Do you have content that answers your audience’s questions and provides value along every stage of the sales funnel? Some of the most influential pieces of content include proof of ROI value, thought leadership, customer stories, and case studies.

Today’s guest is LaRissa Hendricks, product marketing copywriter at CoSchedule. She describes how to create relevant and compelling customer case studies. 

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• What are case studies? Success stories about how customers use product or service to reach specific outcome
• Goal of Case Studies: Share how and what can be achieved with CoSchedule   
• Possible Outcomes: CoSchedule helps marketers complete more projects, meet deadlines, and prove value to stakeholders
• Gartner ranks case studies as third most-valued marketing asset for buyers
• Case studies prove most effective at start of sales funnel by covering customer challenges and outcomes achieved to engage and establish trust 
• Pitfalls to Avoid: Focus on customers and outcomes, not product and features
• Target Audience: Anybody with an interest in CoSchedule, including specific industries, various team sizes, and common customer issues 
• Short- or long-form structure used for case studies depends on sales funnel stage, challenges, outcomes, and key data points
• Customer Story Matrix: Who, what, when, where, and why of sales enablement content case studies to use for specific situations
• When is enough, enough when it comes to case studies? Depends on customers and different factors 

Links:

• Gartner
• CoSchedule Customer Stories

Nobody enjoys tedious, manual busywork. Precious work time is wasted, instead of spent on completing projects. Makeshift marketing isn’t fun. It’s unproductive and creates inefficiencies due to a disconnected marketing stack.

Today’s guest is Jared Rhue, head of business-to-business (B2B) marketing at rewardStyle. Jared describes his strategy of combining a core plan with agile methodologies to improve team collaboration and communication.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• rewardStyle: Influencer marketing pioneer started from passion for fashion
• rewardStyle’s revenue model drives more than $1.2 billion annually in retail sales
• Global Community: More than 250 team members; 50,000 top-tier influencers, and 5,000 retail partners
• Strategy, Plan, and Review: Jared’s average day at rewardStyle
• Strategy Steps to Success: Document marketing plan, strategy, and methods
• Marketers must be agile for ability to ask and listen to audience challenges
• Short Message Service (SMS): Relevant channel for B2B marketing in the future
• rewardStyle’s core plan consists of positioning, value proposition, and priorities 
• Secret to Team Success: Eliminate fire drills/urgent projects created by makeshift marketing chaos
• Questions to prioritize projects: 
• • Does it support quarterly/yearly Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals?
  • Does it drive annual revenue?
  • Are there dedicated deadlines?
  • What’s the scope of work, and which team members will it impact? 
  • Which projects will need to be deprioritized?
• Stay on Track with Tasks: Implement marketing organizational management platform and agile methodology  

Links: 

• rewardStyle
• Gartner
• CoSchedule Academy
• How to Get Started With Agile Marketing and Do Better Work

Inbound marketing is one component of content marketing that is often misunderstood. Relevant, compelling, and interesting blog posts, Webinars, and other content can attract and educate prospective and existing customers. What best practices should you use to align team of teams creating content marketing?

Today’s guest is Valaer Goldsworthy, director of content marketing at EZ Texting. Valaer describes how teams collaborate with business units outside of marketing to understand use cases of EZ Texting’s products and services. 

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• EZ Texting: #1 mobile marketing platform for business that focuses on messaging and voice solutions
• Team of Teams: Identify, create, and review content needs
• Rapid Growth: Doubled in size, retained long-term staff, and hired new voices 
• Customer Base: EZ Texting is easy to use; doesn’t require tech-savvy marketers 
• Lifetime-value customers inspire content for prospects in various verticals
• Is text messaging safe? 90% of people believe so; EZ Texting tries to maintain that protection in all its content, collateral, voice, and point of view
• Everything to Everyone: Trust and consumer confidence are critically important
• Customer Success Team: Shares constant customer roadblocks creating churn
• Customer Marketing: EZ Texting segments content into “Hero,” “Hub,” and “Help” content to create awareness and ongoing education
• CoSchedule Transition: EZ Texting coordinates and collaborates content creation for campaigns to offer transparency and avoid silos 
• Change Management: Lessons learned via objectives and key results (OKRs) 

Links:

• EZ Texting
• CTIA