B2B demand generation 2023: The rise of content marketing
B2B marketing has changed substantially in the last few years. And with tightened budgets, smaller marketing teams and hard KPIs, it's forcing so many businesses to reconsider their demand generation strategy.
In a recent podcast, kindly invited by hosts at Present Works, we ran through the biggest challenges and ways forward for B2Bs to succeed in 2023.
The video footage will be available soon – watch this space – but we thought you might like a write-up. Let’s dive into the questions 👇
Q: How important is it to have a more targeted approach to your B2B marketing?
Targeting is excellent and we’re definitely seeing more B2Bs shift to this approach to focus resources. And there should be a balance between timely content and then layering on top of the targeted content:
Evergreen narrative-led content: appeals to your broader target audience.
Sector specific content and campaigns: requires you to niche in on specific pain points, industry knowledge, and segmenting data.
Not many businesses are doing this but we’ve seen it is on the rise.
Q: Do you think some of the big brands are cutting back on marketing?
Actually, recent stats show that marketing teams are seeing bigger budgets this year.
Almost 4 in 10 (39.5%) of firms expect marketing budgets to be higher in 2023/24, with just 15.3% expecting spending cuts.
This means a strong positive net balance of 24.2% expect marketing budgets to grow this year, suggesting firms are protecting spend – despite economic concerns.
However, it’s worth noting marketing and advertising costs more today – ad spend in particular – so it doesn’t always equate to more spend, necessarily.
That’s why B2B businesses are getting more strategic and balanced about how they spend their marketing budgets. For example, a lot of businesses we talk to say they are not seeing the best return from performance marketing (e.g. PPC).
Overall, businesses are getting lean with what they choose to spend their budget on. If it doesn’t deliver the right results, it tends to get axed 🪓
On the flip side, businesses are also ramping up on what works. We’ve got clients spending £4-7k on creating high volumes of high quality content to capture the bigger market.
The c.97% that aren’t aware they need a solution, rather than the 3% ready to buy at any time – more on this here).
Q: Where are businesses now focusing marketing (spend, strategies etc) to improve ROI/hit KPIs/satisfy stakeholders & investors?
Over the past 5-10 years, there was a huge shift toward performance marketing. It was fairly new and it used to work.
But today, the B2B buyer has changed. This change accelerated substantially during the pandemic when prospective customers became bombarded with digital communications.
In turn, we believe that marketing’s role must also change from collecting as many qualified leads/MQLs as possible to educating buyers at scale.
So that they’ll come to you when they are ready to buy.
This is why we believe there’s a major shift towards content marketing and organic distribution channels like LinkedIn and email newsletters.
Q: How can businesses use content for B2B demand generation?
A lot of businesses think that a blog's purpose is to sit on a website. But that’s not enough. It seems a shame to spend all that time perfecting a blog, to just leave it to just sit on a site, hoping that the right audience stumbles across it.
To put it bluntly, there are two big challenges with content marketing today:
#1: Not focusing on content distribution
When B2Bs focus on content distribution – sharing it on as many channels as possible – they see a massive spike in inbounds and ROI because they reach a much bigger audience with just that one piece of content. Now, when this happens for every new blog, you can see how this generates qualified leads 🚀
The biggest cause for this happening? Often, it’s because either they don’t know how to or their teams have shrunk so much – teams are getting pulled into lots of meetings etc. (I guess that’s why we’ve been drafted in to help a lot of marketing teams).
#2: Writing blogs to hit KPIs
One thing that catches B2Bs out is writing for the sake of it because there’s now a KPI to meet or a stakeholder has requested a blog topic without any strategy behind it.
This can lead to content being created that doesn’t hit the mark. And this is why businesses need a content strategy that focuses on the audience’s pain points and needs – but also allows for flexibility to react to the latest news with their views and guidance.
Q: What would you say is the most commonly made mistake by businesses when it comes to how they are putting out content?
We’ve already touched on this, but to recap:
#1: Not distributing it properly – e.g. not enough channels ( consider sector specific guest blogging for backlinks and repurposing into carousels and posts for LinkedIn engagement).
#2: Not having a unique angle and expert input – regurgitating what others are saying or keeping it too general that it doesn’t look interesting enough to invest in reading it. Instead, try to include an expert opinion and/or unique and interesting angle to your pieces.
💡Top tip: Just a heads up, relying solely on AI writing tools are a sure-fire way to create generic content that everyone else is putting out. Plus, there's a danger it might not rank as well because it isn’t unique and misaligned to E-E-A-T – something Google loves!
Q: You say you believe in not gating content, why is this? Because so many publications and brands gate their content.
It’s not necessarily gating content – but what happens afterward. 💔
We used to adopt this approach when we were Heads of Marketing because we’d use that contact data for lead nurturing – NOT to sell to people off the back of a guide download.
The problem is we still see so many B2Bs sending one white paper download straight to sales to a sales team to convert.
The impact of this is that audiences now don’t trust filling in forms because of these practices.
Essentially, now, the way B2B buyers buy has changed. But marketers are still using strategies from 2015 to engage them. And it doesn't work.
So, if your ultimate goal is for content to be read, then you need to ungate it. If it's valuable and you use the right distribution approach, it will boost conversions.
When is gating ok? Some content, like valuable research studies, could be gated. They’re a big investment for B2Bs and incredibly popular reads so people are likely to want to trade their contact details for valuable insights.
Just don’t be tempted to repackage a blog post into an ebook and then gate it. Potential buyers will just hop to a competitor's website for the insight instead and you’ll lose out.
Q: What would you say is the key to lead nurturing?
If we could sum this up, we’d say these three things:
Value-adding/quality content written for all levels of the sales funnel – You need this to pique interest with an introduction to a topic and drive contacts down the funnel.
Personalisation and targeting – Like at Account Based Marketing level (e.g. noticing they’ve won an award or started a new role and mentioning it alongside the relevant content)
Reviewing engagement data over time – We use both social media and email marketing to run lead nurturing campaigns. With email, you can see engagements over time. With this, you can then invite the most engaged contacts to small in-person events after you’ve nurtured and warmed them up (invite c.20 people, bring in guest speakers and run a true thought leadership session – not a sales pitch!).
Q: Why is it important to have a multi-channel approach to your marketing activity?
We’ve touched on this already. It’s not just about writing helpful SEO content, it's about distribution.
Today’s B2B buyers ask their network, consume content to learn about their issues and explore solutions, follow recommendations from industry influencers, ask about vendors in closed communities, and check out the company and employees on LinkedIn.
All this means, you need to be where your buyers are.
So, start optimising your content for the platforms where your buyers are. And make your content worthy of sharing on the places you can’t reach - such as closed Slack communities.
We have a number of frameworks we use for content writing to make content more easily disseminated and distributable. For instance, one blog we wrote was repurposed into:
Two LinkedIn carousel style flipbooks
10 brand-led social posts
5 subject matter expert social posts
One un-gated PDF guide
Two guest blogs - tailored for different sectors
One paid social post
As an interesting side note, it’s not just about content, it’s about relationships. Enable your subject matter experts to be active on social platforms and communities.
Q: What’s one of the biggest blockers you see in B2B marketing
We’ve seen it in previous roles and as an agency: CEOs and investors dictating metrics, KPIs and OKRs. Now, this is completely NOT the case if your senior stakeholders have a sales and marketing background because they tend to know what moves the needle.
But, with the wrong KPIs, B2B marketers are forced to ignore what they know works or try new strategies because they need to hit their numbers.
This can lead to a huge problem. Instead of demand generation, these businesses are only able to capture existing demand. And those in the market to buy are price sensitive and aware of all your competitors. This makes for tough conversions and it’s much harder to build trust.
Q: What do you think of AI writing tools? Will they replace writers?
They can be really useful. For example, if you’re stuck Googling things like stats – it's also worth seeing if the tool can pull back a quick result. But we would not rely on them. As we know from having a strong background in writing for AI-led businesses – AI is ONLY as good as the data it is fed. This can make them inherently biassed – which could impact on a brand’s reputation.
Plus, it writes it in an incredibly inhuman way (because hey, it's a robot! 🤖).
The result? It’s boring, it’s not helpful content… Or expert-led and might not rank as well in Google. It may even get penalised by Google if it’s duplicate content or misaligns to E-E-A-T.
Key takeaways
In short, it’s 2023. The B2B buying journey is complex and buyers are in control. That’s why you need to optimise for buyer education, frictionless experiences, and consistency – and distribute your content where ideal customers are.
That was quite a lot to take in so let’s recap the key takeaways:
⬜ Create content marketing that’s evergreen AND sector specific
⬜ Don’t cut back on spend – leading businesses aren’t
⬜ Focus on content marketing and always repurpose and repackage content
⬜ Remove friction from your funnel
⬜ Don’t rely on AI writing tools
⬜ Make sure you’ve got a unique angle for content – new views and opinions
⬜ Use content for targeted campaigns like lead nurturing and account based marketing
Have a burning question? Drop either me or Kerry a note – we’d love to hear from you! becca@rooandeve.com | kerry@rooandeve.com.