B2B marketing’s virtuous digital circle: Spin Cycle

Let’s imagine two marketing managers responsible for creating B2B content marketing materials for a technology company; one is called Hector, the other Socrates.

They’ve both been given some good news. The head of content marketing, their boss, is retiring at the end of the quarter and wants to recommend one of her protégés as a successor, so she sets them one last content task based on an interview with the CEO.

Because the quality of their work has always been an even match, she promises the promotion to the one that works the hardest.

Hector, a man known to work like a Trojan, is thrilled. He immediately gets down to subject research, interviews the CEO and after three sleepless nights delivers an impeccably argued, indexed, edited and designed eBook to his immediate boss.

Socrates, a man rarely in a hurry, is less concerned. He returns to his desk, and after a full, uninterrupted day, of deep thought spends the next three days in peripatetic conversations with his B2B marketing colleagues. Eventually he does his research, makes his call, and, a few days later, delivers an equally substantive eBook.

So why does Hector end up with Socrates as his boss? Because the test didn’t focus on how hard the candidates worked; it focused on how hard their content worked.

B2B Content Marketing (the Socratic) Method

Traditional marketing walls have collapsed. While Hector believed his hard work could secure his promotion, Socrates realised his personal success was linked to his team performance.

Hector made an argument: Socrates made a difference.

Socrates optimized his content with keyphrases from search engine marketers; tags from the analytics junkies; guidelines from the webmaster; landing pages from the web copywriters; and, of course, strategic goals from his CEO.

He turned a few days of thinking into three months of strategic key performance indicators (KPIs) built squarely on the needs of colleagues and management. And he could report back to every one of them.

The moral of the story? It pays to make your content work harder than you do.

B2B marketing strategy – Spin Cycle™

We like to help our clients get promoted, but still have time to enjoy the sunshine, so we’ve created Velocity Spin Cycle™, the process that adds analytical steel to every creative content project.

It’s planning, optimization, creativity, promotion and measurement welded together with girders to ensure value is locked in from start to finish.

With a little bit of forethought you can transform your content into an organisational treasure. If you want to know about how to start a virtuous circle of content marketing then you know where you can find us.

It worked for Socrates but will work even harder for you.