After reading an article by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, I am adding the word Authentic to my b2b vocabulary.  How true does this ring?

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet holds a message for the marketing world: To thine own self be true. With authenticity appealing more and more to customer sensibilities, those words could not be more important. Organizations today should be true to their own selves, while also being who they say they are to others, according to the authors of this article. Yet the customer experience of actual offerings often fails to live up to what marketers said about them. Now is the time to stop saying what your offerings are through advertising, and create places where people can experience those offers as they actually are.

Creating a relevant dialogue and content is more than just perceived relevance, it has to be authentic as well.  Here are a few ways to stay authentic and relevant in your content online.

• More thought leadership, less marketing – focus on finding individuals in the organization that are closest to the customer, that understand the actual problems your customers is facing and know ways to solve it.
• It’s okay if your content is raw – I know you want your content to be marketing driven and developed with the right “messaging”.  I understand – so do I.  But, if the content is raw and unfiltered, it shows authenticity.
• “it is what I say it is” – be honest with yourself and your customers about what you can and can’t do.  Stop with the B.S. and focus on your strengths.  Your customers will appreciate you for it.

I love the word authenticity, and it is actually convicting to think about.  Building my own personal brand, I need to remember “it is what I say it is” – I am going to strive to be true to myself.  Not a bad goal.

Related posts:

1. A practical example of creating a relevant dialogue

Partnering
We are working with the companies traditional agency of record, as they have no true interactive marketing capabilities.  This has been an excellent process, of which I would like to dedicate another post to.

Research
Together with the traditional agency, we did quite a bit of customer research, talking to prospective customers, conducting online surveys, and talking to editors of trade magazines.  Through the research we found that the customers of this new product had some significant challenges in front of them.

• the economy is affecting their business tremendously especially with the slow down of new residential and renovations
• green and energy efficient is on everyone’s minds, but most don’t know how to take advantage of it
• because of the economy, contractors are trying to find new ways to sustain their businesses

What we found
In our quest to be relevant, we also faced challenges.  What was easy to do for the client was to create a microsite with the typical features | benefits | case studies information.  As I probed deeper and deeper, we kept asking the question what does your customer care about.  The answer was simple – the customer wants to be able to make more money in this down economy.  They are not sophisticated enough to determine ROI – they just care about the R (Revenue).  Therefore our content that we provided needed to be focused around solving this core problem of making more money for the contractor.

Lead generation
The goal for the product launch was to create a lead engine that could attract prospective buyers and in the end create sales-ready leads that were ready to be engaged by a salesman who could close the deal.  To get those leads, we knew we had to give the contractor something of value so that we had the right to ask for a name and email address (simple forms for landing page optimization).  Going back to our research, we decided to create white papers and eBooks around “How to make more money in a down economy”.  We are now going to tailor those to each primary segment and personality profile that we have identified.  So we will have “4 ways for HVAC contractors to heat up your business in a down economy” and elements like that.  The information is simple, not product focused and has a lot of value – no marketing propaganda.

What’s next?  We are now working on the nurturing approach to turn them from leads to sales-ready prospects.

Creating a relevant dialogue is critical.  Here are a few practical strategies to keep your content relevant.

Related posts:

1. Hand in hand – traditional and interactive marketing
2. 6 strategies to make your content relevant
3. Business-to-Business Marketing in a Recession

Identify and extract thought leadership in your organization
Thought leadership is found in people not departments and roles.  Most organizations have certain employees that always have ideas or are a step ahead of the organizations.  Incent those employees to come forward and start providing content.  This content can be white papers, case studies, blogs, twitter updates, etc.  Make sure you give these employees time to create content, and recognize them throughout the entire organizations.  BTW – if you can’t identify those employees you have a whole other problem.

Tell a story
We all know that stories sell.  Your stories should include real life examples, weave in research and case studies and trends in your industry.  The best stories engage the reader emotionally.  See this posting for great information on creating white papers.

Research
Backup your stories and content with real research that shows subject matter authority based on quantitative data.  While you are at it, use that research to seed PR news releases and blogs.

No more propaganda
Relevancy by definition means no sales and marketing propaganda.  Focus on educating, informing, and attacking real problems with real solutions (not your products!)

You gotta give it away
I know it’s hard, but give that content away.  By give it away, I’ll still allow you to get a name and email address in exchange.

Related posts:

1. A practical example of creating a relevant dialogue