Content Marketing

Content marketing is the planning, creation, promotion and measurement of content for a specific audience and intended to inspire a business outcome. With over 90% of B2B and B2C marketers engaging in content marketing, it’s more important than ever to make sure your content stands out from the crowd.

As the only blog to be named #1 content marketing blog three times by Content Marketing Institute, TopRank is dedicated to helping marketers understand the opportunities, best practices and current trends in the world of content marketing.

Browse our content marketing articles to find tips, guides, expert interviews, conference liveblogging and best practices.

12 B2B Marketing Sessions You Can’t Miss at Content Marketing World 2022

Photo: CMWorld 2021

It’s amazing to think that 2022 marks the 12 year anniversary of Content Marketing World. This year also represents the 12th time I’ve presented at CMWorld with the first presentation in 2011: A Content Marketer’s Guide to Social Media and Search Strategy. That first amazing event had about 50 speakers and around 600 attendees.

Conference Comic CMWorld 2011

Fast forward to today and this year’s Content Marketing World has nearly 200 speakers providing workshops, keynotes, and breakout sessions with anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 attendees. I am just as excited to present this year as my first with a session on The Secrets of Creating Inspired B2B Content Experiences Wednesday September 14th at 1pm in Grand Ballroom B.

12 B2B Marketing Sessions You Can’t Miss at Content Marketing World 2022

Triple Take: How to Make B2B Content Marketing More Influential, Authentic, and Credible

Nick Nelson on Jul 25th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

When it comes to creating effective B2B marketing content, these three traits arguably rank as the most essential: credible, authentic, influential.

Credible: Does the content position its author or brand as a knowledgeable and authoritative expert in their space? Enough so that it aids in justifying a decision to invest in their solutions?
Authentic: Is the content reflective of what that person or brand is really about? Does it instill trust through truth and transparency?
Influential: Does the content actually shift perceptions and drive the reader or viewer toward some sort of action?

These three qualities, in a nutshell, differentiate marketing content from plain-old “content.” When all three are realized in the hearts and minds of your audience, a piece of content is almost guaranteed to achieve its objectives — provided you have the right promotion plan in place.

Triple Take: How to Make B2B Content Marketing More Influential, Authentic, and Credible

8 Tips for B2B Marketers with ADHD to Elevate the Writing Process

Art Allen on Jun 14th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

When you search for “jobs for people with ADHD,” nearly every list will have at least one iteration of “writer.” And, if you have ADHD and are reading this blog post, it’s probably pretty easy to understand why. Especially in B2B copywriting, the high demand for blog posts, landing pages, white papers, infographics, ebooks, and social posts means there is always something interesting to look forward to.

The flip side of this is bumping up against the mental and emotional dysregulation that comes with ADHD. When our brains get bored, overwhelmed, embarrassed, distracted, tired, or any of the other wonderful ways they like to betray us, they can shut down—and the flow of words onto the page shuts down with them.

But the words still need to be written.

8 Tips for B2B Marketers with ADHD to Elevate the Writing Process

The Business Case for Awesome B2B Content

Joshua Nite on May 9th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Have you seen Everything Everywhere All at Once? It’s a must-watch for everyone, but especially B2B marketers.

The movie tells a simple story about healing generational trauma. But it does so using multiverse travel, kung fu fighting, a truckload of googly eyes, and much more.

Simply put, it’s awesome. You have to admire the bravery of both the filmmakers and the financiers, who read this script and went, “Yup, that seems reasonable.”

Marketers could use a healthy dose of that kind of courage. Awesome content doesn’t overwhelm the story you’re telling the audience — in fact, it makes your message more likely to stick.

The Business Case for Awesome B2B Content

Content Contemplations: How We Process Information & Why B2B Marketers Must Craft Content That Elevates

Lane Ellis on Apr 18th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

How can B2B marketers craft content that elevates, and what role do our preferred digital formats play in making it happen?

Recent study data looking at content formats has deep implications when it comes to creating online experiences that will not only be noticed, but delight the senses while also answering our most important questions.

Let’s take a look at how we process information, and how written, static images, video, and audio can work cohesively to create B2B marketing content that elevates with hope and delights with hyper-relevant answers delivered at the right time.

1 — Brain Science & Marketing Content Preferences: Formats, Styles & Relevance

via GIPHY

Content Contemplations: How We Process Information & Why B2B Marketers Must Craft Content That Elevates

Fast-Forward: 4 Business Problems Solved by B2B Content Marketing

Joshua Nite on Mar 28th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

For B2B business, the pandemic was a magnifying glass pointing out the cracks in systems. We discovered just how fast digital transformation can be when our livelihoods are on the line. We found that global supply chains aren’t as resilient as we thought. We found that remote work is far more viable an option than we’d been led to believe.

None of these realizations were brand new — we were just able to see them clearly for the first time.

The same is true of B2B buyer behavior. When we talk about how the pandemic changed B2B sales and marketing, what we mean is that we can finally see what we have missed before.

Fast-Forward: 4 Business Problems Solved by B2B Content Marketing

5 Ways to Build B2B Content That Resonates With Your Audience, and Why They Work

Harry Mackin on Mar 18th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

B2B marketing has a content problem: there’s more of it all the time… and the people we actually want reading it have started tuning it all out. We can’t exactly stop the content deluge (look, we’re even contributing to it right now!), so instead we’ve got to figure out:

Why are decision makers tuning out content?
How can we keep them from tuning out ours?

Why isn’t B2B content resonating?

LinkedIn-Edelman helped answer this first question in their 2021 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study. Their conclusions aren’t really all that surprising.

Decision makers can really appreciate good thought leadership content (64% said it was a better basis for assessing a potential vendor than marketing materials or product sheets), but…. only if it isn’t boring.

5 Ways to Build B2B Content That Resonates With Your Audience, and Why They Work

The Gated Content Dilemma in B2B Marketing: Here Are the Best Practices

Joshua Nite on Mar 9th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Q: How many lead gen marketers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Please fill out the form below and we will email you the punchline.

The great gate debate continues to rage throughout the B2B marketing world. What once was a landscape full of sparse landing pages with lead gen forms has become an ocean of content. But still, there’s little consensus about how to get the most value out of what we marketers create.

Does ungating content devalue it? Does gating content make it inaccessible to the audience you’re most trying to reach? We all agree that getting people’s contact information is a value exchange. The debate is whether we offer the value first, or we demand that the reader do so.

The Gated Content Dilemma in B2B Marketing: Here Are the Best Practices

Free The Story: How B2B Marketers Can Use Digital Storytelling To Bring Content Alive In New Ways

Lane Ellis on Mar 7th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

How does digital storytelling help B2B marketers bring content to life in powerful new ways?

With more B2B buying research and ongoing customer engagement than ever taking place online over the past two years, there have never been as many opportunities to benefit from digital storytelling, yet greater competition has made it vital to create content that truly stands out and engages.

Let’s take a look at how well-crafted digital storytelling can propel B2B content to new successes, and how B2B marketers can breathe new life into content in a variety of digital formats.

Free The Story: How B2B Marketers Can Use Digital Storytelling To Bring Content Alive In New Ways

5 Helpful Ways B2B Marketers Can Achieve Content Approval

Harry Mackin on Feb 21st, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

The “Wild West” of content marketing stuck around longer than we may have imagined, but COVID-19 well and truly brought it to a close. These days, 82% of marketers use content marketing, over 40% of marketers say content is a very important part of their strategy, and 70% plan to actively continue investing in it in the long term.

If content marketing is such big business now, however, why does so much of it still feel distinctly lawless? Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to actually getting either client or internal approval for your content. You go to all the work of producing your stuff, send it to the people in charge, and then… you’re at their mercy. And often, your content disappears then and there.

5 Helpful Ways B2B Marketers Can Achieve Content Approval

Best of B2B Marketing: Learn & Refine With Insight From Our Top 10 Content Marketing Posts

Lane Ellis on Dec 15th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

What were our top B2B content marketing articles of the year?

Content encompasses nearly everything we read, watch, or listen to, and as our CEO Lee Odden said years ago, it’s also represents a significant part of the reason the need for search technology began in the first place.

We’re proud of the continued content marketing successes our team of marketers at TopRank Marketing have achieved during another challenging year, for a wide-range of major B2B clients. As 2022 draws ever closer, we wanted to take time to share our top content marketing articles of the year — each filled with insights, best practices, research, examples, and a look towards the future.

We’re also fortunate to have a wealth of talented B2B marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank B2B Marketing blog — which celebrates its 19th year this month.

Best of B2B Marketing: Learn & Refine With Insight From Our Top 10 Content Marketing Posts