It’s really easy to say B2B content sucks. One of the first content campaigns we did at The Juice was about why B2B content sucked and highlighted the people who were trying to fix it.
Marketers have gotten into a really bad habit of writing for machines and not people. To make matters even worse marketers are using AI machines so they can write for more machines more quickly. The end product is junk and all I can hear is Jon Bon Jovi screaming, “You give content a bad name”.
Because the perception exists that B2B content sucks it makes it impossible to get cross functional teams like sales and customer success bought into content. If your content is lifeless the response of your go-to-market team will be to ignore it. Sales people care about hitting their goals and making as much money as possible. If your content sucks then your sales team will just treat it like a transaction and decline it.
Content should never be treated as a transaction. Content should be treated as a product.
Treating your content like a product means building resources that answer questions that are deep in the hearts and minds of your customers and future customers. To understand the right questions to answer we need to unite marketing, sales, customer success, and even product. When we get cross-functional teams together on the front end of content everyone buys into the content because everyone is a part of the content.
We dropped The State of Gated vs Ungated Content Report yesterday. I could have never have written this report without:
- Data from the product team
- Future customer contributors from the sales team
- Customer contributors from the customer success team
The launch felt just like a new product release because our team was a part of it, cares, and views the report as a product.
Building great content can’t be done in isolation or with full reliance on machines.
Before you create your next piece of content, think about it like you’re releasing a new product.
The first step might be as easy as letting the people you work with know about it before it goes live.
Take care,
Brett McGrath
VP of Marketing, The Juice 🧃
P.S. I share a lot of data from The Juice on LinkedIn, too. Feel free to connect with me.
The State of Gated vs Ungated Content Report
We analyzed the 300K+ pieces of content on our platform to understand how gated and ungated content performs. We share a few incredible data points in the report. A sampling:
- Most engaging content format for gated and ungated content (Templates)
- Average amount of time between a content touchpoint and deal being closed (162 days)
- Average number of content pieces that touch a deal (2.2)
- And lastly, ungated content is 26% more engaging than gated content when all other factors are equal.
Defining the 3 Axioms of Content Marketing with Tommy Walker of The Content Studio
I love talking with people who take their content marketing as seriously as Tommy Walker. He defines his three axioms of content marketing as premise, content is social currency, and decisions are made in Slack. I learned a ton from listening to Tommy break down his framework for how to create content that doesn’t suck.
🧃Listen to Tommy go broadway on content marketing
What’s Catching My Attention on The Juice
Your 2024 guide to Google & Yahoo's new requirements for email senders from Postmark
The "email is dead narrative" is always so silly. Marketers say it, but then turn around and use email to run workflows, send out their newsletter, and as the primary driver for webinar registration. Email isn't dead, but it's changing. Postmark put out a premium resource to catch us up to speed on how we can make sure our email lands in the inbox in 2024.
🧃Read: Your 2024 guide to Google & Yahoo's new requirements for email senders
Step Inside the Data Drama: Unveiling Ninjacat’s ‘Big Data Day’ Musical
I’ll continue to break my rule for another week. This podcast isn’t on The Juice…yet, but caught my attention and needed to share. You know what I said about B2B content not being great at the top? Well, this podcast episode is far from that. A big shout out to our friends at Ninjacat for creating a musical around marketing data…yes, you heard that right.
🧃Listen: Big Data Day
Does AI E-E-A-T? Maximizing Productivity Without Sacrificing Authority from MarketMuse
I love it when two great brands collab! A shout out is in order for MarketMuse and Compose.ly who got together to discuss the impact of AI on your brand's authority. This is a topic that I am very interested in learning more about and enjoyed all the nuggets dropped here.
🧃Watch: Does AI E-E-A-T? Maximizing Productivity WIthout Sacrificing Authority
30 Sales Commission Memes to End 2023 with a Laugh
This is our last newsletter of the year so why not end with a laugh from our friends at Spiff?
🧃Read: 30 Sales Commission Memes to End 2023 with a Laugh
If you stumbled across this post on the Google machine make sure to follow The Juice on The Juice to get more content like this delivered to you.🧃
