Content, Content, Content – Think Again!

B2B marketers are creating a thick fog of content. . .

The hope is that more and more content will give them higher Search Engine Optimization and more credibility in the marketplace. But just producing more content will not be enough by itself to cut through the content fog being created.

It’s not that content is bad, it’s just that the next generations of intelligent customer journeys are about to be launched.

The Customer Journey

Imagine a journey that starts with the customer’s first awareness of your company, and embraces them throughout the life of their use of your solution. A journey designed with an intimate understanding of your customer and their environment. A journey designed and engineered to deliver a seamless, engaging, and personalized experience to prospects, champions, and influencers.

Imagine a journey in which every touch point, every piece of content not only influences but also captures additional insight.  During the journey, you gain insight and metrics that enable the next interaction with the customer to create an even greater value for them and for your organization. Imagine a journey that is continually updated and innovated based on the learning and insight collected. Imagine the value, the decidedly unfair advantage, that a journey like that creates for your sales team, your product management team, and your marketing group.

It is those journeys that prospects and customers will gravitate towards. It is those journeys that will create the bond of value and trust that make them excited to become a customer, and to recommend your company to others. Its those journeys will give the companies who launch them a decidedly unfair competitive advantage. Apple is the best example of that today.  Steve Jobs focused his company on the total customer experience, the total customer journey that is driving Apple to the top of customer satisfaction and to being one of the most valuable companies in the world. Those are the journeys that are now being designed and built with next-generation methods and technologies.

These next-generation technologies provide tremendous capabilities. But to fully take advantage of them requires thinking and investing very differently in marketing and the customer journey.

It requires:

• Building and leveraging an immersive understanding of your highest value customers
• Knowing how to help accelerate the success of your internal champion as well as the other influencers and decision makers at each stage of the journey
• Making a continual investment in integrating and aligning the organizations, processes, and systems that enable that intelligent and engaging customer journey.

To help cut through the content fog, your 2013 customer journey should be designed and managed end-to-end starting with awareness and supporting the customer throughout their use of your solution as a strategic and continually evolving engagement framework.

It should:

• Provide for interactively and intelligently exchanging high-value information and insight
• Create a deep bond with your highest value prospects and customers

Why you ask?

Because Moore’s Law is at work and the number of ways to interact, the speed and effectiveness of those interactions are doubling every 18 months. In short, while content is important, even more, important is to develop and deliver a customer journey that allows you to stay ahead of the competitive learning, innovation and customer value delivery curve.

Mike Connor, Principal, Spice Catalyst