Customer and content go hand in hand, a recent report by Netline found that overall B2B content consumption increased more than 9% in 2022, with c-level consumption rising by 15.8% YOY. The stats are compelling, in part driven by the pandemic and a lack of in-person events and networking driving the need for research and learning through other means. Research from FocusVision suggests that as many as 13 pieces of content are now required before a prospect is ready to engage.
The pandemic has also cemented the link between content consumption and intent, providing valuable insights into where your prospects are within their buying cycle and how likely they are to be considering or close to a purchase decision.
This poses a few challenges for marketers in a recession – the type of content to invest in and how much?
Type of content
To tackle the types of content to invest in you need to shake down your personas, get to grips with relevant industry trends and what you’re hearing from your customers are all essential insights when looking at what topics are of most value to your audiences. Identifying evergreen topics for content will give you longevity and you can blend topical reactionary content alongside them.
Overall eBook registration volume grew by 15.5%, accounting for 43.3% of all downloads in 2021. Short-form video had the highest ROI in 2021 of any social media marketing strategy as 30% of social media marketers plan to invest in it more than any other trend in 2022. Video exponentially outperforms other content for engagement and consumption but remember to understand its role in the buyer journey and invest in the right type of content.
Level of investment
Content creation isn’t easy, many businesses often find creating content a challenge, however establishing a content theme is an efficient way to meet your audience’s needs, without substantially increasing the workload of your team, and an even better way to do this is by leveraging content you already have.
Decide on a content theme, establish an informative piece of content on a specific topic or theme that can be broken into many derivate assets, such as whitepapers, eBooks and guides. You likely already have this within your arsenal and will be simpler and faster to shatter into multiple assets.
This reuse, repurpose and recycle approach is an efficient and process-driven way to cover all your content bases, ensuring you’re providing content that resonates with your audience through different topicality, messaging and format at each stage of the buyer journey.
“In the ever-changing world of search engine optimization and content generation, AI can give marketers the edge they need” – Todd Van Hoosear, Principal Ground Control Communications and Lecturer, Boston University College of Communications