One thing we know for certain is that 2023 is already gearing up to be a wild, fast-paced year for content marketers ready to go all in.
To create a high-performing content strategy, your marketing must always consist of a few types to generate interest or engage an audience, such as:
- Blogs
- Videos
- Case studies
- Infographics
- eBooks
- Checklists
Without a solid content marketing strategy, B2B brands miss out on massive ROI potential, opportunities to build authority as a thought leader, and avenues to provide value to prospects and customers alike.
All of that sounds great, but what does it really mean for you and your brand to have a solid content strategy?
Often when brands think about content marketing, they think about the owned content—content the brand creates for itself. But an effective content marketing strategy combines owned, earned, paid, and shared content—all cohesively working toward a common goal. In 2023, every B2B content marketing strategy should:
- Be audience focused.
- Use influencer- and user-generated content.
- Leverage AI.
- Think outside the blog.
- Update existing content.
Let’s break down a few of the most important trends we expect to see this year.
Related reading: The Ultimate Guide to B2B Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Trends for 2023
1. Be audience-focused.
Your audience deserves intelligent, interactive, and personalized content—and they know and expect it. The content you create and share must add value to their lives; it should be content your audience actually wants and needs. It’s also important to be audience-focused in choosing your medium, not just the message of your content. Video and audio content is still hugely popular among consumers. In fact, articles with videos get 84% more traffic than those without—and articles with more than three videos generated 55% more backlinks than those with none.
The name of the game for B2B content marketing in 2023 is prioritizing the recipient of your messages. The best way for brands to begin is to understand the why behind the wants, needs, and choices of their customers. Knowing the why helps marketers—and product developers and the whole organization—accomplish the mission of the company more effectively: solve the problem they set out to solve for their customers. When you understand why your customers want to solve this problem—what their goal really is—you can tailor solutions, content, and all forms of engagement with them to their specific pain points.
In addition to the video trends and favor for intentional marketing, audiences are also showing a lot of love for “snackable” content. Bite-sized morsels of content that they can like, share, retweet, save, react to, and more. The catch is that—like that bag of chips you can’t keep your hand out of—snackable content always leads to a long-form piece of content, like a blog, article, full-length podcast, or the like.
Other great forms of snackable content include:
- Quote graphics
- Memes
- Gifs
- Infographics
- Audio clips
- Twitter threads
2. Use influencer- and user-generated content.
If you really want to boost the effects of a content marketing campaign, then influencer marketing and user-generated content should be at the forefront of your strategy. B2B influencer marketing has been on the rise, as is the use of user-generated content. What do they have in common? Consumers trust them. Audiences trust what—and who—they know. In fact, 93% of consumers turn to customer reviews and recommendations before making their purchase decisions. Incorporating influencer- and user-generated content into your marketing campaign should be a no-brainer decision.
Related Reading: How Your B2B Can Leverage User-Generated Content To Build Credibility
3. Leverage AI.
AI has been a huge topic lately across the entire marketing and PR industry. Innovative leaders are asking about the pros and cons of AI, how their brand can leverage it, and what AI marketing tools they really need to invest in. The answer to these questions isn’t simple, which is why a lot of B2B leaders have avoided true digital transformation and have failed to fully embrace AI to the extent that it can benefit their business. To successfully leverage AI, B2B leaders must use AI tools to solve their consumer’s needs in a unique way while balancing the human- and data-driven elements of marketing communications campaigns. In other words, AI paraphrasing tools and other writing tools powered by AI should supplement your content team and marketing efforts in a unique way rather than fully replace them.
Whether “leveraging AI” in your content marketing means developing a learning management system for small business, prospects, or new customers to learn the ins and outs of your product or posting your daily educational Reel using user-generated content optimized for post time is entirely up to you. AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
4. Think outside the blog.
When people hear “content,” they often associate it specifically with blogging—and blogging is an important part of developing an B2B SEO strategy and providing valuable, informative content for your prospects—but too many brands rest on blogging as the center of their marketing strategy, and in 2022—let alone 2023—that is a mistake.
Content strategies must go beyond written formats. They must be multi-modal—video and audio components are key to a successful strategy. With many options, marketers should focus on what will be interesting and useful for their prospects—and there are a variety of media that can help with that:
- The majority of marketers (87%) say video has helped them increase traffic, and Forrester indicates that video is 1,800 times more valuable than written content.
- B2B email marketing boasts an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.
- Infographics take the written word and make it visual. Not only is visual content easier for our brains to process, but it also increases the number of people who comprehend and believe the content.
- Audiograms, podcasts, and webinars capitalize on the two-thirds of the US population ages 12 and older that listen to digital audio at least once per week, up 5% from 2021.
- Creating content that is experiential—as PowerPoint templates prospects can actually download and use or a quiz to help them understand which of your products suit them best—adds value for your audience. Where prospects find value, they build trust. And when brands build trust with prospects, they make sales.
At the same time, however, you don’t want quality to suffer because you’re branching out into something new. Pulling back on a blog or podcast series for a little while to work on something new and awesome won’t destroy your brand. Just make sure you’re getting help in the areas you need to, whether that’s video editing or app-building.
So the next time you have a great idea for a blog, consider if it may be better served as a contributed article, youtube video, Twitter thread, podcast topic, or an infographic—or mix and match. Improve your blog by inserting videos, infographics, and more into the blog itself.
Related reading: 5 Tips For Crafting The Perfect Case Study
So the next time you have a great idea for a blog, consider if it may be better served as a contributed article, youtube video, Twitter thread, podcast topic, or an infographic—or mix and match. Improve your blog by inserting videos, infographics, and more into the blog itself.
5. Update existing content.
It seems like silly advice. Why update old blogs when you can write a new one, right? Well, there are significant benefits to revisiting old content. A concept called information gain is at the root of that statement. Information gain is a method that can be used to optimize what is featured out of data sets. In 2020, Google was noted to be using information gain in its search engine results. With Google’s latest update, it essentially prioritizes not just the best information but different information. So you’ll want to make sure previous content is updated with the most updated information, comprehensive subheadings, and a new perspective annually.
Related reading: Next Generation SEO: What Google’s New Patent Means for Content Marketing
What do you think of our top five B2B content marketing trends for 2023? Have you already tried some of these? Get any ideas for a new campaign?
If not, then you have some homework for this year.
Thinking you might need a little help? Reach out. We’re happy to help—in big or small ways.
