Are You Ready to Talk to the Media?

By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Architect, Sonnhalter

We’re officially in trade show season, which means planning booths, putting together promotions, connecting with customers and preparing your staff for the show. One often overlooked aspect of trade show participation is the media.

When you exhibit at a trade show, you can trust in the quality and relevancy of the attendees as potential customers. You can also trust that the media that is most important to your ideal customer will be at the show, so make sure you prepare to talk with them as well.

I once supported a company at their biggest industry show. I’d set up meetings with media at the show and spent a lot of time in their booth. During a lull when I didn’t have anything scheduled, I decided to go eat lunch. When I returned, the sales rep in the booth handed me an editor’s card and told me he’d stopped to see you. I asked about the interaction with the editors, what had been show to him and so on, just to find out that they had given him my card and sent him on his way. Throughout the show, the booth staff was so laser focused on getting leads that every time they encountered the media, they said two word, “See her” and pointed them to me.

It’s important to treat the media personnel at a show as if they are just as important as a customer … if not more. Trade media have a huge audience of hundreds or thousands of the people who you want to reach.

Beyond trade shows, you may find yourself speaking to the media for other reasons, so it’s important to be ready.

Interaction with the media benefits both you and them. They gain depth and substance to the piece they are working on, and you and your company gain priceless publicity.

For this partnering to work though, each party needs to understand how the other works. When you are interacting with a journalist, it is important to remember certain guidelines.

Prepare – It is important to be prepared when you speak to the media. Before a scheduled interview, take some time to anticipate questions that a reporter might ask. Take some time to learn about the medium, reporter and the audience. By doing this, you can modify your responses to better fit the piece.

Think before you speak – When talking to a journalist, you want to make sure you are in control and that you have a clear idea of what your agenda is. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to say? And what don’t you want to say?

1. Don’t go off the record. If you’re not prepared to hear it, see it or read it in the article, just don’t say it.
2. Make sure you take the time to think through your answer before it is spoken, because once something is out there, there is no going back. You want to control your answers. If a reporter tries to pin you with a tough question or brings up something you don’t want to speak on, either say you have no comment or try rephrasing the question in terms that are more favorable to you. Whatever you do, don’t lie. Tell the truth, even if the truth is, “I’m not able to comment on that.”
3. Don’t ramble. Make your point and move on. Reporters think concisely so try to answer the same way.

Use layman’s terms – You don’t want to use company or industry jargon that might confuse the reader or sound too complicated. Keep it clear and concise for the best results.

Journalists work on deadline – Editorial opportunities, especially interviews, are requested by a deadline. Often times, the editor calls at the last minute without very much lead time, and you have to be able to meet that deadline. Reporters will go to the next opportunity if they don’t get a response, and a lot of the time that means they will turn to your competitors. No one wants to miss out on a valuable and highly credible opportunity, so it is important to respect an editor’s deadline.

Know your message – When speaking with a reporter, try to make sure you get in your key points. Don’t simply answer the question, but try to bridge the questions to a key point you want the reporter to know about. This can open new opportunities to you as well. A reporter might expand your addition to the piece he/she is working on or may wish to contact you further on the new points you have spoken on.

Time is of the essence – Always make sure you provide information asked of you. If you tell a reporter that you are going to send him/her more information, make sure you do.

Adhering to a few simple guidelines can result in valuable publicity and gain trust between you and the journalist that can generate future editorial opportunities.

The Most Important Customer in Building Materials

Today we have a guest post from Mark Mitchel of Whizard Strategy.

Building materials companies frequently only see the customer who is directly in front of their nose. They are laser focused on selling a builder, an architect, a facilities manager or even a homeowner.

In every one of these cases there is someone standing right behind them, that you may not see. That person is the contractor. More specifically it is the installing contractor.

Time and time again, I see building materials companies, with a great product, think they have a made a sale to their primary customer, only to lose the sales, because of a contractor.

It’s easy to assume that contractors are working for your primary customer so they so they will do what the customer wants. That is frequently not the case.

Here’s Why Contractors Resist Change

• There is a shortage of labor so any good contractor is in demand and may turn work down or charge more, if it involves something new or different.
• Contractors see new ideas and products as change and change represents risk. It usually does not represent opportunity to them.
• Contractors can be very stubborn in their resistance to change. They and maybe even their Daddy has always used the same product and installed it the same way for years. Many of them also believe that buildings and homes are not built as well as they were in the past. To them, modern day construction practices and products are not necessarily better.
• New products mean the contractor will lose money. The contractor looks at a new product as having many places where they are going to lose money, for example:

1. They aren’t sure how to estimate the project so they can underestimate it and lose money or they can over estimate it and lose the job.
2. Their installers will have to be trained and the cost of that training will fall on them.
3. Installers will take a longer time on the first few jobs, reducing the contractor’s income.
4. There is a higher likelihood of a callback on the first few jobs, once again costing the contractor.
5. Dealing with a new supplier is also time consuming, when he probably isn’t having a problem with his current supplier.
6. Fear of change, most contractors are smaller firms with fewer than 20 employees, they are frequently family business and the owner can feel responsible for the well-being of the entire family. Once again, the contractor sees change as risk
7. Don’t screw it up, the majority of contractors started as installers and not as business owners. If they have survived the first few years, something is working. They may not even know what it is that makes them successful but the thing they do not want to do is to screw with success.
8. Contractors honesty and sincerely want to do the right thing for their customers. If they don’t understand or believe in something or think it is unproven, they will let their customer know their opinion.
9. The end result of change is the same as before. The contractor feels that as soon as other contractors have invested in the change that the market will keep their profit margins at the same level as before, so there is little reason to change.

How to Not to Lose Sales Because of Contractors

The first and most important step, is not to forget or ignore them. When selling your product to your primary customer, realize the importance of the contractor. Take some of your hard to find time and reach out to the contractor to identify his concerns and work to overcome the.

Take the list of contractor concerns from above and put yourself in the contractor’s shoes. Which of these are their biggest concern and how can you work to overcome them.

One last recommendation, most companies focus on the benefits of their product which may not mean a lot to the contractor. You should also develop a sales message for the contractor about the risks of them not making the change. Make the risk of not changing bigger than the risk of not changing.

About the Author

Mark Mitchell, from Whizard Strategy, is a leading building materials sales and marketing consultant and author of Building Materials Channel Marketing. He works with building materials companies to help them overcome sales barriers.

How to Create Distributor Plans that Incent Growth [FREE TEMPLATE]

This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com

Many manufacturers treat their distributors equally. They offer everyone the same discounts, the same promotions, and the same training programs.

However—not all distributors work equally hard for your business.

In this article, we’ll look at how the right distributor plan can help you get the most benefit from your distributor relationships and drive the business objectives you want to achieve.

What Exactly is a “Distributor Plan”?

A distributor plan formalizes the key aspects of your distributor relationships, namely:

• What should the distributor be doing for you?
• What should you be doing for the distributor?
• What’s the reward for success?

How does this help? It allows you to incent the right behaviors and get everyone working toward the same common goals.

For each distributor relationship, you should have specific goals, which will in turn drive the specifics of your plan.

Let’s look at an example.

Common Goal: Rapid Growth

Now that you have a goal, begin answering the questions we mentioned above.

What should this distributor be doing for me?

To grow rapidly, you might ask that the distributor hold a certain amount of inventory at all times.

What should I be doing for this distributor?

Holding excess inventory can be risky. To compensate for this risk, you might specify higher margins for the distributor on those products.

What’s the reward for success?

Here are some options:

• Build in incentives for the distributor’s sales team to hit specific targets, offering rebates to the distributor once those targets have been reached
• Offer to co-share certain marketing expenses to help the distributor and sales teams get there
• If you prefer to directly train and certify the sales reps who represent your product line, you might encourage compliance by specifying higher discounts for distributors whose reps complete your certification

Don’t Reduce Your Spend; Instead, Optimize

Because all distributor relationships are not equally fruitful, your plan needs to direct your money and attention to those distributors that bring you more value.

It’s not necessarily about reducing your overall spend; it’s about redistributing your spend to get the most bang for your buck.

This may mean you spend less in markets that present fewer opportunities. It also allows you to increase your spend in areas with more upside, including growth markets, high margin markets, and markets with highly engaged partners.

Analyze Your Distributor Relationships With These Questions

Before you build your plan, you need to go through some exercises to understand the nature of your distributor relationships. For each distributor on your list, run through these three categories of questions.

Distributor Strengths: What are this distributor’s strengths?

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is this distributor exclusive to my brand or do they carry my competitors’ brands?
• Do they have warehouse space for inventory?
• Do they actively train their salesforce?

Support Initiatives: How well am I supporting this distributor?

Ask yourself questions like:

• What margin expectations do they have, and does my pricing support this?
• Can I offer favorable payment terms or discount structures to incent this distributor to focus on meeting our sales goals?
• Would product training help my distributors improve their expertise and selling efficiency?

Brand Strengths: What could we be doing better in relation this distributor?

Ask questions like:

• How strong is my brand in relation to other brands this distributor carries?
• How well do we market and support our products?
• Do this distributor’s customers know my brand and ask for our products by name?

Turn Your Distributor Analysis Into an Action Plan

Use a Google Form Template with the above questions saved and make a copy for each distributor relationship. Once you enter your answers into the form, Google will automatically create a spreadsheet to store your answers.

At your next pricing team meeting, use the spreadsheet as discussion prompt to create a step-by-step plan to optimize your relationship with each distributor.

To save you time, we’ve created a sample template you can use to get started. Click here to download our free Distributor Plan Template.

You can copy this template to your Google account and use it to store your answers in a spreadsheet.

Get Better Insight Into Your Distributor Relationships with Strong Data

You need to be able to assess the markets you’re winning, the ones you’re not, and the overall health of your financial relationship with your distributors.

To that end, your analysis should include metrics not only on distributor performance, but on market, customer and product segment performance as well.

Look at all of the factors that can impact profitability, including:

• Price (both wholesale and retail)
• Terms
• Rates
• Warranties

Once you’ve armed yourself with the right insights, you can make smart, strategic decisions about your relationships moving forward.

Your clearly defined distributor plan allows you to focus both your time and resources where they can serve you best: on the distributors who are doing more for your business.

By helping your distributors succeed, everyone wins.

The right analytic partner can help you assemble the data you need for the insights that will drive your distributor plan. To find out how INSIGHT2PROFIT can help you unleash the power in your numbers, download this report.

Call Reports & Sales People…the Reality!

Today we have a guest post from Russ Hill, Founder and CEO of Ultimate Lead Systems.

OK, let’s get real about sales people for a minute. Sales people want to make sales calls. They want to make calls on qualified leads and on profitable customers who can generate sales and compensation. They are like gunslingers interested in the “quick kill.” You hire them to sell and that’s where you want them to spend their time.

But they are also given business plans and projections to write and update. They also have prospecting and travel to schedule.  And they are frequently required to spend time on software training…you know the CRM program, Excel, quote building software, the ERP system and the other third-party programs and resources that are pushed out to them, so they can be “more productive.”

The days of sales people making sales calls and writing up “simple” call reports (primarily for their own benefit) are long gone. Besides making calls, today’s sales people need to master and manage a variety of tasks and complex software. The need for the fundamental call report stills exists and management would be wise to keep that in mind. That means that one of the most important things management can do to help their sales people be more productive is to reduce the sales person’s administrative and non-sales related tasks.

Meaningful Call Reports

Sales people need simple programs to keep track of their clients and calls. That is where CRM programs are supposed to help. But not all CRM programs are easy to use. With over 25 years of sales and CRM consulting experience with hundred of companies large and small, a few of things regarding sales people and call reports have proven to be true:

1. Sales people hate paperwork and equivalent computer work (Non sales related work)
2. They need and want simple call reports for tracking their sales calls that include:
   a. Who they called on
   b. When they called
   c. What they discussed
   d. Next steps.

Simple!  Anything else management might obtain is a bonus.

Sure, it is helpful if a sales person can see other communications a customer has been having with other in the company, and the status of orders. But a sales person is primarily concerned with knowing exactly where he stands with a given prospect or customer, what he or she last said or did, and what needs to be done next. And the faster and simpler means a sales person has to capture and track this information the happier he or she will be.

Today’s CRM programs are more complicated than ever before. Of course, they don’t need to be and there are ways to zero in on the truly important functions that can help make a sales persons’ job simpler and more productive. Managing contacts and account information is important. But the B2B sales person’s day typically revolves around call planning based on previous call reports, new sales calls and more call reports. How easy is it for your sales team to capture and track the information most important to them? Can it be improved? Simplified? Perhaps it is time to ask them, “How is our program for managing calls working? Not for us… but for you?”

Russ Hill is the founder and President of Ultimate Lead Systems, Inc., a company specializing in sales lead management, CRM and support services. See the post as it originally appeared.

3 Tips on Maintaining Good Relationships with Contractors

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

The cost of acquiring a new customer can be up to five times greater than keeping an existing one.

Unless you have a unique product that no one else has, you have to compete with someone for the business, and part of that process is building good customer relationships.

Contractors, for the most part, are loyal folks as long as your product delivers on its promises and you don’t treat them like dirt. Bottom line is, if you treat them right, they’ll be customers for life. 

Not only will they continue to be a customer, but they will become an advocate for your brand. These guys talk to each other and believe me, if your product doesn’t deliver on its promises, word will spread fast.

Here are three ways to keep relationships with professional tradesmen strong:

1. Stay in touch. E-mail is probably the best and most cost-effective way to this. Make them feel important, even a quick e-mail to say thanks for the business or a follow-up note from customer service after they have helped out with a problem will pay off long term.

• A call from their local sales rep to say hi with no particular sales pitch may lead to opportunities if they (your sales guys) just listen.
• Make them feel like they’re special by giving them a first look at new products as they are being developed.
• They also could be the ideal source for field testing prior to launch. Also think about doing a webinar for customers only on a new product or application.

2. Solicit feedback. You have the perfect audience of people who know and use your product. I haven’t met a contractor yet that doesn’t have an opinion he wants to share. There are several low-cost survey and poll services that you should check out:

• www.zoomerang.com
• www.surveymonkey.com
• www.polldaddy.com
• www.questionpro.com

What better venue to ask for feedback on a new product or product enhancements. Make them feel like they’re part of the team.

3. Provide valuable resources. These contractors are up to their eyeballs, so if you’re going to give them something, make sure there’s some meat on the bone. Good vehicles to use would be to have pertinent information on your website like case studies and white papers.

If you feel really bold, set up industry forums on your site and let the contractors come and talk to each other. You’ll find that there will be strong advocates that arise out of such forums that will be your best advertising to the group.

I’ve always been a big believer in relationship selling. After all, we usually buy stuff from people we know, like and trust. Agree? So why not take that to another step in the selling process by using the same principles to your marketing efforts?

This is especially true now that content and content marketing is such a big part of everyone’s overall strategy.

We all have heard the saying that Content is King and Community is its Kingdom, but what brings them together? It’s building solid relationships with Contractors and Tradesmen using relationship marketing.

We need to know and understand what our target wants and needs. They want solutions, not necessarily a sales pitch. You need to make yourself available in conversations with contractors.

We should collaborate with others that share the same passion. For an example, say your target is professional plumbers. You want to focus on products that will help them do their install better. You’re not interested (nor capable) in helping them market their plumbing business locally.

Manufacturers: When’s the last time you looked at your Value Proposition?

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

Have you given contractors clarity and conviction as to who you are? Sometimes manufacturers focus all their efforts on products and not enough time on developing their value proposition. Others take for granted that everyone knows who we are and what we do.

I recently read an article by James O’Gara from On Message about creating clarity and conviction in the minds of your customers that got me thinking about a possible disconnect on messaging through the buying process. James points out that the message has to be consistent before, during and after the sale. Customers or potential customers can’t have one message when they are investigating a solution, only to find out once they start the buying process, the culture and messaging has changed.

Your story needs to capture not only your purpose and vision but your positioning statement, the value you deliver and what sets you apart from the competition. The bottom line is, your story can’t change from one phase to another. You need to be consistent and authentic!

According to Kapost, a content management company, “75 percent of the B-to-B buying process takes place online and more than 60 percent of decision makers start the buying process with informal research using search engines and blogs to look for products or solutions.” If you get them to take the next step and your messaging isn’t consistent, you risk losing the sale.

Now for most manufacturers who sell to contractors, you’re not looking for a one-time sale, so how you do in the first two portions might dictate future additional sales. According to New Business Strategies,“60 percent of fortune 500 companies say their purchase decision is based on what the buyer believes their post-purchase experience is like.”

So when was the last time you took a look at messaging throughout your buying process? 

Improve Your Communication with Calls to Action

By Rachel Kerstetter, PR Architect, Sonnhalter

When you think about a Call to Action (CTA), what comes to mind? Perhaps a print or banner ad that says “Click Here”? Or a TV commercial urging you to “Call Now”?

CTAs are often thought of only in relation to sales messages. But incorporating CTAs in each aspect of communication can significantly improve your results. This goes for all external communication, but also for internal and interpersonal communication.

For example, think about the last email you sent (to a colleague, customer, friend, whomever). Did you clearly communicate the response you hoped for or did you just send a message that might leave them wondering how to respond? Even adding a simple, “Let me know your thoughts” to a message can signal that person to act and engage with your communication.

Each piece of communication you use could benefit from a call to action; once you incorporate CTAs into your messages, you’ll likely see better results.

Beyond advertisements or commercials, add CTAs to:

• E-blasts
• Emails
• Voicemail messages
• Videos
• Presentations
• Press releases
• Blog posts

Even some conversations can benefit from a call to action.

At the end of the day, all communication has a desired response. The easiest way to get the response is to simply ask for it!

Do you incorporate a call to action in your communications?

Manufacturers: Is Social Media Working for you in Reaching Contractors?

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

Social media has been around long enough that by now you should have an idea of whether or not it’s working for you. Is it? Do you really know? Do you really care?

I guess the first question we should ask ourselves is why are we doing it? Hopefully it’s not because everyone else is. The next question would be which of the many social media options out there are you focusing on?

Let’s explore the first question – Why are you doing it?

• Are you really sold on it?
• How much of your promotional budget is set aside for social?
• Do you have a written strategy for social?
• Do you have some way of defining and measuring success?

If you’re really sold on it, you’d have a written plan and a dedicated person responsible for its implementation and success.

How about the second question – What social media tools are you using?

• Is Facebook and Twitter the right way to connect to your audience?
• Are the photo sharing apps making sense for you?
• What type of YouTube presence do you have?
• Are you utilizing SlideShare?
• Are you participating in appropriate LinkedIn groups?
• Have you started a blog?

I have found that Facebook  and Twitter have little impact on reaching contractors. The best tools for results, in my opinion, are blogs, YouTube, SlideShare and LinkedIn. Here are some interesting factoids:

• 80% of all B-to-B social media sales come from LinkedIn.
• SlideShare receives 500% more traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.
• Google+ gets an average of 1.2 billion visits per month, compared to 800,000 for Facebook.

I’d be curious to find out from you what social programs are working for you.

Here are some links to posts that you may find interesting regarding social media:

SlideShare is probably the most overlooked social media tool to reach contractors

Social Media: does it affect marketing to the professional tradesman?

Why Manufacturers should personalize content for the professional tradesman.

Do you have a company LinkedIn page? You should.

How to use content to reach Contractors

 

Sustainable Pricing Starts with Your Sales Force

This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com

Achieving significant pricing gains can feel like a long, hard-fought battle. This makes it all the more satisfying when the numbers start to roll in, validating your efforts and proving without a doubt that profitability is attainable.

The thought of losing those gains may keep you up at night. What safeguards can you put in place to protect the gains you’ve achieved and prevent your company from sliding back into past poor pricing habits?

It all starts with building a confident sales force.

1. Handling Customer Pushback

No one wants to pay higher prices, ever. If you recently increased prices or are planning to do so, at least some segment of customers won’t be happy with the change. Know that they will push back. After all, that’s what their purchasing staff gets paid to do. And that’s OK.

Just because they push back doesn’t mean you have to cave in.

A well-trained sales force will be able to hold their ground, resist the pushback and effectively explain to the customer exactly why the price change is necessary and unavoidable.

However, if your sales force is not well-trained—if they are not fully informed about the price change and equipped to discuss it—you’ll likely have some issues on your hands.

2. Communicating Value

Strong companies price according to value. They’re not worried about losing business to the competition because they know they deliver far more value than the competition could ever hope for.

A sales force that is confident in your value proposition can communicate this value effectively. But they need your help to find this confidence. Your sales team needs to be equipped for these conversations, both with hard numbers and high-level messaging.

Data. Quantify your value claims. Your proof might include value calculators, quality metrics, on-time delivery rates, gains on a customer satisfaction index or any host of other value benchmarks.

Message. Document exactly how to articulate the value your company provides so your salespeople know exactly how to make the case for higher prices.

If your sales force believes in your value proposition, and if they are trained to sell a price increase in a clear and thoughtful way, they will be able to ask for and receive the right price—and they’ll be able to stand firm when asked for a concession.

3. The Flip Side of Confidence

Of course, all of this implies that your company does, in fact, deliver value. It’s critical that your quality, service and overarching customer experience be excellent. When this happens, it’s only natural to expect to be paid for it.

But if your company struggles with value—if you’ve had quality or service issues in the past—your salespeople will have doubts.

And if they have doubts, they’ll be more likely to act out of fear when a customer pushes back. They’ll be too afraid to stand their ground on the price increase because they’ll be afraid to lose the business.

If this is the case, it’s time to tackle the issue before your profitability goes out the window.

4. Ongoing Commitment to Training

Ultimately, you’ll find that investing in the confidence of your sales team is one of the smartest decisions you can make. But this is not a one-time event.

Price negotiations happen every time a sales representative talks with a customer, whether or not you or they realize it.

Therefore, you must have ongoing training.

To engage effectively in these continual price conversations, your sales force needs constant reinforcement on the value your company delivers. They need continual updates on the data that support your claims. And they need the freshest messaging and communication materials that will equip them to make the strongest case for a price increase.

If your company does not change prices frequently, the need for this ongoing training becomes even more imperative.

5. Measuring Results and Identifying Opportunities

But slips will happen even in the best-trained companies. Putting a process in place for tracking key metrics can serve as an early warning system to identify potential price leak threats.

As you analyze your price and profitability KPIs, drill down into your data and look for outliers.

It can help to segment the metrics that you track:

• By salesperson
• By territory
• By product line
• By product manager

This may help you understand what is really happening out in the field. You may find, for example, that more concessions are taking place in the Northeast relative to the rest of the country.

Armed with this information, you can look more closely at what is going on in that region. Is there a competitive reason there that warrants the concessions? For instance, has a competitor introduced a new product line that is undercutting yours?

Or is the problem internal? Is the product manager doing a good job communicating value to the sales team? Is this an opportunity to provide the sales team with additional training and support?

Not all price concessions are bad, but all blind price concessions certainly are. Once you start tracking pricing metrics at the appropriate level, you can begin to make accurate judgments about where price concessions are warranted and where they’re not to determine sustainable pricing.

6. The Value of a Pricing Partner

Analytics is one area where the right pricing partner can pay dividends. By helping you establish a system to appropriately and accurately measure price and profitability, you gain a truly granular view of your pricing strategy.

As a result, you can confidently make the right decisions on how to manage prices—deciding, for example, to raise them by 5 percent in Region A, 3 percent in Region B, and hold prices steady in Region C.

You’ll also be able to track against that plan. This allows you to identify gaps and the cause behind the gap so that you can take steps to remedy the gap if needed.

As with all things in business, what gets measured gets improved. If you turn pricing into your most rewarding profit lever, you need the right system in place to implement, communicate and track price changes.

Anything less than that almost guarantees your price gains will be temporary at best.

Content Marketing Helps Drive Business Results

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

I think we all can agree that content marketing is playing a vital role in everyone’s overall marketing plan. Everyone wants lead generation and engagement, and to get both, you have to give them good content!

In a September 2015 study by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, 76% of B2B marketers in North America said they expect to create more content in 2016 than they did in 2015.

Contractors and professional tradesman often don’t have time to read the latest trade publication or look at the magazines’ website on a regular basis and might miss your message. Chances are, unless you only make one product, their interest at any given time may be on another product.

When they do go looking for things, the first place most go to is the internet, and the chances are that they are looking for a solution just as much as they are looking for a specific product. That’s why search is so important in the big scheme of things, and what makes you go up in search – good meaningful content!

And here’s what they are looking for:

The challenge is how do you develop good content? The recognition of these difficulties is leading many B2B marketers to focus on outsourcing some of their work to specialists. Nearly three-quarters of B2B marketers in Ascend2’s survey either outsourced all of their content marketing work or used a combination of outsourcing and in-house resources.

You can certainly look for freelancers to fill the gap or you could look to an obvious source – your PR or marketing firm. They are familiar with your overall goals, your voice and what you do. The key is quality content, not quantity, and your outside professionals can help you keep the bar high.