Toughest B2B Content Marketing Challenges for 2023
The Content Marketing Institute's annual B2B Content Marketing report outlined the top challenges for 2023. Find out how applying traditional research, storytelling and influencer skills can overcome these obstacles in the year ahead.
In last week's edition, we rang in the New Year by talking about some of the skills B2B marketers will be needing in 2023. I suggested the capabilities people in this field should cultivate are market research, influencer marketing and storytelling.
As it happens, the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), along with MarketingProfs and ON24, published its annual B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budget and Trends report. This document is always a gold mine, and I’ll be drawing on its study results in a number of editions going forward.
For this week, we’ll be focusing on the challenges the study’s respondents identified for 2023. I’m hoping to show that the skills I identified last week can deliver the know-how you’ll need to meet and overcome those challenges in the New Year.
Creating Content for All Stages of the Buyer's Journey
The top challenge content marketers raised for the year ahead was “creating content that appeals to different stages of the buyer’s journey.” Fully 61% or respondents thought this was their biggest headache.
Similarly, when the researchers asked participants whether they agreed with the statement, “Our organization provides customers with a consistent experience across their engagement journey,’ the response was tepid at best.
Only 19% strongly agreed with this statement, although 46% somewhat agreed. Yet, when the researchers split the question results between the most successful and least successful brands, 87% of the top performers agreed, while only 40% of lower performers shared that view.
So, the numbers suggest that buyer’s journey management is a key success factor for B2B content marketers. How do we go about appealing to buyers at every stage and guiding them towards a purchase?
First, we need to confirm that our brand’s sales cycle is well thought-out. Research by Gartner shows that old-school, linear sales funnels no longer describe how B2B buyers make purchasing decisions.
Buyers No Longer Follow Linear Sales Funnel Process
Instead, potential customers engage in what Gartner calls “looping.” They no longer follow a linear process of problem identification, solution exploration, requirements building and supplier selection. Today’s purchasers revisit each of these tasks repeatedly and work on all of them simultaneously.?
According to Gartner, the key to nurturing leads in this new environment is what they call “buyer enablement.” By that, they mean providing prospective purchasers with the information they need to complete their buying tasks at every non-linear stage.
To deliver on buyer enablement, your team needs to make relevant information readily available. That calls for in-depth market research to unearth the answers to buyers' questions?at every point in the sales cycle, and deliver them creatively and flexibly.
Skillfully engaging influencers, such as satisfied customers, can bring this data to life by sharing relevant case studies for each phase of the process. Creative storytelling will make these experiences relatable and easy for buyers to apply in their own workplaces.
Aligning Content Efforts Across Sales and Marketing
The second-biggest challenge the CMI study identified was “aligning content efforts across sales and marketing.” Fully half of respondents agreed this was an obstacle for their brands.
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In my experience, the challenge here is often that the marketing team doesn’t make a point of formally engaging the sales force on a regular basis in developing content strategy. This is a significant mistake for several reasons.
The sales force is an untapped resource for up-to-the-minute market research based on direct customer interaction. Sales representatives spot trends in your brand’s target marketplace long before they’re picked up through official channels or industry websites.
Sales Representatives Spot Trends Before Marketing
Collectively, your sales force can identify the influencers in your target industries and the best ways to approach them. They may even know them personally and be able to set up a meeting with them. Often, some of your sales reps are influencers in their own right.
Your sales team is also a fountain of relevant stories about existing and potential customers. They hear anecdotes about customer pain points every day and often get the inside story on potential case studies. The storytellers in marketing need the steady stream of new narratives the sales team gather on their travels.
Soliciting input on all these points from the sales team gives them a sense camaraderie and of ownership in their brand’s content. That's the best way to build sincere alignment between marketing and sales.
Developing Consistency with Measurement
The third obstacle content marketers identified was developing consistency with measurement. Once again, this calls for sound research abilities
TAB president Bill Beattie, a mentor from my consulting days,?was fond of reminding us that “if it’s not being measured, it’s not being managed.” When it comes to measuring results, marketers are now living in a golden age.
Social media platforms can tell you how many views, likes, impressions, shares and engagements every single post receives in real time. Marketing analytics tools like HubSpot, monday marketer or Maropost can help your team identify customer preferences, buying patterns, and buying history to gain insights and make more informed decisions.
Before getting overly excited about the software capabilities, it’s a good idea to do some preliminary research. You need to pinpoint what measurements you need to improve on, and which applications best support those research needs.
2020 Landscape is Starting to Emerge
As we hit the ground running for 2023, the landscape ahead is starting to emerge. Successful B2B content marketers will be finding themselves applying their research skills, well-chosen influencers and storytelling gifts to meet the challenges of making their buyer’s experience more consistent, aligning marketing and sales efforts, and consistently measuring results.
The most successful firms in the CMI study are already doing these things. That's how we know we'll all have to apply these lessons to make 2023 a success.
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