A lot of B2B content marketing strategies tend to fail, and mostly because it can be tough to write about obscure niches. When catering to such niches, some find themselves stuck in a rut and suffering from perpetual boredom.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. Instead, some marketing consultancies are leading the industry with constant innovations. Hence many companies are choosing to outsource marketing needs, a trend which has rapidly grown over the past few years.
Here, we have compiled a few reasons your B2B marketing strategy might be doomed to fail, wasting limited financial resources and manpower:
Unclear Reasons for Online Marketing
Over the years, we have worked alongside numerous different B2B companies. For any initiative to be successful and have an impact, including an online marketing initiative, the content has to be relatable to the core operation of the business, which should be relayed throughout the overall strategy. But before attempting to create the perfect B2B content marketing strategy, the marketer needs to understand the company’s reasons for taking on the initiative in the first place.
Unlike traditional marketing, online marketing is quite dynamic in nature and can be pretty fluid in achieving its outlined objectives. Thus knowing the goals, such as increasing sales or lead generation, before a roll out of the plan is extremely crucial to its impact on the targeted audience.
Associating Sober with Professional
An unfortunate trend amongst some B2B content marketers is how they seemingly attempt to be as boring as possible in the hope of appearing professional. Some people have even joked about the boring content by insisting that B2B actually stands for “boring to business people.”
Before we start anything, we need to take time out to acknowledge the fact that B2B marketing most definitely doesn’t have to be boring – and a boring tone certainly shouldn’t be carried over into the content.
Take it from us – we live, breathe and sleep online marketing! We maintain that B2B content marketing can be just as edgy and exciting as B2C marketing.
Confidentiality Issues
Many B2B companies guard information about their organization closely. But in today’s world, transparency is greatly appreciated. Google is the biggest advocate for open source as a development model, believing in technological progress through the collective shared efforts of everyone. Sharing at least some information about the company will only help in engaging the targeted audience.
Exclusion of Calls to Action
Much B2B marketing content tends to completely avoid calls to action, and the reason for that has always eluded us. The point behind content creation for online marketing is to influence the consumer’s behavior based on the information they just received.
Regardless of the fact that most B2B consumers are executives and that the sales cycle can be daunting in its length, if time and resources are spent on content creation and marketing, then that’s all the more reason to direct the readers towards to the next step in the process.
The Issue of Quality vs Quantity
Contrary to popular belief in B2B marketing circles, it’s never enough to just have a content marketing blog. It has to be done in a creative way, in order to be enticing to the reader. The quality control demands on B2B can even be much more strenuous then those imposed on B2C writing, due to the nature of the audience.
In many cases, B2B content marketing is done simply for the sake of doing it. It needs to be understood that for a strategy to have a positive impact, regular and quality content is necessary. Simply maintaining a mediocre blog doesn’t cut it anymore.
Following Trends
A lot of B2B companies are simply following a small number of marketing patterns, creating an environment of imitation in the industry, though some firms are getting quite innovative with their marketing initiatives.
Whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, videos, podcasts, blog posts, articles – from long form content to short form, from video to audio to written, B2B marketers need to use every possible tool at their disposal to spice up their marketing tactics and stand out from the crowd.
Is your business stuck using the same redundant marketing practices? We at Zen Media can help you inject some creativity and innovation into your strategy. Fill out our online contact form today for more information on all that we can do for you!
