5 Imperatives of B2B Content Marketing
Prologue
Seth Godin, the famous American author & entrepreneur stated the importance of content marketeering as follows:
“Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s left.”
Any business is driven by a sense of awe that needs to be applied across all of its marketing sub-sets, including the content strategies, to inspire innovation. Having the brains for awe is something that lays the foundation for the marketers to introspect & think beyond the established patterns. When it comes to B2B marketing nothing is stagnant, things are fast-paced & dynamic & immobility is synonymous to some serious incongruences in marketing strategies opted for.
When it comes to B2B content marketing & crafting of a holistic strategy for creation & distribution of content across multichannel, to help the marketers optimize their return on marketing investments (ROMI), the marketers need to be well informed of the changing dynamics of market place around them. Not only do they need to do extensive research to figure out the latest industry-specific trends in the market, but also need to keep abreast with the moves of their competitors. While standing out of competition & thinking out-of-box for innovation is important, equally important is sticking to the situation at the grassroots & doing the basics correctly.
When it comes to B2B content marketing, the marketers need to strategize their omnichannel content strategy, decide on the engagement & conversion metrics to quantify their content marketing strategies & align the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the content marketing endeavors to those of their prime business objectives.
As James Allen, CEO of web-only had described, content marketing is all about making money. However, in an era of fiercely evolving B2B technologies, mere money-making isn’t sufficient. The marketers need to optimize the return on their marketing investments (ROMI) to generate maximum business profitability.
According to research by the Content Marketing Institute, 92% of the organizations agree that content is an integral part of their marketing strategies & is required for driving business growth. When it comes to B2B marketing though, the content marketing landscape is competitive. In fact, according to a report by Top Rank Marketing, only 30% of the content marketers see their content strategies as effective & only 46% of the marketers have a documented content strategy.
At the end of the day, the content marketing endeavors of the B2B marketers should be highly focused on targeting the relevant personas so that they generate an ample amount of website conversions. The content marketing efforts that have been valuable have mostly been those which resonate with the areas of interest of their prospects.
Ways to Architect an Impactful Content Strategy
The modern B2B content marketing needs to be executed across multi-channel. Omnichannel content strategies encompass multichannel sales approaches that have been optimized to provide customers with a holistic & 360-degree shopping experience. The customer might be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, via iPhones or through other popular referral channels but the experience needs to be seamless. The omnichannel content strategy prioritizes customers & ensures that customers are served with phenomenal experiences at every touch-point as opposed to merely having diverse touch-points in place.
The following are some of the steps for successful B2B content marketing strategies:
1. Defining the Buyer Personas:
The concept of buyer personas is not new for B2B marketers. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer profile that helps marketers in strategizing. Shaping their marketing endeavors to best resonate with the areas of interest.
Segmenting the market & then segmenting the group of ideal audiences into specific clusters. Lays the foundation of attracting, engaging, converting & retaining the customers. Not only this, only with the constant alliteration with the areas of interest of the prospects. Conversions may be optimized & hence the marketers also need to focus. On the niche-specific segmentations & sub-segmentations.
The pain points of the prospects should be specifically addressed at each step of their buying cycles. Prospects can be segmented based on their demography, technography, psychographic behavior. Firmographic, fit-data, as well as according to their first & third party intent data. Based on their research methodologies & past purchase histories.
Content strategy needs to be weaved around prospects & should be free of structural ambiguities.
2. Research Right: Quantify & Optimize the Omnichannel Content Strategies
When it comes to B2B content marketing, words need not be conjured up, bereft of purpose. Every piece of content needs an orchestrated and pre-defined purpose. Content strategies in marketing are structured in assonance with dynamic research & test-running.
Several BI tools & tools such as Moz & Google Analytics can help marketers analyze the relevant keywords being searched by their ideal personas.
Additionally, the marketers also need to take the data gathered from omnichannel into consideration. The digital footprints of the prospects can be used to manifest their buying behaviors & their intentions to make a prospective purchaser.
Content strategies can also streamline the gap between marketing & sales endeavors. Creating specific pieces of content resonating with the specific questions being asked by the marketing & sales professionals can help in optimizing their experiences.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a dramatic shift in the ways prospects research online, it has led to a deliberate modification in the conventional structure of the sales funnel. Sales funnel is now a looped structure & research is equally vital for prospects at each stage of their buying cycles.
B2B buyers conduct the majority of their research online before they ever reach the salespeople. Maintaining the sacredness of the pieces of content & their relevance to the prospects is important for the marketers and is also an integral part of their online research methodology.
Equally important is for the marketers to quantify their efforts for omnichannel content marketing by measuring the content marketing ROI. The Content marketing ROI can be measured in terms of the amount of revenue gained from content marketing compared to the total expense done in terms of creating & distributing the pieces of content.
A simple formula to measure the Content Marketing ROI in terms of percentage is as follows:
Content marketing ROI (as %) = (Return-Investment)/Investment * 100
With the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) & algorithms based on machine learning (ML), the marketers are also focusing on creating intelligent pieces of content & dynamic content to fragrantly optimize the personalization for the end-users & improve their experiences across omnichannel.
The simple stratagem to create relevant pieces of content & commercializing them around the areas of interest of customers requires continuous split-testing, analogy of diverse digitized data-points across omnichannel & prioritizing them around the key business goals – envisioning the values that the brands want to deliver apart from just trying to sale & quantifying the efforts of their omnichannel content strategies as important pre-requisites to optimize them.
3. Employ Influencer Marketing:
Influencer marketing grew from an adjuvant marketing strategy to absolute essentiality & is an industry worth $5-10 billion in 2019 (Source: MediaKix).
This strategy revolves around companies partnering with influencers to increase brand awareness & accomplish their core conversion goals with a specific group of the target audience. As B2B brands, as well as customers, highly trust an expert’s opinion, before making a buying decision, the showground of B2B influencer marketing can’t be left untapped.
Influencer marketing can be an impactful way for brands to optimize their Returns on Investment (ROI) through positive Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM).
Research from Mediakix reveals that 89% of the marketers state that ROI from influencer marketing is comparable or better than other marketing channels. William Harris, Founder & CEO at Elumynt, quotes the importance of influencer marketing in curating content strategies as follows:
“When you want to really scale and when you want to reach new audiences, you need content that makes people WANT you — and that comes from having great content.
One of the best ways to get this content is from influencers – they know how to tell a story that fits the social media channel’s objective.”
4. Unveil the Glaring possibilities Of Paid Promotion:
Creating relevant pieces of content in assonance with the diverse areas of interest. Of the prospects can also prove to be a devouring & mindless adoration. If the content strategies aren’t optimized for web visibility.
With the constant evolution of the social media algorithms, social sharing to improve engagement. The web-visibility of the pieces of content is now no longer a relevant practice. As it once used to be Also, the risks of falling back on sliding doors while optimizing.
In such a situation, the risk of succumbing up to the risks in the marketplace may cost.
For making sure that a great piece of content gets the visibility & engagement. That it deserves, the devotion to organic traffic needs to be accompanied with paid ad campaigns.
Paid advertising on diverse social platforms are algorithm-friendly. Are often highly orchestrated to the ad structures of the social platforms which attracts . Engages relevant traffic with the pieces of content.
5. Focus on Visual Storytelling: Employ Videos in Content Strategies:
According to a report by SocialMediatoday, customers are 64% more likely to purchase a product after watching an online video. In fact, 96% of the top decision-makers in IT watch videos before making a buying decision.
Visual storytelling involves the use of videos, webinars, infographics, images, etc. To entice users to expedite their buying cycles & make a quicker buying decision. Visual content is timeless & immortal & often can be easily repurposed in n number of ways. Companies like HP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Google & Cisco are already effectively. Using visual story-telling as an integral part of their content strategies.
Bringing It All Together
Beyond simply insisting on the customers to buy through blunt ad messages, the content marketing. Strategies have evolved & assimilate greater intelligence & attentiveness. Into the equation to address the pain-points of the customers.
In congruency with the diverse areas of interests of the prospects the intelligent. Predictive, quantified & split-tested content strategies are sacrosanct for B2B marketers. To truly understand their market & to deliver the relevant experiences to their audiences. To be rewarded by optimized sales conversions, increased brand loyalty & better client retention.
We, at Valasys Media, have been pioneers in providing content syndication services. As stalwarts in the marketing industry, our custom-made B2B services are focused .The omnichannel marketing endeavors of our clients to help them optimize their sales revenue.
We are all-set to proudly sponsor an upcoming business event called the CMO & Future of Marketing Middle East. To be held at Dubai Between September 23-24, 2019. On Day 2 of the event, Ashish Aggarwal, Director of Digital Marketing. At Snapdeal, will talk on the topic: “Media Content is no more a luxury but a necessity”.
The talk will enlighten marketers on ways to create omnichannel content strategies to improve customers. Experience (CX) and on methods to create authentic video & audio-based pieces. Of content & sponsoring of the pieces of content containing multimedia to reach the target audience. The event will also cover other intricate topics of relevance to B2B marketers such as account-based marketing. ways to weave content strategies of resonance to innovative & data-driven digital landscape. We invite our readers & marketers from all niches to participate in the event & to grasp as well as contribute insights. Towards futuristic approaches for intertwining impactful & interdisciplinary.
Our services such as lead generation, appointment setting, event promotion & lead nurturing. Services have been carefully articulated to help our B2B customers achieve. Their core bottom-line endeavors such as achieving the predefined standards for customer success. Improved users’ experiences (UX) & an optimized sales revenue. For the furtherance of perennially healthy sales pipelines, feel free to get in touch with our team of experts.