How Do I Run a Successful PBM Campaign?

Humans are creatures of habit. Once we find something that works, and fits it into our routine, it can be hard to break away from it. However, what if that routine did not give as much breadth as the new option? Marketers have, for years, been feeding into the SEO machine with the understanding that it was the best way to generate organic search traffic and new leads through account-based marketing (ABM). Our team at DemandJump is here to shatter that worldview and introduce you to the future that is pillar-based marketing (PBM).

What Is PBM and How Does it Work?

Before we can get you rolling out your own PBM campaign, we need to understand what it is. A PBM marketing strategy aligns content marketing techniques and demand generation tactics to the search behavior of prospective customers. It aims to increase qualified web traffic through highly-targeted content designed to quickly rank high on search engines and provide users with a self-service discovery experience within a brand's area of expertise.

This alternative to ABM has similar goals, such as lead generation and increased website traffic. The main difference is in how you achieve these goals. PBM is heavily focused on one major element, CONTENT. Whereas ABM combined the efforts of sales and marketing to cater personalized experiences for what they deemed as high-value accounts, PBM allows content to do the heavy lifting.

What Makes a PBM Campaign Successful?

Now that we have a better understanding of what a PBM campaign is, we can look at what makes it successful so that your team can implement this strategy in the future. Creating content is just the start; putting just anything out on the web about your company, product, or services will not help you gain leads or generate traffic. You must create calculated, keyword-driven material that feeds into a larger content ecosystem. Here are a few simple steps you can take to start a successful PBM campaign.

1. Topics: The first step to creating a successful PBM campaign is choosing the topic for your pillar page. Each pillar strategy will call for a Pillar Page at the top of the plan's hierarchy. A Pillar Page is a 3,000-word-plus piece of content that lives as the main navigation page on your website. Our consumer insights tool will show what your target audience cares about, and these can serve as your pillar topic(s).
2. Keywords: The second step in your PBM campaign journey is to select high-ranking keywords and topics for all the content you will publish. It is best to choose keywords and questions that are being searched by your target audience. You need to be able to conduct detailed customer and market research in order to write content like this. Luckily, DemandJump can take care of both of these needs. Our keyword research tool can show your team the phrases and questions that need to be included in all your pieces of content (pillar, sub-pillars, supporting blogs) to rank higher in Google's search results.
3. Content Ecosystem: After you have your keyword phrases and topics, the next step is to write the content yourself or hire out this work (Our stellar team at DemandJump can take care of this for you as well). Think of all the content around a specific topic as a massive spider web where each blog connects to a sub-pillar and each sub-pillar connects back to the pillar page. This web of content communicates to Google that you are an authority on a specific topic and will boost your rankings to the first page of results.

After all of the pieces are ready, you can publish them in batches to align with other projects your team is working on, or you can publish everything you have all at once. Either way, if you take full advantage of DemandJump's services while creating your PBM campaign, your content will reach your desired audience and increase organic lead generation.

DemandJump and PBM, is it Too Good to be True?

We have made some pretty bold claims about PBM campaigns, and we are sure you have some questions. After many years of only performing ABM, many companies ask, "why is PBM so effective?" To prove its value, let's look at one of our own PBM efforts. We wanted to command more of the space for the search term "SEO Keyword Research." We published six pieces of content per week and went from 10 to 59 first-page rankings in just three weeks!