B2B content marketing Archives

We share the latest research, benchmarks and advice that will help you reassess your lead generation channels and identify those approaches proven to deliver results.

Word of mouth may be King but who’s the Queen?

It’s no surprise that word of mouth and referrals reign supreme when it comes to B2B lead generation. It has always been a powerful way to generate leads, particularly when done strategically however it is limited by scale.

B2B Lead Generation - Conversion Rate Table — Source: Average Conversion Rate from Lead to Opportunity – Marketo Data Tells Us: What Is the Top Conversion Rate by Channel?

When broader outreach is needed, inbound content marketing comes into its own. The channel, used by 91% of B2B marketers, provides a strong ROI and delivers warmer inquiries compared to cold outreach campaigns. However, it doesn’t come without its own challenges.

What content marketing isn’t

Organisations that are unsuccessful with content marketing are likely to be doing one or more of the following:

1. Publishing content that’s not tuned in to potential buyers, doesn’t recognise their challenges and lacks proof.
2. Sharing self-serving or self-focused stories (the “Read all about us!” approach, you’ve read this stuff before and probably switched off).
3. Poorly timed distribution that misses prime engagement times.
4. Using dull formats which don’t engage with their audience.
5. Lack of content and keyword strategy.

These mistakes mean the opportunity to engage with prospects, and nurture them, are missed.

In contrast, those that that see success through content marketing have a clear and documented strategy (only around 37% of organisations), invest in their content marketing efforts (40% of marketing budget vs 14% of those who are the least successful) and work within an organisation that has a strongly aligned sales and marketing team.

B2B Lead Generation - Leads vs Alignment Chart — Source: State of Inbound Global Report 2018

What does successful content marketing look like?

B2B Lead Generation - Content Marketing Graph — Source: 2018 B2B Lead Gen Outlook

Blog articles, whitepapers and research reports remain among the most fruitful forms of content marketing.

Key is to ensure they are well-researched, long-form pieces of content and provide real value to your prospects.

What’s more, video is becoming harder and harder to ignore, even in the B2B space.

However, successful content marketing doesn’t happen in isolation. For the best results, it will be integrated with your SEO, social media and email marketing strategies.

Account based marketing for your hottest prospects

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a more focused approach than content marketing but still not as personal as referral marketing.

ABM works because it focuses heavily on building quality relationships (something we’re naturally advocates of). With 84% of marketers reporting that ABM has significant benefits to retaining and expanding existing client relationships, it’s one to seriously consider for your marketing mix.

These are just some of the proven approaches that will help you build impactful B2B lead generation marketing. Get the balance right and you’ll shape a strategy that works short-term, longer term, and which supports wider outreach and focused efforts for those truly hot prospects.

Do your B2B lead generation strategies need a shake up?” Feel like your marketing mix isn’t filling your lead funnel as you’d like it to? We help businesses review their channel mix and find one that works. To find out more, drop us a line.

Sources

5 (often overlooked) tactics to set you up for B2B referral marketing success Your Allies, February 2018

Marketo Data Tells Us: What Is the Top Conversion Rate by Channel? Marketo

Content Marketing Trends and Stats for 2018 [Infographic] Webbiquity, February 2018

State of Inbound Global Report 2018 HubSpot

B2B Content Marketing 2018: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America Content Marketing Institute, September 2017

2018 B2B Lead Gen Outlook Chief Marketer, 2018

Why 3000+ Word Blog Posts Get More Traffic (A Data Driven Answer) Neil Patel

The pivot to video by the numbers – and what B2B marketers need to do next LinkedIn, June 2018

SEO 2018: Top 5 Most Effective SEO Techniques Bubblegum Search, May 2018

Using social media marketing in B2B markets? Smart Insights, April 2018

Global Email Marketing and Marketing Automation ROI benchmarks 2018 Smart Insights, June 2018

Quality is a B2B marketing budget’s best friend Your Allies, January 2017

What Is Account-Based Marketing? Strategic IC

More valuable stats to underpin your marketing strategy can be found here: Sources, stats & benchmarks for your 2018 B2B marketing strategies and tactics.

Ok, so it’s unlikely a hilarious Times Square flash-mob video promoting your products or a slick, TV ad with George Clooney on voiceover will be signed off by your MD in your next strategy meeting. So what other options are there? Here’s some seriously smart approaches to generating and sharing content in a way that will grab your audience’s attention and boost brand presence.

1. Be outspoken, be memorable

Take a good look around. What are your competitors, industry spokespeople and thought-leaders talking about? And what’s NOT being said? Find a unique perspective or angle on trends and topics your clients care about. Consider how you can be memorable and become known for sharing B2B content that makes people sit up and listen, while others are saying the same old, same old.

And what if you don’t take the time to understand who’s doing what with their content marketing in your industry? Well, the risk is you churn out the same stuff as everyone else, or slightly different versions of it. How can you develop stand-out B2B content without knowing what’s around? Sounds obvious, but it’s a step many marketers still miss.

Brave some controversy

A company voice itself can also be memorable, be it heard through company communications or through the language of its spokespeople and employees. Stepping up to the mic with either a strong tone of voice or controversial take on things can really pay off. Explore how you can be thought-provoking, or challenge current thinking in a meaningful way? Of course, this only works when backed with substance.

Point in case… which of these blog titles are you more likely to read?

“Driving business growth with artificial intelligence”
OR
“90% of AI spend has zero lasting value – so why bother with AI at all?”

“How to connect with busy professionals”
OR
“Why successful people are douchebags”

Consider building a choir of voices, using multiple spokespeople to tackle industry topics and share a range of insights, debate and thought-provoking angles. If you’re communicating with numerous buyer personas this well worth a look-in, as you can align spokespeople to appeal to each buyer group.

But back it up

This approach can be nerve-wracking for the marketer at the helm. So, back it up with checkpoints. Especially at the start, ensure the right eyes are on any outspoken, challenging content you’re putting out. Ready your spokespeople with responses for any retort that may come. Weigh up any potential risks versus the end result of improved brand authenticity, increased reach and shareability of your content.

Some good examples of people putting their mark on the world through brave approaches to their content marketing are: Gary Vaynerchuk, Liz Ryan & Doug Kessler. And then there’s Trump… leading the way in some respect but no doubt causing heart failure daily for his poor PR team.

2. Team up and turn up the volume

Primary research and insights can be gold dust for building unique, valuable B2B content. However, conducting interviews, running surveys and then compiling all the data into a cohesive, compelling whitepaper that excites is time and resource intensive (not to mention chews through budget).

Look then to your network, your partners or industry influencers in your space that complement what you do. Teaming up with other (bigger) brands or people who serve a similar audience, with points of view that work together with yours, can increase the success of your content marketing efforts tenfold. Provided you and your partners have a keen eye on what the market wants to hear – this can be an excellent way to create highly valuable B2B content.

Not only can you benefit from the wisdom of experts outside your business, but the amplification from their outreach, audience and networks will get you heard where you wouldn’t otherwise. Joining budgets on research or content initiatives will also typically help your marketing bucks go further.

Let’s move onto look at what you can do in terms of content format. Having an attention-grabbing approach, and dream team of partners to build content with will only take you so far. Being Google-savvy must be a key tactic with content creation.

3. Go long-form

We are drowning in information overload, with over 2 million new blog posts being created every day (oooof)! Almost quickly as a question pops up, we can Google it and have reems of instant answers. The challenge here is this can lead to information fatigue. Your prospects and clients are tiring of content that’s general, or just slightly helpful – stuff they could find anywhere. They’re seeking out (and expect) high calibre articles that resonate with them. Content which helps solve their issues, shed new light while entertaining them in some way too. They’re looking for new takes and unique insights, backed by expertise and credibility.

For even the most skilled copywriters, coming up with content that addresses all these needs in short blogs or articles is incredibly challenging. How can you truly get to the crux of a matter or explore a topic deeply in so few words? Couple with that the shift in how 500-800 word blogs perform compared to longer, more in-depth pieces of content and we see it’s time pay attention to long-form.

In this article, Neil Patel shares why long-form is so powerful. Research also tells us that long-form blog posts can generate 9x more leads than short form posts and strengthen or build your authority as a thought-leader.

This will boost your SEO health too. As search engine algorithms have become smarter (as in AI smart) they now better understand user intent which eliminates the need to try to rank for every long-tail keyword.

Instead of creating lots of different blog posts for each long-tail keyword, build a few high-quality ‘pillar’ posts for your business’s key search themes (i.e. those main topics your audience would search for). Enrich them with detail, optimise them for conversions and link them to secondary B2B content. That secondary content should relate to topics similar to your pillar keyword. This link is important both for SEO and to help your website visitors to navigate your content. HubSpot explains this nice and simply in this video.

Revisit and repurpose

Take a look back at previous content. What here could be built out to a long-form piece, and repurposed with a new tone or standpoint?

“Hungry for the detail?” We’re merely pointing you in the right direction here, rather than giving you the full rundown on how to manage and execute these approaches. Naturally, there’s lots more to making B2B content marketing stand out using these methods, including having the right thinking, processes and channel mix behind it.

To hear more about how we can drive your content marketing in a new, attention-grabbing direction – drop us a line.