3 Ways for IT Marketers to get Board Buy-in to B2B Content Marketing

So many more technology companies could be benefiting from B2B content marketing and inbound marketing if the sales director, MD or even sometimes the marketing director would only listen to the innovative, forward-thinking marketers they employ.

So, if you’re one of those frustrated marketing professionals, I hope that this short blog helps.

In my experience there are three approaches to board level cynicism or indifference. Each appeals to different people and different concerns/objections. You may well need all three!

1. Facts about content marketing 

These will appeal to the statistician of course and there are various angles. Here’s some of the best from some highly credible sources:

• B2B buyers like content: 85% prefer online content to online advertising (Roper, 2020)

• Everybody else is doing content marketing: 86% of B2B marketers are now using marketing content (Content Marketing Institute)

• Content marketing is the fastest growing marketing tactic amongst B2B companies: 70% of B2B companies are using content  more than they did just one year ago (Content Marketing Institute) and 77% plan even more this year (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• Content marketing is cheaper than traditional outbound methods like advertising, direct mail, telemarketing etc: 61% in fact (Hubspot)

• Content creates more web traffic: companies that blog regularly get 55% more website traffic than those who do not (Hubspot)

• Content marketing drives more leads and far higher website visitor to lead conversions: companies that use blogs and other educational content enjoy 2.89% website conversions compared with 0.5% of those who do not (Aberdeen Group)

• Content marketing has a great return on investment: 82% of companies that blog daily created a client that could be directly attributed to their blog (Hubspot)

This approach may support an argument and even create some interest but it rarely convinces the cynic by itself.

2. Facts about your company and the competition

Bring the case closer to home. One of the best approaches is to open Google AdWords and to pick a keyword that is important to your company and used by your buyers. Make a note of how many people search for that term each month. Then check out where your company ranks - and where your biggest competitors or a competitor that does use content marketing, ranks in comparison with your website. If you’re not using content marketing, you’ll almost certainly find that you rank below them. 

Another useful approach is to think of the commonly asked questions that are asked by people who buy goods or services provided by you and your competitors: typically these will revolve around comparisons, problems with different approaches, how to, what to look for, price etc. Try typing some of these questions into Google and you’ll find that the pages that come up in the search results are nearly all blogs or articles - very few will be pages about company services. If your website answered the questions that your customers are asking - it would be found by a lot more potential buyers and generate a lot more leads.

3. Ask the million dollar question

“If I had a pound” as they say, for every MD or other business leader who’d told me that her company is the best kept secret in the market and that “if only people understood how we could help them" then her company would be growing as fast as any business in Britain, I’d be very rich.

People very often feel that their potential buyers need a little education and just don’t understand the difference between their company and their competitors. It is frustrating and most people in IT have felt this way at one time or another - especially as so much of the language of IT has been devalued.

Not for the first time I have put to use some good advice from inbound marketing pioneer Marcus Sheridan:

Instead of asking your boss to invest in blogging or content marketing, try asking this question:
“Do you feel that buyers really understand what we do and the problems that we solve?”

If not, the company needs to get busy educating the market and shining a light. Time to start your first blog!

Getting management buy-in for content and inbound marketing is one of the biggest challenges facing IT marketers, so please share your stories and experiences of how you’ve dealt with the issue. We’d really like to hear your thoughts.