Heading into 2017, B2B marketers are redoubling their efforts on content marketing. In many ways, the past 18 months have been a period of experimentation to find out what works, and what doesn’t. And now the evidence is starting to build that a few formats are especially effective. The following four content formats offer a quick way to boost your B2B content marketing efforts.
#1: Video
No surprises here, as even a casual Internet users realizes that video is everywhere these days. But even as video becomes ubiquitous, it’s showing enormous potential to pull in new leads. According to Forrester Research, adding a video to an email can increase the click-through rate by 200 to 300 percent. And embedding a video on a website landing page increases conversions by 80%.
Moreover, video is extremely versatile – you can put it almost anywhere. Video is a natural fit for social media and YouTube, of course, but also for blogs and any long-form content. There’s no better way to break up a long page of text than with a brief video to illustrate a point.
#2: Blogs
Blogs seem like they’ve been forever as a content marketing tool, but that’s primarily because they are still so effective. According to WebDAM, B2B marketers who blog generate 67 percent leads than those marketers who don’t. The key to writing blog content that converts, say experts, is helping to provide a real solution for a problem a reader might have.
#3: E-books
E-books are relatively easy to put together and make available, and just the presence of an e-book from a company helps to create the image of being a thought leader. Unlike print books that might be 150-250 pages long, an e-book is considerably shorter, and is meant to be consumed in a single reading or two. The goal is to educate the reader without being overly sales-y.
#4: Case studies
Companies may have groundbreaking new solutions, but if potential clients can’t visualize how the solution will work for them, they may pass on you. That’s where case studies come in – if you can provide a customized, tailored look at how your solution is designed for a specific industry or vertical, you’re much more likely to convert that customer. In fact, case studies are actually more effective than testimonials in converting customers.
And then, of course, there are the old standbys – whitepapers and webcasts. These are the analog grandfathers of today’s digital tools like e-books and live streaming video, but they are still surprisingly effective as lead generation tools.
Ultimately, the goal is to get your content shared on the web and discussed by others. It’s great to have someone download an e-book or watch a video, but it’s even better if that person can also tweet about it or at least like it on Facebook. And remember – just because a video goes unwatched when it’s first released, or an e-book goes unread when it’s first published, that doesn’t mean that it will be forgotten. It just becomes evergreen content that web visitors can discover at a later date.
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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.