Marketing The Funnel and Delivering the Right Content at the Right Time
B2G marketers: this article is part 1 of a 4-part series recapping the June 2023 Content Marketing Review.
At the Content Marketing Review, B2G marketing experts Anna Pettyjohn, Senior Vice President of Marketing, GovExec and Lisa Sherwin Wulf, Founder and Marketing Consultant, LSW Marketing spoke about marketing the funnel and delivering the right content at the right time. Their conversation centered on their experiences and knowledge when it comes to B2G content marketing and emphasized the importance of needing time, a larger budget, and resources to aid in successfully executing on all strategies.
For the full study results and key takeaways, see the On-Demand presentation.
The Challenges We all Face
B2G marketers have two challenges in common, and Lisa and Anna shared how they handle them:
- Budget, Resources, and Time: You have to be realistic. You have to take a look at what resources you possess. What’s your budget? Do you have SMEs? Do you have enough people to create the content? What kind of traffic do you already have? How can you execute? Do you have customers that are willing to speak? It always comes down to your budget, resources, and time.
- Getting Everyone On The Same Page: Another big challenge is your sales team. You want your pitch to resonate with your customers, and that means giving them the information they want and need. Creating a tangible roadmap for milestones so everyone is on the same page can be an effective way to ensure initial priorities are still being met.
In a Perfect B2G Marketing World…
Lisa said that in a dream world, once you have your budget, resources, partners, and vendors established, you would next want to know the foundational concepts. For example:
- What are your business goals?
- Do you have documented messaging that’s adjusted for the public sector as needed?
- Do you have campaign themes defined?
- Do you have SMEs?
Having the time and budget allows for creativity within the foundational process. After you’ve understood the overall foundation, then you want to get an idea of the inventory of existing assets. Even with an unlimited budget and time, you still want to look at what you are trying to convey.
- What are your customers going to learn?
- How do they want to learn?
- What are your themes?
You may get lucky and things may already exist that you could reuse. Last but not least, in this perfect world, you’d have an SEO team, designers, a video team, and intent data and email nurturing to help share relevant content.
Making sure your content finds the audience
The biggest takeaway from this panel is that whether someone is working from home, working in the office, or traveling, providing content throughout all stages of the funnel is critical.
Webinars, research, white papers, and search engines resonate across the different stages of the funnel, but the specific focus and information will change.
If you do not have an SEO team, it is essential to look at how your audience can discover your content and ask the following questions.
- How are you promoting on social media?
- Do you have the budget for paid search?
- Is it all organic?
- What keywords?
- What can you rank on?
For example, a blog post can be a great way to get a white paper discovered in an organic search. Knowing all of this is super important. You want to make it easy for people to access and leverage your content. Leveraging content is going to be different with every company and every set of offerings. Look at your data and ask:
- What are people searching for?
- What are your salespeople and your sales engineers hearing?
- Knowing all of the answers to those questions will aid you in developing different formats.
Some people want to read, some people hate reading and want a webinar or a video, or they only want to read press coverage. You can get creative and produce a webinar that can be repurposed into a white paper which then could get repurposed into a blog post and then into a graphic. Just remember to have a consistent message because if what you put out in the market is inconsistent and doesn’t tell a connected story, that’s going to impact whether or not your audience wants to talk to you and buy from you.
For more B2G marketing insights, read the other blogs in this review of the Marketing for the Public Sector Content Marketing Review. And don’t forget to purchase your results report: a must have resource for GovCon marketing!
Related B2G Marketing Posts
Marketing 4 the Public Sector (M4PS) Study Recap
Marketing The Funnel and Delivering the Right Content at the Right Time
Creating Impactful B2G Content