Content marketing surrounds almost every aspect of the marketing world. There are countless books, articles, blogs, social media outlets, and websites (like the one I am siting) dedicated to content marketing and why it is an essential tool for B2B and B2C marketers. They define strategies, layout plans, and provide case studies detailing the ever-present need to deliver good content to the right people at the right time. A marketer can find virtually every aspect of content marketing they need to know about in these various outlets except one: the content.

Of course, it would be senseless to think that a book or a website could tell every company exactly what they need to say to engage their specific customers and promote their specific products. It is up to a good, creative marketer to develop that piece of the puzzle, but where does a good, creative marketer find a bottomless pit of content ideas?

Louis Rix recent post to the Content Marketing Institute blog, 5 Places to Find Inspiring Content Ideas,  lays out exactly that. He writes that it is most important to “approach your content development with an open mind and a willingness to find inspiration in random places”. Inspiration can come from anywhere, from anything, at any time, and inspiration is key in creating fresh content ideas to offer your customers and readers. Rix suggests five simple places to begin looking for inspiration:

Your old work. The advantage of using your old ideas is that you already have the building blocks, now you simply need to rebuild them with a new angle.

Someone else’s old work. Parallels can be drawn between different industries, and making unique comparisons could open up countless ideas and points of view.

Your personal conversation starters. Those topics that we are always eager to share and discuss are often fully developed content ideas, and typically they are easier to write about and resonate strongly with the reader.

Your readers. Considering and responding to your readers’ feedback not only provides you with the most relevant content, but will also allow you to engage your audience on a more personal level.

Your mistakes. Writing about your—or your company’s—mistakes and experiences can facilitate growth and learning for you and your company.  And by sharing it with your readers, you can create excellent content and build a more trusting customer relationship.

You can view the full article at 5 Places to Find Inspiring Content Ideas.

This Thursday and Friday we head to Langley, Washington for the 2^nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat. We are looking forward to a great two days of innovative idea sharing and expert knowledge surrounding the ever-present content marketing world.

Day 1 has a great lineup of speakers, with quick hitting fifteen minutes presentations that will paint a complete picture of the content marketing cycle.  Speakers include:

• Rod Brooks, CMO, Pemco Insurance and President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)
• Russell Sparkman, CEO, Fusionspark Media, Inc., and Retreat creator and host
• Tim Frick, Author, Return on Engagement
• Jayme Thomason, CEO, Divvy HQ
• Chris Baggott, CEO, Compendium, Inc.
• Pawan Deshpande, CEO, HiveFire, Inc. and Curata
• Mark Jacobs, CEO, Me!Box Media, Inc.
• Jeff Erramouspe, President, Manticore Technology
• Simon Kelly, COO, Story Worldwide
• Robert Rose, Author, Managing Content Marketing

At the end of the day there will be a networking reception and party at a very cool glass blowing artist’s shop in Langley.

Day 2 will have individual one hour breakout sessions with each of the speakers so that the attendees can understand how to implement their content marketing plans utilizing our products and services.  There will be a lot outstanding presentations and I expect the interaction between everyone in attendance to be thought provoking and enlightening.

You can find additional information about the retreat, speakers, and topics here.

It’s not too late to register and we hope you will join us for this one of a kind retreat. We are very excited to share our expertise as well as engage with other experts in developing a broader view of content marketing and the issues surrounding it.  You can register here and if you use the registration code “manticore20” you can get an additional 20% off the fee.

If you can’t attend, follow me on Twitter @jefferramouspe as I’ll be tweeting live from the event and I am planning a series of blog posts in the coming weeks talking about the conference.  We hope to see you there!

I participated in Russell Sparkman's "3Q4" series of blog posts he is creating during the run-up to next week's 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat.  Russell asked me about the skills gap in marketing automation, the role of content in demand generation, and how organizations should start measuring their content efficacy.  You can read my responses here.

In addition to me, Russell has inteviewed many of the speakers at the event, including  Curata CEO Pawan Deshpande, Me!Box Media CEO Mark Jacobs, Diivy HQ CEO Jayme Thomason, and the keynote speaker, Rod Brooks, CMO for PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company.  If you're interested in a number of great perspectives on content marketing you should check out these posts.

And don't forget, there is only one week until the Content Marketing Retreat kicks off on January 26th.  There is still room to register and you can get 20% off the price using a registration code of "manticore20".  Come join me.  I promise we'll all learn a lot.

Is it still OK to say "Happy New Year" when it is already January 17th?  Since this is my first blog post of the year, I'm going to assume that it is still within the bounds of proper etiquette.  So:

Happy New Year!

It is hard to believe we are already seventeen days into 2012.  But, this is what happens when you and your team are heads down working on new and exciting things.  The most important thing we are working on is the next release of our platform.  Manticore Winter 2012 is slated for full availability in mid-February.  It is a major redesign of our product and brings to bear our six-plus years of marketing automation experience and detailed feedback from our customers and prospects.  We've designed Winter 2012 to seamlessly mesh with mid-sized companies marketing operations processes while simplifying the most common marketing activities.  We're receiving excellent reviews from those who have seen it.  If you'd like a quick preview, please contact us.

We're also participating in a couple of industry events this month.  Last week, I was honored to be the weekly guest on the Sales Lead Management Association's weekly SLMA Radio show.  Host Will Crist and I discussed a number of topics, including key prerequisites to implementing marketing automation and the role of content in demand generation and lead nurturing.  If you missed the broadcast, you can listen to it here.

Finally, the end of the month will bring our participation as a sponsor (and me as a speaker) at the 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat put on by the Langley Center for New Media.  Held January 26th and 27th in Langley, Washington (on Whidbey Island just north of Seattle), the retreat will allow creative marketers to learn about the latest strategies for designing, developing and executing content marketing programs.  We are very pleased to be participating in this event and encourage all of you to consider attending.  And please contact us for a code to get 20% off the registration fee!

I hope that the year has started off as productively busy for you as it has for us.  We're excited about what the New Year has in store.  Here's hoping that you all have a happy and prosperous 2012!

During a recent business trip to Seattle, I had the opportunity to meet with Russell Sparkman, founder and CEO of Fusionspark Media, the Langley Center for New Media, and the Content Marketing Retreat.  In its second year, the Content Marketing Retreat takes place in Langley, WA, located on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound.  The arts-based community of Langley makes an excellent venue for creative marketers to learn about the latest strategies for designing, developing and executing content marketing programs.  I was so impressed with Russell and his vision for the event that I am pleased to announce that Manticore Technology has become a sponsor for the 2^nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat, to be held on January 26^th and 27^th, 2012.

If you believe like I do that content marketing is the key to effective B2B demand generation and lead nurturing efforts, then you should seriously consider attending this event.  The Day 1 program, delivered in quick-hitting 15 minute presentations, will take the audience on a journey through all aspects of content marketing, including:

•     Real-world experiences of a top CMO,
•     The content marketing cycle,
•     Content curation and development,
•     Content from the perspective of the buyer,
•     Content analytics and metrics, and
•     Managing the overall content marketing process. 

The Day 2 program will feature one hour “deep-dive” breakout session where the latest strategies, tools and techniques for each aspect of content marketing can be explored.

We are thrilled to be sponsoring this exciting event,  along with leading content marketing software companies HiveFire (producers of Curata), Compendium, and Me!Box Media.  The Retreat will provide a tremendous amount of value, so if you are serious about your content marketing efforts, I would encourage you to attend.

In today’s technology-driven society, conversations with buyers rarely happen face-to-face or even over the phone.  In fact, SiriusDecisions reports that the average b2b buyer is 70% of the way through their buying process before ever speaking to a sales rep. To connect effectively with modern buyers, it is essential that marketers deliver content digitally that speaks directly to the needs of the buyer.

Therefore, content has emerged as a key ingredient to digital marketing. However, it is also one of the most challenging areas for b2b marketers.

To get a closer look at this challenge, we teamed up with DemandGen Report to poll the marketing automation user community on the role of content in demand generation and overall marketing strategy. The survey found a growing interest in measuring the impact of specific content pieces on various phases of the sales funnel, with 31% of respondents indicating they currently measure and attribute the impact of specific content; and 59% indicating and interest in tools that can help measure the impact.

In this DemandGen Report: Blueprint for Using Content to Connect with Buyers, marketing automation power users and industry experts share lessons and best practices for building a content roadmap that connects with buyers and helps them move through the stages of the buying process. Download now to receive a step-by-step guide on how to:

1. Conduct an audit of existing content and identify gaps
2. Repurpose existing web or sales material into educational nurturing content
3. Develop buyer personas
4. Map content to buyer needs and stages
5. Measure the success of your content and its contribution to your bottom line

If you’re a b2b marketer tasked with building a lead nurturing programs and content roadmaps, this DemandGen Report is a “must-read”.

With the increased attention on content strategy and how it drives the buying process, the content audit is becoming a routine exercise for many b2b marketers. If your organization has not performed one, I would highly recommend it. Tedious and time-consuming as it may be, it’s well worth it and will pay off when you’re developing lead nurtures and building your content strategy. I recently completed a large content audit and thought I would share my approach and some tips that might help save you some time and get a comprehensive audit done.

I’ve heard content audit defined several different ways, so let me first clarify how I’m using the term. An audit helps me understand what kinds of content we have and how it maps to buyer personas and buying stages. Additionally, I noted the details about each piece of content that will be helpful in determining where we have content gaps or room for improvement. If you’re the lucky marketer tasked with the audit and have quite a few other responsibilities as most of us do, I would break your audit into 3 phases so it won’t seem so overwhelming. Start with your collateral pieces or offerings, such as webinars, whitepapers, videos, eBooks, reports, and case studies, then look at blog content, and finish with additional web pages, emails and third-party material.

The Preparation

If you haven’t already done it, meet with your team to discuss buyer personas and buying stages:

1. Developing Buyer Personas: A buyer persona is description of anything that you would want to know about your most ideal buyers. For B2B companies, there’s typically more than one person involved in the decision-making process. You can start by looking at some of your customers and analyzing the decision-makers and influencers involved in their buying process. Your buyer personas might cover job titles, pain points, and work responsibilities for the key people participating in the buying process. Once you develop a list of buyer personas, you can map your content accordingly.
2. Defining stages of the Buying Process: There are many available resources to help you define the stages of your buying process. Most experts site between 3 and 8 stages. I recommend looking at the buying processes of some of your customers for this exercise as well. Analyze their online activity, interests and interactions with your sales team throughout the process to determine how your existing content corresponds to each phase. As a team, look at a few pieces of content and map them to buying stages together to ensure you’re on the same page.

You might want to also discuss the details of the audit with your team and see if they have any additional ideas/suggestions. The more input and buy-in you have from your team, the more successful your content strategy and lead nurturing programs will be. Once you’ve taken these steps, you are ready to start your audit.

The Audit

There are tools available to help you complete a content audit for all your online pieces, such as iGooMap, which scans your website and generates an XML sitemap. However, if you have quite a bit of gated content or content that is not published as a web page these types of tools will not be as useful for you.

I did my audit manually and created a spreadsheet with the following categories:

• Content Piece: The title of the collateral piece, web page, video, presentation, etc.
• Subject Matter: The goal here is to identify how much content you have for subject matters that are important to your buyers. Therefore, you want your subjects to be broad enough to group content but specific enough to segment. I created 10 subject matters, which were consistent with search phrases and key words buyers typically use when searching for our solution.
• Secondary Subject: I noted if the content was targeted at a specific industry or user group.
• Type of Content: whitepaper, webinar, video, article, blog post, interview, case study, analyst report, etc.
• Targeted Buyer Persona: Here I assigned the buyer personas that my team and I had developed to pieces of content. Several pieces targeted more than one persona, so I added a secondary persona column. I used decision-maker, financial buyer and influencer/user, which is a good place to start. However, as your gather more information about your prospects, you can create more detailed buyer personas and more targeted content.
• Department: If you create content that targets specific departments involved in the decision-making process, note which department your content best targets.
• Delivery method: PDF, AV presentation, webpage, etc.
• Purpose: This will vary from organization to organization but I used the following categories: Thought Leadership (new idea or concept); Education (how to; tips, tactics and strategies); Entertainment (attention grabbers); Customer/Product Support (product and customer-specific technical support); Proof Points (case studies, customer videos & testimonials, analyst reviews and buyer guides); Sales Enablement (sales presentations, company/product information, competitive comparisons)
• Buying Stage: I used Awareness, Research, Consideration and Decision. I looked at each piece of content and chose a corresponding stage based on the nature and purpose of the content. This part is the most subjective so your team’s input and the exercise I mentioned above is important.
• Authorship: I didn’t list the specific author but broke it down into 3 categories: Internal (Manticore employee); Partner (Manticore partner); Third-party (analyst, reporter, industry expert).
• Ownership: Do we own the content and have the ability to change or update it? Yes or No.
• Last Updated: Year or month the piece was written or updated.
• Location: Link or file location
• Action Needed: I noted if the piece of content needed to be updated, reformatted, repurposed or deleted.
• Other: Here I recorded anything else that I wanted to mention.

The point of listing the 15 categories I used when performing my content audit is not to show you exactly what your audit should cover. Your audit will probably look different, but I thought showing you my approach and analysis of our content might help you think through your process. There are a ton of good resources available regarding content marketing, buying stages, and buyer personas. I encourage you to do a quick search and check out some other articles before your start your audit. Jeff Ogden posted a good content audit article on B2Bbloggers, and Cari Baldwin’s interview on the Content Connection blog discussing content mapping is helpful as well.

The Take-away

Congratulations, you’ve made it through the audit. Now you can analyze the information and determine if you lack content for any particular subject matter, buying stage or persona. I created graphs comparing how many pieces of content we had for each area, which showed some gaping holes in our content mix. The presentation helped me secure budget for creating the appropriate content to fill those gaps and have a more cohesive content strategy.

Hopefully these tips will help you get started and make your content audit easier and more useful. Good luck!

One of the biggest obstacles many organizations face when trying to effectively implement a marketing automation platform is filling the marketing skills gap necessary for success. The technology is such a small piece of it.

Marketers have historically been right brain creatives. However, to properly implement process and use marketing automation effectively, marketers must learn to use the left side of the brain. Before you can implement marketing automation successfully, you have to have a lead-to-close process worth automating and the skills – such as program management, copy writing, content development, creative development and data analysis – needed to continually executive campaigns.

Our responsibility as a vendor does not end with selling customers a platform and providing them with technical support, it’s also to provide marketers with the training and resources necessary for continued success, which is why  we are proud to one of the charter Vendor Council members of a new association dedicated to helping marketing automation users acquire the skills and education needed to maximize our technology – the Marketing Automation Institute.

The Marketing Automation Institute (MAI) officially launched on Monday as a new certification body and community for the industry. In collaboration with industry thought leaders and marketing automation vendors, the MAI is focused on providing educational training opportunities that help both BtoB and BtoC marketing professionals develop the skills needed to succeed in today’s ever-changing, increasingly buyer-focused market.

The community brings together an Executive Council and a Vendor Council, which will serve to both consult and provide direction for the MAI. The Executive Council consists of Jay Hidalgo (The Annuitas Group); Trish Bertuzzi (The Bridge Group); Craig Rosenberg (Focus); Larissa DeCarlo (Marketing Operations Works); Steve Gershik (28 Marketing); David Lewis (DemandGen International); and David Raab (Raab Associates).

Beginning in the Fall 2011, the MAI will offer Certified Marketing Automation Professional (CMAP) classes that focus on the most critical areas of the marketing automation industry. Initial classes will include: Marketing Automation Foundations; Lead Management Process Development; The Fundamentals of Marketing Operations; and Marketing Performance, Measurement & Benchmarking. Other classes will be offered as well and are in development.  Insiders agree that the new community, and nurturing the critical need for education, is a step forward in fostering a greater industry dialogue to enhance market education, technology usage and adoption.

Visit the Marketing Automation Institute website to learn more about it. For a limited time, the MAI is offering annual memberships at a discounted rate. Use the Manticore promo code MAN005 to become a member of MAI for only $199!

Improving marketing performance is not just about implementing the right technology, it’s also about creating a strategic process to involve people in the process of lead nurturing and qualification.

Join us and demand generation company Winn Technology Group on Thursday, July 14th as we reveal 5 ways to integrate the human touch into lead nurturing programs and  improve your marketing performance. In this webinar, you will learn:

• How to accelerate the buying process through combining the delivery of relevant content with phone conversations
• What techniques increase your chances of setting and keeping appointments with decision-makers
• How to Sales and Marketing can collaborate to build more solid relationships with prospects

With such a huge focus on online communication and strategy, it’s easy to place less importance on one-to-one contact – that’s a mistake. The human two-way conversation is critical to the buying process. Learn how to maximize its effectiveness.

Event Details:

Date: Thursday, July 14^th

Time: 10am PT/1pm EST

About the speakers:

Geoffrey Swallow, President and CEO of Winn Technology Group, has over 30 years of sales and marketing experience in the technology community. Geoff's business experience has covered all aspects of organizational management including operations, client services, sales, marketing, and business development. Geoff has held senior management positions at Focus Research Systems, Dataquest, and Dun & Bradstreet. In 1990, Geoff founded Winn Technology Group, a leading provider of global integrated marketing solutions exclusively for the technology industry, and has since provided over 900 organizations  with B2B marketing solutions. Geoff received a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from the University of Hartford.

Emily Mayfield, Director of Marketing at Manticore Technology,  is responsible for all marketing efforts including corporate communications, demand generation and public relations. As a B2B marketing leader and marketing automation power user, Emily blogs and presents on best practices in marketing automation campaign execution, managing the marketing funnel and demand generation techniques. Prior to joining Manticore in 2008, Emily was Director of Marketing at AHR, Inc, where she launched the company's nationwide online real estate education program and managed its e-commerce site. Emily graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Corporate Communications.

DemandGen Report announced the winners of their third annual Sales and Marketing Alignment Awards profiling 10 companies that have successfully adopted technology to drive an influx of top-funnel lead generation, maximize campaign development and response, and cut internal costs.

Award winners showcased an impressive ability to significantly increase lead generation metrics, enhance marketing effectiveness, build a stronger database and nurture prospects soundly throughout the pipeline. Winning companies also successfully eliminated manual batch-and-blast strategies and increased overall productivity.

Manticore customer SalesStaff, a demand generation service provider, was among the 10 winners. Recognized for ditching the "batch-and-blast" strategy and creating more targeted, one-to-one campaigns based on prospects' online activities, SalesStaff recognized a 20% increase in web visitors who contacted a sales rep directly among other impressive results. They shared their success story with us in a recent case study. To learn more about how they used marketing automation to build a relationship with their prospects and drive revenue, download their case study now.

Congratulations to SalesStaff and the other 9 winners of the Sales and Marketing Alignment Awards!  Click here to download the 2011 DemandGen Report Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards Report in full.