Create Engaging Content for Any Industry, Even “Boring” Ones

According to a new book and recent study conducted by the Hinge Research Institute, high-growth, professional services firms are focusing heavily on blogging.
The researchers asked 500 marketing executives to rate how much focus their firms put on various marketing techniques. The respondents were then segmented into average-growth and high-growth firms. 

As the chart above shows, firms that are growing the fastest tend to focus a significant effort on blogging. This may not be much of a surprise if you’re a regular reader of this blog, but regardless, the case for content is clear.
The question then becomes, “What are these firms writing about?” It’s one thing to create engaging content about entertaining consumer products. But what about the less glamorous professional services industries?  How can you make business intelligence consulting fun? What about banks and accountants? Government contracting? How do you create engaging content for some of these industries?
To help answer that question, I’d like to direct your attention to Kinaxis, a supply chain solutions company (doesn’t that sound fun?). In a profession that elicits blank stares from many of us, Kinaxis has found a way to create a vibrant community of supply chain professionals through its content marketing efforts.
The firm has built up a group of nearly 7,000 members on its website, the Supply Chain Expert Community. This niche group is founded on sharing educational content — covering everything a professional would ever need to know about supply chain management. The firm itself consistently publishes new educational content and encourages members to share their perspectives. Here are a few takeaways from this community that has embraced its specialty.

Seek out common issues, and offer solutions 

In the professional services space, valuable content means giving people the resources they need to educate themselves about important issues and solve critical problems, which Kinaxis does by writing about the issues that are important to their prospective clients.
Examples of issues in the supply chain world include:

• Risk mitigation: Are we looking at risk in the right way?
• Establishing a common platform to address multiple supply chain applications
• Achieving supply chain visibility

By developing a steady stream of new white papers, reports, and blog posts, the company continually nurtures visitors with practical information and cutting-edge advice.
Kinaxis’s blog posts tend to fall into one of three categories:

• Step-by-step guidance (Example: “3 Keys to a Collaboration Framework”)
• Visionary topics (Example: “The Future of Supply Chain Strategy”)
• Technical tips (Example: “Simpler is Better: Dynamic Buffer Management”)

The marketing team employs ongoing keyword research to monitor which words and phrases are hot, ensuring that they are covering topics that are in demand. This ongoing list of keywords helps their in-house experts uncover new opportunities and content ideas.
The company uses tools such as Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to gain insights into which industry words and phrases are being searched in Google. For example, the phrase, “sales and operations planning” is an important phrase to Kinaxis and thousands of people search this topic every month. Seeing this opportunity, the content team creates blog posts and other pieces covering this critical area. 

Leverage new media 

Kinaxis has been experimenting with video and monitoring engagement for several years. The firm’s success can be measured by its tens of thousands of plays, both on its website and on YouTube. Here are just a few of the ways they are crafting their content to leverage the video medium:

• Executive Perspectives: C-level executives appear on camera to explain and discuss their particular supply chain challenges.
• Quick Takes and white papers: Kinaxis team members explain their perspectives on hot topics and summarize some of their key content pieces.
• Late Late Supply Chain Show: A spoof of late-night talk shows, this comical series attempts to make supply chain topics as entertaining as possible.
• Uncle Jay Explains: These videos provide amusing explanations of hot topics in supply chain management. 

Remember: Video and other interactive media make learning easier. They also can bring a company’s many personalities to life. Which brings us to… 

Tap into various personalities 

Thirteen different team members contribute to the Kinaxis community’s blog on a consistent basis, making for diverse discussions on various topics and issues. For user convenience, visitors can access every contributor’s blog from one single landing page.
Encouraging different thought leaders to get involved is a proven way to keep ideas fresh, and it is one of the key reasons the Kinaxis community is so lively. In addition, allowing your employees the opportunity to show off their industry expertise gives your business the opportunity to cultivate visible subject-matter experts who will enhance your reputation as a trusted information source.
How do you encourage employees to get involved? Here are a few tips:

• Offer incentives: Getting the team motivated can be tough in the beginning. Try offering a free lunch to the blogger with the most comments or shares for the week.
• Tie it to career: Publishing content can be great for business development and also personal exposure. Enticing employees with the idea of being an expert can boost inspiration.
• Make the time: Few people want to spend their free time working on company content. Allocate work time for content creation.
• Make it fun: Content can be the best part of going to work. The folks at Kinaxis are sharing their knowledge, but laughing while doing so.

Discover the two-way conversation

Some companies choose to publish content in a vacuum — keeping interaction with visitors to a minimum. More confident firms open up their content to discussion, which creates more of a community feel.
The members of the Kinaxis community are constantly commenting on pieces and discussing new hot topics. Not only are the Kinaxis blog posts open to commenting, but the firm also provides a designated forum (resembling the forums within LinkedIn’s groups) where members can debate topics and regularly engage.
Here are a few methods Kinaxis uses to engage its community:

• Keep it light: Although the community is professional, the feel of it is fairly relaxed. It’s a place people would want to visit to take a break from work and stress.
• Make it personal: The contributors have personal profiles, friendly pictures, and cheerful personalities. Talking to a person is a lot easier than talking to a cold forum.
• Expand to social: The team does a great job of getting out into the Twittersphere and pulling people into the community. Get social outside and generate buzz inside.

How Workflows Take Marketing Automation to the Next Level via Hubspot

Lead nurturing is a crucial part of any effective marketing strategy. Why? Because if you’re not managing your leads properly, you're wasting your time, marketing resources, and money.
Workflows take lead nurturing to the next level. As one of the most powerful tools available to marketers today, workflows enable you to build stronger relationships with your leads, send higher quality leads to your sales team, and save more of your time as a marketer.

So ... What Are Workflows, Exactly?

A workflow is series of automated actions that you can trigger to occur based on a person’s behaviors or contact information. Workflows go way beyond simple marketing automation, though. With workflows, you can send emails, update contact information, add or remove contacts from lists, and trigger email notifications.
So let’s say an existing lead downloads a piece of content from your site, and now you want to send this lead to your CRM system because it’s "sales ready." Based on what you know about the lead’s history, you want to increase their lead score because now they’re more qualified. With workflows, you can move them from a "lead" to an "opportunity" stage, and you can deliver a personalized call-to-action.

Your goal here is to waste less time, define the rules you want, and be able to automate it. Workflows make all that possible, and -- better yet -- they make it easy. With workflows, you can trigger actions based on any information you have about your leads, allowing you to send the right message to the right person at the right time. For instance, you can send a series of emails to:

• Leads who have viewed a certain page on your website
• Leads from companies with more than X employees
• Leads from companies in XYZ industry or XYZ location
• Leads with a specific website history like page views, clicks, downloads, etc.

3 Reasons You Should Be Using Workflows for Your Lead Nurturing

Workflows are one of the most powerful tools available to the modern marketer. Let's take a look at 3 of the reasons you should be using a workflows tool for easier and more effective lead management:

1) Workflows Help You Convert More Leads Into Customers

Workflows give you the opportunity to do extremely powerful segmentation. Being able to group your leads based on different properties and behaviors means that you can very closely target your emails and your nurturing process to their specific interests and needs.
Gone are the days of sending one big email to all of your leads and hoping it’s relevant enough for some of them to click through or engage with it. It’s time to start using smarter tools to send your leads what they’re looking for and make them sales ready faster.
According to a report released by Lenskold Group and The Pedowitz Group, 60% of survey respondents who use marketing automation say it has increased the quality of the leads that get passed to sales. Market2Lead also found that leads that go through automated workflows have a 23% shorter sales cycle. Imagine what your sales team could do with 23% more time!

2) You Can Customize the Content and Timing of Your Workflows

In addition to allowing you to send targeted content to various segments of your audience, workflows also let you set custom timing for your campaigns, so you can decide when each email or action should be triggered, down to the minute after the lead is entered into the campaign.
For example, if you have a handful of leads that are much closer to being ready to buy than
others, you can set up a workflow to send them three emails per week instead of one. If your leads who own small businesses respond better to emails sent on the weekends, you can set your workflow for these leads to only trigger emails to send on Saturdays and Sundays, and maybe just in the mornings.
You choose the times you want, and you put those times in the tool -- not your calendar.

3) Using Workflows Saves Time

Not only will workflows help you do smarter marketing, but they’ll also help you save time. Just set up your campaigns, and once they’re live, they’ll simply keep running with no active work required on your part. No need to be constantly sending a new batch of emails every time you add more leads to your list; these leads will be automatically added to your workflows, and you won’t have to do a thing.
And really, what marketer doesn't enjoy having more time back?

When Is the Right Time to Start Using Workflows?

More effective marketing? Saving time? Converting more of my leads to customers? Alright, you’ve got me hooked! But how do I know when it’s the right time to start using workflows in my marketing?
There’s no explicit answer for this, and it’s really up to you when you want to start integrating workflows into your marketing strategy, but we will offer you some indications that it’s time to think about getting started with workflows. If any of these are true of your marketing process, you should consider using a workflow tool (like HubSpot's!) to improve your lead nurturing and make your marketing more effective.

Indications It's Time to Use Workflows:

• You’re generating leads but ignoring the ones who are not yet ready to buy.
• Your sales team is unhappy with the quality of the leads you’re sending them.
• You’re sending the same emails to your entire list.
• You’re collecting valuable lead information, but not using it for segmentation.
• You’re not targeting your offers and messaging based on your leads’ needs.
• You’re sending or following up to all of your emails manually.
• You’re mass updating contact information manually.
• You want to convert more leads to customers with better lead nurturing.

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Article Marketing

 ARTICLE MARKETING | Setup time: 1 – 2 hours (excluding article)

Article marketing, if done correctly, is an easy (and free) way to drive traffic to your site. Most likely, you have plenty of content about your business/industry compiled in articles, blog posts, ebooks, white papers, reports, or other media. (If not, now is a good time to start creating a few.)

You can put your content into article form (usually between 300–600 words) and distribute it to free article-hosting sites. As the author, you will usually get a byline that includes your name, bio, and a link to your website. You get instant credibility, exposure, and a little help with your search engine ranking too.

Start compiling your content into articles that will be ready for distribution. Each hosting site has different requirements, so you may need to tweak the articles just a bit to make them work. One thing should remain consistent, however: Don’t sell in these articles. Just inform, educate, entertain …
and then send them to your site to learn more.

Some popular article sites are:

• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.goarticles.com
• www.articledashboard.com
• www.isnare.com
• www.articlebiz.com