Content that works for B2B marketers

I’m always on the lookout for great information on the subject of inbound marketing and in particular what’s working best out there for my B2B marketing peers.  I’ve been a B2B technology marketer for almost two decades–I prefer to use the term ‘seasoned ‘as opposed to ‘old’ to describe myself by the way.  So as you can imagine I was pretty excited to come across a report from the LinkedIn B2B Technology Marketing Community entitled “B2B Content Marketing Trends”.  This report presented the results of survey taken by over 500 of my fellow B2B tech marketers, and details how they’re using content, what’s working and what isn’t–very cool.

As I started combing through the charts, I was reminded of similar report issued by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) that I discovered a while back.  “B2B Content Marketing:2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” rolls up the results of a survey of over 1,000 marketers across different industries.  I love this report and often refer back to it as I’m putting together a content plan or thinking of a new piece to write.  This is the second annual study, so there are some great data points about how content marketing has evolved between 2010 and 2011. Technology marketers made up 17% of the responders to this study.   Even though you can’t make a direct ‘apples to apples’ comparison of the two studies, I did find a lot of common ground and some interesting differences.

So what works for my fellow tech marketers and for marketers across different industries?  Here’s a summary of what I found.

Content marketing tactics used

No real surprises here.  Both surveys showed that B2B marketers are using a mix of content tactics.  From tried and trusted tactics like media articles, white papers and case studies to more experimental tactics like e-books and podcasts.

Here’s a chart from the MarketingProfs / CMI study that shows the breakdown of tactics used:

I was a little surprised to see “articles” as being the number one tactic used–I’m assuming that this means media articles and not Blog articles (Blogs are broken out as their own category).  If this is the case then I guess it shows how well established PR is as a channel for B2B marketers in all industries.   Unfortunately the tech marketers study didn’t present data on how many marketers are using what tactics.  However by looking at the results from other questions in that study you can see that a very similar set of tactics emerges.

Content effectiveness

When it came to rating what content worked best for B2B marketers, live / in-person events and case studies claimed the top two spots for both groups of survey responders.  For the tech marketers the good old white paper was came in at number three, whereas webinars / webcasts stole that position for the all industries group.  White papers for that group shared the number five spot with eNewsletters.  I was surprised at first about how both groups ranked live / in-person events so highly, as I don’t tend to think of events like seminars or roadshows as content tactics.  But given that they are content tactics and effective means really engaged and moving through the sales cycle then it makes sense that live events work best.  Just by the fact that you’ve got people to come to an event means that they’re really interested in the subject matter that you’re offering.

Webinars / webcasts I believe ranked highly for similar reasons.  Participating in one requires a degree of commitment that is much higher than clicking on a link in a newsletter or downloading a white paper.  In my experience both live events and their online equivalents appeal the most to prospects that are more mid-funnel than early stage in their buying journey.  That’s why both tactics work well as nurture touches to prospects in your house list.  They can also work as first-touch tactics if you happen to catch someone mid-funnel.

Chart from the LinkedIn B2B Technology Marketing Community entitled “B2B Content Marketing Trends”	Chart from the MarketingProfs / CMI study entitled “B2B Content Marketing:2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends”

Let’s talk about white papers for the moment.  This is a catch-all category for content downloads and goes way beyond the purist definition of a white paper.  This category now encompasses content like tips and tricks, top X ways of doing whatever, things to avoid, best practices, research reports etc.  This tactic has been a mainstay of B2B tech marketing for many years, and has been widely adopted by all B2B marketers.  It was interesting to see that “research reports” were called out as especially effective by the all industries group.  I’ve had first-hand experience of how effective this type of content can be, even if authored internally.  Us B2B marketers like hard facts and numbers based on research, it appeals to our left brain analytical side.  So it’s definitely worth putting this type of content into the mix, even though they are usually much more expensive and time-consuming to produce.

Moving right along to case studies—that tactic that we love and hate in equal measures.  Getting good ones can be very painful, but the rewards are so great that the pain is so worth it.  Just think of all the ways you can use a good customer story—press releases, in your Webinars / live events, as downloads on your Web site, contributed articles, pull quotes for your sales collateral and content pieces etc.  Remember too that getting a good story on film has even more benefits, as you can promote this content via video channels.

So as painful and time-consuming as it may be to get case studies, make this a priority for your company and ensure you have a well-oiled program to keep them coming.  Of course the rage debates over whether you should gate your case studies behind registration or allow them to be freely viewed.  I think part of that argument depends on the format and depth of the piece.

Goals for content marketing

That contentious issue leads me neatly into the reason why we do content marketing.  If you look at the data in the charts below purely at the ranking level you’ll see that tech marketers think first about lead generation.

Chart from the MarketingProfs / CMI study entitled “B2B Content Marketing:2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends”

We typically have long and complex sales cycles so the chances of us clinching a deal and acquiring a customer with our content marketing efforts are pretty remote.  For us brand awareness came in third as a goal.  Not the case for the all marketers group.  Brand awareness and customer acquisition tied for the number one spot, followed closely by lead generation.   I was surprised to see that lead nurturing wasn’t higher on the list for both groups.  I think this reflects the fact that lead nurturing is a relatively new tactic, and many B2B marketers are trying to figure out how to do it well.

To wrap up this article I wanted to say a few words about what’s not been working that well for my B2B marketing peers.  As the graphic below from the all industries study shows podcasts and mobile content were on the bottom of the list.

Chart from the MarketingProfs / CMI study entitled “B2B Content Marketing:2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends”

Podcasts were also the worst performer for B2B marketers.  Being a ‘glass half full’ person I’d like to point out that part of this low performance is due for sure to the emergent nature of these tactics.  In some cases the more practiced we get with doing and measuring new things the better they perform.  This is evidenced by the decreasing confidence gap in social media and other tactics seen between the 2010 and 2011 studies by MarketingProfs and CMI.  In some cases new tactics that we try will fall by the wayside as the marketing landscape changes.  What’s important is that we keep testing new tactics in a controlled way while maintaining a focus on tried and true methods.

Well I hope you’ve got some great information from this article about what’s working and what’s not in terms of content marketing for B2B marketers across all industries and how marketers of technology products in particular approach using content.  We’d love to hear about your experiences with content marketing.

Optify is a great platform to help B2B marketers from any industry discover which content pieces and keywords are driving visits and leads, so you can do more of what works.  Our inbound marketing suite also enables you to optimize your content so that it can be easily found by search engines and in turn by your prospects.

Ready to learn more?  Contact us for a demo, or start your free trial today.

Resources

If you’d like to get your own copies of the studies I referred to in this article, here’s where to go.

• B2B Content Marketing Trends from the LinkedIn B2B Technology Community
• B2B Content Marketing:2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute.