Rachel Balik

Based in San Francisco, Demandbase is a B2B marketing technology company focused on advertising and is a leader in B2B  target account marketing. At Demandbase, Rachel Balik manages the content marketing program and leverages a decade of experience in journalism, public relations and B2B technology to create and deliver meaningful and relevant content to prospects and customers. Rachel is a popular author and her articles have been published by MarketingLand.com, Forbes, VentureBeat, Slate and many others. You can follow her on twitter @wickedrb

Press play below and listen Rachel drop some content marketing wisdom right on top of your head:

The show sheet for today’s podcast is available at: http://www.triblio.com/blog/demand-base-podcast

Beginning of Transcript

Rachel Balik: Sure. I’m Rachel Balik. I’m Senior Manager of Content Marketing here at DemandBase. We have a great marketing team. So we’re a B to B marketing cloud, which means we really believe in marketing and it’s very exciting to work on that team. I get to work on a demand gen campaign. I get to work with our communications people and I work with products marketing to get the message out about everything that we’re doing. An exciting time to be a B to B marketer I think.

Jeff Zelaya: Yes. I know you’ve been in the field for a while and some people are just starting to get a hang of this whole content marketing thing. But why do you think it’s important? Why do businesses need to focus on content marketing?

Rachel Balik: Well, so I think most of us in B to B know that buying habits have changed, right? So now with digital content and just the digital era in general, as much as 67 to 90 percent of the buying cycle is taking place online. So what that means is that old model where we knew who we were talking to and salespeople to get involved right away has kind of disappeared. That means our buyers and our prospects are doing a lot of research on us online, when we don’t really know about it.

So if we don’t provide them with material they’re looking for in advance, the likelihood is they will find it from one of our competitors. So I think that content is really – in a sense, I consider it a virtual salesperson for that long B to B buying cycle when people are doing research.

Jeff Zelaya: So you want to be visible. You want to make sure people have access to this information because chances are they’re going to consume a lot of that on their own. If your content is not out there and the competitor’s is, then they’re more likely to work with a competitor than they are with you. Great. I have this imaginary scenario for you Rachel. You’re a content marketer, the head of content marketing for a brand new startup out of Silicon Valley. It’s your first day today. Where do you start?

Rachel Balik: I think that there are a few things that happened and not necessarily from a tactical standpoint, from an information gathering standpoint. I want to talk to the top stakeholders at the company and let’s imagine this company is certainly going to have a CEO. But they probably have someone who’s doing private or technology. They may have someone who’s doing the other areas of marketing. I certainly want to talk to the salespeople. I really want to hear from all those people, not only what they think is the most significant thing that the company is doing and their description of the products. But also I want to hear what they’re hearing from customers, from prospects, from the market, right? So as a content marketing, my goal is to – I want to sort of blog post my site. Get on the friend zone with our customers and our prospects. So how do I make friends with this audience and how do I create content that supports an appealing brand as we start to educate the market? Not right about our products right away but about who we are and what the space is.

Jeff Zelaya: Yeah, that’s a great place to start Rachel. I think most of the best content marketers that I’ve see, one of the characteristic that they share in common is that they’re really good listeners. By listening, you will learn a lot and then are able to provide information that makes sense for that target audience. What are some other characteristics of top content marketers in your opinion?

Rachel Balik: I don’t know if this is a specific characteristic, but I think one thing is interesting about – content marketing is you will hear, “We need to do a tweet and we need to have a social media strategy. We need to have a blog and we need to have a webinar,†and people are throwing out these names of things and I think that really the characteristics of content marketers are pulling yourself out of that tactical arena and being really strategic.

So I love talking to people and saying, “OK. What is the business goal? Who is the audience? After we do this piece of content, what will have changed?†and then being able to come back and saying, “You know what? I don’t think we need a blog. We need a video,†or “I don’t think we need an info graphic. We need a tweet,†or “Hey, this is so much bigger than one tweet. Let’s do a whole blog series,†or “This is so much bigger than us. Let’s actually start interviewing our customers and get them involved.â€Â So being able to assess not necessarily what we’re putting out or the piece of content, but really how the message and the brand identity fits into the overall strategy.

Jeff Zelaya: Great advice. Too many content marketers treat content marketing like checkers. It’s a game of chess. Follow Rachel’s advice. Be strategic. Have a purpose in mind. Analyze your data and figure out what your next move will be of your content, so some great insight from you Rachel. You have tons of it. I’ve been following you now, @WickedRB, and you’re just full of awesome tidbits of information and you write for some of the leading publications in our field and I’m very curious. How do you stay ahead of the content marketing curve? This is a fast moving industry but you seem to manage, knowing kind of what’s upcoming. I’m very curious on how you do that.

Rachel Balik: I think it’s looking beyond just content marketing, right? We’ve got to be thinking out of the box. So I do – I have a circle of friends that are content marketers and I always catch up with them and see what they’re doing, events like Content Marketing World and other events. Not even just geared to content marketers but geared to B to B marketing. I like to go there, hear about what everyone is doing. Obviously read stuff that’s relevant on the web, but also making sure that I don’t get too stuck in my own field, so talking to people who are more in the technology area.

Talking to like I said the sales team is really important and learning about what products and strategies are out there, because it’s like I said, you don’t want to be in that box of I just got a [0:06:10] [Inaudible] blog post. You really want to say, “I have a message and I will do whatever it takes to get it to the right people,†and sometimes that means learning about all the other great technology that’s evolving in the Bay Area and obviously all over the world.

Jeff Zelaya: Listen to Rachel. If you’re stuck behind a computer all day, that’s not going to help you become a topnotch content marketer. Get behind from your computer. Go to these events. Meet people. Shake hands. Kiss babies. Build your network and that will add value to your content marketing and help to keep you informed of how the industry is changing. So that’s the advice that I have to follow. I have to make sure to do that better as well. So thank you for that Rachel.

I know DemandBase is producing great content on this topic and so are you personally. I see a lot of talk about this trend from many of the leaders in this industry and in our space. Content personalization, it’s a very hot topic recently. How does a company even get started doing something like that?

Rachel Balik: So I would give the prologue that content personalization is data and measurement, right? I think a lot of people are trying to do this and they’re taking guesses at who they need to personalize for or who might be on their website now and there’s a lot of opinions, not that there’s anything wrong with opinions, about what the content should say or what types you should have.

I mean obviously data-driven is a huge topic in the days. But especially in content personalization, it’s important because just being perfectly frank, you’re not going to do everything all at once. So I think data is the prologue and I say that the first step really is prioritization. You know, depending on how big your team is, you may say this quarter, we really need to make a push against all of our financial services prospects. So we will start our personalization by just creating personalization content and personalized content for them.

Then as we start to get a handle there, here’s how we’re going to roll out in Q2, Q3, Q4. So I think the data informs the message and the strategy and then the next step is prioritization. I like to focus on prioritization first because I think – as cliché as it sounds, personalization feels like an overwhelming topic for a lot of people. It’s not overwhelming. It’s extremely manageable once you set out your priorities. Then from there, you can start thinking about, “OK. Who do I talk to, to get the right insight on this segment? How can I support with content?â€

Jeff Zelaya: So for anyone that’s listening and is thinking about venturing into content personalization, remember data comes first. Without data, content personalization is not going to be effective. Even when you begin down the path of personalizing content, pick your priorities. Make sure that you focus on the right areas first and if you do that effectively, then you can unroll it to other parts of your marketing programs. You take a very overwhelming or – where people think of as an overwhelming venture and you can make it very easy to manage if you take the right steps.

I know some of our marketers, they’re doing a lot of content curation these days and they’re trying to figure out, “Who are the thought leaders? Let’s share what they’re writing and share what they’re sharing.†How do you execute on content curation for yourself and what are your tips for organizations that might be looking into doing some of this curation stuff?

Rachel Balik: I think it’s narrowing down but not getting too narrow. So you don’t to just focus on one specific thing just related to your products. But also you really want to say, “What is our company message and what would we like to be a thought leader in?â€Â So it’s not just all marketing, right? I mean I do read a lot of stuff on all marketing. But from a content curation perspective and when I share out with people who are looking to us, it’s going to be something specific that supports our message.

But also being open enough to say, “Yeah, we’re having an intelligent conversation.†There are tons of companies out there doing it and they don’t need you just regurgitating stuff. They want to see – people reading your content want to see an intelligent pattern emerging from your content curation.

Jeff Zelaya: So provide that pattern. Provide that context and your curation will excel and stand out from just being one of those parrot accounts that is just retweeting and sharing other content without really giving it much thought. So have a strategy for curation and you will get better results as Rachel mentioned. How important is search engine optimization for your content marketing strategy Rachel? Is it something that you put a primary focus on? Do you prioritize SEO as you’re writing your articles in your content marketing?

Rachel Balik: I think if you’ve established your target audience right and you’re doing your SEO right, there should be an overlap there. So I’ve worked with companies where I say, “Show me the SEO list and I will assess if these are the most important words. Let’s measure these against our content strategy. And is our content strategy including topics that overlap with our most important work?†because it should.

Not necessarily all that really long tail stuff or being phrased exactly the right way. But if we have a list of – SEO is – you know, as we get into the semantic web, it’s really just what are you trying to be known for and your content should support the message of what you’re trying to be known for.

So I wouldn’t say that for me it’s a primary focus when it comes to writing titles. I believe in quality writing above all. But we do include SEO in our metadata and try to map out the overall goal of our website to the content that we’re putting out there.

Jeff Zelaya: That’s a great way to look at it. Quality writing comes first. SEO is equally important but don’t force it. You want to make sure that it complements your writing. If you pick the right target audience, and have some really awesome content, then it should work to your advantage. I know DemandBase is a huge innovator in the content marketing realm, doing some really forward-thinking stuff. What are some other tech companies that you would consider when it comes to content marketing?

Rachel Balik: Well, I think it’s interesting. I think that there are two ways to look at innovative content marketing especially when it comes to B to B. New Relic comes up a lot. They just have really entertaining, great content. They’ve had a huge amount of success with promoted tweets and paid search and things like that.

I think that there’s another angle to take which is not only creating entertaining content. But actually making sure that content gets to the right person. So DocuSign has really done an outstanding job of actually building a website that makes sure that the right content gets to the right audience among their business prospects. I think that’s – when I’m thinking about innovation especially [0:13:06] [Indiscernible] makes me so sad and I talk about it all the time. But I think 70 percent of content doesn’t get read.

So to me, you can be as innovative with great ideas and really cool content as you want to be. If nobody reads it, it doesn’t really matter. So to me the most exciting innovation is happening with companies that are figuring out how to deliver their content to the right people. So DocuSign is an example of that. Brocade [Phonetic] is doing that. Concur has done a great job of breaking out content for their different business segments. It’s going to be something that really continues to grow and continues to be innovative in different ways.

I think that advertising as a tool for promoting content is going to continue to grow. There are companies. Well, DemandBase is doing it. Bizo was doing it. Really thinking about how do you get advertising to the right person at the right time. I mean we segment differently but really using advertising throughout the entire life cycle I think will be a really meaningful way to use content to actually get pipeline opportunities and closed deals. So I think that will be interesting.

End of Transcript

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