Three Steps to Authentic Connections in B2B

Table of contents

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1 Telling authentic stories

Inform stories with dataDevelop a point of view

Storytelling frameworksMake content go the extra mile

Making authentic connections

Great audience experienceLive boosts conversionsContinue the conversation

Decisions with authentic results

Performance with contextRevenue impactMeasuring success

About BrightTALK

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It's one thing to be an authentic human being and come across that way. It's quite another to codify that.

This guide will help you create a framework around storytelling and standardize that process, while remaining authentic and genuine.

Audiences are empowered like never before to choose what content they engage with. Their attention, trust, and ultimately business must be earned.

View related content About BrightTALK

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1 Telling authentic stories: inform stories with data

One of the things that we always start with at BrightTALK is looking at data. We look at what's working from the stuff that we're already doing.

We always want to know what's popular, but popular and trending are not necessarily the same things.

ratings What is getting the most ?

Trending topics are a flash in the pan, indicating a surge of interest in the topic, not giving information about perception.

Gangnam style was trendy in America.

Popular topics are enduringly of interest, and maintain high keyword rankings.

The musical artist Psi is massively popular in South Korea.

BrightTALK has a wealth of information on the viewing and engagement behavior of our 7+ million viewers. We leverage this data to create better content.

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It’s been highly effective to jump on

news-related topics in specific use

cases.

As a security company, there are often

relevant security breaches. Kaspersky

looks at breaches that are happening

and within a few days they have

prepared a webinar to talk about it in

depth.

1 Telling authentic stories:Kaspersky case study

Kaspersky developed and produced a webinar and content series 48

hours after a breach. They took five days to promote it and it was

some of the best performing content on BrightTALK.

It's all about staying on top of what's trending, and being reactive to

what's breaking in the news to maximize on that. Kaspersky has

made it a practice to look at what is happening in their field and react

to it, or in some cases anticipate what will be newsworthy.

Breach Promo began Webinar

Kaspersky

Baseline Activity

300% More viewing time than a

webinar on a non-trending topic

3.3X More views than a similarly

timed non-trending webinar

https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15591/329307 | https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15591/329031

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1 Telling authentic stories: develop a point of view

Develop a point of view that's authentic to the business and the personal brand. Telling authentic stories using the structure of a why, how, and what.

Why

Why does your company or product exist?

As the crucial driver of your company it should be fundamentally apparent in all that you do. Your “why” shouldn’t expire or become obsolete, it should bring a sense of purpose.

How

The how are ways your why gets accomplished.

These are practical and organizational elements that will drive your company to achieve your why. The Essential elements that will ensure success achieving your why.

What

This is what your company actually produces and sells.

The what should answer the why that your company embodies, and should solve the fundamental problem you’re looking to solve.

Lead with why this is relevant to the target audience through the lens of the problem that it is solving. Product pitches are a turn-off when buyers are getting to know you. To showcase products, get a customer to talk about a popular use case or create an awesome explainer video that positions your unique strengths.

Organize the world’s information.Guide users to the information they seek.

Offer higher visibility to companies.Leverage massive-scale data processing to

connect information in a human way.

For more information on the why, how, what framework and the golden circle by Simon Sinek, click here

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1 Telling authentic stories: storytelling frameworks

How do you turn storytelling into a skill regardless of how skilled you'll team is that storytelling? By providing a usable framework, you can equip your team to hold the audience's attention, create tension at the right time, and most importantly conclude with actionable insights.

This makes it accessible for anyone on your team to organize any story into an engaging framework.

Here we introduce the characters in our story.

Where we give some context for our characters.

A conflict or challenge is introduced.

Our hero has to change to tackle the challenge.

We show how far the hero has come. What change actually took place?

This is where you share the outcome, the results.

Pixar Storytelling FrameworkClick here to learn more about this and credited writer, Emma Coates

Once upon a time:

And every day:Until one day:

Because of that:

Until finally:And ever since that day:

Practical: Try adapting your brand or user story to this model

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If you have an authentic story defined from the get go, it’s easier to adapt that

campaign story to different mediums.

Templatize your assets, don’t templatize your story.

Without doing much more work, you can get four to five assets out of every webinar

or webcast panel. The templatization of these processes can allow you to get much

more content out of a campaign.

If you think it through and structure an authentic story you can turn that into a

webinar, guide, a blog post, videos, really anything.

With a good story, your content is medium-agnostic.

Telling authentic stories: make your content go the extra mile

Webinar

Ebook / Guide

Blog posts

Videos

Landing pages

More

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2 Making authentic connections: great audience experience

Content formats that connect on a human level

A lot of us probably will have heard the statistic: by 2020, 80 percent of all web traffic will be video based. When a viewer has a voice or better yet a face to connect to, authentic human connections are much more easily formed.

Provide frictionless access where, when, and how audiences want

Viewers now expect ease of access and being empowered to engage on their terms.

Experiment with new formats

Rich media formats are limited by only creativity, try shaking up your content with interesting ways to shrink the boundaries between you and your viewer.

120%Higher engagement than

average channel viewership

2XMore unpaid native

views from topic search

80%80% of web traffic will be

video-based

15xLive video will grow 15-fold,

from 3% to 13% of video traffic

33%Overtaking PCs, the majority of

content will be consumed on smartphones

By 2020…

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This provides additional benefits in requiring fewer slide preparations, through emphasis on audio or video. The preparation all comes down to the

story structure that we talked about why, how, what. Moderate toward a direction, but prepared imperfection grants a touch of authenticity,

because it’s not overly groomed and produced.

2 Examples: blend the physical and digital

Live / semi-live panel

This new format has gained traction for its

convenience and storytelling ability. Live

presenter cut with prerecorded inline

interview segments, similar to a Podcast.

Live video from in-person events

BrightTALK @ Summits are talks and panels

broadcast live from the conferences that

allow you to reach audiences that are

physically present, and those that aren’t.

Live webcam panel

Like a conversation digitized, we see

examples of this format frequently on the

daily news. Audiences love it, and so do

presenters due to ease of preparation

Live Video

Replay as Live

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2 Making authentic connections: live boosts conversions

Interactivity is core to conversation. Engagement requires two-way interaction.

Votes, questions, downloads, ratings, live audience messages, and contact requests

All rich content is good, but the personalized and contextualized follow-up for strong conversion that live

streaming allows for is invaluable. You get more than views, you get conversation.

More than just YouTube comments and views

With BrightTALK, you get to know who watched your content, not just how many. This is key if you want to turn views into sales. You also get contextual information on user questions, polls, views and downloads that you can use in follow-up conversations.

Live Webinars

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2 Making authentic connections: continue the conversation

Create story consistency after handing leads over to sales

Personalization and contextual outreach is sometimes sacrificed as systems scale.

Don’t let the handover of leads from campaigns with great conversational context go

into a machine that's just playing the numbers game. The story can break down on

the handover from marketing and SDRs if the story isn’t understood or thoroughly

planned.

Don’t automate the expression of the story, simply construct a wireframe to operate

within for all levels of the team.

Create systems to make it easy for sales to be consistent

Create marketing program briefs detailing why they were run, who the target

audiences are, and what some of the key messages are. That way the authenticity of

the story you are telling comes through in follow-up when reaching out to your leads.

Steep all personnel in the campaign messaging to keep consistency with the story you

are telling. Language at the top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel should align.

Step 1

Step 2 2%

3%

4%

6%

10%

24%

47%

90 Days

60 Days

50 Days

40 Days

30 Days

20 Days

10 Days

Additional audience gained within # days after live event

Make your webinar instantly

available on-demand to enjoy a

long tail of demand for as long

as 3 months after the event.

“50% of my spend is wasted,

but I don’t know which 50%...”

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3 Decisions with authentic results: performance with context

Is that number good

Use relevant benchmarks to understand performance rather than just looking at internal metrics.

Knowing which content will resonate with your audience ahead of time can radically improve

your content marketing success, this visibility into your audience can optimize all stages of your

marketing efforts:

For more information see our benchmarks report and schedule an editorial planning session with your Customer Success Manager.

Before event: There is an optimal time to

promote and engage audiences, a happy

medium. Too long in advance, they

aren’t excited, too soon and your target

audience may not see it in time.

After event: Use engagement data to

properly engage the right attendees after

the fact, in the right ways.

Planning phase: Use keywords and topics

in the titles that you know targets are

engaging with to drive your content focus.

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3 Decisions with authentic results: revenue impact

Measuring revenue impact

BrightTALK’s marketing impact was historically measured exclusively on net new demand generated. As the Marketing team is being asked to drive growth across the customer journey, multi-touch attribution has become a strong secondary performance metric to track contribution to growth.

First-touch attribution:

First touch attribution is defined when marketing is sourcing the audience before an opportunity has been sourced by Sales. It's a clean metric to track marketing-sourced pipeline and bookings. That said, it's broadly considered too limiting when marketing is being asked to make a growth impact across the customer experience.

Multi-touch accelerated:

With mid-to-bottom funnel conversion being one of the biggest challenges for Sales teams today, multi-touch attribution is an important overall indicator of the impact that marketing is making on accelerating and increasing deals, no matter who originally created the opportunity.

BrightTALK Marketing 2018 Q1 & Q2 Example

Compare the business impact marketing had on revenue, when looked at from these

two attribution models.

1.7 million

2.3 million

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3 Decisions with authentic results: measuring success

A look at marketing metrics

Marketing often gets measured by first touch, Last touch is almost always the sales organization and it's going to be lopsided towards the bottom of the funnel because that's the attributional model.

Marketing’s business impact at BrightTALK now gets measured by first and multi-touch attribution to ensure we understand the demand we source and the deals we help accelerate.

“What matters in the end is what impact you’re having right now.”

Additional metrics to consider

• Promotions to registration conversion percentage• Opt-in database growth• Registrations and views

Create the tide that lifts all boats

These additional measurements allow you to be authentic with the business, leadership team and the executive teams. I'm hitting all the KPIs In terms of the acquisition number, but what we're also doing is really illustrating the impact that marketing is having on growth accounts. On actually accelerating the business as part of our campaigns.

Properly tracking your value throughout the entire funnel will help attribute your successes to your team, and gain traction in advocating for your team and for more bandwidth.

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To discuss your content and demand marketing needs with one of our specialists, please e-mail sales@brighttalk.com, or call +1 (415) 625-1500

In today’s B2B marketplace, competition is fierce. Buyers are increasingly sophisticated and no longer fall prey to one-size-fits-all marketing campaigns and pushy sales calls.

Authenticity is key and webinars and videos are key to achieving the human touch. They're also consistently ranked as the top performing content marketing tactics.

BrightTALK makes it easy for you to acquire and inspire your ideal audience.

Grow pipeline contribution

by connecting with our audiences where, when and how they want

Boost engagement and demand

with a webinar and video experience for a new era of connections

Increase content conversions

by inspiring audiences with video throughout the customer journey

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