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Takeaways From INBOUND 2018 That Will Help Improve Your Content Experience

Last week, INBOUND 2018 took place in Boston, and two lucky members of our marketing team had the pleasure of attending. Between the inspiring keynotes, immersive breakout sessions, and awesome entertainment, the week was packed full of insights we couldn’t wait to share.

Since some takeaways in particular got our wheels turning about how to create better content experiences for our customers and prospects, we wanted to share them with you. We’re on this content experience journey together, after all!

From social video to sales enablement, we’ve highlighted our favorite takeaways below.

Chatbots as a Content Distribution Tool  

Fun fact: There are now more daily active users on messaging apps than on social media. Fellow social media marketers, don’t let this stat scare you. Instead, allow it to direct your attention to a whole new realm of content distribution possibility… Messenger marketing.

During his talk, Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey explained that there are now 1.3 billion daily active users on Facebook Messenger alone, which is part of the reason Messenger chat blasts can receive 60-80 percent open rates (making them 60 times more effective than your standard email blast).

The ability to send a push notification directly to your subscribers’ phones is what really changes up the traditional email or social media experience. Messenger chat blasts catch people where they’re already highly engaged, and allow you to offer up a more playful interaction. Not only can you send people directly to your content through one click, you’re also able to set up questions that will help you segment your chat subscribers to create even more personalized experiences for them.

Taking Social Video to the Next Level

Does each social platform really differ when it comes to social media videos? In Animoto co-founder Jason Hsiao’s session, he shared why the answer to that is a definitive yes.

Through experimentation, the Animoto team conducted a lot of research ($30,000 worth 💸) about how people engage differently with video on each social channel. For example, Facebook videos are typically watched on the go, without sound, and are focused on quick updates, while YouTube videos should be designed for an engaged audience that’s searching for specific information.

Jason also shared some killer insights on what types of video work best for each stage of the funnel. (You know it’s a good slide when the entire room pulls out their phone for a photo.) You’ll see that thought leadership, ideas, and influencer videos make great top-of-funnel content, while product demos and case studies will perform better when put in front of your prospects and customers.

What It Really Takes to Make Your Marketing Go Viral

The most important takeaway from Lucidchart CMO Nathan Rawlins’ session was this: “Your business can be boring, but your marketing can’t.” Whether you’re trying to get your content picked up on Reddit, or you’re just trying to get the views that matter, this quote rings true for all of us. Especially in the B2B world, we can fall victim to the idea that “boring” products only warrant “boring” marketing.

Nathan explained that in order to create truly attention-grabbing content, you have to be able to stretch what you consider to be on-brand. As the CMO of a flowchart software company, I trusted what he had to say about this.

During his talk, he shared examples of how Lucidchart moved from creating flowcharts like this “Hey Jude” example to their What is a Pupper? What is a Doggo? video to find a balance between something that was both fun and meme-worthy, while still educating people on what their company does.

As B2B marketers, we need to constantly challenge ourselves to create content that is out-of-the-box enough to delight our audiences, while still staying true to our brands.  

Account-Based Marketing and Social Selling on LinkedIn

To effectively execute an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy, sales and marketing alignment is essential. Sales reps are on the front lines talking to prospective customers and hear firsthand their biggest challenges and goals, so marketing must have open lines of communication with sales to understand these goals and challenges to effectively develop campaigns and content that truly connects with customers.

Ty Heath, Global Agency and Partner Education Lead at LinkedIn, and her team understand the importance of alignment to deliver timely ABM campaigns, which is why they’re working hard to deliver a new marketing solution for 2019 that connects Sales Navigator with Campaign Manager.

This integration will allow sales reps to automatically add accounts they’re actively working into lists the marketing team has created to serve ads to based on where they are in the funnel. This is GENIUS—not only does this foster better communication between the two teams, it also helps marketing stay on top of engaging accounts with the right content at the right time.

As an added bonus, LinkedIn is also releasing Lookalike Audiences for accounts early next year!

Who else is excited for this new LinkedIn ABM solution?

Creating Sales Enablement Content That Drives Results

Want to know the secret to creating sales enablement content that drives results? According to Kelsey Raymond, President and Co-Founder of Influence & Co., it’s making sure your sales team has a direct hand in creating the content they use to reach out to prospects. Not only are they more likely to remember the content, but they’re also more likely to share it.

Kelsey also emphasized the importance of providing a content repository for sales to access marketing-approved content. Keep it clean, organized, and make sure you outline the intended use of each asset.

Shameless Uberflip plug here—we offer some pretty awesome sales enablement tools such as Content Hubs that allow marketing to easily centralize and organize sales collateral as well as the Uberflip Extension for sales to easily access the right content assets and experiences and embed them into their emails, all without having to leave their inbox.

Which of these takeaways has you most fired up? We’ve already got ideas brewing about how we’re going to integrate these strategies into our marketing this year.

Looking for more insights that will help you take your content experience to the next level? Download The Content Experience Report.