Galen De Young : “the smartest B2B marketers will master how to leverage and optimize content across search, email, and social”

Galen De Young Contributor Ambal Balakrishnan from Click Documents, recently interviewed Galen De Young, managing director of Proteus B2B and Proteus SEO. Ambal asked Galen’s view on the role and rise of content in B2B marketing.

According to De Young, content marketing will become the first priority of top B2B marketers because of its powerful role in positioning, lead generation & nurturing, social media, and organic search.

The focus and investment on SEO will increase sharply as B2B marketers seek to leverage content marketing across multiple search channels, he says.

However, according to De Young, B2B marketers will struggle to source people who can write well and effectively package content marketing.

He also says that the the pursuit of thought leadership positioning and long-tail search will drive a sharp increase in multi-author corporate blogging and that the pace of adoption of marketing automation will quicken, but that most B2B adopters will struggle with its effective use.

Tips and strategies for B2B content and marketing automation

Galen De Young finally has some tips for B2B marketers:

  • Conduct an audit to determine nature and effectiveness of content marketing assets vis-à-vis purchase influencers and points in the buying cycle. Strengthen weak spots. Fill the holes.
  • Good B2B content writers are scarce. Quickly groom internal resources for content assets and blogging. Research and retain outside experts for strategy, ideation, and content development.
  • Most B2B marketers—even those who think they have things optimized—have major deficiencies. Retain good outside counsel to help optimize your site, blog, and individual content assets for natural search.

While marketing automation providers have tools and insights on best practices, use outside counsel to help analyze and configure lead nurturing processes tailored to you.

Ambal Balakrishnan is the co-founder of US-based ClickDocuments.
Ambal’s book “Content Marketing Tweet: 140 Bite-sized Ideas to Create and Market Compelling Content” will be published in Spring 2010.
Ambal is specialized in content marketing, social media marketing, B2B marketing and much more. You can connect with Ambal on Twitter here.