Episode 105: Using Content to Fuel the B2B Customer Journey with Cassandra Jowett

As a B2B marketer, does the prospect of nobody ever looking at your content keep you up at night? You work hard and plan what should be the greatest content calendar in history — and you get nothing in return. How can we put these fears to rest and get some sleep?

Cassandra Jowett, Senior Director of Marketing at PathFactory, and her team have a path to get content where it needs to go every time. In this episode of SaaS Half Full, she shares how you can use your content to fuel the B2B customer journey and get your content read and utilized. 

Content to Meet Prospects Where They Are

At PathFactory, Cassandra spends her time figuring out how to help marketers understand content engagement. The company collects “content consumption data” that shows which prospects are engaging with which content pieces and their engagement level. Imagine knowing a prospect spent five minutes watching your promotional video — how could you use that to better shape your content development and delivery?

Her company’s research has drawn out insights like the importance of breaking up dense content like ebooks into more easily digestible pieces. Coupled with the desire for prospects to binge on content a la Netflix, marketers can plan a stronger content calendar and deliver exactly what a prospect needs to move on their journey.

Marketers should be working with other customer-focused teams to build great content. While Cassandra knows it’s tempting to jump on the first open content opportunity your sales-minded coworkers propose, she advises you to listen and see where trends are really emerging. “My rule of thumb is if I hear the same idea from three different sales reps, I actually start to think about slotting it into my production calendar and making it a priority,” she said.

She also invites marketers to think bigger about content. While there’s always a need for content to inform prospects about your brand, she notes that content meant to show a more fun side of your brand is just as important. “I think marketers are really shooting themselves in the foot when they think of content as just a brand exercise,” she said. “I think there is a ton of value in creating brand-focused content that doesn’t have a lead gen or funnel metric associated with it.”

Remove Friction from the B2B Customer Journey

In the always-contentious battle of forms versus no forms to gate your content (a battle other SaaS Half Full guests have waded into before), Cassandra believes forms can provide some value. Still, everything should be directed toward creating a smooth educational process for prospects. “I think forms should be used as a way to identify unknown users, and that’s all. Once they’re known to you, you shouldn’t have any other forms,” she said. “If you want them to consume the content, just give them the content.”

Forms are one example of how marketers bog down prospects and make the B2B customer journey a bumpy road. As marketers work increasingly with more teams in their organizations to build and deliver content, Cassandra believes they should always be considering what makes life easiest for prospects. “As marketers, our job should really be removing as much friction from the customer lifecycle as possible, not introducing it to serve our own goals,” she said.

For more insights from Cassandra on how you can create and deliver content that gets clicks and drives interest, listen to Episode 105 of SaaS Half Full.