What is the Future of Content for B2B Marketing? Find out at #MPB2B

Content makes the B2B marketing world go round in so many ways. But will content of the future be as important as it is today?

According to the “hot of the press” report from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, 86% of B2B companies are using content marketing. That’s actually down from 93% last year. The definition of content marketing has evolved as well and I suspect, so will the nature of content in the coming years.

But what do those changes mean for you, business marketers trying to create a variety of engaging content on a regular basis without blowing your budget into space? Luckily we have thoughtful insights from 3 people who know from companies that are growing and selling to business customers. These B2B content marketing insights come from none other than Moz, SnapApp and our very own agency, TopRank Online Marketing.

Big Data, Big Opportunity for Content

Jennifer Sable Lopez   @jennita
Director of Community at Moz

The idea of taking big data and turning it into real-time, relevant content for your community, should be a no-brainer for the future.

Turning big data into real-time, relevant content for your community, should be a no-brainer.

We saw it recently when Jawbone wrote a post about how Bay Area sleepers were affected by the Napa Earthquake, based on real-time data it had from customers. Although Jawbone is B2C, I see the trend being the same.

If you’re not utilizing your data to create something meaningful for your customers and community, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for your brand. Make your data work for you!

Quality Crushes Quantity

Seth Lieberman  @sethwlieberman
Founder and CEO at SnapApp

1. CMOs will take the pole position for CEO promotions. As marketing becomes the single biggest driver of business growth CMOs will ascend to run the whole shebang.

2. Every Marketing Automation company with more than $10M of revenue will be acquired. Marketing Automation is increasing table stakes for marketers and large players who don’t have an offering, but will buy whomever is left to be a central piece of their marketing cloud offerings.

In the future, quality will crush quantity in content marketing.

3. Quality will crush quantity in content marketing. The days of cranking out content to suck up SEO traffic are gone and marketers will increasingly spend time and money to deliver quality content and experiences that set them apart from the crowd.

Content @ Scale: Participation Marketing

Lee Odden  @leeodden
CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

Today, B2B buyers are 60-90% through the sales cycle before making contact with a supplier. But most marketers can’t keep up with content demand.

Scale high quality content by co-creating it with prospects, customers and influencers.

To scale high-quality content that satisfies information and engagement demands of modern B2B buyers, marketers will focus more on co-creating content with their target audience, current customers, and industry influencers.

• Participation marketing delivers multiple benefits:
• Scale high-quality content
• Incentivize sharing and promotion
• Fast-track relationships with influencers & buyers
• Invest buyer, influencer & customer interests with those of the B2B brand – everybody wins!

Well done Jennifer, Seth and Lee, hey that’s me! Trust me, it’s weird curating your own content in the third person, but hey – we’re talking about futuristic marketing here. I might have just traveled back in time to do this while present Lee is on an airplane going somewhere like Boston! Yeah, that’s right, Boston, where MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum is happening this week.

If you are attending the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum this week, be sure to check out my presentation on Friday afternoon: Influencing B2B Influencers and the Magic of Co-Created Social Content.

Don’t worry, if you aren’t able to make it to #MPB2B, you can see what you missed with on-demand access here.

This will be our last post about the futuristic B2B Marketing insights that can be found in the TopRank MarketingProfs Future of B2B Marketing eBook. I hope you enjoyed the series and the eBook too.

How are your B2B marketing efforts evolving with content marketing? Are you investing in more content or better quality content?

Photo: Shutterstock