Google's Sam Sebastian on B-to-B Content Strategy

I had the pleasure of seeing Sam Sebastian speak at the recent ABM/FIPP conference in New York. Sebastian is director of b-to-b and local markets for Google, and provided some interesting luncheon comments for the international group of publishers.

Here is a link to Sam's PowerPoint presentation, with thanks to ABM.

Sebastian started the presentation by discussing what is important to b-to-b marketers during this current economic downturn. According to Sebastian, 66% of marketers interviewed by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in 2008 indicated that their marketing plans have been impacted and are changing as a result of the current economy. His solution to this was three points:

1. Continue investments in search and online
2. Tap into the marketing value of online communities
3. Experiment with new ways to create and share content

Another interesting statistic - According to Forbes.com and Gartner, 67% of CXO's cite the Internet as the most influential and important source of information. In addition, Enquiro research found that 70% of executives use search as their primary research tool.

If you've been following this blog, these stats are nothing new, but they continue to show the importance of content. Sebastian's biggest point was that success for b-to-b marketers lies in the quality of their online content. His advice to the crowd was to "build mountains of content" and distribute to customers and prospects in a targeted manner.

Sebastian also noted the success of online communities such as Salesforce.com's Successforce and TheITRoom.com sponsored by Dell.

My Takeaway - Google gets it. It's about content for buyers at the right time during the buying cycle. It's about thought leadership content to position your company as an expert business resource. It's about having a conversation with customers, and getting let in that conversation by providing trusted information.

Knowing this, even though Google says they are not in the content business, they will be someday. They themselves see the importance of distributing content (since that's what they do for everyone else).  Tools like Orkut and Knol are just the start. Watch for more to come and see how Google will start to move away from it's "content distributor" statement and morph into something different.

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Comments

[Jean]

Hi Joe,

Very interesting about Google and essentially agree, although I don't think "mountains" of content, without a thoughtful, integrated strategy, makes sense for customers or marketers. Content needs to be curated. In an era of information overload, this is the ultimate luxury service.

Cheers,
Jean @ bnj.

[Joe Pulizzi]

Jean...incredibly important point. Most businesses I talk with crank out content without really understanding the informational needs of their customers, or what they want to content to do for them and their customers.

More content does not necessarily mean better results (without the proper content strategy).

Cheers yourself
Joe