Content creation is a powerful marketing strategy to drive traffic and engagement for brands — regardless if they’re B2B or B2C. In fact, 92% of marketers describe content as a critical asset for their companies, helping them generate more quality leads than traditional outbound marketing strategies.
Given the noisy digital marketing landscape, people’s expectations for quality content are higher than ever before. Content marketing that can effectively build brand reputation and lead potential customers down the funnel must be genuinely useful in terms of providing information or entertainment value.
The demand for compelling and creative content continues to rise, and it’s not easy for marketers to keep up. To lend you a helping hand, we’ve compiled a list of four B2B businesses that are achieving great results with their content marketing:
Salesforce
Salesforce may be the world’s leading cloud computing vendor, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune to tough competition in the fast-growing IT industry. Case in point: Salesforce UK was struggling to maintain steady traffic, leads, and sales numbers.
But instead of doubling down on their existing outbound marketing efforts, the regional office decided to pivot their strategy (and budget) completely, choosing to focus on content marketing. Their tactics included:
- Creating an easily-digestible Prezi presentation featuring customer success stories.
- Filming hilarious yet informative sales and marketing videos.
- Developing an interactive and engaging stop-motion slideshare.
The results spoke for themselves: After these pieces of content were uploaded and shared, Salesforce UK saw an 80% increase in web traffic, 2500% more traffic from social media platforms, and over 6,500 email newsletter sign-ups. That’s a lot of leads!
Pro Tips:
It’s never just about churning out content — these campaigns were fun and attention-grabbing. Consider taking a risk and experimenting with innovative methods to execute your content creatively. It pays to be bold.
Deloitte
Deloitte is a global company specializing in providing various services, from consulting to auditing to technology. In other words, they don’t have a one-size-fits-all audience — their clientele includes scientists, government agencies, and small business owners.
As a result, their content marketing strategy revolves around dispersing their broad knowledge to these unique audiences. The company launched Deloitte Insight, a platform with specialized hubs. Resources and insights are organized by different industries — financial services, telecommunications, industrial products, etc. And the content isn’t only in one format either, but spans blog posts, videos, podcasts, and curated collections.
Long story short: Deloitte’s content marketing has something for everyone.
Pro Tip:
If your product offerings appeal to a wide range of buyers, you can separate your buyer personas. It’ll be crucial to segment your website to keep the information organized and easy to access and discover (consider building microsites.) You’ll cement your brand as a thought leader in no time.
NextView Ventures
As a VC firm, NextView Ventures wanted to expand their content marketing presence beyond their own website. As a result, they launched Better Everyday on Medium, sharing and curating stories and resources to help start-up founders “redesign the everyday.”
By developing a highly-popular off-site blog, NextView has successfully tapped into a huge repository of readers who otherwise wouldn’t have stumbled upon their website. (Medium has 6.3 million users.)
Additionally, because Better Everyday isn’t attached to NextView — article CTAs don’t all link back to the company’s website — it’s a great opportunity for the firm to experiment with content types, perspectives, and voices.
Pro Tip:
Anyone can publish and create publications on Medium. But beyond Medium, there are numerous ways for B2B brands to publish off-domain content. Consider submitting a guest post to a popular industry blog or have your CEO give a TEDx talk that shows off her expertise. Though these efforts may not be directly linked to your company, it’s a great way to engage with new audiences who, if interested, will go and dig for more.
Evernote
Evernote, a note-taking app, leveraged content marketing for storytelling, albeit slightly differently: They created an engaging campaign featuring customer success stories in various industries and niches. Not only did they deliver a human touch to the brand, but they also celebrated their customers in the best way possible — the company expanded from being just useful software to a lifestyle brand.
Pro Tip:
Whatever type of content you develop, make sure it tells a story. If you’re creating a how-to article that’s chock full of “pro tips,” make sure you’re telling the story of how it solves your customers’ headaches. If you’re doing a roundup of the latest trends, tell the story of how it relates to the current cultural climate. Quality storytelling will ensure that your content is engaging, relatable, and worthy of your viewer or reader’s limited time.
It’s Your Turn
Are your creative juices flowing? If you’re a marketer at a B2B company excited to launch your own content marketing efforts that are creative and commendable, shoot us an email! We’d love to help you get started.