There are people who think with numbers, and people who think with words.

Numbers people—I will call them the Quantifiers—come off as business focused because they have their eyes on the bottom line: a number. They are the results managers.

Words people—you guessed it, the Qualifiers—look for the substance, the meaning, and the integrity behind what is being said. They are the relationship builders.

With the emphasis on relationship building in B2B marketing, the day has dawned for us Qualifiers in marketing. Will we rise to it?

Ardath Albee writes, in a post "It Takes More than Traffic to Generate B2B Leads," that lead generation shouldn't be the sole objective of inbound marketing, and that we need to look past the latest statistic that most blog traffic is from new, and not returning, visitors. She writes:

"...the main idea is to capitalize on traffic by creating reasons to stay upon arrival and reasons to continue to engage. It doesn't matter which means people choose to engage with you, only that they do. That's the job your content should be doing."

Paul wrote in a related piece about the “Call to Knowledge” that effective content helps prospects to think, and move themselves through the sales funnel.

This is a job for words, not numbers.

As a Qualifier, I want to write the words that break through to the reader, get them motivated, and get them to think, "Yes--the people at this company understand what I'm looking for. This company gets it. How can I learn more?"

When I do my job well, is it measurable? Certainly. Impactful white papers get downloaded. Compelling tweets get retweeted. Interesting blogs get links and comments. There are plenty of metrics. Are the metrics essential? Absolutely.

Here’s my concern: resources are tight. In many B2B companies, marketing managers occupy dual roles as Quantifiers and Qualifiers. They write the email newsletter and analyze the open rates. They bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.

I suggest B2B marketers keep the metrics analysis simple, and spend more resources qualifying the prospect with great content. Make the goals simple and the content rich. The new client case study is more important than a multivariate analysis comparing the A/B test results of the last 5 email newsletters. Count the downloads and the retweets, and just keep writing.

Expert opinions vary about the role of metrics, but the overwhelming mandate on marketing organizations is to become publishers: resources of original content that demonstrate thought leadership. Campaigns, web sites, blogs, are ever-more-sophisticated social media channels are hungry for content. Keep feeding them.

Mark W. Schafer does an excellent job on his {grow} blog in engaging his readers in discussions in the comments of his posts. I participated on the post, “Wait a minute. It’s not about engagement after all!” In this post and its comments, two sides emerge to the question, is a blog successful if there are no comments? Does the success of a blog depend on the number of comments readers make?

Schaefer suggests that we re-frame our expectations for the corporate blog. Recent studies show that large percentages of blog readers are first-time visitors, which means that the assumption that blogs build community is incorrect, and that building community may not be a realistic goal for many bloggers.

This is what I mean by “The Call to Action Has Become a Call to Knowledge.”  A B2B company’s blog is an excellent way to take pulse—to learn a company’s philosophy and culture, observe its thought leadership, and to gather industry knowledge. In giving prospects more control over their engagement in the new buying cycle, we marketers must respect their option to engage passively, lurk, and learn.

Not every visitor to a blog has an opinion to add. Not every reader is a writer. And many blog readers are content being just that—readers—not community members, or even subscribers. While there are metrics that indicate a blog’s success, I don’t believe that the lack of engagement is a “fail.”