against your sales team, don't go around their back, involve them in that process, and you should be able to get to that customer content or the proof that you're going to be able to line in there. That's really the three core of what I would consider the go-to-market content, you've got what you think, you've got what you do, and you have the impact that you deliver when you do it. That is a really good starting point for most companies.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, that's a good point, bringing up the fact that it's a starting point. And I think that some of the other areas we'll talk about in a minute are gonna help dive into deeper sections of video content, but if you don't have that as a foundation, that's absolutely where you should start.
Start looking at those three pillars, start looking at where can I gather information or who can I put on camera that will support this initiative, who can I put on camera that will support this initiative, and then what customers would work out for case stories that we could put on for this initiative. It's not just gonna help with the quantity of content, but it'll help with the diversification of your message for your audience.
Nathan Yerian: So the fourth type of content, we categorize as brand. And anything that is brand is really the feeling we want people to have when they're thinking about your organization. So kind of where I draw the line is it's non-commerce related.
It's not exactly about what you sell, it's more about the feeling you want people to have a really good example would be, hey, our company does this charitable thing, and we go and we help the Houston Food Bank pack bags or boxes or whatever it is of food to deliver to people in need. And that's something that we do a couple times a year and it's a cool thing, our people really love it. Great, let's capture that as content. Let's talk to your people about why they love it, why they wanna be involved. And the point isn't, oh, look at us and look at the charity that we're doing. It's more of, hey, we wanna support the things that our people care about. And if it helps the community, great. Also, we think other organizations should be doing this type of work as well. And we want to highlight that as part of our brand, right? And there's a thousand things that a company might want to do as part of their brand, but capturing those things not only is a signal to the market of, we're more than what we sell, but it's also a signal to potential employees saying, hey, we care about more than what we sell. We care about our community, we care about our employees, we care about the fulfilling nature and aspect of some of these types of things.
If that is important to the brand, guess what? You need content for those things. So again, different brands will have different things that they care about, but going beyond, we're selling this thing, it is gonna be helpful to include in your content mix.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think the brand aspect essentially personalizes your organization. I think that when we think about the community involvement or the different initiatives that we're a part of, people sometimes get hesitant because they feel they get the ick of like, oh, I don't wanna broadcast that, I don't wanna highlight that. But the reality is it does, it shows that human side of what you're doing. And it does show we are more than just what we sell. And I think that that is super important because it creates a sense of connection with whoever's on the receiving end of watching that. That has a lot of power because it does influence decisions.
If you give me the choice to work with a company who I don't know what they do, or I see that they're over here doing some really cool things that help the community or supporting certain groups, like I'm gonna be interested in that because I want to know that who I'm working with is going towards a good cause or that it's going towards a certain initiative. And I think that there's a lot of power behind that.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, and it doesn't all have to be charitable aspects of things, that's one area that we do play a lot in. Something that your audience would be interested in around your brand. It could be a mini documentary series. It could be telling the story of your industry. It could be a lot of different things that just aren't about what you're selling. And it's just creating the content that your audience is gonna be interested in. Obviously you are the creator of the content.
You're telling that story, but keeping it to something that they're interested in, something that supports your brand and the messaging that you wanna have around your brand, and how you want people to think about or remember you is really what you need to put at the forefront of your brand content. So the fifth one sometimes is out of the marketing department. It really depends on how marketing is structured. So when we look at content, we look at what is the full audience that you need to talk to. And obviously your potential customers out there, your existing customers is one, but another one is going to be your internal team. If you are a marketing and comms department, you're already kinda thinking that, like, oh, well, we need to communicate internally.
If you're only a marketing department, or don't have an existing internal communications department, or function, this is still something that you need to think about. And there's a lot of companies out there that say, oh, well, we only have 30 or 40 people. Well, okay, but I bet if we pulled those 30 or 40 people, they have different opinions about what's going on with the company. Unless you're meeting with them regularly, getting time with executives, and really being able to broadcast a message of, what's happening here? There's probably a need for internal communications. And the larger that organization gets, and the more departments and more levels, the more that need grows.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, we have a client specifically that I'm thinking of that is a publicly traded company who has basically taken this and made their communications now at scale internally, because they don't have to meet with each person individually. They can now send out this video and say, like, here's the policy changer. Here's the new approach, or here's this aspect. And then the managers can meet on a more granular level to be able to field questions or be able to help guide them through this process. But that way, things from the top down are not lost in translation. It is said once this is the way that it works, and then they can just help navigate that from there. So it's a lot cleaner, it's a lot more straightforward. It can help cut out some of that ambiguity when you play telephone.
Nathan Yerian: I mean, last week I was talking with an organization, they have a new CEO coming in. There's a little bit of a detach. They're not as familiar with this particular person. And when I say they, they have an 800 person organization, they need to create that connection. They need their people to understand who is this? Why do we trust them? And most importantly, why do we trust them to lead us to greener pastures, right? We're gonna be better off. That's part of the role here, is being able to communicate those messages to your people in an effective way that they're actually gonna consume, that they're actually going to pay attention to.
In this particular case, video is the way that they're choosing, and they're gonna have their CEO once a month sit down and just say, this is what's going on. The good, the bad, the ugly, this is what's up. And here's what I need from you as a result of that.
Here's what I'm doing, and here's what I expect of you. And having that on a monthly recurring basis is going to one, give them connection to the company, to the CEO. It'll tell them the actions that are being taken that are going to benefit them, or at least be positioned to benefit them, but it'll also tell them what they need to do to actively make that possible. And I think a lot of organizations overlook, you know, when we're talking to people about content, it's almost always in the marketing realm. Every now and then there's an internal comms aspect to it, but I think more companies could benefit from adding internal communications to their content mix in general, whether that happens as part of a marketing communications team or whether they're separate functions. Maybe you have marketing and communications over here. However it looks, that type of content should be part of your content mix.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, no, I agree 100%. Which brings us to number six, which is training.
Nathan Yerian: Yes, so number six, training. Sometimes this is again, gonna be a different department. There might be a HR function or some other training function that actually handles this, but again, when you're talking about your internal team, there's going to be usually some type of training that needs to happen. Why overlook that when you're talking about your content? That is something that you need to take into account of its content that we need. We don't need to put it into a bucket. It doesn't need to be a totally separate scenario.
It just needs to be factored into what is our overall content plan? What training do we need? What departments need training?
What are the trainings specifically? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
What does it sound like? How is it gonna be made available? There's things to think through definitely, but to section it off and say, oh, we're gonna do marketing content and this is totally separate. It's not. It's the message of your company that's being compartmentalized and delivered to an audience. A different audience than your marketing content, definitely.
But training is probably one of the most compartmentalized and overlooked, at least from the marketing and communication side of things, because it usually happens outside of marketing and communications. There's certain companies that task marketing with creating the content because they're used to creating content, there's a reason they do that because it's content and they know you know how to create it and be effective at that. And that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to create effective content.
So stop ruling it out or lining it off to some other department. Again, when you're talking about content and you're trying to make a full plan, just the same way you're gonna involve your sales team and getting your customers involved in the content, involve your HR team or your training department and say, hey y'all, we are coming in. We're gonna create content. What would benefit you guys? What would make your trainings better? What would reduce your workload and having to fly over to 10 cities, a couple times a year to give this training in person? Is there a way to digitize this? Can we turn it into a training system?
The training videos you've been using, they're 15 years old and nobody watches them. Do you wanna update this? Do you wanna have a more modern approach? The training aspect I think is important. Obviously if your people don't know what they're doing, you're gonna start falling short on your product or service side that's gonna affect your customer side. I mean, it's part of the mix. It's part of the message you need to communicate.
So training is the final one, but it definitely needs a seat at the table. It's something that you should talk about when thinking about your content. So at the end of the day, I think just understanding that there are these six pillars of content and there may be more and you may need to change it up a little bit for your organization, but generally speaking, these six pillars give you a content mix that you can take and really analyze what are we doing? What are we thinking about and what are we missing? And when you do that analysis, it gives you a really good starting point for how do we actually want to approach this topic of content to be the most successful possible at transferring our message to the different audiences that we need to communicate with. ["The Last Song of the Year"]
Adam Marquardt: This is one of the most common problems that B2B organizations run into is they don't think about content as a whole. They think about it as individual pieces or they think about the current need as just one off video and we've talked about that in other episodes but realistically this is what drove us to essentially create the content stack that we operate off of today. Exactly.
Nathan Yerian: So I kind of ran her through that and said, okay, hey, look, let's start at the beginning and let's look at content as a whole and look at the opportunities for a B2B company and where should you have content and then let's back into where are we going to start and then how are we going to graduate to that level of content. So after going through that with her, I thought it would be a good idea for us to just kind of go through and tell the class how do we think about content and what's the actual opportunity if you were trying to do it at scale and really maximize its use across the organization?
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think if you have the opportunity to kind of break it down and say, hey, are you creating content in these six, we'll call it buckets or these pillars, if you're not, there's an opportunity there and not all six are going to apply to everybody but I think that the core three, maybe four, should be something that every B2B organization adopts as part of their overall content strategy because it will really cover all the bases that they need to for the marketing perspective but then as we'll talk about in a little bit, also expanding that into other places of the organization.
Nathan Yerian: Right and that's something that I think it's left behind a lot. You could separate it out and people are like, oh, I'm so worried about creating that piece of marketing content. They forget that there's other audiences other than the person that is going to buy next. So let's just dive in and look at each pillar of content and how it fits into a system to allow you to effectively communicate your message to all of the different interested parties.
So the very first one and this is one that I think a lot of people in the B2B space already know is going to be your thoughts. I think a lot of people are going to call it thought leadership, whether you have a leading thought or not, I think is something that's left to be discovered. The idea that your organization thinks something is important. The market in general needs to understand how do you think about the industry, the problems the customer faces, the different aspects of the way you go to market and why you do those things, why you create the things that you create. There's people within the organization, whether they be the leadership or the subject matter experts that have expertise and experience and new ideas that they're forming probably on a daily basis. So being able to capture those thoughts and communicate them to an audience is going to be important.
Whether that looks like social content or it's webinars or it's whatever, it doesn't really matter, you need to have some aspect of thought leadership as part of your content stack.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think that's where a lot of people get hung up is they have these experts and they just kind of put them in a corner and they don't leverage that expertise. But every day, whether it is somebody that is actually on the sales side handling objections or whether it's somebody on the product side or some other form in between, they really have a unique perspective as far as what they're seeing, what changes are happening in the industry, what new innovations are happening. And all of these things are great, would be great ammunition for being able to create content in that thought leadership or that what you think space or pillar to be able to maximize being able to get your thoughts and your perspective out in front of your target audience.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, there's also an overlooked component many times that if you're involving your leadership or your subject matter experts or whoever it is, you're not only creating content for the company, you're also creating content for them, their personal brand. If you do it correctly, you're going to be able to get a lot more reach out of that message and actually increase the status of the people that you want your market to listen to. So there's a greater opportunity than just, hey, we're going to create company content when you're talking about the thought pillar.
Adam Marquardt: We actually just ran into this with a client where they said, hey, our core focus over the next three to five years is going to be focused on hydrogen and we want to go down that route.
And it's like, great. I know that with that is going to come new product innovation, new industry trends that are shifting and happening. What is influencing that their perspective on it, how they're approaching the changes to their product, why it matters, but all of those things of their unique thoughts on this category that they're pursuing as a company is going to be extremely impactful to create content around because if they do that right, they essentially will be the leader in that space.
Nathan Yerian: And I think talking about product, that's going to lead us to that next pillar. So the next pillar is your product pillar. What is it you're selling? And it doesn't have to be a product. It could be the product or service.
What is the actual thing we're trying to sell to the market? And this is another space that I think a lot of B2B marketers are very used to. They're very used to creating product content. Now what I will say is that most are used to doing it in a promotional way. It isn't necessarily a very sales-focused way. I would say maybe approach it a little bit differently and pretend as if you are target audience that may potentially buy this, not right now, but may be interested in buying it in the future to solve whatever their problem might be and approach your product content in a way that gives them all of the information that they would need from a multitude of angles. So if you're taking an individual product, you might have a product demo.
That's fantastic. You might interview the creators of the product and talk about what was the process to create this. You might interview them and talk about the problem that it solves in the market and the need to create that product. You might sit down and just create a list of the different features or the different benefits or depending on the product or the service, there's a number of things that you could do to really demonstrate the value of that product and tell its story in a complete way.
And the answer isn't do one and be done. The answer is show that product in as many lights as possible and turn it into as much content as possible because if your audience doesn't understand what you sell, they will not buy it. So you got to have a full round story about what is this thing? What is its value?
How does it fit into my life and what problem does it solve for me? And if your audience has a clear understanding of that, it drastically increases the likelihood that they're going to think about you when they have a problem.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah. And you hit on a really good point talking about content for future buyers, right? So so many pieces of video content that I've seen people create is very, like you said, very sales focused.
They almost act as if it's a short term impulse buy and it's not. Most of these things in B2B organizations have a longer lead time, sometimes 12, 18 months, sometimes longer. And the reality is if you can create content and I'm not going to go through it today, but if we're talking about just the different stages of awareness from unaware to having a solution that they know of, everything in between there is fair game for being able to create content around for the buyer that isn't ready today, but might be ready in 18 or 24 months, the more you can educate them, the more that you can soften the ground for the sales team, it's going to make a load of difference. You're not going to be having people come to you that are needing as much information from sales. They're going to be ready to buy and now you're just consulting them of what makes sense for them because they already have the background. They already have the knowledge that you've been basically priming them for that time.
Even though they weren't ready to buy right when you posted that thing, you've been slowly trickling out information that has helped them really understand who you are, what you stand for, and these different value points that are going to really drive home what you offer in a way that makes sense.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, and if you look at all of the most recent research, everybody's saying the same thing. Buyers are not making impulse decisions. They're doing a lot of research. They're not involving companies as much as they once did. They want to do independent research. So creating this content is the fuel for them to do the research. If you answer every single question that you probably think happens in the sales process, if you answer that before the sales process, or I should say before you're involved in the sales process, it becomes part of their buying process, which is what you want. You want to be able to educate your potential buyer about why you're the best solution before they talk to you and that's where the product content pillar comes in.
So the third pillar of content is proof. That's cool that you think some things. That's cool that you create some kind of product or service. But where's the proof that any of this actually does what you claim that it does? In most instances, that proof is not going to come from you. It's not going to come from your engineering team.
It's not going to come from your manufacturing floor. It's going to come from the people that you actually work with, that you sell to, and that have experienced some sort of impact or some sort of change based on them exchanging their dollars with you for your product or service.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, that transformation is really, really powerful because of course the sales person is going to say, we're the best, we're the fastest, we're the leader in this space. But the reality is when you can see a customer and they had a similar problem or they're in a similar position and they had an outcome that you haven't yet had but you want to have, that has a lot of weight because you're essentially now saying, okay, you can say it but now you've proven it to me.
Nathan Yerian: And that's what it's about. So when we're looking at that type of content, it's easy for the marketing team to say, hey, we don't really have access to our customers in this way. There's a lot of B2B organizations that the customer is kind of sales territory and that's not necessarily accessible to the marketing team. That's something that you need to bring the sales team into. They need to be part of the content creation process. They need to understand what you're doing, what you're up to. Why are you doing this? Because at the end of the day, if you're creating your thought content and you're creating your product content, these are things that are going to help them. And arming them with not just go-to-market content where you're saying, hey, we're going to take these testimonials, case studies, whatever they're going to be and turn it into marketing content.
Well, guess what? This is also sales content. When you're talking to a prospect and you want to show them value, when we can show them the value that you have provided to your previous customer, they're going to buy. In fact, we had a client in here last week that literally won a $10 million contract based on a case study video that we did for them. She was in here, she said, yeah, I mean, we sent them the case study video, they saw the value, they were willing to meet with us, we closed the deal, it's $10 million. I mean, I'm not gonna say the video did all of that, but at the end of the day, if you talk to your sales team about that type of approach of bro, wouldn't it be awesome to show your potential customer the value that you could deliver prior to even really engaging in that sales process all the way, I think that's gonna be a pretty big door opener, don't you?
And any serious sales person is gonna say that it would. They want that type of content. So don't let boundaries kind of get in the way, you need customer content, you need proof, don't work against your sales team, don't go around their back, involve them in that process, and you should be able to get to that customer content or the proof that you're going to be able to line in there. That's really the three core of what I would consider the go-to-market content, you've got what you think, you've got what you do, and you have the impact that you deliver when you do it. That is a really good starting point for most companies.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, that's a good point, bringing up the fact that it's a starting point. And I think that some of the other areas we'll talk about in a minute are gonna help dive into deeper sections of video content, but if you don't have that as a foundation, that's absolutely where you should start.
Start looking at those three pillars, start looking at where can I gather information or who can I put on camera that will support this initiative, who can I put on camera that will support this initiative, and then what customers would work out for case stories that we could put on for this initiative. It's not just gonna help with the quantity of content, but it'll help with the diversification of your message for your audience.
Nathan Yerian: So the fourth type of content, we categorize as brand. And anything that is brand is really the feeling we want people to have when they're thinking about your organization. So kind of where I draw the line is it's non-commerce related.
It's not exactly about what you sell, it's more about the feeling you want people to have a really good example would be, hey, our company does this charitable thing, and we go and we help the Houston Food Bank pack bags or boxes or whatever it is of food to deliver to people in need. And that's something that we do a couple times a year and it's a cool thing, our people really love it. Great, let's capture that as content. Let's talk to your people about why they love it, why they wanna be involved. And the point isn't, oh, look at us and look at the charity that we're doing. It's more of, hey, we wanna support the things that our people care about. And if it helps the community, great. Also, we think other organizations should be doing this type of work as well. And we want to highlight that as part of our brand, right? And there's a thousand things that a company might want to do as part of their brand, but capturing those things not only is a signal to the market of, we're more than what we sell, but it's also a signal to potential employees saying, hey, we care about more than what we sell. We care about our community, we care about our employees, we care about the fulfilling nature and aspect of some of these types of things.
If that is important to the brand, guess what? You need content for those things. So again, different brands will have different things that they care about, but going beyond, we're selling this thing, it is gonna be helpful to include in your content mix.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think the brand aspect essentially personalizes your organization. I think that when we think about the community involvement or the different initiatives that we're a part of, people sometimes get hesitant because they feel they get the ick of like, oh, I don't wanna broadcast that, I don't wanna highlight that. But the reality is it does, it shows that human side of what you're doing. And it does show we are more than just what we sell. And I think that that is super important because it creates a sense of connection with whoever's on the receiving end of watching that. That has a lot of power because it does influence decisions.
If you give me the choice to work with a company who I don't know what they do, or I see that they're over here doing some really cool things that help the community or supporting certain groups, like I'm gonna be interested in that because I want to know that who I'm working with is going towards a good cause or that it's going towards a certain initiative. And I think that there's a lot of power behind that.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, and it doesn't all have to be charitable aspects of things, that's one area that we do play a lot in. Something that your audience would be interested in around your brand. It could be a mini documentary series. It could be telling the story of your industry. It could be a lot of different things that just aren't about what you're selling. And it's just creating the content that your audience is gonna be interested in. Obviously you are the creator of the content.
You're telling that story, but keeping it to something that they're interested in, something that supports your brand and the messaging that you wanna have around your brand, and how you want people to think about or remember you is really what you need to put at the forefront of your brand content. So the fifth one sometimes is out of the marketing department. It really depends on how marketing is structured. So when we look at content, we look at what is the full audience that you need to talk to. And obviously your potential customers out there, your existing customers is one, but another one is going to be your internal team. If you are a marketing and comms department, you're already kinda thinking that, like, oh, well, we need to communicate internally.
If you're only a marketing department, or don't have an existing internal communications department, or function, this is still something that you need to think about. And there's a lot of companies out there that say, oh, well, we only have 30 or 40 people. Well, okay, but I bet if we pulled those 30 or 40 people, they have different opinions about what's going on with the company. Unless you're meeting with them regularly, getting time with executives, and really being able to broadcast a message of, what's happening here? There's probably a need for internal communications. And the larger that organization gets, and the more departments and more levels, the more that need grows.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, we have a client specifically that I'm thinking of that is a publicly traded company who has basically taken this and made their communications now at scale internally, because they don't have to meet with each person individually. They can now send out this video and say, like, here's the policy changer. Here's the new approach, or here's this aspect. And then the managers can meet on a more granular level to be able to field questions or be able to help guide them through this process. But that way, things from the top down are not lost in translation. It is said once this is the way that it works, and then they can just help navigate that from there. So it's a lot cleaner, it's a lot more straightforward. It can help cut out some of that ambiguity when you play telephone.
Nathan Yerian: I mean, last week I was talking with an organization, they have a new CEO coming in. There's a little bit of a detach. They're not as familiar with this particular person. And when I say they, they have an 800 person organization, they need to create that connection. They need their people to understand who is this? Why do we trust them? And most importantly, why do we trust them to lead us to greener pastures, right? We're gonna be better off. That's part of the role here, is being able to communicate those messages to your people in an effective way that they're actually gonna consume, that they're actually going to pay attention to.
In this particular case, video is the way that they're choosing, and they're gonna have their CEO once a month sit down and just say, this is what's going on. The good, the bad, the ugly, this is what's up. And here's what I need from you as a result of that.
Here's what I'm doing, and here's what I expect of you. And having that on a monthly recurring basis is going to one, give them connection to the company, to the CEO. It'll tell them the actions that are being taken that are going to benefit them, or at least be positioned to benefit them, but it'll also tell them what they need to do to actively make that possible. And I think a lot of organizations overlook, you know, when we're talking to people about content, it's almost always in the marketing realm. Every now and then there's an internal comms aspect to it, but I think more companies could benefit from adding internal communications to their content mix in general, whether that happens as part of a marketing communications team or whether they're separate functions. Maybe you have marketing and communications over here. However it looks, that type of content should be part of your content mix.
Adam Marquardt: Yeah, no, I agree 100%. Which brings us to number six, which is training.
Nathan Yerian: Yes, so number six, training. Sometimes this is again, gonna be a different department. There might be a HR function or some other training function that actually handles this, but again, when you're talking about your internal team, there's going to be usually some type of training that needs to happen. Why overlook that when you're talking about your content? That is something that you need to take into account of its content that we need. We don't need to put it into a bucket. It doesn't need to be a totally separate scenario.
It just needs to be factored into what is our overall content plan? What training do we need? What departments need training?
What are the trainings specifically? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
What does it sound like? How is it gonna be made available? There's things to think through definitely, but to section it off and say, oh, we're gonna do marketing content and this is totally separate. It's not. It's the message of your company that's being compartmentalized and delivered to an audience. A different audience than your marketing content, definitely.
But training is probably one of the most compartmentalized and overlooked, at least from the marketing and communication side of things, because it usually happens outside of marketing and communications. There's certain companies that task marketing with creating the content because they're used to creating content, there's a reason they do that because it's content and they know you know how to create it and be effective at that. And that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to create effective content.
So stop ruling it out or lining it off to some other department. Again, when you're talking about content and you're trying to make a full plan, just the same way you're gonna involve your sales team and getting your customers involved in the content, involve your HR team or your training department and say, hey y'all, we are coming in. We're gonna create content. What would benefit you guys? What would make your trainings better? What would reduce your workload and having to fly over to 10 cities, a couple times a year to give this training in person? Is there a way to digitize this? Can we turn it into a training system?
The training videos you've been using, they're 15 years old and nobody watches them. Do you wanna update this? Do you wanna have a more modern approach? The training aspect I think is important. Obviously if your people don't know what they're doing, you're gonna start falling short on your product or service side that's gonna affect your customer side. I mean, it's part of the mix. It's part of the message you need to communicate.
So training is the final one, but it definitely needs a seat at the table. It's something that you should talk about when thinking about your content. So at the end of the day, I think just understanding that there are these six pillars of content and there may be more and you may need to change it up a little bit for your organization, but generally speaking, these six pillars give you a content mix that you can take and really analyze what are we doing? What are we thinking about and what are we missing? And when you do that analysis, it gives you a really good starting point for how do we actually want to approach this topic of content to be the most successful possible at transferring our message to the different audiences that we need to communicate with. ["The Last Song of the Year"]
