What are the most effective B2B digital content distribution channels?

Email marketing can work wonders for b2b audiences, but advice above is quite generic. “Catchy subject lines”, for example, actually don’t perform as well in 2023 as plain subject lines styled as though they’re from a colleague. Personalisation is about more than segmentation and adding a {first name} tag. It’s about researching and talking with prospects to gain a deep understanding of pains, gains and jobs to come so you can offer tangible value in each email. For example, webinar promo will work if your audience will learn how to solve a painful problem they’re having, if it provides new and useful industry insights, if it’s more than just a product pitch.

This is good advice, but it’s only highlighting the what, not the how. And, the how is where most businesses go wrong. It’s not enough to “know your target audience”, you need to understand the entire buying committee and their painful problems. Then create content that helps them solve those problems. A content calendar is useless if it doesn’t do the above. You should also constantly refresh the content calendar based on conversations with customers. At least once per month if not more. As for interacting with followers, it’s not just thanking them for liking and sharing, it’s engaging in a deep and meaningful conversation. Go above and beyond with answers to provide a thoughtful response that adds to the conversation.

This misses the most important part of content syndication which is relevant, engaging content that’s based on thorough audience research. It won’t matter where you post content if you don’t get that part right. Use organic social media and your website blog to experiment with content that’s created based on your audiences pains, gains and jobs to be done. Only repurpose the content that’s the highest performing. When measuring performance, don’t just look at clicks, impressions, bounce rate. Also look at what’s driving meaningful action, eg. leads, demos, MQLs, whatever is most important to your business.

Paid advertising is the best distribution channel for businesses with budget available who want to scale quickly. That said, the advice here to “boost” top performing content isn’t particularly useful. To make paid advertising work you need to create a considered strategy that promotes the right content to the right user at the right time. It’shelpful to optimise content for audience temperature and intent. Temperature is how aware an audience is of your product. Audiences with lower awareness need more educational content. Higher awareness audiences need content focussed on features and benefits. High-intent audiences won’t want content at all, they’re ready to talk. They’ll want a clear CRO-optimised landing page with a compelling offer.

The key thing missing here is the LinkedIn thought leadership play. The truth is, the best content distribution and feedback loop channel right now is LinkedIn. But not company pages. Instead, you should incentivise your b2b teams, SDRs, Senior Leaders, etc to build personal brands on LinkedIn and interact with your ICP daily. Talking to your ICP helps you gain real-time research daily which can enhance your content engine and testing different post topics everyday is an inexpensive way to learn what content resonates and what doesn’t. You can do all this, all while promoting your product and building a genuine connection with your ICP. For most b2bs (especially if the buying committee is active on LinkedIn) this your best play in 2023.