In the content marketing world, you can't afford to blink. Rest your eyes for even a second and you've missed out on three trends, an algorithm update, and an untold number of qualified leads. You'll be surprised and delighted to find that it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. We know that, in this fast-paced profession, acting fastest on the best information makes all the difference. That's why we sat down with five leaders in marketing and got their best tips for fellow B2B & ABM professionals in any industry.

Stay Flexible

‍" If I've learned nothing else these past few months, and as a marketer in general, it's that you have to be agile. I mean, who saw this coming to this extreme right? So, you have to be agile and you have to always be focused. I hate the terminology ABM (Account-Based Marketing), because I don't really feel like that describes what the strategy is, but you have to be ABM conscious. You have to get the right message out at the right time to the right person, or else what's the point of marketing at all? So, those would be my two biggest tips. You have to be agile and you have to always be focused on ABM."

Start Big, End Small

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"Just from my content marketing experience, I think the best thing to do whenever you're building a campaign or you're building a launch for anything you're trying to produce content for, is to always start with building the long form content first. Because it's a lot easier to scale down a campaign or deliverables than it is to build up. If you always start off with the large white paper or the main event that really has all the meat to it, that you want people to consume, it's easier to slice into different formats that can be distributed out via social or via blog or other formats. And then you still have that large tent pole piece that you can leverage in the future.

I also think it's important to look at AI solutions... so that you can track engagement and ensure that your audience get the right pieces. I didn't share it before, but one of the great things about Parmonic is that if you don't have a content management system, like we do at OSIsoft, Parmonic has analytics available to show you how many views, how many moments have been watched by an audience member, and you can kind of be able to leverage those analytics to see what's working for you, and what's working for your company, and what ay need to be more embellished or improved going forward."

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Address Your Audience

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"For B2B marketers, I would say, really listen to your audience. Try to provide information that truly answers the questions, "Why do I care? Why do I need to know this? Why do I need your solution? How is it going to help me address my challenges and pain points? You really want to education them and answer those questions of why and how this is going to help your audience in their daily lives. And then Parmonic really helps you to do that, and helps you take information and break it down into those bite size snackable moments that are easy for today's customers and your audience to digest. Because. unfortunately, the time that everyone spends researching information and looking at your information is getting less and less."

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Remain Engaged

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"One thing that I've learned is that you really have to always be in tune with that's going on, just because marketing is always shifting and moving quickly. I think even ABM has really come to the forefront over the last two years or so. So I would encourage B2B marketers to always be curious. I try to attend as many webinars as I possibly can, even if I'm not in a purchasing cycle, even if I'm not looking to purchase anything. i try to stay on top of what's goin on out there. So that would be my biggest piece there. And then the other thing would just be, don't be afraid to try new things, experiment a little bit. I think people get scared, and I've had this hesitation too. People, I think, get a little hesitant, especially when it comes to video, because they're concerned about quality and that type of thing. But even with that example, with the SDRs, I mean, we have cameras for all of them and they just recorded it off teams. And so there's enough out there now that you can create video without having a huge budget and without having to have a ton of resources. So, I would encourage people to always be experimenting and trying new things."

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Know Your Tools

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"I like production. I like knowing how things work. For me, I need to always experience a tool myself to understand the nuance of how it works as well as to gain ideas for new ways to use it. So, I always advise people, roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, use the tools. Just last week... I had an, "Aha" moment on using [Parmonic] before a webinar to quickly create a promo piece that would help drive registrations. So, if I had licensed Parmonic and just sort of had some of my staff, go do this, go get a transcript, I would have missed that experience and how to find new ways to use it.

So, I always recommend people just sort of understand how things work and go through those workflows themselves. Even if it might not be part of your daily work, it's a good exercise. And then I always try to reframe anything I put out, like, is this important to my customers? Especially in the technology space, and those industries where technology is important. We see so many buzzwords. I've been to websites, technology websites, where I know those individual words... but when they're strung together in marketing speak, you've lost me, and I might be a bit more educated than your real target. I always caution the use of too much marketing jargon."

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