Beam Content 💡

A glorified to-do list with timeframes, channels, and formats rarely stands the test of time. It's an approach to content that perpetuates the hamster wheel where content looks busy, looks productive, but accomplishes little. https://lnkd.in/e5JfA8kR

"Talk to your customers." okkk, but without a robust Gong library or limitless access to customers (haha...ha), how are content marketers supposed to do that, exactly? Here's the Beam Team's approach: Talk to the people who talk to your customers—early, and often.  We’ve built an onboarding process to give content teams customer insights that can drive strategy, build alignment, and inspire resonant content all year long: Phase 1: Hear from your customers via your team Start by choosing the roster of teams that can give you the clearest signal about your audience. Curate a mix of voices from teams including: Customer Success Sales Product Marketing Customer Marketing Sales Engineering In these conversations, highlight: 1. Common themes 2. Communication and strategic gaps 3. Disconnects and disagreement between teams Your interview insights should help you plan for content on two levels: strategy and execution. 1. Strategy. Is there an overarching concept your product or brand is well-suited to introduce and create content around for the next 3-6 months? Look for a gap and a solution, or a then-and-now that matches where your brand is headed. 2. Execution. Brain-dump a list of all the potential content topics that came from these conversations. Look for quotes and ideas that can spin off the big-picture strategy you’re setting. Not all of these will materialize into a blog post or downloadable asset, but they might show up within another piece or become something bigger down the road. Phase 2: Build alignment with your team and customers Where is the overlap? Where could you create one piece of content that supports multiple customer-facing teams? Answering this will point you to your cornerstone pieces: Larger, longer-term, and heavy-lift pieces like research reports, product guides, or multi-SME roundups can support demand gen and sales enablement’s needs. A single cornerstone piece, especially backed by original data from surveys or your platform, can turn into: Sales enablement materials with strong customer proof Thought leadership during webinar or event presentations, podcast appearances, and earned media mentions A top-of-funnel gated piece focused on problem awareness, which demand gen can put ad spend behind A product-focused implementation guide, if you covered those tactical elements in your survey or SME interviews Phase 3: Execute, execute, execute Content that starts with a customer-focused strategy and ends with some (structured and within-reason) feedback from your customer-facing colleagues is your best shot at a home run for all involved. I'm convinced it'll make the difference between content as GTM glue and content as just another checkbox. Want more detail on execution? Bookmark this new article from our one and only Sabina Hahn💡 👇 👇 👇 https://lnkd.in/e-gVXk_4

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Content marketers have a bad habit of using the term “bottom-of-funnel content” to refer to anything that seems vaguely commercial or product-focused. All those general comparison pages, surface-level buyer’s guides and “alternatives to [competitor]” blogs. But when was the last time a sales rep sent that “alternatives” article to a prospect? When was the last time a B2B software buyer put a product on their shortlist because of that surface-level comparison post? Real BOFU content: ✅ Helps overcome real customer objection ✅ Walks buyers through implementation ✅ Demonstrates tangible, specific ROI ✅ Offers detailed customer evidence Read, save, and then re-read our latest Darkroom article; it brings together expert interviews and real-world examples to spell out an updated view on BoFu. https://lnkd.in/gHVhfRJm