TechBeacon_Marcel_Santilli

Building an Owned Audience from Scratch at TechBeacon

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As the sixth largest software company in the world it should come as no surprise that HP Software’s recent launch of TechBeacon is quickly gaining clout in the technology industry.

Started approximately three months ago, this content-filled learning center is already receiving 60,000 views per month. Marcel Santilli, the Chief Content Officer for TechBeacon, spent a month doing research before starting what he said was the most challenging task — the executive approval process.

In this episode of the Social Business Engine, Marcel reveals how HP is taking a customer serving approach to their content marketing through TechBeacon. The focus of TechBeacon is to give HP Software’s customers a place to learn. The only mentions of products you’ll see are references in reports or statistics. Listen to this podcast to discover Marcel’s strategy for launching TechBeacon and the benchmarks from his previous work with Security Intelligence at IBM.

HP_TechBeacon

On This Episode You’ll Discover:

  • How HP created TechBeacon to give their customers a place to learn.
  • How HP is trying to change the self-serving concept of marketing to a customer-serving approach.
  • Customers are 50-60% through the purchase process before contacting a B2B vendor.
  • Why Marcel says to figure out why you are doing a project first is mission critical.
  • How Marcel spent a month doing discovery work to define a strategy for HP’s content marketing.
  • Why Marcel says you should operate like a lean start-up and launch with the minimum viable product.

Operate like a lean start-up and launch
with the minimum viable product.
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  • Why you should start small with executive buy-in and then expand once you have results to present.
  • Why Marcel says the approval process was the most challenging part of launching TechBeacon.
  • How the complexities of Marcel’s strategy required him to give multiple presentations to various business units and functions before getting approval.
  • How Marcel set up his presentations with six slides and a clear vision.
  • How TechBeacon has a two-year roadmap.
  • The effect that the length of your sales cycle has on how quickly you will be able to show ROI on content marketing.
  • How most of the content on TechBeacon comes from their 132 contributors, more than half of whom are not HP employees.
  • How TechBeacon allows competitors to contribute as long as they don’t mention products.
  • The roles of TechBeacon’s in-house team members.
  • How paid content differs from free content.
  • How TechBeacon has posted 170 articles in three months.
  • How TechBeacon is averaging 105 social shares per article.
  • What is Marcel’s approach to influencers and emerging influencers.
  • How TechBeacon is receiving 60,000 views per month after only three months.
  • That Marcel generated millions in revenue for IBM with Security Intelligence before coming to HP.
  • Why Marcel’s one thing is related to operating more like a start-up.

 Featured On This Episode:

There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast with Marcel Santilli from TechBeacon.

You can click the Listen Now button at the top of this page… Or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through iTunes or Stitcher.

Subscribe to our podcast to stay current on new episodes delivered to your inbox every Friday!

P.S. Don’t miss next week’s podcast episode with Michael Gerard from Curata to discover the power of the Content Marketing Pyramid! 

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