Too often, strategic content marketing is reserved for the consumer market. However, there’s every opportunity for utilization and optimization in the B2B market, as well. B2B companies who try to implement content marketing often misunderstand the concept, thinking that strategies must be modified in huge, overarching ways due to differences in the B2C and the B2B markets. Here are just a few additional reasons that B2B companies fail at content marketing:
Foregoing a Consistent Strategy
A bad strategy is only good as an initial data gathering tool. For optimal results, you must incorporate a fully defined strategy into your marketing plan, and identify important KPIs before taking the plan to a third party for implementation.
Keep in mind that blindly publishing content will never yield beneficial results. You also need to use innovative video, graphics, and interactive tools. The world has moved beyond text, and words alone will not stand out in a crowded market.
Thinking You Will Get Content Marketing for Free
This may have been the case five years ago, but the market is far too saturated with content today to grow your brand without putting some money behind it. When it comes to content marketing in the modern business landscape, you get exactly what you pay for.
Marketers are now spending upwards of $44 billion on content marketing alone. While you probably don’t have $44 billion laying around, you should have a few hundred to put behind posts that represent your brand. Make sure to focus a significant portion of your funds to the distribution of your content as well as its production. After all, if no one sees your great work, then you may as well have never created it.
No Promo
The worst thing you can do in today’s market is to wait on the search engine or social media algorithms to find your content for organic boosts. By the time this happens, you will have run out of operating funds and will be begging your investors for another opportunity.
If you’re not tweeting about your content, sharing it on LinkedIn, finding ways to link to your content on guest blogs, posting on Facebook and Google Plus, directing incoming traffic to your blog, soliciting comments and reviews, and pitching the kingmakers in your industry with your content, then you should focus less on creation and more on promotion.
Bad Content
On the contrary, if you are doing all of the above and still getting no traction, then you may need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to your actual content.
B2B is not the place to bore people, however technical you may perceive your audience to be. Decision makers at the head of huge supply chain companies still need to be shaken to get the point. You need good writing, a unique personality, and great optimization in order to make a superlative impression that will last. This is even more important when each unique sale is worth tens of thousands of dollars instead of just a few bucks.
Do not skimp on the images and videos when you have an opportunity to include them. There is nothing worse than a wall of text that is not broken up with some kind of multimedia, especially since major search engines can now easily track multimedia assets and include them in the search.
There are many other reasons why your content might be failing, but the above four are essential for consideration. Just because you sell to businesses rather than to consumers, you don’t get a pass on creative content. Take nothing for granted, and develop meaningful content for potential customers, regardless of the market descriptions they happen to fall into.
