Marketers are in an age where they have a huge amount of content at their disposal. In a recent, report the majority of marketers said they had more digital content now than they did two years ago. Most people said the amount of content they had at their disposal was likely to increase over the next two years.
The downside to all this is that B2B marketers are experiencing a form of digital content overload. Marketers just have too much content.
How has All this Content Impacted Marketers?
The high levels of content stressing people out are a challenge for B2B marketers. It has forced them to change so they can manage the increasing amounts of content. For a start, they are reviewing content performance far more regularly than ever before. They need to do this so they can ensure their content marketing tactics are actually working.
B2B marketers are also placing a heavy emphasis on long form content. In these pieces of content, there are articles, lists, and original images. These pieces of content are designed with the idea of making them target a more niche audience and by making them have a longer shelf life.
And they are even going as far as to document their strategies and compiling reports on the consumer journey, which is also changing. These new habits and tactics are leading to B2B marketers investing more and more in content marketing.
In short, the industry has changed because longer form content is now in-demand and B2B marketers can no longer getting away with producing lots of content aimed at a more general audience.
What are the Most Powerful Tools for Marketers?
There are no specific tools to mention that will help every single marketer. It’s possible to say that the B2B marketing industry has branched out based on a variety of different niches. It may not be what you want to hear, but it depends entirely on the business you happen to be operating in.
You need to learn to manage content marketing just like you would IT or Instagram. You need to compete for the best talent and be serious about what you are doing. You should have an entire department geared towards it. For example, for Instagram, you probably have an Instagram growth service that you use.
But what about the technology side of things?
There are two trends regarding technology that you must take into account. You need to move away from localized platforms to the globalized platform that is the cloud. Tools also have to be consolidated to cover the entire lifecycle of each piece of content.
Can there Be Too Much Content?
All B2B marketers know that internal and external content will help them to meet their business objectives. You may be surprised to know that this is actually a big problem. It’s causing the volume of content available online to grow at an incredible rate. And marketers are assuming that the more they put out the better.
Instead, marketers need to concentrate more on finding the right amount of content for their business. It’s easy to get carried away. It’s always better to produce less content that is of a higher quality.
How you react to having too much content is to measure the effectiveness of each piece of content. Concentrate more on individual content performance over your overall campaign. Drilling down will lead to better results.
The B2B Business Uses the Same Content Creation Principles
When you are marketing to businesses, you should put the same amount of effort into marketing to them as you would a conventional customer watching their TV. Businesses perceive your brand in much the same way as an ordinary member of the general public does. You have to think about how people are looking at your brand at all times.
Your content, delivered both in a public and private setting, should focus on the different steps in the purchasing path. Targeted content aimed at businesses that are at different stages of the purchasing path will be essential for increasing conversion rates and maximizing efficiency.
Last Word
There’s such a thing as too much content, but only in the sense that people need to spend less time on quantity and more time on quality. It’s easy to find yourself in a content arms race. Rather than doing this, focus on the individual performance of anything you release.
What is your view on the ‘too much content’ issue in B2B?
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.