One of our favorite content marketing firms is Velocity Partners in London, creators of a 42 page “rant” called the B2B Marketing Manifesto.

Doug Kessler, an American living over there, recently participated in a webinar with Bob Apollo, Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners and John Sweeney of DemandGen in which he shared lessons learned from marketing that content.

I’d like to share Doug’s lessons with our fans.

First Doug and his team combined great content with marketing automation (Marketo). Having both is critical, because the great content is bait and marketing automation becomes the way of measuring and monitoring what’s happening.

Now that the project is finished, Doug was able to share 12 key marketing-takeaways:

  1. Target just one persona
    Don’t try to be all things to all people. Be very specific.
  2. Give influencers a preview
    Reach out to thought leaders with an earlier release of the content. Get their input and support. (They support, advise and promote it.) Doug said this was critical. He also said it is the step most businesses miss.
  3. Create spin-offs
    The B2B Marketing Manifesto became a Playbook, blog posts, etc. Take one piece of content and re-imagine it. Include “shameless plugs” and share on Docstoc, Scribd, Slideshare, YouTube, Linkedin, and Blogs.
  4. Guest blog
    Writing articles for other blogs generates tons of good things, like traffic, backlinks Googlejuice. (This is why Find New Customers also writes for SandHill.com, PostclickMarketingBlog, CustomerCollective, blogs for Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot, etc.)
  5. Test, test, test
    Should you have a form or not? Should you use Auto Direct Messages in Twitter? Should emails be text or HTML? Don’t guess! Do an A/B test.
  6. Set up analytics first
    Think it through before you start. Create trackable tagged URL’s. Think of what you will want to track so you can include it in Google Analytics.
  7. Include the search keyphrase in the title
    They could have called it the Content Marketing Manifesto, but one of the keyphrases they wanted to use was “B2B Marketing,” so it became the B2B Marketing Manifesto.
  8. Set targets before you begin
    Document all the things you want to measure before you begin. #downloads, conversion rates, inbound links created, all the way to prospect meetings set. If you don’t have firm goal, just make an educated guess.
  9. Add a survey question to your form
    By adding “The hardest part of B2B Marketing is….” they were shocked at the number of people who answered it.
  10. Get personal
    They make a point of responding personally to every comment and contact. They found that people appreciated the personal touch and responded in kind.
  11. Capture and share learnings
    As you move through the process, you will learn a lot. Write things down and discuss them. Writing them down is very important.
  12. Put in your whole head and heart
    It works best if you are truly committed and believe in what you are doing. Velocity believed in their content. You should too.