One of the biggest challenges my clients struggle with is creating fresh content. It’s a resource-intensive process to constantly think up new ideas for interesting content that will engage your buyers and not sound like all the same stuff your competitors are putting out.
It’s not that technology marketers lack creativity, but they often don’t have the time to brainstorm new ideas that will generate leads and drive thought-leadership. And constantly feeding the content machine can be challenging and overwhelming.
There’s an answer to this issue that might be new to you: original research.
Here are some of the top challenges I hear from tech marketing directors that original research addresses:
Challenge #1: “I’m struggling to grab my buyers’ attention.”
It’s fair to say that tech buyers are busy folks who are inundated with me-too marketing messages from vendors across your industry. They’ve heard it all before, and they’re a bit jaded at this point.
An original research study eliminates the marketing fluff that most buyers detest. It yields fact-based stories that answer thought-provoking questions. You can choose the type of survey to create based off what your buyers will find most interesting and your marketing goals: you can focus on industry trends, current challenges your buyers are facing, their technology plans for the future, best practices – the list is endless. Any of these themes will lend themselves to creating interesting content that buyers will want to read.
Challenge #2: “We’re just recycling the same tired content over and over.”
Custom research addresses your buyers’ top issues and, if it’s designed correctly, it’s both unique and interesting. It produces data-driven stories that your buyers will want to read.
I recently created an original research project for a regional marketing director at a large telecommunications company who wanted to create three unique eBooks – one for each state their sales team targets. The idea was that creating custom content that asked their target market for their thoughts on business trends in Colorado would result in far more downloads than a generic eBook focused on those trends across the U.S.
This is just one example of the type of unique content you can create with an original research study. You get to choose the themes that you know are most interesting to your buyers (such as “What technology challenges are you experiencing with employees working from home?”), and you have actual data to back up the themes that emerge.
Challenge #3: “We’re overwhelmed trying to create a constant stream of fresh content.”
The amount of unique content you can create from an original research study is staggering. If a survey is carefully designed, it will yield plenty of content – much of which can be repurposed over and over into different formats. Slicing the data so it can be presented from different angles yields even more stories to fuel your content strategy.
For my client who created the eBooks targeted at different states, we had enough ideas to easily fill up a six-month marketing plan. By focusing on different themes in the research data, we could create multiple eBooks, webinars, articles and more. It was also easy to repurpose each of the themes into different formats like infographics, blog posts, quizzes, etc.
So don’t feel overwhelmed at the thought of feeding your content machine. There’s a great answer that will give you loads of content your buyers want to read: original research.
And when you’re ready…
Here are some ways I can help you stand out in the noisy tech market:
- Grab a copy of my report on original research, which includes all the details on how to use original research to capture your prospects’ mindshare. You’ll learn why marketers are getting so much value out of their original research, the steps in conducting an original research study, and my 14×9 content grid that gives you 14 content ideas to fulfill nine different marketing strategies. Get it here.
- Work directly with me to create an original research roadmap. There are a lot of details to running an original research study and creating content that gets results. I’ll work with you to create a roadmap plan that ensures you’ll get the biggest ROI from original research. Contact me, and I’ll get back to you with more details.
Kim Gusta is an enthusiastic promoter of using original research to rev up your content marketing machine. www.kimgusta.com