Two purposes for this post. One to show you a video from the Business Marketing Association’s conference currently being held in Chicago, and the other to introduce you to my buddy, Joe Pulizzi. Joe has the video posted to his site. It’s short. It’s entertaining. And it tells a story that will resonate with you.

You should register to receive Joe’s blog. Content Marketing is the only thing that’s working today for B2B, and Joe is one of the world’s top experts. As the video illustrates, it has always worked for B2B, it’s just that we didn’t call it ‘Content Marketing’.

The way it worked was a salesperson knocked on doors and built relationships over time. Eventually he or she built trust and prospects began to believe what he or she told them. Very difficult and too expensive to do today. Much more effective and much cheaper to do it online.

Complex technology sales can’t be closed online, but trust and relationships can be built that way. Then, prospects will contact you when they’re ready to talk price and Ts & Cs. You still need smart, hard working salespeople, but you can deploy them more strategically.

That’s the way it works today. You have to build the content. Relevant and useful information. Added fresh at least three times a week. A blog is a good way to do that. Case studies, podcasts, surveys, videos, whitepapers and other types of content work too.

Tags: b2b, business marketing association, joe pulizzi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 11:29 pm and is filed under business to business, content marketing, trust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.