R.I.C.E. - The staple diet of content marketing

B2B marketers and their organisations are realising exactly how important eContent is to modern, effective and efficient eMarketing. So what distinguishes eContent from, well, good old fashioned content without the "e"? In this article I argue that your eContent must have Relevancy, Interactivity, Context and Ease of access, hence R.I.C.E. (geddit?!) and discuss some key components for establishing and maintaining one of the most successful eContent tools, the business blog.

But before we address these components, I want to reinforce the case for content marketing, and particularly inbound marketing as a vital part of the modern B2B marketer's toolkit. Inbound marketing or attraction marketing recognises the role the internet plays in your buyer's purchasing journey. 80% of business buyers perform a significant portion of their research for new products and services online without even contacting potential vendors. So what are they doing online? They are seeking out others who have the same problems as them, seeking new and smart ways to solve their problems, interacting with people who have solved problems similar to theirs, reading case studies, white papers, watching videos on YouTube, completing ROI calculators and consuming all manner of content, all without your help and guidance.

In short, you need to be seen in the places they hang out online.

You need to change your content to engage, connect and interact with them. Your objective must be to stimulate their thinking, share your experiences, and connect them with other thought leaders in the area. If you accept this argument, how utterly nonsensical it is, to send out content focused on your company's product release schedule and to suit the promotional calendar you are running this particular quarter. It would be hard to imagine a tactic less engaging to your buyer! No wonder your eDM rates languish at 1% or 2% open rates.

So what does a piece of content look like if we employ the techniques enshrined in the R.I.C.E. principle?

• The content must be relevant to the buyer. It must show you understand the issues they are facing in their business; that you appreciate the gap between where they are now and where they desire to be. You should show a deep understanding of the impact of these issues on their business.
   
• Use a style that allows you to build a dialogue not simply a one way monologue with your buyer, In other words to build high levels of interactivitywith your buyer.
   
• Content must reflect the stage that the buyer is at in their buying journey. It must provide the right context for the buyer. The information a buyer seeks at the early stages of discovery, is quite different from the content they will consume at much later stages of their buying journey. Your content must change accordingly. Your buyer is seeking different outcomes, seeks a different type of knowledge at different stages of their decision cycle.
   
• Use multiple content channels to get your message to the destinations your buyers are visiting, in other words make it easy to access your content. Leverage your stunning piece of thought leadership by publishing it in your blog, write an article for your website, produce a slideshare presentation, post it on relevant LinkedIn groups. You get the picture. You should strive for a consistent message but through multiple channels.

So, I challenge you to stop reading just for a minute or two and think about the last two pieces of marketing you made available to your prospects. How do they stack up to the R.I.C.E. principles? What about the next two? Are you going still send them? Perhaps I could suggest that you take a step back and think about how you can change them to better service your prospect's needs.