In Our Primer On Mastering B2B Content Marketing, We Outline Time-Tested and Verified Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Website.

If the content is king, then the intent driving that content is the ‘king maker’. In 2018, content marketing strategies are directed at customers who are not only willing to purchase but also influence others in the community to drive actions via recommendations, reactions, promotions, and contribute UGC (User-Generated Content).

Fact-Checking Content Marketing Trends

According to the B2B Content Marketing 2018 report by CMI and MarketingProfs, forty-seven percent of the respondents (B2B marketers from North America) outsource marketing activities around their content. While quality and accuracy of content form the core of their marketing activities, the rise of intent marketing has pushed the boundaries for modern content marketers.

• 78% of the CMOs believe that Content Marketing is the future of marketing, says Demand Metric.
• Nearly 805 B2B marketers rely on custom content as their central activity to boost their marketing performance.
• 67% marketers fail to plan to develop a content marketing strategy within 1-2 years due to small time size, according to CMI. Lack of time is the second most-viral reason for them to believe that content marketing plans fail.
• Spiceworks claims that nearly 50% are slightly sure, or totally unsure about tracking the ROI of their content marketing!

If you are struggling to strategize your content marketing goals, or wish to improve your ROI on content marketing, this primer is your compass for 2018, to help you become a B2B Content Rockstar.

Magnify the Churn of Your Original, Organic Content

To become a B2B Content Rockstar in 2018, your primary goals should be to build a content calendar around topics that are easy to find and are useful and relevant to customers that use your services. Don’t bait customers to read what they already know. Rather, delight them with something that is based on pure data and research.

Remember, no amount of paid promotion of bad content is going to turn it into good, viral content. At least, not in B2B tech!

The Power of Product Reviews, Recommendations, and Testimonials

Nothing beats the power of product reviews. At MarTech Series, our product review blogs fetch significantly more unique traffic than any other piece of content.

We learned from the MarTech RADAR 150 Companies that they are successful in their content marketing strategies by virtue of the volume of information customers have about them on product review platforms.

Aptrinsic actually expanded their Product Experience Platform to achieve exactly that! Content, when tagged with Product Experience and Reviews platforms, enables product leaders to engage their accounts, and key personas within them, in a more coordinated way. As a result, their customers enjoy a more consistent and cohesive experience.

The new product launches and expansion details could be covered extensively in a three-pronged strategy, via on-spot interviews, TechBytes interviews, PR coverage, or even guest posts, where the product managers and Chief Technology Officers evangelize the benefits that the products offer.

When your customer or a publisher group talks about the product, and you backlink the piece to your Newsroom or blog section, you invariably increase the mileage of your in-house content.

Events and Webinars: Take a Cue from the Six Thinking Hats

B2B Events are the lifeline of your content marketing strategy.

I always felt that Edward de Bono was a master psychologist, and that his writings are a ready reckoner for all modern content marketers. To become a Rockstar Content Marketer, your magnitude of growth depends on the number of events that you cover in every month, quarter and year.

How many attendees and speakers did you interview?

How many hooks did you offer to your audience that would be interested or impressed to attend the event?

Do you have a plan to cover the key takeaways from the event?

Taking inspiration from the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ philosophy, a content marketer should focus on covering events and webinars to build a content management calendar that piles up abundant information, stirs emotions based on instinctive reactions, walks the conservative line of B2B engagements, and offers an Optimistic (Yellow Hat), Creative way to provoke action from the readers.

Recommended Read: How Webinerds Came, Conquered and Dazzled at Webinar World 2018

Video Updates and Live Streaming

Given the damage that Fake News has on brand reputations, content marketers have hesitated to try out syndicated video content. With new-age advertising standards and brand safety measures, content rockstars are exploring Live Streaming channels to amp up their marketing prowess. With influencers backing their efforts, videos are the most legitimate way to increase traffic and generate verifiable results in a much shorter time.

Images, Chats, and Newsletters

Content that has images has a higher chance of engaging the audience. Visually attractive assets also make great additions in newsletters and email marketing templates. While still in the nascent stage, chat boxes and virtual assistants, popping out of content, provide an unmatched opportunity to marketers to drive intent straight into your content workshops.

We love social media promotions for content marketing. But, we would reserve that primer for you in our subsequent editions. Stay tuned…