content strategy — B2B Digital Marketing

Understanding Intent Behind Content Consumption

March 12, 2014 By Eric Wittlake 15 Comments

You know millions of people saw your content. But do you know the answer to the more important question: why did they take the time to read it or watch it?

It isn’t because it was widely shared on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Your SEO program didn’t make them read it.
A content promotion program didn’t make it suddenly appealing.
Triggered emails gave them a link but didn’t make them click or spend their time with it.

These are ways people find your content, and without them your content marketing would fail.

But these are not the reasons someone chose to spend their time with your content. [Read more…]

5 Lies About Easy Ways To Create Content

June 18, 2013 By Eric Wittlake 14 Comments

There are easy ways to create good content, right?

No. Sorry.

Creating good content is hard. And it’s getting harder.

If you take the content shortcuts that are recommended by so many self-labeled content marketing experts, you will be sorely disappointed in the long run. [Read more…]

Why Good Content Delivers Bad Leads

June 12, 2013 By Eric Wittlake 17 Comments

Congratulations, you are a B2B content marketer.

You have created a great industry blog and library of premium content. You promote your content through search, social, emails, newsletters, even banners.

You are seeing strong traffic, engagement with your blog content and a steady increase in registrations for your premium content.

There’s just one little problem: the leads are crap. [Read more…]

Why Your Content Sucks!

May 14, 2012 By Eric Wittlake 13 Comments

If it doesn’t benefit us, entertain us, educate us, solve our problems or advance our causes, we don’t want it. If we find something better, we switch.

Today, our mantra is “What’s in it for me?”

All too often, the answer is “Not much.”

We are flooded with content. This blog post will be one of millions published today. Blog posts and other content are clamoring for attention with [Read more…]

Why You Should Stop Mapping Content Formats to the Buyer’s Journey

March 28, 2012 By Eric Wittlake 34 Comments

I have had it with “research” about the content formats B2B buyers prefer at each stage of the buyers journey. Multiple B2B publishers are pedaling this misinformation and as B2B marketers struggle with content marketing, it is diverting their focus.

Here is one example from TechTarget:

eBooks are earlier than white papers which are earlier than virtual trade shows? Yeah, right. Instead of focusing on content formats by stage, marketers need to [Read more…]