Overview of Modern B2B Content Marketing
With more eyes on screens, marketers look to content marketing to stay in touch with customers, especially in difficult circumstances. The unpredictability of the situation is the main reason why good content is becoming your most valuable marketing asset right now. Even if consumers aren’t necessarily buying from you right now, it’s the time when brands and customers were building relationships and they might even search for brands for information and entertainment.
Evolution of content experiences after COVID-19
When Bill Gates published an essay entitled Content is King in 1996, he made eerily accurate predictions about the modern state of content consumption. The broad opportunities he envisioned for businesses have only grown exponentially into the marketing monster it is today.
Recent surveys have shown that 69% of B2B marketers plan to increase digital ad budgets by 2021 and if they do, brands will need to improve their approach to content creation in terms of quality and strategy to stand out from the busy digital landscape. The first half of 2020 had many surprises in store for the world, and the marketing universe has seen its fair share of advertising cuts and lower budgets due to declines in revenues. Restrictions on attending physical events also drastically impacted B2B content consumption, forcing marketers to find innovative approaches to fill their marketing funnel.
Uncertainty is the order of the day and so is B2B practices. Many CMOs are all too familiar with budget cuts during the COVID-19 outbreak, but the general trend is to shift focus from acquiring customers to retaining customers.
An overview of modern B2B content marketing
Traditional B2B marketing techniques have not proven to be as effective as inbound marketing due to the nature of the message. Interrupting your audience is a key feature of outbound marketing, while inbound marketing aims to solve a challenge or pain point facing the customer right when they are looking for the solution. When your prospect is looking for a solution online, this is the ideal opportunity to increase brand awareness and drive conversions.
Some of the goals of B2B content marketing are to educate your target audience about your brand, develop the information they have about the brand, and show consumers the benefits of using your product or service. Over time, the goal of driving leads to your business and converting a potential customer into a qualified lead changes. What sets B2B content apart from B2C is that it has to be useful to the reader in some way. If the reader cannot apply what has been learned, B2B content has not achieved its purpose. There are exceptions to this rule, but the main purpose is to be seen as a resource for other professionals in your target audience.
Incremental value addition is essential
In the modern scenario, it has become more important to communicate responsibly with your customers, focus on educating them, and build trust and credibility. This, in turn, affects sales and monetization and helps build loyalty with your existing customers. The quality of the value that your content asset adds to a potential customer must increase over time to convert them into a paying customer. Likewise, an existing customer will gradually look for a different kind of value addition.
The day-to-day challenges of the modern customer have changed dramatically and your content needs to show how your brand is going to help them in these new circumstances. Your adaptability will determine the potential impact of your content on your bottom line. While it’s important to set realistic goals for 2020, it’s also time to scale up content to avoid foreseeable loss of revenue from existing customers.
