Content marketing is a tested and proven strategy for building an audience of interested customers. Especially for B2B marketers in a rapidly expanding digital content landscape, the biggest challenge is identifying content creation and marketing tactics that will stand out from the competition — and from the wealth of similar content available on the internet. This will only become more important going into the new year.
Whether you are part of a marketing agency or work in the marketing department of a B2B company, the successful marketing campaigns of other B2B companies in the past year can help develop and refine a compelling content strategy for 2017, using some of the best marketing trends to reach out through the noise.
Get Interactive (Juniper Networks)
Tell Others’ Stories to Tell Your Own (Cisco)
Content marketing that focuses on your own business, your products and services can come across as far too sales-focused, turning away potential customers. Cisco’s marketing team clearly understands this danger, which they have effectively avoided with the interactive stories it features as part of its “Never Better” campaign. Rather than talking about Cisco’s products, the stories featured in “Never Better” tell how various organizations use Cisco technology to solve both business and world challenges.
Like Cisco, you can create a marketing campaign that entices readers to learn more by telling stories that focus on customer projects and successes. This content strategy sets you ahead of others who instead choose to focus solely on detailing what they have to offer. Another tip to take from Cisco’s content strategy is to pair well-written stories with high-quality visuals, such as photos and infographics.
Use Humor, Carefully (Xerox)
Humor is one marketing element that can take a campaign viral, in either a positive or negative way. With B2B marketing, it can be even more complicated to walk the fine line of humor that is memorable and engaging and humor that turns away potential customers. Xerox is one example of the creative and successful use of humor not only to reach its customers, but also to refresh an established but older brand. The company’s “Work Can Work Better” campaign uses humorous videos to highlight common office challenges that will resonate with its core audience — and shows how Xerox solutions can make that work better.
B2B marketers wanting to boost the visibility of their campaigns can apply similar tactics. Combining humor with the popular trend of video content marketing can attract potential customers and drive sales. The key to using humor appropriately is in demonstrating, like Xerox has, a solid understanding of the daily experiences and needs of its business customers.
Conclusion
Originality, storytelling and humor may seem like simple concepts when it comes to increasing your marketing reach and successfully capturing sales. But used creatively and consistently, these tactics can be an effective way to design compelling content that stand out from the crowd and cause your audience to take notice.
