For many of us, the phrase “content marketing” is a relatively new buzzword used to describe the art of communicating a message to customers and prospects without selling.
And here’s why B2B CFOs can often be counted among their firm’s best content marketers. Think about it. Instead of deliberately pitching products or services, CFOs have for years engaged their CFO peers (your firm’s B2B prospects) by speaking the language of finance and sharing financial tips and best practices. However, selling has remained a taboo.
For more sales-minded CEOs and CMOs, repressing the urge to sell arguably presents a daily challenge, and unlike that which distinguishes finance, there’s no “lingua franca,” or linguistic alternative to the mother tongue. Only the CFO has broad access to the C-suite in such a stealth manner, a fact that fully exposes how little prepared many CFOs are to exploit their coveted proximity.
With my last post on LinkedIN, I discussed how our CFO Thought Leader interviews exposed a sizable divide among CFOs by asking our finance leader guests, “How did you become a CFO?” In short, while certain CFOs responded with a powerful professional narrative, others, we reported, seemingly led us down the Amazon.
It should perhaps come as little surprise that we exposed a similar divide when asking finance leaders to reveal what gives their firm’s products or services a competitive edge. It’s a question that we would characterize as being for “polite company” — one designed to give finance leaders enough latitude to sell their services or products to their peers without really selling.
While there is no formula with which to decode an answer to this question, it’s clear that a thoughtful and polished answer from a finance leader qualifies as a silver bullet in the realm of content marketers. (Listen to “The Power of the CFO Voice: Five CFOs Explain Their Firm’s Competitive Edge” )