Thrillers, fillers and spillers: how to cultivate your B2B content garden
As a gardener, I’ve learned that the secret to a beautiful mixed border or container planting is to assemble just the right combination of thrillers, fillers and spillers. The same is true for your B2B content marketing strategy.
Whether it’s a single, targeted campaign or a comprehensive program, you need to plant a strong foundation of content that attracts prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey, seeding awareness and nurturing ongoing interest.
Thrillers are the rock stars
Every garden needs a focal point, something big and bold with enough sex appeal to catch the eye and inspire further discovery.
Original thought leadership
In your content garden, a thriller could be based on original or third-party research, providing thought leadership and unique insights for your audience. For example, you might conduct a survey of industry peers or analyze other proprietary data and analyze the data, providing your own expert perspective about the implications.
You can then propagate the research in multiple ways, slicing and dicing the data for different industries, geographical areas, functional roles, and other segments, or packaging it into different content types and formats.
The Edelman Trust Barometer, which has tracked attitudes about trust in business, government, and the media every year since 2000, is a well-known example. The global PR firm releases its key findings each January ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, keeping journalists and other influential audiences buzzing long after the report comes out.
Live events
Live events provide another opportunity to create thriller content. In addition to content produced as part of the event itself, such as live streams and recordings of keynote presentations, there are myriad opportunities to expand on what happens on stage.
But you don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a global research study or host a live event to produce thriller-worthy content.
Other ‘thriller’ assets
Tap into anonymized customer data or other proprietary data you already have to establish benchmarks that others can learn from. (Example: Metadata.io’s Paid Social Benchmark Report)
Write a book that showcases your company’s expertise and approach. (Example: 3Pillar Global’s The Product Mindset)
Gather insights and advice from your own subject matter experts to create a best practices guide. (Example: RGP’s Cloud ERP guides)
Although thrillers have the power to stand alone, your thought leadership content should always connect to other assets and/or activities. If thoughtfully framed, research and event themes will be relevant to your customer’s business challenges, and the insights you share will align to your brand value or solutions.
Fillers are the workhorses
They may not command center stage, but fillers are essential elements that build on the featured attraction, connecting it to the rest of the garden and holding attention over time.
Every B2B content collection needs a foundation of content that covers industry trends and best practices, customer stories, product and service information, and practical resources your audience can use whether they buy from you or not. For example, Datarails, which provides financial planning and analysis software for companies that rely on Microsoft Excel, offers free Excel templates.
When choosing the best content for your B2B customer’s journey, form is less important than function. Whether it’s in a white paper, webinar, video or blog post, your content should answer the questions your audience has at each stage of their journey.
Like thrillers, your fillers must connect your audience to the part of the story they’re ready to hear next. Provide readers or viewers with their best next step or steps:
Ready to commit: how to buy or how to get in touch with sales
Need more information: thought leadership, best practices, features and benefits
Need more confidence: customer testimonial, analyst recommendation or other validation
Spillers are the social butterflies
You can plan all you want, but serendipity has its place — and so do spillers. These are the groundcovers, vines and creepers that enthusiastically flop over edges, reaching tendrils over, under and around to weave a cohesive tapestry — or share with the garden next door.
For the B2B content marketer, spillers are the compelling tidbits that people want to pass along to colleagues, social networks — or even their boss. Spill-worthy content could be an entertaining video, a practical checklist, an interesting infographic or a newsworthy tweet — anything that can be easily snipped and shared.
Whether you’re designing a garden or a B2B content marketing plan, it’s important to focus on your goals and audience. It’s easy to get distracted by bright colors and flashy flowers that don’t really hold their own or hold up over time. So choose carefully. Make sure every asset either thrills, fills or spills. And don’t be afraid to yank out the pieces that fail to thrive.