How BuyerZone Creates Content that Gets Results - Q&A with Jeremy Sacco

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Jeremy Sacco, editorial manager for BuyerZone, about their content marketing practices. Some gold nuggets here about how they are continually refining (and challenged by) the ongoing creation of content. Check out our Q&A below.

Joe at Junta42 - Tell me a little about what BuyerZone does?

Jeremy at BuyerZone - BuyerZone helps people who need to make purchasing decisions for their business. We provide the information buyers need before they start comparing different sources of equipment and services, then connect them to multiple suppliers chosen to match their exact purchasing requirements. It's a free service for buyers -- the business model is a lead generation service, so suppliers pay a per-lead fee to be part of the program.

Joe - What is your role/purpose as part of the BuyerZone plan?

Jeremy - I'm the editorial manager here -- my job focuses primarily on the written content we present as part of the purchasing process. That includes Buyer's Guides, standalone articles, newsletters, and more. I'm also involved in some marketing and user interface work, but my main focus is on giving our users more of the information they need to be better buyers.

Joe - With so many areas that BuyerZone offers services for, how do you coordinate your time regarding the creation of content?

Jeremy - We only have a two-person content team at BuyerZone, and we cover over 150 different types of products -- from copiers to forklifts to payroll services to steel buildings -- so we have to be pretty comfortable shifting gears from one topic to the next. We try to allocate our time in a couple of ways: naturally, we tend to spend more time on the areas where the BuyerZone RFQ process is particularly strong -- traditional office equipment, telecom, and construction equipment. But we also make sure we "check in" on areas where technology is changing quickly, so we can put up new articles or update existing ones to make sure they're still accurate and relevant. We have a stable of freelancers from different sources that we use in different ways -- some specialize in research, and some on basic writing. Finally we try to write our key pieces of content in such a way that they're "evergreen:" the Postage Meters Buyer's Guide doesn't need to change much from month to month, so we can write it, post it, and leave it alone.

Joe - What types of content (channels and topics) do you tend to focus on?

Jeremy - The most prominent type of content on our site is the Buyer's Guides: comprehensive, multi-page articles that provide a complete overview of how to purchase the specific product. When a new product is introduced on the site, we first write a "quick hit" version -- about 800 to 1000 words on one page. If that proves successful, we'll write the more comprehensive version, which can be 2,500 to 3,500 words on 6 to 10 pages. The idea is to make sure we have the most appropriate version for the amount of traffic the product is seeing. Then we'll go through phases where we focus on different types of content: articles on pricing, or buying in tough economic times, for example.

We also work with our SEO team -- they send us sets of keywords that we don't have good SEO coverage on and we'll write articles specifically targeted to those phrases. That partnership has been central to our success: we strike a balance between editorial and SEO in decision making, and we've been able to build quite a strong presence in the search engines. (For example, Google the phrase "copier leasing" - #1 result is an article we wrote after the SEO team indicated that phrase was high-volume.)

Joe - How do you measure what works, and what doesn't?

We track revenue per piece of content: if a visitor first reaches BuyerZone through a Buyer's Guide, their eventual quote request is considered "content revenue." That's the most direct measure of success, but it's pretty limited, as well: many visitors touch a Buyer's Guide at some point during their interaction, regardless of where they entered the site. We also look at relative traffic -- which types of articles get the most clicks from overview pages -- to see what's popular. And we try to listen to our users. We collect both direct feedback and survey responses to see what people are reading, what they think of it, and what we could do more of.

Joe - What's the future of content marketing for BuyerZone?  How is it currently evolving or what would you like to do different?

Jeremy - We are slowly starting to add more modern web tools to our site. (I hate to say "Web 2.0" because it sounds so trendy -- and not all the Web 2.0 features are applicable. No one is going to Digg our Skid Steer Loaders Buyer's Guide.) We've introduced user ratings and comments in a couple of areas and had some success, so we hope to be rolling those out to more areas soon. And we're working on a blogging strategy as well. (The challenge there is picking a topic -- just general buying advice is too broad, but no one would read a 'buying copiers' blog.)

Right now BuyerZone is a one-time tool for many users: they come to the site through search, get some information and their matched suppliers, and are gone. Our big challenge is to turn those users into repeat visitors by exposing them to more valuable and timely information.

Joe - Has content marketing always been a practice at BuyerZone, or did it naturally evolve as the company has grown and succeeded?

Actually BuyerZone's history is as a content company. Before launching the BuyerZone request for quotes service, the company wrote and sold business purchasing advice. (Actual books!) So there is an ingrained sense of the value of content here -- even though it's no longer the sole focus, it's still a core part of the business.

Joe – Any other content challenges?

Jeremy - One thing that's been on my mind lately is the people who steal our content. I use Google Alerts to find them, which isn't perfect, but still finds more content thieves than I can keep up with cease-and-desisting. When I'm feeling positive, I think about it as a sign of success: we must be doing something right for people to hijack our work.

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