Marketers are finally talking about storytelling. A lot, in fact.

The frequency of "Why Use Storytelling in Marketing?" blog posts and articles has gone from occasional to ubiquitous over just the past few years.

It's no coincidence that I attended three sessions at INBOUND 2019 alone about how storytelling can be used to improve marketing messages and strategies.

Overview

B&H Machine, Inc. (B&H) is a third-generation hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder manufacturer. Founded in 1951, B&H started its operations as a producer of tooling and fixture designs for the Army, Navy and Air Force, in addition to production machining for the automotive, mining and steel mill industries. Today, B&H is one of the most experienced and proven cylinder manufacturers in the U.S.

Despite B&H’s long history of success, it became apparent that the company was falling behind competitors online. The leadership team at B&H knew it was time to revamp their digital presence to better communicate their unique capabilities and value proposition to prospects who were becoming more and more digital-first. If they didn't do this, they would continue to fall behind the competition. 

It's likely a daily occurrence. You visit a website. You immediately become confused. You leave the site and never look back.

If you had bothered to stick around for more than a few seconds, you might have found yourself asking:

• What products and services are being sold?
• How do I benefit from them?
• What can I expect to experience when engaging with this company—and how do I engage in the first place?
• Why should I care about any of this?

But why would you stick around? There's not enough time in the day to read unclear value propositions, decode confusing processes, stumble through industry jargon or—worse yet—deal with companies that talk at you and tell you about how amazing they are.

Did you know that B2B customers today are more than 70% of the way through the decision-making process before speaking with a salesperson? This is because they are consuming content online and making up their mind about a company simply based on the content on their website. Because of this, every company needs a solid content marketing strategy.

By now, we’ve all heard the marketing phrase “content is king.” And while it’s still truer than ever, it’s important to keep in mind that all content is not created equal. In fact, simply producing content for the sake of producing content can be detrimental to a marketing team’s performance and can hinder the growth of a business.

If you are in sales or business development, you know that lead generation is very important. Lead generation comes in many forms and usually falls on the shoulders of both sales and marketing departments. Managing prospects, leads, accounts and opportunities is very time-consuming and detailed.

Many marketers may contemplate using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or content marketing, but they often fail to see the value in merging both to create a foolproof content marketing strategy. Let’s dive in and explore how you can utilize PPC in your overall content marketing strategy.