by
Andrea Johnson, Copywriter
Marketers have the means to access more information about customers than ever before — from Web analytics to surveys to online searches to good old-fashioned interviews.
This year’s top MarketingSherpa B2B case studies reveal the creative ways leading marketers are using this information to develop content marketing that achieves a strong return on marketing investment.
Tactic #1. Respond more precisely to customer pain points
B2B Content Marketing: Threefold increase in closed deals from e-book effortFive9, a contact center software solution, was creating plenty of content, but the leads fizzled out after three weeks. Then the marketing team investigated what concerned their customers most. They wanted to know customers’ precise pain points and address them.
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Five9 conducted in-person interviews, fielded surveys and researched demographics to achieve this. The team developed content in response that was repurposed 63 different ways including blog posts, lead-nurturing campaigns and, of course, social media. The result: The company drove four times as many leads and closed 300% more deals.
Content Marketing: 415% lift in pageviews via inbound strategyElizabeth Kraus, the sole marketer for DB Squared, a business finance company, optimized inbound marketing by overhauling its site and incorporating content. She tailored it to speak the prospects’ language and address their problems.
The result was significantly greater website engagement. The company more than doubled the number of sessions, tripled the number of unique users and quadrupled the number of page views year over year. Furthermore, bounce rate decreased from 60% to 20% and social followers increased from 800 to more than 5,000.
B2B Marketing: Content strategy results in 50% of qualified leads being inbound LENOX, a division of Newell Rubbermaid, wanted to have sales stop chasing cold leads and, instead, close more deals.
The marketing team achieved their goal with content marketing. They studied their customers’ needs, and developed content like case studies, whitepapers, benchmark reports, blog posts and testimonials to address them. This effort was supported by lead scoring and, as a result, content marketing is responsible for 50% of qualified leads and a 10% growth in the sales pipeline has been achieved.
Tactic #2. Make decisions based on both qualitative and quantitative customer data
How Dun & Bradstreet's Infrastructure Supports Data-driven Marketing DecisionsInstead of just a single form of data, Dun & Bradstreet now uses multiple forms of qualitative and quantitative data to make marketing decisions. This includes multiple-outcomes analyses, experimentation and testing, and customer and competitive intelligence.
This article outlines the specific steps taken to achieve this and the results, which include reducing homepage bounce rates 21% and increasing clickthrough from the homepage to other product pages from 25% to 175%.
Tactic #3. Infuse campaigns with fun
Direct Mail Marketing: Multi-channel approach achieves 700% ROI Think direct marketing is old news? Think again. Intronis, a data protection company, reveals how it achieved a 700% return on investment from a direct mail marketing campaign where it sent out Atari gaming units and $200 gift certificates to a steakhouse as an incentive. The campaign was supported by intense research to pinpoint the most valuable prospects.
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B2B Content Marketing: Video campaign leveraging pop culture lifts new leads generated 20% Fun content is good for business. That’s the word from Fiberlink, an IBM company that provides enterprise mobility management and security solutions. The Fiberlink team infused trending pop culture references, like “Game of Thrones,” into videos that encourage customers to consume content like webinars and whitepapers.
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As a result, the team has netted 20% more new leads and a 10% increase in content engagement.
Tactic #4. Identify content gaps in the marketplace and fill them
Content Marketing: Multi-channel approach increases organic traffic 97%SuperOffice, a Europe-based customer relationship management software company, proved the power of content even when it has to be delivered in six languages.
The team increased organic traffic 97% and leads 43% through a methodical content marketing campaign that delivered content that customers are eager to consume through whitepapers, blogs, email nurturing and social media. It all began by determining the most popular keywords that had little or no competition, and then building content around them.
Tactic #5. Orchestrate content to align with buying cycles
B2B Marketing: How PR Newswire shortened its sales cycle 30%When PR Newswire orchestrated content in every marketing channel to accelerate the unique buying cycles of more than 25,000 prospects and customers worldwide, it achieved remarkable results.
In less than a year the company achieved a 30% shorter sales cycle, increased closed deals by 7%, qualified leads by 8% and engaged buyers by 20%.
Personalization Marketing: In-trial messages increased online registrations by 15% for a B2B SaaSHow do you convince users of freemium products to become paying customers? This is the issue that challenged Brainshark, a cloud-based B2B service for training, sales conversions and marketing.
The company responded by learning how, when and what to message customers when they were most open to more information about their product, and then personalizing that messaging. These efforts influenced $1.1 million in sales pipeline and increased registration 15%.
Creative Samples
- Five9 ebook download
- Intronis direct mail piece
- Fiberlink “Game of Phones” trailer
Related Resources
Sign up for MarketingSherpa's B2B email newsletterB2B Marketing: A recap of content and customer-centric marketing in 2014MarketingSherpa Summit 20162015 MarketingSherpa Content Directory
