B2B Content Marketing Comes of Age

Done well, it creates a strong connection with existing and potential customers.

The popularity of content marketing is growing steadily. The amount of investment in content marketing is increasing, as is the number of channels for distributing content. This is because this marketing technique remarkably pays off the investment and enjoys the trust of the target audience. According to Brightcove and the Content Marketing Institute survey, about 58% of marketers plan to increase their content promotion budget over the next 12 months.

Why Content Marketing Is Effective

Content marketing involves the creation and distribution of media content and journalism to attract customers. Information can be presented in a variety of ways and formats, including news, videos, e-books, infographics, research, travel guides, Q&A, press publications, photographs and more. Over the past few years, all kinds of websites, blogs, social networks, digital media, online seminars, podcasts, and internet conferences have been added to these channels.

Strategic Focus and Lean Marketing

B2B marketing has undergone dramatic changes over the past few years, driven largely by changing customer needs. Combined with many new tactics, tools, channels and technologies, this has created a tricky situation for the B2B marketer. Too much good can be wrong or ineffective. Thus, many marketers experienced difficulties, and this contributed to the randomness of trying to do something. First, many companies have searched for the statistics project help to assess the no longer relevant marketing areas. After calming down, B2B marketers started to put on the brakes and evaluated their marketing activities in order to re-focus their time, energy, and resources more effectively.

Goals of Online Promotion of a B2B Company

The main purpose of content marketing is not sales but creating a strong connection with existing and potential customers. By providing up-to-date and reliable information without the obsessive urge to buy goods and services, this marketing format helps build a good company reputation much faster and more efficiently than other direct methods that many find intrusive. Customers, having access to valuable and interesting information for them, will trust the source more since they are confident in its excellent awareness and impartiality since there is no obvious incentive to buy.

Promoting a company on social media requires clear goal setting. Based on the final goal, a whole advertising campaign is being developed, therefore, you must clearly understand what you want to achieve. Image goals:

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Create the desired company image
  • Analyze the needs and preferences of target consumers
  • Form a certain opinion of the brand and product among potential customers

Also, the promotion of B2B companies pursues specific indicators:

  • The inflow of customers
  • New product presentation and distribution
  • Market research
  • Sales growth

How to Improve Content Marketing Performance in 2021

To get the most out of this promotional tool, you need to clearly define your company’s purpose. Most B2B marketers (about 93%) set a lead generation as the ultimate content marketing goal. This also becomes the main criterion for the format’s effectiveness, along with performance indicators, brand recognition, and image, etc. Network traffic, the ratio of new sales to customers, as well as activity in social networks, are used to track indicators.

The overwhelming majority of marketers (84%) also note the need to have a strategy clearly stated in writing since its absence leads to a sharp and significant decrease in performance indicators.

Barriers to Content Marketing

To get the desired effect of content marketing, you need to know how to handle information properly. About 95% of marketers divide content into segments, 65% use trends in a specific area, 59% use profiles of responsible persons, 55% – company characteristics, 43% – stages of the buying cycle.

In addition to segmentation, marketers also face barriers, the most serious of which are lack of time (69%), insufficient content (55%), quality and consistency issues (47%), and lack of dedicated budget (39%).

The Future of Content Marketing the B2B Sector

According to the experts, the share of social networks and media for distributing content aimed at B2B customers will only grow in the future. Compared to last year, the number of widely used platforms has already grown by 16% (increased from 5 to 6). The top media platforms that have shown the greatest growth include a service called SlideShare, which allows users to share presentations and infographics, and Google+ and the well-known Instagram. It is already clear that these numbers will grow even more in the future, prompting many marketers to use this format.

Author

  • Jane Travis

    Jane Travis is a freelance writer. She holds a degree in marketing and undertakes different courses in economics and management.

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