Over the weekend, I received an email from a reader of my book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, sharing his success with contagious content. With his permission (he requested anonymity) I'd like to share with you what he discovered.
I read your book and am beginning to implement your strategies. We are a startup software company in silicon valley. For the last 6 months we have issued press releases and product information — all company directed.
When we issued these materials we would post on LinkedIn updates and to discussions in relevant groups. We would send the info to a few key bloggers. And, we would also email to our internal mailing list a blast with the info. Typically – these standalone blasts would generate about 60 hits on our website. And, that was it.
I read your book. Built a blog to have a publishing platform. And, created some contagious content. Regarding distribution – I did everything exactly as I did before as a test to see if we got a different reaction.
First time out — we got incredible results. In the first 4 days of the release the story got read over 310 times — 5x times the rate of the company concentric material.
And, then the interesting part. Two firms we have been selling to for over 4 months and it has gotten down to checking in every 3-4 weeks for a status to see if they are ready to go forward [no action] …. called us within two days of getting the information. We closed one deal and the second one is checking references.
Thank you for the book. We are aggressively building out more content to create a lead nurturing campaign next. You have changed our company!
As an author and content marketer, I'll remember this email forever. But, the one thing I'd like to say is that the reader gave me way too much credit.
I didn't change his company, he did. He took the ideas and put them into practice. I'm so darned happy about his results, it makes me smile every time I think about them! And I'm especially grateful that he chose to share the story with me.
The one thing I'd like to point out is that the reader had a pretty good process established. He was already publishing his content where his prospects would find it. By only changing the content—not the process—he gained tangible proof that content focused on his prospects is what made the difference.
Are you up to the challenge?
Very cool! For those of us who are new to your method would you mind posting a link to some contagious content as an example? I do understand that the email author requested being anonymous but perhaps you can think of another example to link to?
Thank you
Akin
Hi Akin,
Please forgive how long it’s taken me to answer. My schedule is nuts.
The easiest way to show you an example of Contagious Content is to point to a company that does a ton of it. HubSpot.
HubSpot is passionate about providing helpful, entertaining and educational content to their audience, regardless of whether or not they are customers.
They have the blog, are active on Twitter and Facebook, present HubSpot TV, sponsor a group on LinkedIn, etc. They are constantly creating and publishing content designed to teach and add value to marketers in their quest to master online and inbound marketing. [Not to mention that they created and own the term Inbound Marketing and their execs actually wrote a book by the same title.]
The result for them is that their sales reps spend all their time working inbound calls from prospects inquiring about becoming customers. If I recall correctly, many of their sales reps are consistently achieving at least 20% above quota. How many companies can say that? And, it’s due not only to a great product, but to their contagious content.
Does that help?
Ardath