Catherine spent some time last month chatting with Britton Manasco of Manasco Marketing Group in Austin, TX. Britton produces a thought leadership strategy blog at Illuminating the Future and has contributed to many business and marketing journals and magazines. Below is a transcript of Catherine and Britton's conversation. 

Catherine:  Thanks for speaking with me today, Britton.  As you know, our newsletter is tailored to people who are responsible for sales and marketing in their organization. In my article this month, I wrote about how the Internet has changed lead generation.  Do you agree with my premise: that sales and marketing professionals need to think differently about the way people buy today versus a few years ago? 

Britton:  Yes. It’s true that the Internet has made it much easier for people to gather insight and perspective that will help them in considering the issues they have to address, as well as the potential solutions that might be available to them. The Internet helps them identify the trusted authorities on a particular issue and get a handle on what others like them have experienced and achieved. Good marketing, in this sense, sets the stage for a credible sales conversation – a business conversation. 

Catherine:  So, what are some of the things your clients are doing to provide the knowledge that buyers are looking for about their products?

Britton:  I call this idea “marketing assets” or “content assets.” It’s my view that anything you produce should be thought of as a tool to help guide the buyer through a decision and through actions that will make them successful. What I found in the past (that is still a problem even now) is companies tend to create content or material that is very much inward-looking or introspective in nature. Companies talk about themselves, their products, their features and functions.       Sellers often aren’t locking on to the fact that their buyers really want to hear about themselves and others like them. They want to know, first off, that the seller really understands the problems and challenges that they face.                  

Sellers, as I see it, largely differentiate themselves with buyers based on the thoroughness of their diagnosis of a buyer’s pain or problem. However, you are far more likely to set up smart meetings and have these successful diagnostic conversations if you have already established trust and credibility. That’s a key objective of marketing assets such as white papers, case studies and webinar presentations. So, marketing assets should reflect the problems and challenges and issues that the prospective buyer is facing. That’s how you engage them. Otherwise, they’re not going to see the seller as credible or as a trusted authority. They won’t be provoked or enticed to meet with you in the first place.

Catherine:  One of the terms that I’ve heard people use to describe how sellers should want to come across in their written materials is as a “thought leader.” How do you recommend someone show this in their marketing and sales assets?

Britton:  You demonstrate thought leadership by showing that you have a perspective on where things are headed.  To the extent we’re engaged in a complex sale involving a high-risk, high-impact investment, the buyer is looking for someone they can trust and that they can commit themselves to for some period of time.                  

So they are naturally gravitating to what I would call “thought leaders” or “trusted authorities.”  You need to have research that demonstrates what’s happening out in the marketplace and be able to show what successes you’ve had with other companies like them.                  

This needs to be documented and demonstrated to build credibility.  You must articulate the key trends out in the marketplace, the business challenges that your prospect may be facing and the potential solutions they might invest in. You position yourself as an advisor – and provide reliable guidance.   

Catherine: What else should companies do?  

Britton: Companies need to be thinking about production, packaging and presentation. First, they must produce relevant and compelling content and research – marketing assets that draw prospects into your gravitational field.  Then, you must package those assets.  When I say “package” it, I mean package it as a white paper, a case study, a videocast, or a presentation at a conference or for a webinar.

Marketers can take their initial content and package it in any or all of the above.  In fact, that’s how you magnify the value of that initial content and ensure you’re getting a better result from your initial investment. You need to find more ways to package it.                  

And then,  finally, presenting the material is a critical issue. You may present information by sending it out to your house list, in an email or through a newsletter.  You can present it through social media like LinkedIn and Twitter.  You can run a PR campaign or you run a press release promoting the content you’ve created. You can present it in an event. You can do all of the above. 

Catherine: This sounds like a lot to do. 

Britton:  I realize that all of this can sound intimidating for some companies but it’s important to recognize that there are ways to enter into this gradually and make small investments in content that have a big impact.                  

A lot of the media, for instance, allow you to present your ideas in the marketplace inexpensively or free.  Your time isn’t free, but the media to deliver it is.  This can be an incredible advantage for smaller companies. They can’t compete on the level of buying ads or big trade booths, but they can compete as thought leaders.                  

Companies can elevate their image in a grand fashion and differentiate themselves from much bigger companies.  They can even come off as far more credible by making minor investments in excellent content.                  

This is a great time for smaller companies to be looking at how they’re going to position themselves in the marketplace, differentiate themselves from bigger players, build credibility with the client base they’re trying to build, and accelerate their whole sales process.       

Catherine:   Okay, great.  My next question relates to your blog.  You mention the term “high-performance content factory.”  Tell us more about that.

Britton: Yes, companies shouldn’t be intimidated by this idea.  They don’t have to invest enormous resources in developing content or hiring big PR firms to go out and represent them in the marketplace to create a content factory.                  

Business leaders do have to make some investments though.  They have to produce articles and presentations that represent some of their best thinking.  It may be something as small as producing one white paper per quarter…something that represents a provocative point of view on a key issue.                  

And then, once that white paper’s produced, they can go out and take that content and reformat it, repackage it in different ways.  If they have case studies, they can repackage this material all over as articles, as blog posts, as newsletter pieces, as presentation material, as examples for webinars. Sales people will use these stories to illustrate their points and strengthen their business cases. 

Companies can do a lot of this very inexpensively. 

Catherine:   Is there a rule of thumb about how many times something can be used?

Britton:  No. As long as it’s working, you can keep presenting it in different ways.  Take a white paper: you can just keep refashioning the main elements of that white paper in different ways for different articles for different presentations.  Just as long as the prospects are still interested in it, you can continue to present it.                  

Quite often, by refashioning it for different audiences, you create new interests.  By making it more relevant to them, you raise your results.                  

I have a simple equation for this.  I say, “Relevance times Reach equals Results.”  This means that the less relevant your material is to an audience, the more outreach will be necessary to get the results you’re trying to achieve.                  

The more relevant your content to an audience, the less outreach will be necessary.  It’s my view that the reach part of it is a far more demanding investment than the initial investment in relevant content.  What you want to do is make that equation work for you.  You need both: you need outreach and you need relevant content.                  

But too few companies actually invest adequately in relevant content.  And, thus, end up working themselves to death to get the results they want to achieve.

Catherine:   Okay, so my last question: can you give examples of companies or web sites that you would direct people to in order to demonstrate that they presented their marketing assets very well? 

Britton:    There’s a company out there that’s very hot right now.  You may be familiar with them.  They’re competing with SalesForce.com; the company is called Infusionsoft.  They have done a very nice job of building a portfolio of great content assets: white papers, case studies, think pieces of varying kinds.  They’ve got customers who just love them and they turn that enthusiasm into great stories and case studies. This information further fuels their growth engine.  I think they’re doing well in presenting themselves as thought leaders in the marketplace.

Catherine:   Great, I’ll check out that example.  Britton, thanks for helping us identify some of the key steps to create reusable customer-oriented materials that help drive sales.