Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

Chapter 23. Kadient: Lowell, Massachusetts

Kadient sells software to help organizations improve their sales performance. Because Kadient's business relies, in part, on arming salespeople with the right kind of content to move a sale further down the funnel and close it, Kadient understands the value of ebooks and video.

Kadient recognized that much of the content created by business-to-business firms falls short of attracting and engaging buyers. "Marketing often creates content and throws it over the wall to sales, but they're not creating what sales needs" to help close a deal, says Amy Black, then-senior marketing communications manager at Kadient, who now runs the marketing department at TimeTrade.

Like many B2B companies, Kadient contends with a long sales cycle—moving potential customers from the top of the sales funnel (or first contact with a potential customer) to the point of purchase: from recognition to lead-generation to nurturing and closing the sale. In many companies that sell complex goods or services to other companies, the sales process occurs over 6 to 36 months. So Kadient creates content to help buyers at every stage of the cycle, mapping content to engage prospects at specific points in the sales process.

Content That Ignites

Amy began creating a content library mapped to the B2B sales cycle, producing ebooks, white papers, and video targeted toward prospects—those who are just learning about Kadient as well as those further along in the buying process.

Amy created ...