Consumer behavior has changed, and so does the content marketing business. It’s especially challenging for B2B companies whose most important goal is to educate their audience (businesses) to make them buy. Selling your products or services to people has changed. You can’t just sell and forget about it. Pre-selling conversations to post-selling services are to stay if you want to do business these days.
Educating is building relationships, engagement is retention, and staying up to date is not a choice but a must for businesses. Trends let you please your customers by making buying processes easy for them. Some trends will stay for a long time, some might fade away soon. Let’s look at 13 B2B content marketing trends that will change how you play your marketing game.
1. Video Content Gets More Traction
When learning something new or selling a product, nothing can beat videos. They are more engaging because it’s easier to process the information presented through videos than any other medium.
So, video content helps sell better even if it’s for businesses. You can get around 70% more traffic by using at least one video in your articles. More organic traffic means more visibility and as a result more leads.
Also Read: 10 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Important For B2B Brands
2. Personalized Content Is The Key
Creating content that doesn’t serve your audience has no meaning because it lacks personalization and depth. As a result, it fails to attract the right audience you aim to do business with.
Identifying your audience and creating buyer personas to create personalized content solutions for them will take your business to new heights.
Customizing your strategies that suit your audience’s needs helps you know better about them and serve them the content relating to their pain points. It won’t just make them buy from you but stick to you in the long run too. As per HubSpot, 94% of marketers believe personalized content increases sales.
Businesses that care about their customers are the ones who retain them successfully. And personalizing your content is how you care about your customers as you can’t present the same content to everyone if you want to stand out, especially when you have first-party data. You can use your customers’ data to create customized solutions for them and do exceptionally well in your business.
3. Branding Will Become More Important Than Ever
People’s perception of you is one of the most important B2B content marketing trends. It takes time and strategic branding to win your audience’s trust and let them see you as the best solution provider. Strong branding can give you a 74% higher return on brand marketing investment.
Branding helps you make sales when you try to establish that trust and brings long-term loyalty. It establishes you as an authority. People want to buy from people and from whom they feel connected. Branding helps your business build that connection with your customers.
Branding also helps your audience recognize you among your competitors and make you stand out. You need to do it with a strategic approach that your customers like.
4. Repurposing Content Will Help You Reach More Audiences
Repurposing is a new trend and is highly effective for saving you time and money on content creation. You create content where your target audience is mostly active but you can also use it for other platforms to gain traction and new audience.
Optimizing your content to suit the needs of different platforms is an effective strategy to attract potential customers. You can create a blog post, for example, and promote it on other social platforms to maximize its impact and lifetime.
It saves you effort and time and makes you visible to your customers. But you should consider your audience’s needs and platform rules to make the most of repurposing content.
5. Tracking Metrics To Create Highly Targeted Content
Using data to create content that helps your customers has become a popular trend in B2B content marketing and is important for the overall growth of the business. You can’t assume your audience’s preferences, you need to get deeper insights into their behavior.
You can track the data they provide you ethically and use it for what they need from you. You can use that data to know what content and platform works best for you. For example, you can understand how people engage with your content on your website and social media and make changes to your strategy accordingly by comparing the results with your goals.
6. Storytelling Will Be A Game Changer
B2B audience is different from B2C but one thing is common when selling products or services. People don’t just buy products, they buy emotions. Harvard professor, Gerald Zaltman shares how most people (around 95%) choose a product subconsciously rather than with their conscious mind.
If you want to build a greater impact on your audience instead of just urging them to buy, use emotions or stories in your content. Make them feel something about your product at each touch point. You should focus more on their benefits and less on your product’s features.
Using a bland approach to selling healthcare products, for example, might not urge your audience to buy let alone feel connected with you. But once you strike an emotional chord with them by telling them how the product can change their lifestyle and benefit them, they’ll feel you’re talking to them. As a result, they are more likely to become your customers.
7. First-Hand Content Will Outshine The AI Content
People love helpful content and Google knows about it. That’s why Google’s policies value content written keeping people in mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s automated or human-written content. It should be able to solve the user queries precisely.
Google isn’t against AI, it just wants to serve quality content to its readers. Most of the content created using AI loses its efficiency when no human is involved in the content creation process. Human’s ability to create original and creative content is far better than AI. So, adding the human touch by humans is necessary for the content (even if it’s produced using AI).
The audience prefers content having stories, metaphors, analogies, and experiences that AI can’t match yet.
It’s also possible to use AI for content creation and make it unique by adding a human touch later. Know how you can humanize AI content.
8. Influencer Marketing Will Have An Influence
Selling a product or doing marketing has become fun with influencer marketing. Consumers spend more time on social media and have more trust in the people they follow. Influencers bring their authenticity and new customers to the table.
When you work with influencers to make the most of your content, you attract your potential audience and build trust and awareness for your brand. Using influencer marketing is like showing proof to interested people that your product has a value that their authentic figures on social media vouch for. It’s more likely to gain people’s trust quickly.
The impact of influencer marketing is huge, it was worth $21.1 billion in 2023 as per a report, and will continue to grow. According to a HubSpot survey, 31% of people using social media trust influencers for buying a product, and most of them (43%) belong to Gen Z. Investing in influencer marketing can be of high value for the engagement and ROI it brings for your business.
9. Interactive Content Will Help You Stand Out
It’s easy to create content but not so easy to create the content your audience will engage with. You can outperform your competitors by knowing more about your audience’s needs and creating tailor-made content for your audience. Videos, quizzes, and polls are examples of interactive or engaging content your audience will love.
A 2022 study showed that 52% of marketers preferred interactive emails as their go-to content type for successful marketing and 47% of attendees chose interactive videos to capture their audience’s attention. That’s how powerful interactive content is for your business to engage and retain your target audience. Try to leverage this trend as it won’t go anytime soon.
10. Use Social Media To Your Benefit
You can’t go without social media when most of your audience hangs out there. They browse it, attend events, follow influencers, and see a small brand turn into a giant. Your growth has a higher chance within the four walls of social media platforms.
The benefit of using social is that you can interact with your audience to receive one-on-one feedback on your content and improve it as they like. As per a report, 91% of businesses find social media data useful in understanding their audience.
It’s high time to build your brand awareness on social media as 68% of people prefer to follow brands on social media to stay informed about their services. If you want to promote your products, social media content is the best way to go.
11. Evergreen Content Will Help You Stay Relevant
When you produce content that never gets old and help people find the solution to their problems even after a few years, your content game levels up. You can have a few pieces of evergreen content without worrying about their updates. For example, how-to articles can be called evergreen, for example, how to learn the basics of content marketing.
You don’t need to spend more time and resources upgrading it because the evergreen content is always fresh. Relevant and consistent content helps you stand out as an authority and people start trusting you for their solutions. So, this trend is something you should keep an eye on.
12. Lean More Towards Customer Relationships
Your business only exists with customers. And your content marketing efforts are only worthwhile if your target customers respond to you the way you want. That’s where you know you need to change your strategy. You need something more than a business mindset.
The thing that stands out as the most important here is the relationship-building mindset. Your content marketing becomes solid when you set out to know your customers in and out, understand what they want, and strive to give them the best experience of their lives through your product or service.
A Hubspot survey of 1,400 customer service leaders showed that 88% of satisfied customers will return to buy from you again. Customer experience is equally important for most customers (80%) as the product or service. When 77% of businessmen find good personalized support as the main ingredient for retaining customers, having a great relationship with them becomes essential. It is a sign you’re doing right and will survive the odds.
13. Use Thought Leadership To Create A Buzz
Thought leadership is another hot topic today when people’s trust in reviews has declined. It’s a direct way to reach your audience and connect with them to build brand awareness and trust. Using thought leadership, you can create genuine content consistently to help your audience solve their problems.
Even if they don’t buy from you currently, they’ll surely stay in touch with you and can be convinced if your services look useful to them in the future. Thought leadership is a long-term approach and one of the best marketing tools, helping your brands survive future uncertainties. You should consider it a need to grow your business to another level.
Final Words
If you’re a B2B business or marketer, keeping an eye on the B2B content marketing trends is non-negotiable. You can reach your desired audience by using certain trends and retain them for a lifetime with other ones.
At Rank Scholars, we make it easy for B2B businesses to use trends in a way that gives results. Know more about booking your slot here.
Author
Shagufta is an SEO content writer for websites who writes content around wellness and relationships. She’s an avid dreamer and learner. Growth, loyalty, and simplicity are the words that describe her.
