Marketers are generating volumes of content to help move prospects through the buying cycle. But in many cases, that content is not resonating with the buyer.

In her new book, Digital Relevance, Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, outlines how marketers can develop content and strategies that drive results.

In her session at the upcoming B2B Content2Conversion event, Albee will discuss strategies for creating content to become and stay relevant to buyers, influencers, and customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle and across all channels.

Demand Gen Report recently caught up with Albee as she prepared for her presentation.

Demand Gen Report: A major theme of this year’s B2B Content2Conversion is content as the fuel that drives demand generation. Are you seeing this as a greater focus area?

Ardath Albee: What I’ve seen is that people are realizing that it takes more than publishing content to get something to happen. It used to be the people would call me and say, ‘Can you help me convince my boss to give me budget for content marketing?’

Now, they call me and say, ‘Look, we bought into content marketing. We’re creating content and people are reading it, but the needle isn’t moving.’ Nine times out of 10, it’s because they don’t have a strategy. They’ve just gone out and published content like that’s going to create a difference. The publishing of content on its own is not what makes a difference.

DGR: How can marketers take content to the next level in terms of making a difference to the buyer?

Albee: Most of the content being produced today is pretty good, but it doesn’t ask anyone to do anything. Publishing a cool blog post or a great article isn’t what engages buyers. Great content should be helping buyers learn how to do something and pique their curiosity for more.

The C-level executive has delegated down the research and the business-case building to a subordinate, to a director level or a manager level. We need to think about how we talk to all these different people differently. If sales isn’t going to get in the conversation until much later, marketers need to think about how they’re getting their company’s expertise and ideas into the conversations that are taking place amongst that buying committee. Whether they are there or not, their ideas need to be there.
Storytelling is all about helping your prospect be the hero. You have the solution to the problem that they need to solve or a goal they want to achieve.

DGR: Storytelling and digital relevance are the themes of your new book. What was the inspiration for the book?

Albee: Mostly it comes from project work. What you learn over time as you watch what happens with your content, your personas and how they’re informing your strategies, is that you have to continuously tweak until you get to that sweet spot — if you will — where it’s actually engaging the right people and getting them to do the things you want them to do.

The more and more you look at it, it’s got to be personally relevant to them. It has to address context that makes sense to them.

If you’re not segmenting your content and speaking to a persona or a segment of your audience that cares about the same stuff, what ends up happening is content that is too high level because it’s trying to cover everything for everyone. Then it’s not relevant to anyone because it’s not specific enough to really give them an ‘aha’ moment, if you will.

DGR: In your session at B2B Content2Conversion, you will be discussing the need to become and stay relevant across the entire customer lifecycle. What are some strategies for achieving that objective?

Albee: One thing that I talk about in my book, and in presentations, is that campaigns just suck the engagement out of the buying process. We’re not paying attention to what our buyers need to know across the entirety of the process. We’re throwing stuff out almost like it’s spaghetti to see what sticks to the wall.

It’s really crucial for us as marketers to engage buyers the way they want to be engaged. That’s what I mean when I say we have to be relevant throughout the entire buying process. What is that whole story? Changing campaigns is just detrimental because it makes people reconsider whether or not they’re interested. If they were interested in Theme 1 and you change to Theme 2, they’re going to go and find someone else talking about Theme 1, so that they can get to where they need to go.

That’s why personas for me are so important because they help you hone in on what is important to that segment of people based on their roles and responsibilities for the company they work for, how to tell that story that engages them based on what you can help them do.

DGR: In your presentation, you will also be discussing how marketers can identify the right channels to build a framework for engagement. How can marketers keep up with the continual changes in content consumption habits?

Albee: Different social media channels have different nuances. You can’t put the same stuff on all of your channels and attract everybody from everywhere. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to pay attention to what the channels are used for, what they’re good for, and how your particular prospect, segment or persona is using those channels.

Part of creating a persona is creating engagement scenarios where you figure out what channels your prospect’s use, what kind of content they want to find in each channel and what’s the best way to engage them on their preferred channels.

DGR: Any other tips you hope attendees will take away from your session?

Albee: One of the things I’m going to be talking about is what I call the relevant maturity matrix. It’s really the state of relevance. So it starts from irrelevance, which is where a lot of companies are still talking about their products and themselves more than they’re talking to their customers about stuff that’s interesting to them. Then you go through four different realms to reach radical relevance.

I’m hoping that people take away different tools and ideas that can help them become just that much more relevant as they move forward and continue to build on that. It’s not like you’re going to wake up tomorrow and be totally relevant to a target audience that you don’t really know yet.

Try taking a step in that direction. Also, in the book there are 14 skills I came up with that marketers need to develop and hone in order to continue on this relevant evolution. So there are some things that they can take back and put into play right away and other things that are learning process — and come in time. The whole thing is about getting started.

DGR: What would you say to marketers who are trying to make the case to attend events such as B2B Content2Conversion?

Albee: C2C in particular is focused strictly on B2B, which I think is huge because there are not a lot of conferences that are focused on B2B. I always know I’m going to be interacting with people who are really engaged in what’s next for B2B marketing.

The other thing that I think is really important about the experience I’ve had at this particular conference is the high caliber of the people that attend. You have some really fascinating conversations with people.