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:

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

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

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:

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.

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.)

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

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

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:

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

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

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

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:

Disadvantages:

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

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

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

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:

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.

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:

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

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:

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.

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.

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.

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 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:

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:

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?

We recommend starting with basic rules of engagement:

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:

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.