What a long, strange trip it’s been! Content marketing strategy . . . then and now.

Updating a retrospective. Marketing became the engine of business long ago in a galaxy far, far away! And “The Marketing Profs” were there to document that transformation in 2006.

Here’s what they said in a blog post in that year.

“But today, strategy is out, and execution is in. Witness the popularity of the book by Larry Bossidy (former CEO of Allied Signal) titled Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done. First published in 2002, it’s now ranked No. 168 on the Amazon.com best-seller list.

This emphasis on execution at the expense of strategy is on the rise in marketing organizations as well.

Many executives question the value of spending money for marketing strategy, especially if they have already defined an overall business objective. They want the marketing team to simply go out and execute a marketing plan.”

The Slade Group can give you extra horsepower to get to the intersection of new buyers and your brand.

Packaging, or look and feel, is a key part of deploying a marketing strategy. Many important and on-target messages have been lost because they were delivered in plain-vanilla, or worse, hard-to-read, distracting, or downright ugly packages.

However, attractive packaging, when combined with content that is not well thought out (or more importantly, not on target strategically), will fall flat on its pretty little face.

Take the time to ensure you have a well-thought-out, fully developed marketing strategy. It may require more work upfront, but it will pay off in the long run. After all, about the only thing worse than not knowing where you’re going is starting out for your destination, only to find out later that it’s not really where you want to go.

• Be sure you really know and understand your target customers, including what motivates them, what causes them pain, and why they would be interested in even considering your solution or offering.
• Have a solid understanding of the current market situation. Know the competition, where they are successful, and where they are struggling. (Remember that the status quo can be your biggest competition!)
• Play devil’s advocate. Ask what could go wrong, what counter-moves you can expect from competitors, what obstacles you can proactively plan around. Be honest. The time to consider possible pitfalls is before you begin the project, not once you are stumbling into them.
• B2B companies plan to spend 4.3% of their 2006 revenue on marketing (compared to 6.8% for their B2C counterparts). Although not explicitly stated, I presume this number includes both staffing and program spending.

• B2B companies spend 28% of their marketing budget on advertising (compared to 40% for B2C companies). Not surprisingly, most of the gap is made up for by B2B’s increased spending on events (17% of the budget). Other significant categories include direct marketing at 12% and PR/AR at 8% of the budget.
• B2B companies spend more of their marketing budget online than B2C companies (17% for B2B versus 15% for B2C). This primarily reflects a higher portion of advertising going online, but also includes email and website expenses. (I should point out that this average number masks a wide range, with some companies spending 100% of their marketing programs online, and some companies spending nothing.)

B2B ad spending (means content) totaled $14.39 billion in 2006, up 1.4% from $14.19 billion in 2005, and the top 100 B2B advertisers accounted for $6.76 billion (or 47%) of that amount, up 3.0% from $6.56 billion in 2005, according to BtoB’s analysis of data from TNS Media Intelligence.

That’s a lot! We can help you maximize a modest investment in the form of a high ROI!

The lesson from this trend in B2B marketing history? You can hire skill sets, you can allocate more dollars to your marketing tactics and their deployment, but if you do not engage with and use the expertise of experienced outside marketing vision, you are as they say in the Superman joke, “just pi**ing in the wind”!

Be selfish for your 2015 success! Start a whiteboard conversation with a top marketing agency executive. Bring in another perspective to the creation of your newest and best B2B content marketing strategy. Collaborate and create that exceptional customer experience.

And savor the rewards.

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