New research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs shows that B2B marketers are spending more money and time on content marketing.
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According to the study, most content tactics are being used more frequently, with B2B organizations using an average of 12 tactics. The most popular tactics are social media (excluding blogs) (87%), articles on a company’s website (83%), enewsletters (78%) and blogs (77%).
The era of traditional marketing through product placement, direct advertisements, and promotions may as well be over, writes David Woodrow on the Social Media Today website. Woodrow writes that content marketing has picked up a full head of steam as nine out of 10 B2B marketers currently engage in some form of content marketing.
One of the problems many B2B merchants face is very fewhave a repeatable process for creating content, messages and tools, according to the October 2012 findings from Corporate Visions. As a result, without a repeatable process, merchants are at risk of using content and messaging that is inconsistent or doesn’t address customers’ pain points.
So how can B2B merchants significantly upgrade their content marketing efforts? In this article on the TopRank Online Marketing Blog, Lee Odden offers 5 tips to win with B2B content marketing and social media.
Many marketers think more content equates to content marketing, Odden writes. “What matters with content marketing is the thoughtful creation of information designed for a particular audience and specific outcomes as an individual object and as part of an overall strategy,” Odden writes.
To get an idea of what a great example of B2B content marketing looks like, check out this post from the Content Marketing Institute website.
Successful B2B content starts with compelling storytelling, according to this blog from the Broadcast Engineering website. It’s important for your content marketing to target the right people and to match the content up to the most influential individual in the purchase decision, according to this article from the SYNND website.
And here’s a look at current and future trends in B2B content marketing, blogs Holger Schulze, vice president of marketing at EG Innovations.
Jim Tierney ([email protected]) is a senior writer for Multichannel Merchant. You can connect with him on Twitter (TierneyMCM) and LinkedIn, or call him at 203-358-4265.