The Evolution of B2B Content Marketing - Ashley Faus

Content has been the lifeblood of how B2B companies go to market for at least 20 years, since Hubspot pioneered the concept of Inbound Marketing. We make content, we drip it out, we nurture people with it, we align it with our funnels, and we have a conviction that it makes people buy things—although that's also quite difficult to prove.The content game is not going anywhere, but it IS changing. And to guide us through those changes, we're chatting today with B2B content expert Ashley Faus, Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Atlassian. Ashley challenges traditional content mapping to the B2B funnel and introduces the idea of a "content playground" where people engage with content in a way that suits them best in a non-linear, non-standard journey. She also delves into the different intents behind content (buy, use, help, trust), the different levels of content (conceptual, strategic, tactical), the nuances between individual and brand-led content, and the growing role of B2B creators.Thanks to Our SponsorMany thanks to the sponsor of this episode - Knak. If you don't know them (you should), Knak is an amazing email and landing page builder that integrates directly with your marketing automation platform. You set the brand guidelines and then give your users a building experience that’s slick, modern and beautiful. When they’re done, everything goes to your MAP at the push of a button. What's more, it supports global teams, approval workflows, and it’s got your integrations. Click the link below to get a special offer just for my listeners. Try Knak About Today's Guest Ashley Faus is a marketer, writer, speaker by day, and a singer, actor, fitness fiend by night.She's a leading content marketing expert who loves telling the high-level stories that resonate with an audience and connecting the dots between types of assets and distribution channels. For the past seven years, she's been the Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio, at Atlassian. Her writing has been published on TIME, Forbes, MarketingProfs, and The Muse, and she's spoken on various marketing topics for INBOUND, Harvard Business Review, and MarketingProfs.https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyfaus/Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:17] - A brief history of content marketing[04:41] - Over-indexing on attribution[08:55] - Different types of content intent [15:42] - Individual vs. brand-led content[19:12] - B2B creators[29:24] - The content playground [45:52] - Email as a consumption channel[49:02] - Treating people as a whole human[51:47] - Content formats[54:54] - AIResource LinksCreate a “Content Playground” that’s Fun for Buyers (and Lucrative for You) Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter