Tony Zambito

MAY 8, 2011

  From a business culture perspective, we are seeing a recently introduced new domain of content marketing born out of changes in technology and buyer behaviors as well as the area of sales enablement attempting to make selling performance more efficient.    Sometimes I wonder though if the two areas ever talk to each other. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Content Marketing Content Buying Cycle 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 20, 2011

The chorus appears to be getting louder and louder on content marketing in bloggersphere, digital media, and traditional media.    In this case, should CMO’s be looking at content marketing or content strategy as the first order of business on the agenda? . 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Marketing & Strategy Buyer's Journey Content 100

Tony Zambito

FEBRUARY 5, 2017

In the past five years, the often-unquestioned hymnal has been that to succeed in today’s digital world, businesses must produce content. Produce high-quality content, yes. According to various statistics on the Internet, we are living in a world where every minute over 200 million items of online content is produced.

Digital Transformation 50

Digital Transformation Buyer Personas Broadcasting Leads 50

Tony Zambito

MAY 17, 2010

Similarly, the world of B2B Marketing and Content Marketing must contend with parity.    Businesses continue to be in receipt of multiple waves of marketing messaging, email marketing, demand generation, pay per click, and many new forms of social networking oriented content. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Marketing B2B Content 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 5, 2010

  This is a good example of “buyer persona thinking” in action when developing a content marketing strategy.   And once you do, you can build a content marketing strategy around it. .   Depending on the industry, there were varying degrees of this “end of day” pressure but it is always there.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Content Marketing Wikipedia Marketing & Strategy 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 30, 2011

One of the interesting outcomes of the rise of Social Media , Demand Generation , and Content Marketing in 2010 was the increasing use of the term audience development.  In the new world of content marketing, the idea of thinking like a publisher has taken root.  Image via Wikipedia. Let’s take a look at some good.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing Buyer Personas Planning 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 12, 2021

A good reason your content marketing may fall on deaf ears. Ascertaining key mental models, perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs affecting how buyers respond to target content or their receptivity to engage in a sales conversation becomes a must-do priority. . To do so will require they first know how buyers think.

Buyer Personas 221

Buyer Personas Marketing AI Personalization B2B Sales 221

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 20, 2020

A key buyer insight coming out of the pandemic is B2B buyers are experiencing content fatigue. Who as a group, are undergoing the greatest barrage of content since the digitization of content began. With many B2B organizations tethered to activity-based metrics, the response is – you guessed it – more content marketing activity.

Account Based Marketing 273

Account Based Marketing Buyer Personas B2B Content 273

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 12, 2020

Many customer experience efforts by B2B organizations have content marketing as a cornerstone for such initiatives. With online research as the most important element of B2B purchase decisions, many B2B organizations are putting emphasis on developing content-driven customer experiences.

Buyer Personas 310

Buyer Personas B2B Amazon Fulfillment 310

Tony Zambito

MAY 31, 2017

Marketing played a role then by supporting sales with content that sales delivered. Applying generalized content marketing thinking to an ABM strategy whereby the focus is on “getting our content in front of more people in our accounts”. ABM Does Not Equate To A Content Marketing Campaign.

Account Based Marketing 211

Account Based Marketing ABM Digital Transformation Paid Search Agency 211

Tony Zambito

APRIL 28, 2021

Marketing is producing new forms of digital content at 5 to 10 times the volume they did pre-pandemic. Since the pandemic began in March of 2020, we have seen the scales tipped heavily towards how to re-orient sales towards virtual selling and to create more interactive content. And to affect The Buyer Mindset.

Buyer Personas 208

Buyer Personas Planning Interactive Marketing Network Marketing 208

Tony Zambito

MAY 17, 2021

ABM has been a content-driven program found highly desirable for B2B marketing departments. We need to get more content in front of our target accounts. Where intent signals are set, content developed, and buyer interaction is designed not solely on the basis of what is good for marketing. Get more responses if you will.”.

Account Based Marketing 224

Account Based Marketing ABM Buyer Personas Intent Signal 224

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 11, 2021

Backlash Against Content Flood. I ended 2020 talking about the content fatigue on the part of buyers. This will lead buyers to further ignore or turn-off the overwhelming volume of content they are facing day in and day out. It is anticipated backlash behavior will include just being silent and “going dark.”.

Trends 209

Trends B2B Sales B2B Marketing Spending 209

Tony Zambito

MAY 24, 2021

In fact, each prime their channels with marketing content or sales guides at the ready with an answer. Marketing and sales traditionally believe that the path to building buyer trust is by providing answers. Answers to buyer problems and challenges. To whatever question comes up, there is an answer.

Ad Building 303

Ad Building Buyer Personas Trust Marketing B2B Sales 303

Tony Zambito

MAY 26, 2021

If content and sales conversations are about helping to buy, then a mindset oriented towards selling only can still exist. Helping buyers to accomplish future goals can lead to more meaningful content and sales conversations. 2 – Expand The Scope Of Content And Conversations. This is of a similar vein. .

Buy 196

Buy Buyer Personas B2B Sales Gartner 196

Tony Zambito

MARCH 6, 2017

Inside the bubble, intelligence is gathered to support predefined expectations around CX, account-based marketing, buyer’s journey, content marketing , content conversion rates, etc. Where success is oftentimes measured on how many downloads occur and the ability to identify real-time shifts in which content is accessed.

Digital Transformation 253

Digital Transformation Buyer Personas Lead Ranking B2B 253

Tony Zambito

MARCH 12, 2017

If your buyer personas are rooted in outdated sales and product marketing paradigms pertaining to role-based perceptions and the feeding of the perpetual content machine – it is time for a reboot. Whereby marketing finds itself analyzing historical trends related to online visits and which content was accessed.

Buyer Personas 251

Buyer Personas B2B Digital Transformation B2B Sales 251

Tony Zambito

MAY 21, 2021

A November 2020 Trust Radius research report on the B2B Buying Disconnect points to buyers increasing the amount of research they do, searching online more, seeking more review content, and looking for more sources. And yes, giving less attention to content that fails to connect.

Buyer Personas 197

Buyer Personas Intent Signal B2B Sales Interactive Marketing 197

Tony Zambito

JUNE 26, 2016

A recognition of the growing importance of digital content marketing to overall marketing strategies today. As the concept of content marketing has become more prominent in the B2B Marketing landscape, so have terms and compartmentalization. For example, some content marketing pundits believe you should separate out audience personas.

Buyer Personas 104

Buyer Personas Research B2B Fulfillment 104

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 10, 2022

What content do they read when evaluating our products?” For example, here is a sampling: “I need to know what they think of us and our salespeople.” “Why Why did they choose our competitors over us.” What are the common objections they have?” What makes us different when compared to our competitors?”. These are just a sampling of responses.

Buyer Personas 234

Buyer Personas Sample Urgency Marketing Analysis 234

Tony Zambito

MAY 4, 2021

Far too often, organizations can treat buyer insights and buyer personas as checklist items for content production. The pay-off, however, is significant given the continuous shifting of buyer goals and behaviors. . 2 – Buyer Insights Management. You can prevent this by developing a dedicated focus on Buyer Insights Management.

Buyer Personas 328

Buyer Personas Account Based Marketing ABM Organic Leads 328

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 4, 2015

Respond with content and media that fits into the new world of digital commerce. Yet, as CMOs invest and allocate more to content and digital media, the returns are not occurring as hoped. Various studies have shown buyers continue to find as much as 60-to-75% of content to be non-relevant. Understanding The Problem.

Direct Marketing 100

Direct Marketing Buyer Personas Allocation Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 27, 2018

Many customer experience efforts by B2B organizations have content marketing as a cornerstone for such initiatives. In a previous article , I mentioned that one of the most heavily produced forms of marketing advisory content has to do with mapping content to the buyer’s or customer’s journey.

B2B 165

B2B Amazon Buyer Personas Fulfillment 165

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

Content marketing arose in response. And find the barrage of irrelevant content marketing annoying. BTI buyers saw the Internet and its evolution as a way to get information. They no longer needed to call a sales representative to begin information seeking. Digital explorers know they can get information. They now seek much more.

Internet Marketing 207

Internet Marketing Fulfillment Interactive Marketing Customer Surveys 207

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 6, 2020

With the focus on activities that buyers engage in, such as what content is being accessed and how often. . Hierarchy Gets in The Way. Closely related to the above is organizational hierarchy can get in the way. Where layers of reporting prevent critical buyer insights from bubbling to the top.

Organization 183

Organization B2B Buyer Personas Fulfillment 183

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 24, 2016

For example, one shiny object has been content marketing. For some who have gone “all in” with content marketing, they may just be discovering the constricting of their marketing to such has not been fruitful. What Should Guide Marketing? This is just a hunch but it may be close to being on the mark.

Planning 100

Planning Buyer Personas Paid Search Agency Marketing & Strategy 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 22, 2017

4 – Digital Interaction Will Matter More Than Content. Much attention has been paid to content marketing and more recently customer experience in the past five years. The results have been a decline in content marketing effectiveness.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Digital Transformation Enterprise Management Account Based Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

Solving the content overload buyers currently dread through BxD. Leaders will need to embrace Buyer Interaction Design that is focused on how the seller and seller-free buying interactions are designed. Infusing digital channels and technology into their buyer interaction design.

Buy 309

Buy B2B Buyer Personas Buyer's Journey 309

Tony Zambito

MARCH 6, 2016

I recently wrote an article on the waste of content that is resulting from this assumption. Primarily from attempts to create multiple pieces of content for each perceived stage. Thus, inundating customers with non-relevant content. As opposed to a buyer’s focus on their situational scenario.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B B2B Sales 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 14, 2020

Our typical first response is to create content perhaps stacked with statistics. Helping To Convey Confidence. The challenge for B2B marketers and sellers is how to achieve collective confidence. Made more challenging because of COVID-19. Validating how our product or services does what we say it does.

Ad Building 271

Ad Building Urgency Marketing Case Studies B2B Sales 271

Tony Zambito

AUGUST 14, 2016

Applying this quantifying approach to content development spun the numbers even higher. They believed there were six stages to a buying process with the operational thinking that for each stage, each buyer role needed unique content. If you do the math, they were looking at trying to develop 450 unique pieces of content!

Buyer Personas 102

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles Profiling CMO 102

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

A recent survey by B2B Marketing, in conjunction with the UK-based agency Tomorrow People, indicated only 38% of marketers considered their content to be “very customer-centric.” Buyer personas are thought of as a tool specific only to new endeavors in content marketing, campaigns, and product launches.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 3, 2016

72% of the respondent stated they were using buyer personas for content marketing and messaging while 45% stated they were using for assessing market challenges and problems, as well as, address overall marketing strategy – an increase from 28% the previous year. As indicated by over 70% of the respondents.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Correlation Effectiveness Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 15, 2022

For instance, content produced often goes unread and unused for it fails to communicate something meaningful to buyers. When both the lack of buyer understanding and an inarticulate brand vision is out of alignment with buyers and growth strategies, this results in companies missing the mark with their buyers and customers.

Buyer Personas 147

Buyer Personas Marketing & Strategy Validation Paid Search Agency 147

Tony Zambito

MAY 23, 2017

For example, many companies tend to adopt different labeled marketing approaches each year, whether it be content marketing, customer experience, account-based marketing, or the many others that have cropped up. Meeting these challenges remain fragmented and non-cohesive as alluded to above.

B2B Marketing 227

B2B Marketing Planning Buyer Personas B2B 227

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 23, 2016

The primary course of conversation in the past few years for CMO’s and their marketing teams has centered around customer centricity, customer experience, and content marketing. We have also seen organizations struggle with how best to adapt to new market dynamics related to customer behaviors and the role of content in reaching customers.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 5, 2021

The results can often be brand storytelling and content that fails to connect and is meaningless to an audience of buyers. We learn new episodic tidbits that change our perspectives about someone or a moment in history we thought we knew everything about. In the world of brand storytelling, accomplishing a similar end is extremely difficult.

Buyer Personas 198

Buyer Personas Storytelling Brand Identity Branding 198