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Want to get the most out of your agency? Read our best practices for successful B2B marketing content development—scoping work, managing stakeholder feedback, project management, and more—written by our experienced B2B content marketing team.
Featured Resources
Be a Superstar Reviewer: Four Tips for Getting What You Want from Your Copywriter
Tips for Selecting and Working with Subject Matter Experts
What Causes Marcom Projects to Fail
More Resources
How to Get the Best Value From the Content Bureau
We want to be our clients’ first-choice agency for producing great marketing content—and delivering great value. Read these tips for scoping work with the Content Bureau, so you can get the right work/price trade-offs on every project.
The Grammar Queen’s Guide to the Apostrophe and Its Uses
Apostrophe angst? Ask the Grammar Queen for help. In this post, she offers four simple steps to help you remember how to place your apostrophes properly.
Brain Hurting Yet? How to Simplify Complex Content.
Faced with trying to communicate a complex topic to your B2B customers? Read these tips to learn how to keep things simple, but engaging, so your audience will be inspired to learn more.
Yes, PPM Design Really Matters
Does PPM design really matter? Absolutely. Read this post to learn the basics of good design for this vital document, plus a few other strategies to help make your PPM stand out.
How to Write a Great Copy Block: An Essential Piece of Your B2B Marketing Wardrobe
Copy blocks are versatile B2B marketing essentials that can complement any wardrobe of assets. Learn the process for creating great copy blocks in this post.
Customer Reference Program Management: Using a Case Study Matrix to Secure More Strategic Stories
Starting a new customer reference program? Refreshing your site’s portfolio of customer stories? Find out how a simple matrix can help ensure your case studies meet your marketing objectives.
Establishing Brand Guidelines: 5 Tips for Success
Brand guidelines help you control how your audience perceives your brand. Find out how to create a friendly guidebook that will help everyone who works with your brand to become passionate “brand ambassadors.”
The Secret to Writing Better PPMs: Go Formal
Writing a venture capital or private equity PPM? Embrace the formality of the process. Learn how doing so can help you create a better private placement memorandum and save you time.
How to Create High-Impact Infographics
Not sure when to use high-impact infographics to help convey your B2B marketing messages? Consider these three general applications.
“Feeding the Machine”: Preparing Content for Your Marketing Automation System
What should you feed your marketing automation system? High-quality content, of course. Read these content “meal planning” tips.
What Is an eBook?
eBooks are hot, hot, hot in B2B marketing right now. But what IS an eBook? The definition is broad, for sure. Here’s what we’ve seen, and what we think works best—from content to format.
Lessons on Coaching: Why “Punch It Up” Isn’t Constructive Criticism
Constructive feedback ensures better results when marketing collateral needs refinement. Consider these lessons on coaching the next time you feel the urge to tell a colleague to “Punch it up!”
5 Tips for Creating B2B Data Sheets That Can Deliver on Their Mission
Data sheets are vital B2B marketing assets. To help ensure your data sheets deliver on their mission, read these five tips from the Content Bureau.
B2B Website Best Practices, Part III: Writing Headlines
The Content Bureau’s new website is live! Check out the final installment of our B2B Website Best Practices blog post series and find out why writing headlines for B2B sites can be a (huge!) challenge, and learn about some strategies for success our team discovered along the way.
Forget the Shovel: Four Secrets of Strong Content
Do we have content for the data sheet? Could you recommend a good content provider? We post new content every day! Sometimes, at the end of a long week, talk like this can make my cynicism flare. How dare they devalue the hard work that writers do, or demean the power...
Demystifying Content Marketing
Content marketing. The phrase is omnipresent these days. But what does it mean, exactly? Is it really all that new? Print ads, radio ads, TV ads, advertorials, catalogues, direct mail: Past generations of marketers created plenty of content, after all, even if they...
What Causes Marcom Projects to Fail
It’s really hard for me to write in the negative—I’m much more comfortable with “carrot” than “stick”—but will do so to make an important point. Marketing communications projects do fail, often for simple reasons that can be avoided. Failure in my book means that a...
How to Create a Great B2B eBook
B2B eBooks are in vogue–and starting to replace longer B2B marketing white papers. (I haven’t written a white paper of more than eight pages in ages.) Are marketers just calling “white papers” eBooks? Maybe. Is there anything wrong with that? Yes and no. Readers may...
B2B Website Best Practices, Part II: Facebook for B2B
Updating a few webpages today, are you? Of course you are. The content on today’s B2B sites needs to change weekly, if not daily. And every so often, your company decides to re-do its website completely—or at least massive sections of it. If you’re in the midst of...
Make Me Laugh! The Power of Humor in Marketing Communications
Laughter feels good—and in marketing, it can provide a kind of cognitive jolt. It not only gives marketers an opportunity to shift consumers’ attention to whatever it is they want to show or tell them, but also help them to remember it. As the father of a...
Tragedy Creates Transcendent Work Moments
This post isn’t about marcom. It’s about the meaning of life. My friend’s 11-year-old son is having a 10-hour brain surgery today: August 27, 2013—an otherwise normal Tuesday—and I’m having a little trouble focusing on work. Maybe you are, now, too. When life throws...
Five Tips from a PowerPoint Script Writer
PowerPoint slides provide visual support for the facts, figures, and messages that you want to impart to your target audience. But your script is what really helps to tell your story. Developing a compelling script for your PowerPoint presentation takes work and...
Flip-Book vs. iPDF: Which Format Is Best for Your eBook?
You have great content to share, but don’t know whether to publish your eBook in interactive PDF (iPDF) or flip-book format? Consider the pros and cons of each: iPDF Pro As we shared in our recent post “The Beauty of an iPDF,” this format is interactive, sharable,...
Newsletter Writing 101: Answering the Crucial Questions
So at the last staff meeting someone on your team—maybe your boss?—suggested putting out a newsletter. Great idea! Wait, um, you want me to manage it? Edit it? …Write it? [cue crickets chirping] Oh, sure. Of course I can. Yep. Can vs. Should: Three Questions Of course...
Creating Successful Web Banner Ads
Web banner ads can be a very effective way for your company to market products and services online. They help build brand awareness, increase visibility, and drive traffic to your site. But getting customers to notice—and actually click on—your banner ad is easier...
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