Content Marketing Priorities for B2B & B2C

Content Marketing Priorities for B2B & B2C

In digital marketing, creating quality content and rightly so is the main focus; establishing your brand as a thought leader aids in building relationships with your customers, boosts conversions, and so much more. That’s why a content marketing strategy is important for the digital marketing puzzle.

Content Distribution Strategy

Content distribution is the process of publishing and promoting content across multiple channels. It involves various methods for ensuring the brand’s content gets seen by its target audience.

It’s not enough to write articles and post them on your website or share them on your social media pages. There’s just too much competition online for your target audience’s eyes and attention.

Consider:

• There are atleast 600 million blogs on the internet (GrowthBadger, 2022)
• YouTube has approximately 800 million videos
• Everyday, users share one billion Stories across Meta’s (previously Facebook’s) family of apps.

For your content to achieve maximum impact, it needs to reach the right people at the right time and in the right channels. And this is precisely what a content distribution marketing strategy helps brands achieve.

Whether operating in the Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C) space, content marketing is a vital component of any business strategy.

Competition is fierce for both B2B and B2C companies as they increase their budgets and explore new content formats in 2022.

Parse.ly recently completed a study involving over 800 content marketers to determine their content strategies for 2022 and beyond.

With the rise of the digital era, more and more businesses are adopting content marketing as a popular marketing tactic.

In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is widely adopted amongst B2B and B2C marketers, 73% and 70%, respectively. Furthermore, up to 96% of marketing decision-makers today report the effectiveness of content marketing for their brand.

Understanding B2B and B2C Businesses

Developing a cohesive and recognizable brand is critical for distinguishing a business in a crowded market. However, the way B2B and B2C brands manage their branding differs significantly. In B2B marketing, building relationships with businesses is essential to your personal brand’s image. Providing top-notch products and services is vital to boosting B2B companies' reps. On the other hand, B2C marketing revolves around projecting a clear message, ideally in the form of a memorable slogan, to foster future brand recognition.

B2C content marketing aims for a short sales cycle, thereby encouraging consumers to act impulsively to fulfill their needs.

B2C buying decisions are often influenced by emotional impulses, driving personal brand preference and public opinions.

To secure the best results with smaller purchases, B2C companies employ extensive marketing methods, such as billboards and TV ads.

More Money, Bigger Teams

Google and other search engines have long placed content at the top of their optimization list through EAT and other efforts. Despite this, businesses of all sizes kept writing teams small and concentrated on blogs and other written content.

B2B and B2C companies have small in-house teams or use a bevy of freelancers or content agencies to create content, so they focus on running the business.

Companies are creating more content than ever, recognizing the need for creating even more new and diverse content:

• 52 percent plan to increase their number of content creators
• 66 percent planning to increase their content output

Budgets increase as well, with most of the new money going to more creators, instead of programs and platforms, to make creating content more efficient.

In the B2B spectrum:

• 91 % use content for brand awareness
• 85 % to generate demand and leads
• 81 % to build credibility
• 79 % to educate the audience
• 68 % to nurture leads
• 64 % to generate sales

In the B2C space:

• 84 % use content for brand awareness
• 78 % to educate the audience
• 73 % to build credibility
• 60 % to generate leads
• 60 % to build loyalty
• 56 % to generate sales

The most digestible and searchable material for organizations to develop is blogs, with 91% of respondents creating that content. Engaging consumers through social media was a priority for 88% followed by the tried-and-true marketing strategy, email newsletter, at 78%.

Blogs and social media posts are the most common and easily created content is written as they successfully engage audiences, and blogs do well in search engines. Both B2C and B2B companies wanted to invest in video and longer forms of content if they had the resources.

Video on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms, whether organic or paid, has high engagement and many companies baulk at the cost of video production and editing. This leads to a more guerrilla-style approach to video using live streams, smartphones, and handheld cameras.

According to Parse.ly, LinkedIn accounts for over 1% of all social media traffic to a website, making it the preferred social media network for both B2C and B2B businesses. Facebook was the second most common means of sponsored and organic distribution and brought in 89% of traffic from social media sites.

A successful marketing plan isn’t just about creating, but understanding how that content relates to the success of the business and the satisfaction of the customers