Why you still need content syndication in your marketing mix

Content syndication is a marketing multitool

Filling the need for leads

At any given moment, only 5% of B2B buyers are in-market and ready to buy your product, according to research by LinkedIn and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. That means marketers need to be making connections with potential customers long before they’re ready to buy — when they’re looking for information and doing general research about a problem they need to solve.

Content syndication can help you reach that all-important 95% by surfacing your content while customers are conducting their research. It’s also a versatile tactic that can support efforts throughout the marketing lifecycle. This guide explores why you should still use content syndication in your marketing efforts and provides guidance on selecting vendors.

What is content syndication?

Content syndication is republishing a piece of content in relevant industry media beyond your company’s own website or blog. Syndicating your content allows it to reach audiences you would not otherwise have access to. Most businesses dedicate 25% or more of their marketing budgets to developing content; content syndication helps you get the most out of that investment.

How content syndication can help your business:

  • Predictable pipeline: Content syndication provides a reliable pipeline of leads matching your ideal customer profile (ICP) at target accounts, at a pre-set cost per lead, so you can count on meeting your quarterly lead goals.
  • Increased visibility: 68% of B2B buyers start gathering information via search engines and portals. Placing your content on more and higher-traffic sites makes it more likely to come up in searches.
  • Credibility: Having your content featured on well-respected websites can raise your brand’s profile as an authoritative source. Redefine content marketing. Content can no longer only support your top-of-funnel needs. You need to create content to support the entire customer lifecycle: acquisition, retention, and expansion.

Benefits: Syndicating your content provides a reliable stream of leads matching your ICP.

88%

of business buyers say online content has played a major or moderate role in their vendor selections
CMO Council

Optimize content for buyers’ research process

Understanding the B2B buyer’s journey

B2B buyers go through a long decision-making process before making purchases. The early stages of the buyer’s journey offer the best opportunities for the marketer to develop a connection that can lead to acquiring them as a customer. The stages of the buyer’s journey are:

  • Discover: becoming aware of a problem or opportunity and looking for information to understand it fully.
  • Evaluate: further researching the problem or opportunity to understand its impact and the potential benefits of taking action to address or explore it.
  • Convert: selecting specific options to help solve the problem or capitalize on the opportunity.

Buyers are receptive to informative content

B2B buyers are especially receptive to receiving relevant information from vendors during the Discover and Evaluate stages. According to Gartner research, B2B buyers who perceive the information they get from suppliers as helpful are 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease, and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret.

Many buyers start their research on third-party websites. Syndication places your content in front of buyers who are early in their research process. Optimize your syndicated content by making sure it is informative and educational, rather than sales oriented. Provide clear information about the problem, including the hazards of leaving it unresolved. If the subject is an opportunity, explain the potential benefits of pursuing the opportunity.

Benefit: Syndicating your content provides a reliable stream of leads matching your ICP.

Broaden your reach and target specific accounts

When to use content syndication

Content syndication can target a specific set of named accounts or apply broader audience criteria. In either case, content syndication delivers a reliable stream of ICP leads, which complements the (sometimes inconsistent) performance of inbound and paid advertising tactics, adding predictability to your pipeline.

How content syndication supports the revenue funnel

A typical revenue funnel can be defined in five stages. (Note that every company has its own version of a revenue funnel.)

  • Inquiry: the first contact from a potential buyer.
  • Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): a lead that has interacted with marketing messages and is ready for sales contacts.
  • Sales Accepted Lead (SAL): a lead that has been qualified by sales development representatives (SDRs) or business development representatives (BDRs).
  • Opportunity: a potential sale from an account linked to sales-accepted leads.
  • Revenue: a sale resulting from an opportunity.

Content syndication is highly effective at generating ICP top-of-funnel inquiries. It boosts the performance of your entire revenue funnel when used as part of a comprehensive strategy that nurtures inquiries into MQLs through integrated marketing programs.

“Content syndication leads may not be as bottom-of-funnel as a phone call or website outreach, [but] they are an effective and cost-efficient way to fill the pipeline.” — Shelly B., Demand Gen Leader

Benefit: Content syndication has the versatility to reach broad audiences and target specific groups of buyers.

Iron Mountain increased content syndication sourced inquiry to MQL conversion rates from

6 to 22%

and influenced nearly $22 million in pipeline through optimization of their content syndication programs.
Integrate

Integrating content syndication into your strategy

How content syndication fits into your marketing mix

Content syndication is most effective when used as part of an integrated marketing plan that includes inbound and outbound, digital, brand, product, and event activities. Syndicated content should fit seamlessly into the buyer’s research process by providing useful information that helps them understand a problem or opportunity that’s relevant to their business. Think of your content as a resource — the more helpful it is, the better your chances of developing that contact into a customer.

“Content syndication begins the customer journey as a library that’s fully available for ‘self-education’ . . . [A] skilled marketer can help shape that journey by leveraging early interest into strategic demand gen.” — Bret Smith, CEO, HIPB2B

Using content marketing to support other strategies

Content syndication can support a variety of marketing efforts, including:

  • Outbound/traditional demand marketing: Use content syndication to generate inquiries from prospects. You can target by persona, geography, company size, and industry, or any combination of factors.
  • Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Content syndication can support ABM by helping you engage with specific buyers, a small group, or a large list of accounts.
  • Inbound/always-on marketing: Use content syndication to develop a reliable stream of high-quality leads to support inbound efforts.
  • Cross-channel/multichannel: Content syndication can help you identify inmarket accounts to target with tactics such as digital display ads, as part of your multichannel marketing strategy.

Benefit: Content syndication can support efforts throughout the marketing lifecycle.

Selecting content for syndication

What types of content are best for syndication?

Content for use in syndication should be informational in tone, educating readers about a topic or problem and supporting the key points with data or quotes from analysts or experts. Effective types of content for syndication include guide, whitepapers, reports by third-party analysts, infographics, and on-demand webinars.

How much content do you need for syndication?

In general, the more leads you want to generate, the more content you’ll need. To avoid audience fatigue — which can lower engagement and hurt your conversion rates.

Suggested content assets by lead goals

Types of content valued most by business buyers

  • 65% Research reports and studies
  • 50% Technical spec sheets and data sheets
  • 46% Analyst intelligence and insights
  • 35% White papers
  • 30% Articles on trade publishing sites

Buyers consider third-party research, analyst reports, and editorial coverage to be the most trustworthy content sources.
CMO Council

Choosing the right syndication partners for your business

Types of syndication providers

Content syndication providers use a variety of terms to describe their services: publisher, media partner, database provider, etc. The most meaningful distinction is whether they’re a single-stream source or a marketplace source.

Single-stream source: offers access to an audience from one media brand

Advantages:

  • Efficient for working with integrated marketing programs within the same media.
  • Appropriate for smaller lead goals.

Disadvantages:

  • May not be able to deliver a larger pipeline of leads.

Marketplace source: offers access to a network of single-stream sources

Advantages:

  • Offers greater reach and precision than single-stream — you can access multiple sources or target a specific audience without reducing quantity or flow of leads.

Disadvantages:

  • Due to contractual agreements, may not be able to disclose the specific vendors syndicating your content.

10 questions to ask potential vendors

  1. Which channels do they use to present your content?
  2. How will your content look: e.g., will it appear on its own landing page with your logo?
  3. What is the primary source of their audience?
  4. What are their targeting capabilities: e.g., geography, industry, company size, job title?
  5. Do they have a minimum campaign size?
  6. How are leads delivered: real-time injection into your systems or files for manual upload?
  7. Is lead data governed before you receive it?
  8. Do they guarantee that leads will match your ICP?
  9. What options do they offer for testing and in-flight adjustments?
  10. Which types of reporting do they provide?

Benefit: Choosing the right syndication provider will give you the reach and precision you need.

Getting the most out of your syndication efforts

Evaluate your content syndication performance

Once you’ve chosen a content syndication provider (or providers), it’s important to monitor their performance on key metrics to make sure they’re delivering the leads you need to meet your goals. If you’re working with multiple vendors, this also allows you to adjust your spending to make sure you’re getting the best possible ROI. Below are
key factors to consider:

Lead Quality: Poor-quality leads can affect your entire marketing and sales program and expose your business to regulatory risk. Make sure your leads:

  • Include complete and accurate information, with no duplicate leads.
  • Comply with all privacy regulations.
  • Meet all your target criteria, e.g., job title, location, specific accounts.
  • Are standardized according to your formatting requirements.

Lead volume and pacing: Are your providers delivering the quantity of leads you need at the cost you agreed on? Is the provider delivering leads to you at the pace that you requested?

Service: Is the provider easy to work with? Do they offer expertise and insights that help you optimize your content syndication program?

Benefit: Evaluate your content syndication partner’s performance to make sure you get the most of your investment.

Commvault uses content syndication in combination with digital display advertising to increase deal size and revenue

  • 27% Marketing-attributed closed deals increased from 6% to 27%.
  • 23% Cut digital budget by 23% while delivering greater results.
  • 20% Increased average selling price by 20% with digitally engaged accounts.
  • 30% Close rate jumped from 15% to 30%.

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Best practices for content syndication follow-up

Make your content work smarter

As a key tactic in the B2B revenue marketing toolkit, content syndication can benefit nearly any business if done right. But the way buyers make decisions has changed, so the way you deploy content syndication programs should change.

It was once considered best practice to send all leads from content syndication programs directly to tele-sales teams for qualification and follow-up. Due to significant changes in B2B buyer behavior, doing so today will damage the effectiveness of your content syndication program, hurt your relationship with sales, and create a suboptimal buying experience.

Today, B2B buyers do their own research, expect easy digital access to information, and often prefer a rep-free experience. Developing a thoughtful and precise lead nurture strategy is necessary to ensure the success of your content syndication program.

An effective, productive, and profitable content syndication nurture strategy includes five data-driven components:

  • Progressive, personalized email nurture.
  • Multi-channel nurturing: combining email and digital display ad nurtures.
  • Individual lead scoring and buyer group scoring.
  • Effective lead routing.
  • Comprehensive measurement.

In this guide, we’ll explain the benefits of each component and how to use them to generate predictable pipeline through content syndication.

Progressive personalized email nurture

More effective email follow-up

The most important job for any marketer is to increase the odds that your brand will be top of mind when a customer is ready to buy. Nurturing your content syndication leads with timely and relevant emails is an effective way to do this. But your nurture can’t be one size fits all. Because so much more of the buyer journey today happens independently, personalization and segmentation are essential for effective email nurturing.

A persona or topic-based segmentation approach based on your content inventory and go-to-market strategy is an excellent way to influence a buyer’s purchase decision. Develop an email nurture track for each of your segments consisting of the appropriate content and messaging to support the early-stage research needs of your specific buyer personas.

What are the right types of content? Studies from CMO Council show:

  • Industry and category surveys and studies.
  • Analyst reviews and recommendations.
  • Thought leadership with supporting facts and research.
  • Third-party content.
  • Technical details about products and solutions.

Multi-channel nurturing

Reach buyers where they are

Email is a great way to nurture leads and support the buyer’s journey, but it shouldn’t be the only option for lead nurturing. Think about your own experience. Do you read every email that hits your inbox? Unlikely. In fact, the average open rate for B2B emails is only 15%.

Instead of relying solely on email, there are a variety of other channels — industry publications, news websites, journals, and social media platforms to name a few — where you can fnd today’s buyers doing their research, primed for engagement. Pairing your email nurtures with targeted, account-based digital display ads can help you reach buyers on the third-party channels where they’re already conducting research.

Furthermore, email nurture may only reach one or two buyers at an account. B2B buyers make purchase decisions in groups, and 94% of buyers who download content share it with buying group members. Targeting through additional channels can help you engage buying groups and increase leads at an organization, capitalizing on this sharing behavior.

Combining email and digital display ad nurturing

Combine your tactics to win big

The benefits of using digital display advertising with a well-structured email program include increased email nurture engagement, more search engine traffic to your website, and faster sales velocity. The key to combining your programs is in audience selection and messaging progression.

  • For advertising, select target accounts where buyers have already engaged with your content syndication, and update weekly.
  • Clearly target specific job titles and geographies to ensure you’re only spending on ideal customer profile (ICP) buyers.
  • Use awareness-, consideration-, and action-oriented progressive messaging in your ads — for example:
    • Awareness: a buyer problem your brand solves.
    • Consideration: solutions and best practices.
    • Action: case studies, demos, product webinars.

The more relevant and personalized your messaging, the more effective your digital ads will be. To increase your sales velocity further, segment personas within your target accounts into personalized ad nurture flights. Similar to your email nurture tracks, each ad flight should tell a progressive story, aimed at engaging specific roles within larger buying groups.

Lead scoring

The right way to score your leads

Lead scoring is the process of assigning values to buyer engagement to identify leads that are ready for sales. A lead should only become a marketing qualified lead (MQL) once it reaches a specific score based on engagement. There are two types of engagement to consider when lead scoring: identifiable and anonymous.

  • Identifiable activity can be attributed to a specific buyer that is in your database.
  • Anonymous activity cannot be attributed to a specific buyer, but it can be attributed to an account.

Identifiable activities should be scored based on the value of the buyer’s behavior. For example, filling out a form to download an guide should be scored higher than simply opening an email. Totaling up these scores gives you a “behavioral score.”

Anonymous activity is account based and can be scored based on four categories:

  • Engagement intent (page views).
  • Research intent (relevant research on third-party sites).
  • Display advertising engagement (impressions and clicks).
  • Demographic criteria (company size).

Totaling up account level activity and criteria gives you a “demographic score.”

Calculating your MQL score should combine behavioral and demographic scores in a matrix. Ultimately, your lead scoring model should look something like this:

Lead routing

Improve engagement through better lead routing

Lead routing defines how, when, and to whom on the sales team marketing-qualified leads are sent. It’s crucial to account for buying groups in your lead routing, but many marketers don’t. Many lead routing processes — using marketing automation to send qualified leads to sales — fall victim to “second-lead syndrome.” According to Forrester, second-lead syndrome happens when a lead routing process only values the first new qualified lead from an account, disqualifying any subsequent leads as redundant.

So, how can you avoid this potential lead routing nightmare?

  • Create a buying group-friendly lead routing process: Every lead, not just the initial one, should be sent to that account’s sales rep once it reaches the appropriate score.
  • Clearly define service level agreements: We recommend that every marketing qualified lead (MQL) should be contacted within 24 hours, and that demo requests be replied to within 10 minutes.
  • Clearly define the rules of engagement: You don’t want multiple sales reps following up with the same buying group, and you do want to be strategic about priority accounts.

We recommend starting with basic rules of engagement:

  1. If an MQL comes in that is a VP level or higher from a strategic account, then the SDR should forward the MQL immediately to a sales rep.
  2. When an MQL comes in, an SDR should check to see if there is sales engagement within the account. If there is a sales rep involved already, the SDR should forward the MQL to that sales rep.
  3. If an MQL comes in with no active sales engagement on the account, and is not a strategic or enterprise account, and is below a VP level, the SDR should own follow-up.

Comprehensive measurement of follow-up

The real ROI of content syndication

One of the most important parts of a successful lead nurture program is measuring your efforts, without which you can’t accurately optimize and increase program effectiveness, not to mention prove its business value.

There are five areas to measure:

  1. Lead nurture velocity: How quickly are leads moving from nurture programs to becoming a qualified lead?
  2. Email nurture performance: Create benchmarks for every action, including opt-in, open rate, click rate, sequence completion, conversion rate, and lead score.
  3. Digital display ad performance: Measure impressions per account, clicks per account, number of accounts nurtured through all three steps of an ad flight, and directly attributable conversions.
  4. Indirect but attributable ad performance: If you’re using ad tech that employs reverse IP lookups, use visitor data to track the following on an account basis: total visits and visitors, pages per visit, and visits to high-value pages.
  5. Cross-channel influence: When visitors self-identify by filling out a form, you should track inbound leads from accounts that were engaged by ads and syndication. You should also track accounts engaged by display ads and content syndication.

To get an idea of the impact of your content syndication and follow-up program on the bottom line, use a total touch attribution model, which reflects today’s complex buying processes. It rests on the assumption that every touchpoint is valuable because it contributes to the completion of a buyer’s journey. Within this model, you should measure: Number of opportunities influenced; value of open opportunities influenced; close rate of opportunities influenced; and value of deals closed-won influenced.

  • As you can see, while content syndication on its own is an effective and costefficient way to reach early-stage buyers, like all marketing tactics, it requires thorough nurturing, lead follow-up and measurement to achieve its full value.

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