But storytelling is timeless. From the age-old tales in Homer’s Iliad to the classic themes of hero, villain, and someone (or something) that needs rescuing, it’s part of our culture. Time and time again, surveys show that stories resonate; they stay with us, they influence us, they connect us.

But as authors and movie producers know, a story is most effective when it’s told to the right audience. And grabbing the attention of tech buyers can be difficult. They’re surrounded by messages from competitors on multiple channels, from cell phones to social media to websites.

As marketers, you face a variety of challenges in reaching those tech buyers:

• Resources shortage: On average, tech decision-makers rely on 7 information sources during the purchase process. Your message may get drowned out.

• Engagement difficulty: 65% of tech buyers say that they typically spend more time consuming content from known and trusted brands because they’re confident their time will be well spent. Do they trust your brand?

• Storytelling: 91% of tech decision-makers say it is challenging to find high-quality content. Can you measure content effectiveness with confidence?

• Competitive differentiation: 72% of ITDMs report that if a vendor does not supply educational content during research, it negatively impacts their impression. Simply put, mid-funnel sales brochures and solution briefs alone won’t work.

The answer to your challenges

Our newest marketing solution, BrandPage, weaves together the reality of our animated, digital world and the art of storytelling in a highly visual and interactive environment. A solution that shares your story with Foundry’s award-winning editorial brands to reach the IT and business executives, managers, and teams who influence technology investment.

Think of BrandPage like a blank canvas for telling your brand’s story with compelling interactive custom content and a full portfolio of dynamic formats: quizzes, assessments tools, research facts, videos, podcasts, graphics, images, and more, all presented with cutting-edge visual design.

Many influencers quoted in the agree with the need for this format. These quotes stand out to me:

• “We need to make our content pages as robust as possible.”
• “Customers are demanding a more relevant, ‘human’ experience.”
• “Use the crown jewel of marketing – great creative �ɴǰ���.”
• “With a tightening economy, marketers need to be prepared to tell impactful stories with data.”

On top of this, B2B buyers want a blend of in-person interactions, remote contact, and self-service (aka BrandPage) across the purchasing journey, according to .

And technology sites are the #1 source for keeping up to date with new technologies and enhancing knowledge across all audiences, from baby boomers to Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z, according to Foundry’s own research.

Data-driven storytelling

In this busy, complex marketing environment, it’s not all about leads. Lead generation programs only work if your prospects are aware of your brand. If you’ve educated key buyers and influencers about how your solution solves their challenges – or opens up new opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage – you’ve got a leg up on your competitors.

Foundry’s unique quantitative research and topic data ensures your story is driven by facts, from what CIOs and CSOs care about to what they consume, how long they stay on pages, their level of engagement with your assets, and more. 

What’s more, we build your visual story – and then we take it to the market. Remember the adage from Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come?” It doesn’t work in tech marketing. Sorry, Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner).

We use our custom branded promotions across Foundry’s editorial brand ecosystem to spread your story. We use our proprietary remarketing tactics to encourage deeper engagement with any visitors and accounts who visit your BrandPage. We promote and nurture with expertise.

And then we measure the results so you can show ROI on your investment. In a single snapshot, you can learn which accounts are showing interest in your content and deliver that intelligence to your sales team or use the CTAs to drive traffic back to your site.

BrandPage is a turnkey solution, with a dedicated production team with established process and track record for seamless execution. It has multiple uses, from global or local campaigns to partner, multiple product groups, and more.

The bottom line

Making an impact in today’s crowded tech market requires stories that connect, presented to the right audiences, using the right promotional tactics, with trusted measurement of your KPIs. Foundry covers all the bases.

is Senior Director of Content Strategy, Atlantic Region, for Foundry, where she manages a team of expert, highly creative content strategists and storytellers.

One challenge for global organizations is how to forge deeper connections with buyers across different geographies. Storytelling that attracts and engages IT buyers in the U.S. won’t necessarily resonate with audiences in Latin American, European, or Asia-Pacific markets. There’s a reason why “lost in translation” is a thing. Nuances in culture, communication styles, and even the IT purchase process require a market-specific approach to storytelling, beyond standard language translations.  

Localized storytelling doesn’t require unlimited budget and bespoke content for every market you’re targeting. To effectively scale your localization efforts, the key is repurposing core assets for individual markets. This approach also helps to ensure that localized content is consistent with your overall brand principles, because the overall narrative doesn’t change.   

Here are three ways to localize your storytelling to have more impact with target audiences in specific geographies.  

Local data

Citing research studies and other data sources in brand content adds credibility and authority to your messaging. This type of data-driven storytelling becomes more impactful with localized data. Third-party data that’s specific to the country or region you’re serving adds a local flavor that is more relatable to the audience. Analyst firms like IDC (Foundry’s sister company) offer a variety of that provide a trove of useful data and insights.  

Conducting or commissioning your own global research is another option, allowing you to “own” the data and segment the results for specific markets. This lets you create multiple versions of an asset with localized callouts or charts. In addition, when you analyze crosstabs across different regions, you can often find interesting insights about each segment’s interests and buying behaviors – which brings me to my next tip…  

Local audience insights

Insights about the local audiences you’re targeting can help you make better decisions about tailoring your content for individual markets, in terms of both topics and formats.  

For example, Foundry’s 2023 Role & Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker Survey found that the average buying committee among U.S.-based organizations contains 22 people, split evenly between IT (11) and LOB (11). But in EMEA and APAC, the buying committees have many more stakeholders, with organizations in each averaging 29 people who influence technology purchases. Knowing the differences in the size and makeup of IT decision-making teams can inform localized content strategy.  

Differences in buyer behaviors can influence your approach as well. For example, The Role & Influence study found that 76% of U.S.-based ITDMs registered for a work-related webcast in the past 12 months, compared with 56% of respondents in EMEA and just over half (51%) in APAC. That’s an important nugget to consider when determining the right mix of assets for a campaign.  

Local customer examples

Peers are an important source of information and insight for IT decision-makers. If you’re creating case studies, quoting customers in whitepapers and blog posts, or featuring customers as guests on webcasts, it’s better to localize those testimonials for each market you’re serving.  

This tactic can be as simple as creating different versions of a whitepaper featuring different customer quotes, while the overall narrative remains the same. Identifying local customers to provide insights or endorsements can add some complexity to the process, but the extra work can pay off by making the examples more relatable to your target audience.  

Two other things to keep in mind:  

It’s important to have local teams review localized content. This “boots on the ground” approach can provide a reality check on any cultural nuances in the content you’re creating to make sure phrases that are translated from other languages are not insensitive or otherwise off the mark.  

If you’re running into issues with scaling your content globally – and who isn’t – help may be on the way in the form of Generative AI. We’re already seeing content localization vendors add GenAI capabilities to their platforms to automate or augment localization workflows.  

������ý���߹ۿ�, we’ve been doing our own experimenting with the much-hyped technology as a way to quickly produce multiple, customized versions of whitepapers and similar assets, tuned for different geographies, personas, industries, and company sizes. The results to date are promising, though we’re still in the pilot phase.  

Two key takeaways when considering GenAI for content localization: 

You need to start with a core, human-created asset as source material for the derivative content. And you still need a human involved to edit and fact-check the customized versions that your GenAI tool generates.  

These simple localization tactics will help you scale your content marketing efforts globally without busting your budget. Localization is another tool in your storytelling toolbox to help you forge deeper relationships with your customers and prospects, wherever they live and work.  

For years, Foundry’s annual Customer Engagement study has reinforced the notion that IT decision-makers rely on vendor content as part of their research, consideration, and evaluation of new technology. In the , released late last year, 91% of IT practitioners said they are willing to register for a wide variety of content from a technology vendor, including product testing and demos, vendor presentations, analyst research, interviews, and case studies. Critically, nearly three-quarters (74%) said they are more likely to consider an IT vendor who educates them through each stage of the decision process.

Digital transformation is largely about knocking down organizational silos that inhibit information sharing and innovation. Tech marketers need to adopt the same transformational mindset to content marketing. Launching an awareness campaign or a demand-generation initiative in isolation is no longer sufficient. Marketers need to educate, engage, and nurture tech decision-makers along the entire path to purchase, providing a seamless experience from one stage to the next.

Content serves as the connective tissue for the full brand-to-demand experience, but there’s a catch: Creating a holistic content experience is hard. In the newly released from the Content Marketing Institute, 62% of respondents said it was challenging to create content that appeals to different stages of the buyer journey. The stakes are high: 72% of IT decision-makers in the Customer Engagement study said that if a vendor does not supply educational content during research, it negatively impacts their impression of that vendor.

3 steps to success

So what’s the right content mix for a brand-to-demand program? Here are three considerations:

Step one: Establish credibility from the outset
Your upper-funnel content isn’t just about increasing brand awareness – it needs to position your brand as an authority with your target audience. Vendor-neutral thought leadership content should be created from the IT team’s perspective, to demonstrate that you understand their pain points and can offer credible insights and advice on how to work through some of those challenges. Articles, blog posts, short videos, podcasts, infographics, and other shorter-form content are effective content formats at this stage. Proprietary research can enhance all of these formats and further establish authority on a topic.

This approach doesn’t just set a foundation for deeper engagement with your target audience – it can also turn them into advocates for your brand. More than four in 10 ITDMs (43%) in the Customer Engagement study said they would be willing to share information about a technology vendor with their peers if the vendor provides timely, relevant content.

Step two: Layer in the value proposition
Mid-funnel content provides a bridge between an IT professional’s pain points and your brand’s solutions. Discussing key features and capabilities of products or services in the context of how they address IT challenges is a more organic way to deliver your value proposition. Longer-form articles, executive interviews, case studies, webcasts, eBooks, and thought leadership whitepapers are effective formats at this stage, because they allow you to provide in-depth insights and introduce the benefits of your solutions.

Some gated content is acceptable during this phase – as long as the payoff is worth it for the individual registering. The Customer Engagement study found that just 48% of work-related content that IT decision-makers downloaded over the past 12 months provided actionable information. This indicates a massive value gap that exists between what marketers promise in their promotions of gated assets vs. the information they’re actually delivering. Low-quality assets negatively impact perception, not to mention how receptive the IT pro will be to a follow-up call from sales after registering for a white paper, webcast, or another type of asset.

Step three: Make it personal
Lower-funnel content presents an opportunity to convert advocates into buyers, leveraging the engagement data you’ve been collecting to create customized content and experiences. Virtually all respondents (96%) in the Customer Engagement study said they’re interested in customized content, with an affinity to assets tailored by industry (54%) and by relevance to the technology platforms already installed at their organization (49%). At this demand stage, assets that help IT teams make final recommendations and sell the solutions internally are most effective, including product demonstrations and testing, technical whitepapers, and ROI calculators.

As you’re developing a content strategy for this stage, don’t forget the broad team of stakeholders who influence technology purchases. This does not mean you have to create content for a dozen or more personas across different lines of business. CIOs and their IT teams are still the primary decision-makers for large technology purchases. But you can provide IT leaders with resources to get internal buy-in across the buying committee. There’s certainly an opportunity here: In the Customer Engagement study, 65% of IT decision-makers said that educating non-technical functions within their organization requires more educational resources from vendors.

Technology buying decisions are more complex, and more important, than ever. Quality storytelling – minus the silos – gives marketers an opportunity to engage more effectively with IT decision-makers throughout the buyer journey. A brand-to-demand approach can improve the results of your content marketing efforts and help you draw a straight line between marketing campaigns and increased sales.

Learn more about Foundry’s brand to demand solutions. 

is Foundry’s global director of content strategy, overseeing a global team of content strategists who work with Foundry’s technology clients to develop and deliver award-winning content marketing programs.