Content Marketing 2016: B2B vs B2C vs Enterprise

Every company aims to tailor its content marketing to a specific target audience in order to attract its attention and thus attract more clients and trade. But what is the most effective content marketing for your own firm or business?
Each and every company has its own specific business model, target and mission, and a look at the annual survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute can surely help you to determine what would be best for you.

 

Social media content is still the most widely used marketing tool for both B2B and B2C businesses (being used 92% of the time ??oppure: in 92% of cases), but most companies have no truly coherent content marketing strategy and only 37% of B2C businesses have a clearly stated strategy in 2016, although this is an improvement over 27% in 2015.

 

It is interesting to notice how the use of infographics as marketing tool has reached a new record in 2016 of 77% for enterprise companies and 62% for B2C (last year it was 45%).

Often used as a cross-platform strategy for sharing and spreading content on web pages, social media posts are fundamental for every kind of business, enterprise, B2B and B2C.

 

 

 

 

Cost of outsourcing

• Low. The cost can rise a lot if it is to be combined with a good strategy, particularly if this is cross-platform

Newsletter strategies transform ideas into actions by using one of the most traditional systems: emails.
An effective email marketing strategy makes it possible to target customers very precisely. It is low cost, scalable and direct.

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• Moderate

Video is currently taking the world of content marketing by storm. According to Cisco [1], video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017. Video-on-demand traffic alone will have almost trebled.

 

 

 

 

Cost of outsourcing

• High. The market requires increasingly high standards of quality

More impersonal than blog posts, not as authoritative as a white paper. Articles content marketing strategy are widely used by either B2B and B2C businesses.

 

 

 

 

Cost of outsourcing

• Moderate

This is perhaps the most powerful tactic in marketing strategy. While the web is getting increasingly overloaded with marketing content, face-to-face conversations allow marketers to construct made to measure relationships with potential partners and existing customers. The efectiveness of in-person events in B2B tactics increased from 69% to 75% this year according to CMI 2016 report [3 – Content Marketing Insitute – 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends].

 

 

A good white paper generates leads, helping business targets to understand an issue, solve a problem or make a decision.

 

 

 

 

Cost of outsourcing

• It can be very expensive, and it may take one to three months just to get started.

Analogous on-line version of the word-of-mouth testimonial, the case study is a 1-2 pages lenght document that reassure any prospect working in a similar industry or facing a similar challange. As well as white papers, case studies are powerful, convincing, and cost-effective marketing materials, any B2B vendor should produce.

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• Moderate

Posts with at least one image gets 64.9% more shares than the ones with just text [4]. This is particulary true on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Articles and blog posts, on the other hand, in addition to making the actual document more vivid, they are a very useful for SEO.

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• Low. A good strategy is designed to minimize the creation of each image

Writing blog posts are a well used marketing strategy tool. Allows to engage users, build community, increase the user’s perception of authority on specific topics and, last but not least, boost SEO.Usually between 300 to 500 words in lenght, provide a personal, inside point of view.

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• Low to moderate. One of most cost-effective strategies. However, depends on the specificity of the content, lenght and frequency of publication

Webinars are the online version of the in-person events. Unlike many types of content marketing, webinars can promt faster buying decisions and gain high short-term ROI. Definitely one of the most effective content marketing strategies for B2B.

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• High

Online presentations are used primarily for technology demos (67%), technical info (66%), technology news & analysis (57%), how-to info (52%) and training (48%) [6]. They are excellent in driving customer engagement, create loyalty and improve customer retention. An online presentation can convert both live and on demand even for years.

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• High. Finding the right people that have the right competences is not an easy task

One of the challanges for brands is to communicate stories, data, products in an entertaining way. Converting that content into high-impact and stunning visual design maks them eye catching, easy to digest, shareable (+94%, compared to text). Infographic marketing offers good potential for generating engagement, growing your audience, earning backlinks (SEO).

 

 

 

 

Cost to outsource

• Moderate to high