2021 Blog

How to Deploy and Personalize ABM at Scale

If you’re just starting out on your ABM journey, you may be wondering how to scale an operation that is specifically designed to produce unique outcomes for each customer.

It may seem counterintuitive, but these unique results can be reproduced with some simple heuristics that can be repeated endlessly.

By mastering these heuristics through time and practice, you’ll easily be able to handle ABM and personalization at any scale required to grow your business.

The easiest way to start is by picking your targets wisely. We’ll discuss how to do that and then reveal what simple steps you can follow to endlessly iterate your ABM and personalization strategy for maximum effectiveness.

3 Ways to Deploy ABM at Scale

The best way to ensure scalability is to have a concrete plan for each new target your company decides to aim for. In general, this should start with a list of ideal companies which is then broken down by other factors relevant to you and your customers.

Here are three steps that could be part of any scalable ABM strategy.

1. Create a List of Target Accounts

We recommend bringing your sales team in on this step and making it a joint effort. Sales will want to have input on which whales they’ll be hunting and which smaller accounts are going to be worth the effort.

Once you have a list of accounts, you should organize them into tiers based on their priority.

At the top of your tier list will be the accounts for which true 1:1 ABM marketing will be necessary. This means the ground-up construction of bespoke campaigns for unique buyers.

Lower on the tier list will be companies you can group by certain other attributes, such as their unique pain points.

2. Group Accounts by Pain Points

Only you know what needs your company can solve, and in what unique way, you can be valuable to your targets. Many companies might fit the definition of an ideal business partner from this point of view.

Though it’s not true 1:1 ABM marketing, 1:few is still a great way to squeeze some extra personalization and targeting into your marketing efforts.

You may also want to group accounts by expected sales cycle or around their specific stage in the pipeline.

3. Group Targets Around Pipeline Stage or Sales Cycle Length

Sales will have input on this part, since they will be best positioned to predict the stage of the sales cycle your targets are in, as well as how long it might take to push them over the line.

If it makes more sense for your operation, try grouping companies based on the time and resources you expect to expend converting them.

4 Ways to Personalize ABM at Scale

Though ABM and personalization go hand in hand, they’re not synonymous.

Personalization is the act of creating and pushing marketing materials that are specifically designed for unique buyers. Deploying ABM at scale will include personalization and the step that comes before: namely, deciding which accounts to target for maximum marketing ROI.

When it comes to personalization, there are some great heuristics you can follow to get the process right every time regardless of what scale you’re operating at.

1. Create an Execution Strategy

Work with leaders from both departments to craft an execution strategy that can be iterated across a wide number of targets. Your ABM at scale strategy should include some of the following elements:

Synchronization: To achieve harmonious marketing and sales orchestration, every member of your team should be aware of not just their own role, but the role of their teammates and leadership. Trust and communication are key to ensure proper synchronization.
Repeatability: Your strategy (though not the outcome) should look the same for every target account. This eliminates confusion and speeds up tactics.
Accountability: Cross-department accountability and communication are key.
Open to Change: No process is perfect. After a few runs, review your execution strategy and see how well it’s being carried out. This is the only way to perfect your execution strategy.

2. Decide the Level of Personalization by Account

The largest and most valuable accounts will likely call for a deep level of personalization. This means custom marketing materials, delivery, and sales communications.

To speed this process up, determine some objective measurements that will guide this decision. Though that metric may end up being arbitrary and imperfect, you can always change it later on. The key to scalability is streamlining your process by eliminating as many small decisions and crossroads as possible.

3. Start with Low Hanging Fruit

1:1 marketing is not just a revolution in the way sales are pursued, but a big shift in the internal philosophy of your sales and marketing teams. The first time you transition might not go perfectly. The point is to learn from mistakes and improve the next time.

Start with your lowest-hanging fruit: the companies for which you already have some relevant and useful marketing materials.

You could also make a unique grouping of companies that you consider good first-time targets regardless of size, giving your team the freedom to practice 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many tactics all at the same time.

4. Consider Outside Help from a Content Platform like Hushly

There’s no question that ABM and personalization are effective strategies. There’s also no question that they require not just different marketing efforts, but in many ways more challenging marketing efforts, with fewer opportunities for big mistakes.

Small and medium-sized companies may wonder how they can afford the extra time and resources required to actively manage an ABM strategy.

Even if you’re in charge of a larger company with generous marketing budgets, you’ll eventually be looking for ways to streamline your process and reduce costs to increase marketing ROI.

For each of these scenarios, Hushly is positioned to make your life easier.

Your buyers are unique individuals who need unique attention, but you’re still running a company, and you need to prioritize your attention and resources to stay competitive.

Hushly can help you:

Create dynamic content hubs that change based on who is visiting.
Create custom landing pages for your targeted accounts that will help you stand out.
Create and manage custom email campaigns that improve click-throughs and lead to more conversions.
Keep track of important data you can use to reiterate and optimize your strategy.

Best of all, Hushly doesn’t require any technical expertise to use. You can accomplish all of your ABM personalization goals by just dragging and dropping simple elements on our advanced platform.

Combine Your ABM and Personalization Efforts for Best Results

They’re unique concepts that go hand in hand, so they’re best considered with one another.

Determining which accounts you target will depend on the level of effort you plan to put into personalizing their marketing materials. On the flip side, you’ll want to avoid spending the time and energy needed to create bespoke advertising campaigns for companies whose returns simply won’t justify it.

The best way to ensure both of these valuable goals is to combine your ABM and personalization efforts into a united front that you can endlessly repeat and scale at the right time.

To learn more about how to scale your ABM efforts as you grow, check out our free eBook, “Efficient Growth at Scale.”

account-based marketing

How to Create ABM Content in 7 Steps

Creating personalized ABM content has never been more important for B2B marketers.

Hushly advocates for in-depth account-based marketing, which means spending a lot of time and effort crafting bespoke marketing campaigns for ideal buyers that your company dreams of working with.

This time and effort can seem daunting, but there are some surefire steps you can follow that will streamline the process and make it easy to learn how to build an ABM strategy.

You should start by identifying your ideal companies, and who within those companies you’ll need to convince to close the deal. Then, personalizing content for these buyers, determining the right content channel, and tracking the performance of that content will be your main goals.

As you learn each of these steps more in depth, your ABM content marketing process will become easier and easier.

Start by putting together a list of companies you’d love to form a relationship with.

1. Target Your Ideal Companies

The first step in creating ABM content is to identify who you’re making the content for.

This should begin with a process of identifying a large number of potential target accounts. These potential targets should represent a range of companies, from the largest and most desirable accounts to smaller accounts that will take less time but yield less revenue.

Proceed by categorizing these potential accounts according to the criteria you’ve defined. Aim for a tier system that you can easily sort companies into and that will provide quick insights to sales and marketing teams.

At the top of the tier list should be those companies for whom you’ll spend the most time developing bespoke marketing campaigns and content. At the bottom of the tier list will be companies for whom you’ll still rely on more traditional 1:many marketing strategies.

2. Identify Key Personas

The next step is to find out who in these organizations has the authority to buy. This step matters a great deal because the whole point of ABM is to design personalized and targeted advertising. Knowing who you’re speaking to is a crucial part of this.

Part of the process of organizing your target companies into their tiers should include evaluating the accessibility of those in charge of buying decisions. Existing relationships, the length of sales cycles, and expected lifetime value are key factors when determining your ideal buyers.

3. Strategize for New Target Accounts

Once you’ve identified your target companies and who you’ll be speaking with, it’s time to determine your ABM tactics. To do this, ask yourself a few questions about your ideal buyers.

Who is your persona and who will they be consulting with to make their decision?
What can they gain by choosing to work with you?
How will they justify their decision to higher-ups?
Is there anyone in their organization on your side that can leverage their position to help you close the deal?

Forming a relationship with your buyer is a key part of account-based marketing. Learn what the buyer likes, what goals they have personally, and how they hope to benefit their company. Knowing this information will make designing content for them much simpler.

4. Personalize Content

Now that you’ve established an ABM playbook, you can begin the process of designing personalized content around it.

When crafting content, remember that you’re speaking to a human being. Use the information from the previous step to develop a unique voice for that client that speaks to their unique needs.

Don’t be afraid to be too specific. Speak directly to what the buyer needs, wants, and hopes to achieve. Most importantly, focus on why your company is well positioned to help them achieve their own personal goals as well as benefit their organization.

5. Create Omnichannel Content

Your content should reach your buyer where they are.

B2B buyers research more extensively and engage through more channels than ever before. Your content should meet them at any time and in any format they prefer.

Try to create content that meets the definition of omnichannel. This means:

Written Content: Blogs, email campaigns, case studies, and similar types should be consistent with your brand messaging and targeted to the buyer.
Media: Each type of content like video, social media, and podcasts has its own strengths and weaknesses. Make sure the themes of the content are appropriate for the channel they’re on.
Images: Imagery, including infographics, banners, and website ads, are critical. They’re the fastest way to gain someone’s attention and wow them with some interesting bit of personalization.
Personalized Web Assets: You should focus on designing personalized landing pages and dynamic webpages that automatically change based on who is visiting. Creating custom microsites or webpages for unique customers is an easy way to stand out from your competition.

Ultimately, the best type of content will depend on your persona. Hopefully, during the process of identifying your buyer and researching them, the best type of content to reach them will become apparent. In any case, focusing on casting a wide net by creating omnichannel content should cover any base.

6. Update or Remove Existing Content

One of the most useful account-based marketing steps is to frequently review your content for possible updates, removals, and remakes.

Customers expect up-to-date information and content, regardless of what form it takes. Take the time to go through your content archives and figure out what’s still relevant, what needs an update, and if anything needs to be cut entirely.

A regular “content cull” can serve as a controlled burn and clear the deadwood away from your marketing operation, keeping it clean, up-to-date, and relevant for any potential buyer that happens across it.

Reviewing old content is also a great way to farm ideas for new content, making it easier to have a steady stream of updated content to entertain and educate buyers.

7. Try a Content Experience Platform Like Hushly

The easiest way to create and maintain ABM content is to use a platform like Hushly’s.

Hushly specializes in creating state-of-the-art ABM content on all channels. We believe in the principle of providing value upfront, gaining the trust of buyers, and building relationships based on that trust.

Hushly can help you:

Create self-nurturing landing pages and dynamic webpages that dynamically display different assets and marketing information based on visitor information.
Craft custom ABM email campaigns that will target buyers and speak to them on a personal level.
Create adaptive content hubs which also display unique information based on visitors. These content hubs are like rabbit holes of information for your buyers to dive into.
Keep track of data and use it to optimize your ABM content experience from top to bottom.

Bonus Tip: Evaluate Content Based on Performance

Keeping track of how well your content is performing will provide some valuable insight. Namely, what types of content does your audience respond best to and how can you continue to reach new customers with that same message?

By identifying which content is working, and which content isn’t, you’ll make the task of coming up with new account-based marketing ideas easy and scalable.

Your ability to create engaging and effective ABM content will depend on the time and resources your company invests in the effort. In short, you get out what you put in.

For marketers in small and medium-sized businesses who are unsure they can manage the added expense required for true ABM, Hushly is here to help.

Learn how Hushly can manage your ABM content for you to maximize your marketing efforts.

account-based marketing

How to Make Successful Campaigns Using ABM Personalization

The age of account-based marketing is here, and personalization is right alongside it.

Since 2020, B2B marketers in every industry have come to understand the value of targeting high-value buyers and tailoring marketing to them on a personal level.

Marketers have several challenges when shifting from traditional inbound/outbound campaigns to personalized ABM strategies, however. Among these are the difficulties in selecting targets, prioritizing them, and defining the metrics that will measure your success.

We’ll discuss some key concepts and suggest a few ways your company can make more successful campaigns using ABM personalization.

What is ABM Personalization?

To understand what we mean by ABM personalization, let’s break it down into its components.

What is ABM?

ABM is the practice of account-based marketing. It represents a fundamental shift in the way marketers, advertisers, and sales teams pursue B2B customers.

In the past, it was considered enough to produce marketing materials with a wide range of possible targets in mind. The goal of advertising was generally seen as casting a wide net and letting the marketing materials and sales teams find the highest-value customers from those who showed interest.

With the advent of ABM, marketers are now tailoring their marketing content, strategies, and prospecting to those customers who show the most long-term value.

In short, the shift towards ABM is the marketing industry realizing that having a few loyal customers who spend big and can grow alongside you is more valuable than many smaller customers who are always looking for a better deal somewhere else.

What is Meant by Personalization?

Naturally, when targeting individual buyers, there must be a level of personalization in the advertising.

This means attempting to speak directly to specific buyers on a human level. Getting to know your best customers inside and out, and designing materials, sales pitches, and even products around them will naturally lead to an increased level of personalization.

It’s not just B2B customers who expect a level of personalization anymore, either. The switch to ABM and the emphasis on personalization that comes with it will give your company a leg up whether you’re hunting whales or just trying to convert more customers.

5 Steps to ABM Personalization

Personalization means that each advertising campaign and set of marketing materials you create will need to be uniquely tailored to each customer.

But how do you know which customers to target? Who will bring in the most value and, therefore, justify your effort in finding and wooing them?

Once you’ve figured that out, you’ll need to go further to find out how to best personalize every campaign you design.

Though the result should be unique, there are some proven steps you can take to make the design process more streamlined and scalable.

1. Create a Shortlist of Companies to Target

Start by creating a list of dream companies that you’d love to work with. Don’t worry about feasibility or how much time or effort these companies will take, for now. At this point, you’re still in the brainstorming stage and not committed to any decisions.

The point of this step is to illuminate the pool of companies you might be choosing from and give you some idea of what targeting them might entail.

2. Categorize Your Target Companies

Once you have a nice pool of candidate companies, it’s time to rank them based on a few key factors.

These factors should be at least somewhat unique to your business or industry. Here are some general factors you should consider when categorizing your target companies:

Size of the target/potential revenue
Compatibility and scalability
Existing relationships

Try to categorize companies into tiers. At tier 1, you’ll have companies for whom full 1:1 ABM marketing will be appropriate. This means companies for which you’d design custom campaigns, marketing, and all sales materials from the ground up.

At the top of your tier list are the companies for which you’ll be doing true ABM marketing, with no hint of mass production and a great deal of time and energy involved on your part.

Tiers below 1 should be organized based on the same principles, with each lower tier getting a progressively less intensive form of ABM marketing.

At the bottom of the tier listing are companies for whom you may design 1:many marketing that is less specific and, therefore, less personal. This lack of extra time investment should be reflected in how much ROI you expect.

3. Identify the Humans Involved and Design Content for Them

This part will take some research, but it’s very important.

Spending days or weeks designing targeted marketing materials is a huge investment, and it could all be wasted if you end up presenting your marketing materials to someone who isn’t authorized to make buying decisions.

To avoid this pitfall, list the people to target across teams within each company. Create a list of real human beings and what you know about them. Keep a personnel file that will make it easy for anyone from your company to interact with that human and have some knowledge base to draw on. This will increase personalization and consistency.

Focus on creating content for these individuals.

Here are a few types of content you can customize:

Landing Pages
Webpages
Email Campaigns
Marketing Content (Blogs, videos, and all other media types)

4. Collect Data, Analyze, and Optimize

Every step of your ABM personalization should generate valuable data you can use to improve the process further.

Before starting your ABM personalization journey, make concrete choices about which metrics you’ll be tracking. You’ll need to decide what success looks like based on these metrics.

What goals are you aiming for and why? Knowing the answer to this will simplify any problems you may have with metrics or data tracking.

5. Try a Content Experience Platform like Hushly

ABM and marketing personalization, in general, require a ton of time, effort, experience, and dedication to get right.

This level of involvement can be enough to give some marketing executives pause. Though the ROI and benefits of ABM are clear, the effort involved in switching can be daunting.

If you think your company might lack the time and resources required to effectively implement an ABM personalization campaign, Hushly is here to help.

Our unique platform is the best tool for ABM personalization from the ground up.

With Hushly, you can:

Design custom landing pages with brand elements that will impress your targets and help you stand out from the competition. Best of all, our interface is simple to use and can be updated at any time with just a few drags and drops.
Design custom ABM email campaigns that can speak directly to your most important buyers on a human level.
Curate dynamic webpages that can be personalized based on who is visiting.
Use data-driven AI to optimize every step of your ABM personalization.

ABM and Personalization: A Match Made in Marketing Heaven

Regardless of your experience level with ABM or personalization, making the switch is not quite as daunting as it seems.

There are great ways to reproduce ABM personalization at scale, no matter which companies you’re targeting or your familiarity with them. There are also excellent online tools and platforms, like Hushly’s, which can make your ABM personalization more effective.

By efficiently targeting accounts, prioritizing them, and identifying the individuals involved in the buying process for each one of them, you can succeed at ABM personalization.

Hushly can make the work of personalizing ABM campaigns a breeze. Learn how we can help you scale your ABM personalization today.

account-based marketing personalization

3 Questions That Will Lead to a Smooth ABM Journey

Account-based marketing took off during the pandemic. During this time, businesses everywhere were cutting back and adjusting to new consumer spending habits. In the shuffle, ABM emerged as the best way to offer a new and improved level of personalization in marketing.

While it may have been a necessity that caused the switch, the return on investment is what kept ABM around.

With the rise of personalization in marketing and the need to be more efficient than ever with your advertising dollars, it’s our opinion that ABM is the way of the future.

Yet the transition from traditional inbound and outbound campaigns to a full-scale ABM strategy is bound to uncover some problems. There are some great insight-generating questions you can ask yourself before switching that will make the transition as smooth as possible.

First, let’s talk about why you should consider making the transition to ABM.

Simple Reasons to Make the ABM Journey If You Haven’t Already

76% of B2B marketers agree that ABM delivers better ROI than other marketing tactics. Here are two reasons why.

More Effective Personalization

Account-based marketing means targeting the best accounts and tailoring marketing for them. As part of this process, you’ll naturally learn more about those customers and how to speak with them.

As personalization in advertising becomes more common, more customers will come to expect it.

Mastering personalization is one of the most important factors in a successful ABM strategy.

Better Data Management

Designing advertising campaigns for individual buyers means you’ll be generating only the most relevant data points for each of those buyers.

ROI and other key metrics can be tracked on a per-buyer basis with a strong ABM strategy.

The data afforded by this kind of strategy can be used to optimize the campaigns even further, strengthening the system in a closed loop.

These are just a couple of the strengths of a good ABM strategy. However, implementing them isn’t always easy.

Challenges When Shifting to Account-Based Marketing

Switching from traditional marketing strategies, which typically conform to a one-size fits all approach, to targeted account-based strategies will come with some growing pains. Here are a few to look out for when you’re making the ABM journey.

A New Marketing Mindset is Required

Your sales and marketing teams will need to get used to the updated philosophy. No longer is every customer treated with a similar level of attention. Instead, your best accounts will receive the lion’s share of attention and resources, not to mention a level of personalization that wasn’t required before.

Front-line sales and marketing reps will have to get used to the segmentation, personalization, and priority that will be given to the largest accounts.

New Reporting Systems

Since the philosophy is changing, so will the reporting and accountability system you’ll have in place. Quotas for each of your account segments (from emerging businesses to large enterprises) will probably change, and so too will the expectations on those responsible for managing these segments.

Change means managing egos and keeping the team on track – two major challenges to a successful ABM switch.

Adjusting Marketing Platforms

Your new strategy will call for updated customer profiles that you’ll need to keep track of within your marketing platform.

Managing this data can take time and resources even if you aren’t making major changes, so a big company-wide shift to ABM will necessitate a good deal of data management and review.

3 Questions to Help Clarify Your ABM Map

Though there will be growing pains on your ABM journey, making the switch to full-scale ABM is important. ABM is more effective and efficient at personalizing ads and optimizing itself with reams of valuable data. Before long, most or all B2B marketing will be done on a one-to-one basis.

Here are three questions to begin with that will help illuminate the path toward ABM and ensure a smooth and effective transition.

1. Do You Need Outside Input?

If your company is new to ABM strategies, it may be a good idea to get someone with some experience to guide the transition.

Regardless of how well you think you understand the process, there will always be a big gulf between preparing for action and undertaking it. If you and your marketing or sales team are new to the process of full-scale ABM strategy, hiring an outside expert could be the best move.

Alternatively, there are many programs and ABM certifications online that your employees could benefit from.

Start with an internal diagnostic that evaluates the speed and effectiveness of your one-to-one marketing strategies.

2. What Skills Do You Need for ABM?

Whether you get help or choose to do it alone, asking questions such as these should help you find the correct path:

How effectively are you targeting high-value accounts?
What is the state of your preferred metrics, and where do you want to end up?
Is your technology modern and dynamic enough to sustain your vision?
How well is your current one-to-one strategy being executed?
How will you measure success?

3. How Many Accounts Should You Target with ABM?

When it comes to which accounts to target or how many of them, the answer is dependent on how effectively your marketing effort will scale.

We recommend starting by prospecting the largest and most valuable enterprise accounts you can. Not only are these the most worthwhile efforts, but the effort alone will teach you a great deal about how to market to companies in your ecosystem.

You’ll also learn more about what makes your company attractive to potential buyers and, maybe more importantly, what shortfalls your company needs to make up for.

Regardless of what kinds of accounts you plan to target, these general tips should help you clarify your objectives:

Your ABM strategy should be tailored to your unique business objectives. A great ABM strategy is flexible, meaning you can adjust it over time as your business needs evolve.
Design account-based plays that emphasize the unique aspects of each targeted company, as well as the strengths of your company. Your go-to-market motions should be similarly account-based.
Measure execution and success by tracking data and constantly improving your process. No plan is perfect. No matter how well optimized you think you made it the first time around, there will always be room for improvement.

Hushly Can Make Your ABM Journey Easy

Hushly’s unique platform is designed from the ground up to facilitate easy account-based marketing.

Our interface is simple to learn and use. With drag-and-drop features, you can create, update, and maintain account-based landing and webpages in just a few clicks.

Hushly can help you design custom ABM email campaigns and templates and include targeted brand elements that will help you stand out among the competition.

Best of all, our platform can help you measure the performance of your ABM with closed-loop data attribution and scale your campaigns alongside your growth.

Whether you’re looking for the expertise and flexibility that would justify the cost of switching to ABM or better ways to scale your ABM efforts, Hushly can help.

If you’d like Hushly to help manage your ABM campaigns, request a demo of our platform.

account-based marketing

Go-to-Market Strategy 101: Your Complete Guide

Growth is the dream of every business owner. The prospect of growth is never more exciting or uncertain than when your company is executing a go-to-market strategy.

So many moving parts demand a comprehensive strategy flexible enough to respond to challenges but strong enough to keep its shape in the face of innumerable pressures.

Our guide today will give you the 101 on go-to-market strategies and some actionable tips to create your own GTM plan.

What is a Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy?

At its core, a go-to-market strategy is the methods and practices your company employs to introduce a new revenue stream. This could mean a product launch, a new feature, or an expansion into a new market.

Go-to-Market Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy

Your GTM strategy is not the same as your marketing strategy.

You can think of a GTM plan as the transition phase between creating a new revenue source and the act of turning that source on. Perhaps more accurately, it’s the plan to turn that source of revenue on.

This is in contrast to a marketing plan that is more narrowly focused on promoting the product and generating demand for it.

What’s in a GTM Strategy?

Any good GTM strategy should have these three aspects.

1. Flexibility

Your GTM process needs to remain efficient and flexible in the face of any challenge. Your leaders should be competent and in synch with the grand strategy to execute the vision without the need for inefficient chains of command. Lower-level workers need to understand the vision just as well, so they can adapt to challenges and call for necessary support before problems become unmanageable.

2. Repeatability and Scalability

Go-to-market is a process that directly feeds the growth of your business. In essence, it is growth because it involves expanding revenue channels and generating demand for brand-new products or features.

This is a process your company has to optimize over time because there are far too many moving parts and unique variables for any one strategy to ever be considered perfect.

A GTM strategy, therefore, needs to be repeatable and iterative. Each new version of go-to-market should build on the ones that came before it, incorporating new perspectives and data on performance.

Since GTM is fundamentally a growth strategy, it needs to be scalable. If your GTM isn’t scaling, then you aren’t growing.

3. A Unifying Perspective

Your first GTM strategy meeting is the time to lay out goals and expectations. More than this, it’s a time to get everyone on board with the vision your leaders have crafted.

All stakeholders need to understand their roles and how they stand to gain from the success of the plan and the company. This kind of unifying vision is what brings people together and forms a cohesive team. It builds motivation and understanding, and leads to a productive strategy.

Examples of Go-to-Market Strategy for Startups and Large Businesses

Go-to-market channels, or strategies, are best understood as sets of goals and how you plan to achieve them. For simplicity, we’ve organized this list into three types of GTM, defined by their primary mode of demand generation.

However, you could also look at these from the perspective of execution and build a plan with those ideas as the foundation.

Inbound Led

An inbound-led campaign is the bread and butter of many B2B GTM operations.

It involves generating and capturing demand via content marketing. Content should be marketed through multiple channels to ensure maximum lead capture. Data should be enriched on the back end before being qualified and fed to sales, which focuses on high-quality leads and conversions.

In an inbound-led campaign, your growth is tied to the ability of marketing and sales to work together to drive conversions. The more efficiently they can carry out this task, the more you’ll grow.

Product Led

Sometimes a product can speak for itself.

A product-led GTM strategy is right for SaaS companies that can roll out features and expansions at a minimal initial cost. The strength of the product means that users will uncover new features and adopt new products organically. Upselling, deals, checkout, and scaling can all be managed from within the product.

In a product-led GTM, growth is tied to the ability of the product to deliver value and promise even more through added features.

Category Led

An idea can transform a marketplace.

If your company has a revolutionary idea or technology, you can focus on becoming a category leader. This will be based on your ability to assume an authoritative position in your marketplace, either through thought leadership or culmination around a revolutionary product.

For category-led GTM, your growth is tied to your ability to build a movement and spearhead a new marketplace for your developing product or idea.

How Do You Create a Go-to-Market Plan?

Any go-to-market example will involve many moving parts and must be uniquely designed for your company and revenue stream.

Here are three principles you should follow when forming a new GTM plan.

1. Put Together a Strong Team

A go-to-market team needs representatives from marketing, sales, product, technology, customer service, and senior leadership. This is a complex team with many moving parts, so pick leadership candidates based on their ability to understand and articulate a strong vision while allowing for employee flexibility and enabling problem-solving.

2. Identify Your Motion

You’ll need to determine what motion your company will be executing. A motion is defined by the steps your company takes to add and nurture the new revenue stream that’s going to market.

The actions needed for each of these motions are unique, so each one will need a different team with distinct responsibilities.

The three motions identified by GTM partners are:

A new buyer persona: A new idealized buyer that your company needs to cater to. You’ll likely need new marketing materials, sales strategies, onboarding, and content.
A new product or service: You may now have new competitors, a new marketplace, and new requirements on educational content and industry knowledge.
A new geographic location: You may need new sales, marketing, onboarding, and resource strategies to equal or surpass growth in other locations.

3. Follow the M.O.V.E Framework

GTM partners developed the M.O.V.E. framework as a strategic process designed to simplify planning and streamline thought processes. If you’re unsure how to begin planning, these steps are a great place to start.

M.O.V.E. stands for:

Market: Who to market to?
Operations: What do we need to perform efficiently?
Velocity: When and how can we scale?
Expansion: Where will we grow the most?

M.O.V.E. stands for four questions that your leadership and key team members will all need to agree on answers to before implementing your plan.

Go-to-Market Must Be Constantly Reiterated

It’s crucial to understand that go-to-market is not a singular strategy or action. It can’t be encompassed by a single department or goal other than “for the success of the company.”

The point of acknowledging this is to understand that every GTM plan or strategy needs to be created with the goal of efficiency, flexibility, and a unified vision.

Read more about go-to-market strategies and how to optimize your newest revenue stream as quickly and efficiently as possible in “The Comprehensive Guide to Go-to-Market” ebook.

go-to-market gtm

How to Build a Go-to-Market Team

The stakes are never higher than when forming a new go-to-market (GTM) team in advance of a product launch. Often, it’s a process where failure isn’t an option. Go-to-market strategies work best when they’re based on a strong vision and informed by competent advisors.

Ultimately, your success with your go-to-market will be based on your ability to select the best people for the job.

Today’s blog is an introduction to the go-to-market team structure. We’ll explain the typical job roles and how they can be flexibly implemented into any go-to-market strategy. Then, we’ll give you some tips for forming and cultivating a productive go-to-market team.

What is a Go-to-Market Team?

A go-to-market team is a group of leaders, workers, and individual contributors from several arms of your organization who come together to create and implement a go-to-market strategy.

They’re key representatives of revenue, marketing, sales, and other leadership roles who have demonstrated an ability to understand big ideas, contextualize them to their role, and act efficiently in the interests of the grand strategy. This strategy will in part be decided by them based on their input, meaning ownership and accountability should also be part of that plan.

Ultimately, it’s this flexibility that will separate a good go-to-market team from a great one.

A Typical Go-to-Market Team Structure

To keep this guide relevant to businesses of all sizes, we’ve chosen the five most important go-to-market team roles that each team should have.

Go-to-Market Manager

Your GTM manager needs to be a leader who understands how to articulate and enforce a strong vision while supporting the flexibility needed to run an efficient system. Their focus should be on team cohesion, efficiency, and long-term goals.

Your go-to-market lead job description should make it clear that final accountability will lie with the GTM manager. This understanding should lead to a greater emphasis on thorough planning and preparation, as well as constant reassurance that each member of the team understands their responsibilities.

A crucial responsibility of the go-to-market manager is to remain impartial. There may be inefficiencies caused by too many cooks in the kitchen, and GTM managers need to be ready and willing to streamline tasks and reduce or expand personnel as needed.

Marketing Manager

You’ll want a strong strategic vision for your go-to-market team. The marketing manager should be in charge of developing that strategy in tandem with the GTM manager.

While the GTM manager is focused on the overall team cohesion, the marketing manager will handle the oversight of strategy implementation among the marketing team. This will include tasks like performing market research, creating content strategies, and demand generation.

Marketing Team

The marketing team, led by the marketing manager, will be tasked with producing strategic content, marketing the content, and producing leads for sales to work with. Marketing teams should be in calibration with sales teams at all times to ensure consistent messaging, expectation setting, and mutual goals.

Sales Manager

While marketing is focused on how to tell people about the product, the sales manager will work with the GTM, revenue, and product departments to figure out how to best sell it. This includes developing a sales strategy, projecting sales goals, and managing sales personnel to keep them on track and in line with expectations.

Sales Team

The sales team’s job is to bring in revenue while setting customer expectations. Overpromising and under-delivering is a risk whenever a new GTM strategy is implemented, and it’s the sales team’s job to fairly and positively represent the product and the realistic ways in which it will improve the lives of customers.

Additional Roles

If you’re running a larger operation, these roles may be necessary to keep tasks streamlined and efficient:

Product Manager: Your product department should be represented, especially in conferences with sales and marketing teams.
Truth Source: Your truth source should be someone who can impartially gather information from different departments to form an accurate picture of performance.
Customer Experience Manager: Ideally someone from the marketing department who can ensure a smooth and consistent customer experience that fits with the wider GTM strategy.

5 Tips for a Productive Go-to-Market Team

Selecting the right people for the job is the most important piece of the puzzle. Once you’ve got your team together, it’s time to form a cohesive unit that is aligned, motivated, and productive.

How can you carry out this task? Here are five tips for supporting a productive go-to-market team.

1. Support Flexibility Through Cohesion

A strong GTM plan bends and doesn’t break. This is because there are overarching goals that each stakeholder understands. Moreover, they understand their role within that wider vision and never lose sight of it.

A strong plan is therefore flexible because it doesn’t rely on micromanaging or inefficient chains of command. Instead, it instills an understanding of primary goals, then tasks each individual with figuring out how to best achieve them.

2. Focus on Buyer Personas

It’s no secret that we love idealized buyers. They’re your best customers by far, the most loyal, they make the biggest purchases, and they’re always the first in line to buy a new product. Remember that the specificity of this fictional buyer is bound to elicit emotional responses from real buyers who see themselves in the challenges you’ve uncovered thanks to the persona.

3. Establish Goals and Metrics

Take time during the planning stage to get everyone on board with what success looks like. There should be no questions about what everyone is expected to deliver, how performance will be measured, and who will take responsibility for each aspect of the plan.

4. Gather Data and Refine

Even during the execution of a go-to-market strategy, you should be capable of gathering data and reacting based on key metrics that your team identified in advance.

5. Always Seek the Truth

When it comes to a strategy that involves many moving parts and department representatives, there are bound to be accountability shortfalls and communication mishaps.

There will be blame shifted for failures and numbers massaged to tell softer stories. During these times, it’s important to remember the bigger picture and reprioritize. It may help to assign a specific person to track metrics and figure out the facts surrounding the performance of the plan.

Not Just a Strategy, But a Process

Your go-to-market strategy won’t be perfect when you first create it. No matter how well you think you can plan, there will always be some variable you didn’t account for.

This reality is the driver behind our philosophy that your go-to-market process should be flexible and proactive. It should be capable of reacting to challenges and squashing them before they become unmanageable. Ideally, this should be possible without the need for micromanaging, allowing senior leaders to focus on long-term vision and steering the ship.

To learn more about go-to-market strategy and theory, check out our free 39-page Go-to-Market guide.

go-to-market gtm

15 B2B Growth Metrics Marketers Should Track

A growing business is proof that your practices are working. It keeps you healthy and competitive, encourages investors, and gives you time to identify problems and build solutions to create even more value and growth.

Yet it’s not always easy to tell how quickly your company is growing, or even why. How can you separate your company from the ebbs and flows of the market, customer demand, and the performance of your competitors to generate an accurate picture of your growth?

Welcome to the world of B2B growth metrics.

We’ve compiled this list of some of the most important B2B growth metrics you can track and ways to calculate them.

Measuring B2B Marketing Effectiveness

B2B success is not different from success at other companies. It requires growth, which means you’ll always be looking out for new customers who spend more than your old ones.

You’ll need to know how much it costs to acquire new prospects and how long it will take them to become buyers. You’ll also need to know whether it’s time to focus more on market share or if you can safely enjoy a wave of category growth.

The best way to measure growth is with some key metrics that we’ll recommend today. First, you should understand the importance of category growth and why it should affect the way you read your growth metrics.

Category Growth Metrics vs. B2B Growth Metrics

Category growth is the phenomenon of increasing demand in the category of products you sell. For example, a company that makes bowling balls might take a particular interest in increasing the popularity of the game of bowling to unlock new customers and new revenue streams.

This is in contrast to a company that only advertises to current bowlers and doesn’t try to convert new ones. The first company is engaging in category growth tactics, while the second isn’t.

Why Category Growth Matters

In general, pursuing a category growth strategy is a luxury. But knowing how to track category growth is fundamental.

If your company is growing quickly, but more slowly than others in your industry, you may have a problem competing with these companies when your market is mature (i.e., it stops growing so much).

Tracking your category growth can tell you whether you should be focusing on competition or growth.

5 Metrics to Track Category Growth

Here are five metrics to check on B2B growth vs. category growth.

1. Share of Voice

Share of voice is a very popular public relations metric. It essentially tracks how frequently your brand is mentioned in relation to other brands. If your share of voice is falling despite rising revenues, this may mean you’re experiencing a boom in category growth but falling behind in the competition.

2. Web Traffic vs. Competition

Another way to measure yourself against your competitors is to check on web traffic. How often are customers finding and choosing your content over others? Branded web searches is a similar metric that can be used to find the same information.

3. Backlinks

Backlinks are other websites linking to yours. A high number of backlinks can indicate domain authority and mean that your brand is outperforming others when it comes to brand awareness and reputation.

4. Social Media Followers and Engagement vs. Competition

Once again, if you’re experiencing lots of growth in this area, it’s important to see how well your competitors are faring. The speed of your growth vs. theirs is ultimately what will matter most.

5. Category Sales and Revenue

The most direct way to track category growth is by combining the sales and revenue of all companies in your sector. How quickly is your revenue growing in comparison? This insight can be a valuable indicator of how your company is performing relative to competition.

5 Best Forward-Looking Sales Metrics

These five sales growth metrics are the best way to measure the performance of your sales team, which should directly correlate to your growth.

6. Close Rate

The close rate is the percentage of leads converted into sales. It can be contentious because salesmen will naturally believe that if they didn’t close a sale, it wasn’t closeable. Often, they are right! This means that the close rate is not just a measure of sales performance but marketing as well.

7. Total Sales

You won’t find a KPI that more straightforwardly represents sales performance on a year-to-year or month-to-month basis than a B2B sales report.

8. Pipeline Velocity

How quickly are customers being pulled through the B2B marketing funnel? The more efficient the process of contacting, engaging, and converting customers is, the easier it will be for your company to scale.

9. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is a measure of how much money was spent turning a prospect into a customer. This is the best metric for determining the ROI of your sales team. It may also be an indirect reflection of lead quality.

10. Sales by Product, Region, or Category

It’s important to parse data to make it more useful. Knowing that your total sales are growing is useful, but what if that growth is mainly driven by a rise in demand in a particular region or for a particular product? Knowing sales by product, region, or category allows you to leverage it to drive growth even further.

5 Best B2B Growth Metrics

These are the metrics we recommend checking to see how your company is growing.

11. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

Recurring revenue is a prediction based on how much subscription-based revenue you expect to earn. You generally calculate ARR by first finding your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and multiplying it by 12. Your churn rate will affect your ARR and MRR.

12. Churn Rate

Churn is the loss of customers due to failure to renew subscriptions. It’s a direct measure of how useful customers determine your product to be once they’ve used it.

A high churn rate could be cause for concern. You won’t get 2^nd chances with most customers, so it’s important to keep churn manageable.

13. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You measure net promoter score by simply asking customers to rank their likelihood of recommending your product on a scale of 1 to 10.

NPS is simple yet highly valuable. It directly predicts growth, since those who answer with high scores are very likely to recommend you to others. A high NPS score essentially correlates to how much of this free advertising you’re getting.

14. Average Deal Size

This can be measured by individual deals or by specifying a period of time. In the latter case, it’s akin to MRR/ARR. This is a great metric to track when going to market.

15. Average Sales Cycle

You want to know how long it takes to engage with prospects, turn them into buyers, and do it all over again. A long sales cycle is not necessarily a problem as long as it works for your industry. It may also ebb and flow during certain times of the year. You’ll need to pay close attention to this metric over a long period of time.

Product Analytics for B2B Growth is Easy with Hushly

Hushly’s automated customer experience platform collects data from every phase of the customer journey. We use this data to generate important insights that you can use to contribute to the growth of your business.

If you’re interested in a marketing partner ready and able to scale alongside you, contact our team and request a Hushly demo today.

b2b growth b2b marketing

How to Create and Run an ABM Campaign

Account-based marketing is a strategy that involves tailoring marketing content to specific accounts, or buyers, that your company has identified as being high-value.

The idea is that a few high-quality, loyal, and scalable partners are more valuable than many smaller partnerships that don’t develop over time. To keep clients interested in doing business with you long-term, you need to keep them coming back to you with individualized treatment and content. In other words, account-based marketing (ABM).

ABM campaigns can take many forms, but all of them have a few key features in common. We’ll go over the broad details of ABM campaigns, how to create one, and the steps you should take when running one for the first time.

What is ABM?

ABM stands for account-based marketing. It’s a marketing strategy predicated on the concept that each buyer, even B2B buyers, are individuals with unique desires and needs. Catering to these needs is the best way to deliver value to these buyers and convert them from prospects into buyers.

What is an ABM Campaign?

An ABM campaign is a concerted effort on the part of a marketing team to create content and marketing materials directly targeted to convert idealized buyers.

Account-based means each prospective buyer you’re working with should receive unique information and communications. These communications should be tailored to the business’s specific needs and the things the buyer has indicated are important to them.

It’s important to conceive ABM campaigns because, ideally, a prospect should find themselves on a journey that starts with them encountering customized content that addresses their specific problems and promises solutions. Then, a natural stream of content should unfold that proves your in-depth knowledge of the customer’s pain points and why your solutions are proven to work.

At the end of the campaign, the customer should trust that your solution is right for them and be ready to buy.

5 Steps to Create and Run an ABM Campaign

If you’re going to market soon and are interested in creating your own ABM campaign, here are a few things to plan for when starting.

1. Target Buyers

Your list of ideal buyers will be unique based on your industry and products. To keep it simple, try to identify which portion of your customer base is most valuable. This should be based on things like loyalty, scalability, and how confident you are in your ability to solve problems for that client.

Once you have a list of companies, you can decide if true one-to-one marketing or a one-to-few approach makes more sense.

2. Personalize Content

Next, you’ll need to work on creating personalized content that users will engage with. This content should be tailored to these buyers.

If using a one-to-one approach, you can speak directly to the buyer who the content is for. One-to-many marketing will require a more general message – be careful it doesn’t get watered down too much by trying to speak to too many people at once.

3. Engage Through Multiple Channels

There is no best way to reach buyers. This means you should try and cast a wide net. Your content should reach buyers through ABM email campaigns, texts, phone calls, organic search results, and more.

4. Synchronize Sales and Marketing

Regardless of how you get them on board, your sales team needs to be in sync with your marketing strategy. Make sure sales leaders understand the process you’re using to capture and enrich leads, and implement their feedback to make the process as smooth as possible for all involved.

5. Define Success

Finally, you’ll need to make sure all parties involved in the creation of the strategy understand what success looks like for them. This may mean picking and choosing certain metrics that everyone agrees are important.

No matter how you define success, ensure that everyone understands their role and is held accountable for it before starting any strategy.

Tip: You can create ABM campaigns with an account-based experience platform like Hushly. Hushly makes it easy to create self-nurturing landing pages, dynamic web pages, and deep customer insights that will help you tailor products and content to drive conversions.

Examples of Successful ABM Campaigns

What does an ABM campaign look like? There is no right answer to this question because each ABM campaign should be unique to your company, buyers, and industry at any given time.

ABM campaigns are right for B2B sales at any scale and in any industry. This is because the basic principle behind ABM is customer focused. Since every industry has customers, every industry is capable of catering content and marketing directly to consumers with their best interests in mind.

We’ve collected three examples of companies that hired Hushly to be their ABM campaign manager. These examples provide proof of concept. They could also serve to inspire your next ABM campaign.

Mindtickle

Mindtickle’s goal was to increase the rate at which prospects consumed content to quickly eliminate obstacles to the buying decision. The challenge here is that while your content might be valuable no matter who is reading it, not every customer consumes content at the same rate or with the same interest.

Together with Hushly, Mindtickle created visitor and account-based personalized websites, landing pages, and content experiences. These personalized landing pages and websites were designed to improve the customer experience and drive engagement.

The result was an impressive 50% rate of click-throughs on landing pages and content.

Smart Selling Tools

Smart Selling Tools realized independently that individualized landing pages made sense from a customer point of view. However, as their number of clients grew, founder Nancy Nardin realized she couldn’t justify spending the time it would take to customize hundreds of landing pages herself.

Not willing to give up, Smart Selling Tools hired Hushly, which made it easy to turn one landing page into many distinct ones with just a few button clicks. The result was conversion rates 8x higher than the industry average and an increase in leads and lead quality thanks to Hushly’s unique back-end enrichment process.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA knew that personalizing content for individual users was the best way to improve lead capture, lead quality, and get those leads into the hands of sales to drive conversions. Hushly made it easy for them to create self-nurturing landing pages, personalized webpages, and dynamic websites that can be tailored to speak to individual buyers and customers.

Moreover, NVIDIA was able to implement Hushly’s solution across their entire organization with no pain points.

Account-Based Marketing Isn’t Going Anywhere – It’s Time to Join In

Customers’ expectations regarding content quality, ease of access, and value are only going up. The day may come when all customers, B2B and B2C alike, demand personalized content everywhere they go.

Until that day comes, companies and marketers who use proven ABM campaign techniques will have a leg up on their competition.

Hushly can help take your content marketing to the next level with easy-to-create ABM campaigns. Request a demo, and see how Hushly can help your business grow.

account-based marketing

A Guide to Building a Content Marketing Hub

Imagine a user who searches for a problem and finds your website that offers a potential solution.

The article they clicked on from the search result answers their questions, but there’s another blog on your website that answers a question they didn’t even know they had yet. It’s this question that, if answered, could lead to an instant conversion.

If your website isn’t utilizing a content marketing hub, there’s a great chance the user may never even notice this additional content.

On the other hand, if the content hub is nearby or even on the page they landed on, the odds of them clicking through to more content on your website increase dramatically.

If you want to attract more traffic to your website and keep it for longer, you’ll need to create a content marketing hub.

What is a Content Marketing Hub?

In broad terms, a content marketing hub is a place where all of your content is collected in one place. This includes all forms of content like blogs, social media, case studies, videos, user-generated content, and any other kinds you may be producing.

A content marketing hub is more specific than your website. This is because your website has to serve other purposes and isn’t purely organized around content like a content hub would be. A content hub should be thought of as a hub within your website where links to content are collected and sorted into easy-to-find buckets.

A content hub should be focused on making this information accessible to anyone interested in it.

What Should a Content Marketing Hub Include?

Fundamentally, your content marketing hub should be a place where all of your content marketing examples are displayed. Customers demand ease of use, so you’ll need to sort content by type, allow searches for specific information and keywords, and update dynamic and shifting webpages based on intent analysis and best practices.

Your content hub should be a one-stop shop for all of your content. A place where users can go to find answers to all their questions, engage with your content, and find the value that will eventually drive them to convert.

The Benefits of an Adaptive Content Hub

When it comes to content hubs, there is no question that you’ll want yours to be adaptive. At the very least, you’ll want it to update frequently with the latest content that tracks the ups and downs of your unique industry.

Here are a few of the benefits of an automated adaptive content hub:

Dominate SEO

Your content hub will be a cacophony of SEO keywords that boost your search rankings. It’s also a great opportunity to draw users in with one keyword and allow them to find content that they weren’t searching for.

Nurture Leads

An adaptive content hub can create personalized content streams tailored to attract your best buyers. These streams, or tracks, will funnel these users through content that meets them where they’re at in the buyer journey.

This means introductory material for customers who are first encountering your website, and more technical educational material for returning customers who’ve already purchased from you once and are more likely to do it again.

Lead with Value

You gain customer trust by proving to them that you know what problems they face and that your solution can counter those. The best way to do this is with free, ungated content that meets users where they are.

An adaptive content hub is the best way to keep customers on your website for longer by curating their content flow. The longer a user spends with your content, the more likely it is they trust it and will be willing to buy your solutions.

Build Loyalty and Engagement

When all of your content is in one easy-to-manage place, customers are incentivized to stay longer and engage more. Over time, consistent and high-quality content will convince customers that you know your industry well and are prepared to diagnose problems and find solutions.

The more trustworthy your content is, the easier it is for your loyal customers to share and engage with it. If you are legitimately providing value – that is, improving the customer’s life every time they engage with your content – why wouldn’t they keep coming back?

How to Create a Content Hub in 5 Steps

Here’s a list of steps to follow now that you’ve chosen to create a content hub on your website.

1. Categorize Existing Content

The first thing to do is sort your existing content by their commonalities. This should be based on factors like:

Content medium
Subject
Buyer journey stage
Technical detail

There are a few benefits to this step. Not only will you be better able to visualize the types of content you’ve already got, but it will also help you see where shortcomings are in your current content strategy. It may even become obvious what kind of content to produce next.

2. Build Internal Links

Linking from one piece of content to another is a great way to demonstrate authority over the topic that’s being discussed. It tells users that you’re not only writing on the topic at hand but that you’re experienced with the industry as a whole and ready to find solutions to any new problems that may arise.

3. Focus on the Customer Experience

Think about how the customer will be encountering your content. Which pieces might they find after searching for a question they may have? What are the most relevant details about your product for customers who are searching for those keywords?

These kinds of questions can shed light on the customer experience.

4. Observe, Gather Data, and Refine

Your content hub must remain living and flexible. The types of content that perform well today may not perform well next year. Gather data and check it often to monitor the performance of your content, find out what channels buyers are flowing through, and gain insights on what content needs to be delivered and when.

5. Use Hushly

Hushly can automatically manage every step of the customer experience journey, including curating your content hub. We’ll use intent data and analytics to produce content streams that are proven to increase engagement and drive conversions.

Best Content Hub Examples

Here are some examples of content hub websites to inspire your own:

Hushly’s Resource Center

Hushly maintains a resource center that allows users to search our content by type, category, or with a search feature.

Substack’s Inbox

Substack directs users to their inbox, which is filled with the most recent posts from users they’ve subscribed to.

MediaVidi’s Home Page

MediaVidi’s website is a content hub designed to suggest high-performing content, which is tagged and easy to sort through.

Hushly Makes Managing Content Hubs Easy

Hushly specializes in crafting adaptive content marketing hubs that update in real time depending on customer data and insights.

Our platform requires no developer. Customizing and personalizing your digital marketing content hub can be done with just a few clicks. We’ll also generate data from every step of the customer journey to give you insights into what’s working and what needs to change.

Hushly can help you scale by developing, managing, and optimizing your content hub. Contact our team today.

content marketing

Should You Really Use a Content Experience Platform (CEP)?

Deciding on a strategy that will define your overall content experience is the easy part. The hard part is putting in the work to develop that experience across all forms of content.

If you’re thinking about implementing your own content experience strategy, then you’re probably wondering whether it would make more sense to employ a content experience platform to take on the job for you. There are plenty of ways to optimize on your own without a partner, yet few ways to match the data-driven analytics you’ll have access to with an automated platform.

We’ll lay out the case for using a content experience platform, but we’ll also explain the intricacies of the content experience, from what it is to how to start implementing one yourself, so you can make the best choice for your business.

What is the Content Experience?

The B2B content experience is the way all of your content relates to each other and forms a cohesive customer journey from landing page to checkout. A seamless and natural content experience is one in which the customer doesn’t have to try hard to find information about your product or why it should matter to them.

This is part of the reason why a great content experience should be a key part of any go-to-market strategy.

Your content experience should be an overarching voice or theme, which communicates a consistent message across all forms of content you produce. This includes content produced for every stage of the buyer journey. The main goal is steering prospects naturally through the content most likely to show value and convert them into buyers.

By focusing on and developing this goal through content production, you will naturally generate a content experience for customers. This experience should continue to develop over time as your products, customers, and market conditions evolve.

What is a Content Experience Platform?

A content experience platform (CEP) takes on the job of producing your content experience for you. Ideally, this includes everything from the way users first encounter your content, where they land on your website, what kind of content is recommended for them once they’re there, and generating data-driven customer insights.

5 Key Features to Look For in a Content Experience Platform

Here are five key features of a CEP:

1. Dynamic Web Design

Your website is the window through which your customers will look at your products. It’s where they’ll spend all their time engaging with your company online. Ideally, your website should be dynamically tailored to individual buyers.

Hushly’s platform allows clients to update their websites – including text, banners, calls to action, and more – to change in real time for individual customers.

2. Personalized Content

Once you’ve found your ideal buyers, it’s time to figure out what specific problems they may have and produce content tailored to their needs. This is the time to find your voice and stick to it in all forms of content.

Remember that there should be content for every step of the buyer journey. This includes the moment they find your landing page to the checkout process. The goal is a seamless transition from beginning to end.

3. Multiplatform Content

Customers today expect content in many formats and across many platforms. Some customers prefer written content, while many convert better with video content. You’ll need to mine your customers for data to figure out where they’re coming from and how they’d like to engage with your product.

It’s key that your content experience is cultivated across a wide range of content mediums. Blogs, social media posts, videos, audio, or podcasts each deserve special attention and a unique strategy that adheres to the overall content experience.

4. Digital Content Analytics

You’ll never have the perfect content experience because the ecosystem is constantly changing. There is a constant need to gather data on the performance of your strategy and update it on the fly.

You can try gathering data on your own, but it’s a complex process. It’s not always clear where to begin turning data into useful information. Instead, you should use a CEP like Hushly.

Hushly’s platform generates data from every stage of the customer experience, so you can analyze it from beginning to end. Hushly can give you insights like what content is resonating and where, engagement metrics, traffic sources, post-conversion analytics, and more.

5. Constant Optimization

However you’re getting your data, it’s important to use it to glean insight, so you can shape and optimize your content experience as needed.

The needs of your customers won’t stay the same, and your solutions to their new problems need to be flexible and responsive. A CEP should take data and optimization seriously to keep your strategy up to date.

Content Experience Platform vs. Content Marketing Software

A CEP is an automated service that takes on the task of optimizing your customer experience from beginning to end.

A CEP stands in contrast to typical content marketing software (CMS) which may focus narrowly on content creation, marketing, distribution, or content analytics. A CEP focuses more holistically on the way customers will be finding, consuming, and making decisions based on your content. It should also use data to generate insights that help you refine and update your content experience as market conditions change.

What Types of Content Can a CEP Manage?

Ultimately your content experience can be managed in a variety of ways. Depending on your customers and your product, a mixture of content mediums may be best, or you may find that your conversions rely on a single type of content. No matter your unique needs, a CEP should be able to manage all forms of content.

The idea behind the content experience is to push content that is relevant, valuable, and likely to drive engagement. A great CEP combines website customization with content personalization in service of the customer experience. Deciding what content works best for this is Hushly’s goal, and it’s the main reason we incorporate so much data and analytics into optimization.

The reality is that the best content is that which drives the most conversions, regardless of its medium, and your CEP should be capable of managing it.

A Content Experience Platform Can Save Time and Resources

The task of managing a content experience is unending.

There is the identification of buyers, content creation, deciding which content is most relevant to which buyers, personalization, multichannel outreach, and more. All must be carefully balanced and overseen to optimize performance.

Though it may be possible to manage on your own, hiring a content experience platform like Hushly could make your job a lot easier.

We’ll take on the time-consuming tasks for you. We know content marketing, and we’ve refined our system for years to take advantage of the massive amounts of data it generates. We use unparalleled customer insights to perfect the content experience, so you can focus on creating innovative solutions to customer problems.

If you’re ready to see what Hushly can do to make your content experience more seamless, request a CEP demo today.

content experience content marketing