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

Chapter 23

Qvidian

Lowell, Massachusetts

Qvidian sells software to help organizations improve their sales performance. Because Qvidian’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, Qvidian understands the value of e-books and video.

Qvidian recognized that much of the content created by business-to-business (B2B) 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 Qvidian, who now runs the marketing department at Mass TLC.

Like many B2B companies, Qvidian 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 Qvidian 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 e-books, white papers, and video targeted toward prospects—those who are just learning about Qvidian as well as those further along in the buying process. ...