What’s Working In Content Marketing In 2021
Content has always been king, but it took a pandemic to remind us just how essential good digital content is for B2B brands to connect with audiences....
What’s Working
<small>In Content Marketing In 2021:
Modern B2B Orgs Turn To ‘Lo-Fi’ Content, Interactivity, Customization & Repurposing To Engage Buyers In An Oversaturated Digital World
Content has always been king, but it took a pandemic to remind us just how essential good digital content is for B2B brands to connect with audiences. According to research from Demand Gen Report, 61% of marketers rank content marketing as one of their most important tactics for engaging prospects, driving leads and revenue, personalizing account-based strategies and maintaining buyer-seller relationships.
However, with the industry putting out more content than ever before, it can be challenging to stand out from the competition. Buyers’ inboxes are flooded with virtual event invites, sales pitches and gated content offerings promising to help them alleviate business challenges — the “spray-and-pray” approach to content and messaging simply won’t cut it anymore.
The biggest thing that we've seen in content marketing is the increase in digital interaction,” said Michael Brenner, Author and CEO of Marketing Insider Group. “Marketing has moved online, buying has moved online — especially in the B2B space. So, the role of content marketing has finally become clear to a lot of executives and marketers.”
With some companies experiencing budget and personnel cuts throughout the past 18 months, marketing teams were challenged to do more with less… or simply with what they have. This has resulted in a heavy focus on “lo-fi” content, content that is more human and not as extravagantly produced, as well as content repurposing, which takes existing “big rock” assets and slices it into smaller, more interactive and personalized formats that cater to specific industries and needs.
This report will explore the strategies and tactics that are helping B2B organizations grab audiences’ attention, engage buyers online and set them apart from the competition in a digital-first world, including:
- The increased reliance on “lo-fi” content that is highly engaging and more human;
- Key tactics for personalizing and customizing the content experience;
- Why interactive content is the new, more engaging PDF;
- How marketers have overhauled their content creation processes to focus on SEO and buyer needs; and
- The power and value of repurposing content from existing formats, digital experiences and virtual events to reach wider audiences.
Doing More With Less:
‘Lo-Fi’ Content Sets The Stage For Human-To-Human Interaction
‘Lo-Fi’ Content Sets The Stage For Human-To-Human Interaction
The term lo-fi — specifically related to music — is defined as a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections of a recording or performance are audible, sometimes as a deliberate aesthetic choice. This definition can also relate to the way B2B organizations thought about their content marketing strategies during the pandemic and even in the post-pandemic world.
Budgets were cut, bandwidth was (and still is) tight and the demand for companies to be more human was strong, so doing more with less (less production, less money, less resources) is the name of the content marketing game.
I hope people realize that the content matters much, much more than the money you're pumping into it
Kit McKay, Content Marketing Manager at Turtl
“Budgets are smaller than they used to be, or have been frozen, even for big companies,” said Kit McKay, Content Marketing Manager at Turtl, an enterprise content automation platform. “I've heard people use the term lo-fi to describe content that's not as polished or as refined. This tactic has been legitimized because even the largest enterprises were hit by the economic situation caused by Covid-19, so they have been a little bit more relaxed and loosened the collars on their content — especially with video.”
Projects that were normally large productions that cost a lot of money, such as a studio-produced webinar or video, have now been toned down to simplicity via Zoom meetings and selfie videos. According to McKay, lo-fi video content may not be as visually polished, but it puts everyone on a level playing field to focus more on the content itself versus how it looks.
The whole move toward lo-fi content will continue because people see the value in it, and that they don't have to have this perfectly packaged video, [...] I hope people realize that the content matters much, much more than the money you're pumping into it. This makes it more human.
Kit McKay, Content Marketing Manager at Turtl
When asked what made content memorable enough to warrant a sales call,
of respondents noted they want content that tells a strong story that resonates with buying committees.
Source: DGR's 2021 Content Preferences Survey Report
Interactive Content Reigns Supreme As Engagement Becomes The Key Marketing KPI
Interactive Content Reigns Supreme As Engagement Becomes The Key Marketing KPI
Gone are the days where buyers fill out a long form to access a 3,000-word whitepaper in PDF. In the digital-first world, engagement is the ultimate KPI, and if marketers can’t tell how a piece of content resonates with audiences, future initiatives will lack the insights needed to better cater to buyer needs. Sure, someone may fill out the form and download the white paper, but after that, no one knows how much time the buyer spent with the content, or worse, did they even open the PDF at all?
Interactive content allows companies to embed videos, include polls and even chatbots to make it easier for the buyer to self-navigate through the content. It also provides a level of human interaction that static content simply can’t. Instead of scrolling through large chunks of text with very few visual components or the ability to click on and engage with elements within the content, buyers can navigate through interactive content in a way that allows marketers to learn more about their specific needs.
Using eye-tracking technology, we compared the same piece of content — one in a PDF format; one in an interactive document, [...] It increased read times by 73% in that interactive version, and memory retention increased as well. So there's definitely real evidence out there that changing to a more interactive format is a better experience and will give us that increased engagement.
Leading Edge Forum (LEF) wanted to switch from static research content to interactive content to enhance the client engagement experience. Interactive content helped shake up audience expectations and create a novel experience that was innovative, multi-media friendly and flexible across devices and streamlined the production process.
With Turtl's interactive content offering, LEF was able to incorporate multimedia assets that were unfit for static formats and print. The team leveraged videos, charts and polls to give readers a chance to engage and provide real-time feedback.
Because most of LEF's past content was printed, the process was long and tedious. Now, with interactive content, the team was able to reduce production time by up to five weeks. Plus, the tracking abilities really allowed the team to hone in on key data insights that they were never able to get with static/printed content.
The results speak for themselves:
- An average read time of more than eight minutes;
- 126 engagements with interactive widgets and links; and
- One in three readers re-engaged with the report multiple times.
Case study: Automated personalization in the world of ABM
How Punch! used Turtl's software to help close 2 out of 3 target accounts at a critical moment
How it all began
As Q4 was drawing to a close and sales conversations were beginning to dry up, the team at Punch! had three cybersecurity companies sitting in their pipeline.
While the conversations were going well, they were concerned about how several weeks of vacation would impact that momentum. To accelerate the sales cycle, Deanne Crocker, Marketing Manager at Punch! ABM, turned to Turtl's cutting-edge content automation platform.
Punch! ABM is a B2B marketing agency offering end-to-end account-based sales and marketing support to enterprise technology companies
How Turtl’s content automation platform works
- Step 1: Create
Use Turtl's drag-and-drop editor to quickly produce content packed with interactive widgets.
- Step 2: Personalize
Decide which aspects of your content you want to tailor, like name, logo, video, or even entire pages.
- Step 3: Automate
Generate custom versions of your content one person at a time, or for a list of thousands.
- Step 4: Analyze
Monitor the performance of your content overall and drill down into the analytics of each personalized version.
What did Deanne do as crunch time approached?
Deanne was able to create one piece of digital content using Turtl's editor that would appeal to all three cybersecurity companies because it was an analysis of their shared audience and an overview of content consumption trends.
She then used Turtl's automated personalization feature to instantly generate three separate versions of the content, each tailored to incorporate the company names and other identifying markers.
What were the results?
2/3 target accounts won
Deanne believes that Turtl's tool allowed her to produce seemingly custom-created content that helped Punch! make a powerful impact at just the right time.
New content insights
Turtl content is fully trackable at a granular level. This helped Punch! discover:
- In one account, the content was sent to 6 target contacts, but was read by 10 unique readers. This proved the effectiveness of this personalized content as it was being shared internally, increasing Punch!'s influence.
- By monitoring where the average readers across the accounts were dropping off, Deanne realized that the content could have been a third its size and had the same impact. This will streamline future content creation
Personalization Must Be At The Heart Of All Content Initiatives
Personalization Must Be At The Heart Of All Content Initiatives
As more buyers self-navigate through their purchasing journeys, an endless number of vendors are vying for their attention in the digital realm. In addition, buyers are expecting more consumer-like experiences now that they are used to customized attention from B2C brands such as Spotify, Amazon and Netflix. This has brought a whole new meaning to the term “personalization” and the companies that use it correctly have the greatest chance at securing that sales call, and ultimately, landing the entire deal.
Personalization has evolved way beyond name tokens in emails. Today’s buyers demand content that is relevant to their specific needs, industries and even geographies. It’s up to the marketing and sales teams to deliver.
According to McKay, there are two levels of personalization: External and internal. External personalization is when a piece of content is aesthetically customized with the target’s name, company logo, etc.Internal personalization is content customized based on interests or specific personas. “Internal personalization is fairly new,” said McKay. “I think we're just developing what personalization means. And on the other side of things, how do we make personalization easier? And how do we make it less of a pain to do at scale?”
Account-based marketing (ABM) pairs well with personalization, as companies can customize specific assets to cater to target accounts and buyers. During a presentation at DGR’s B2BMX: Next Level ABM online experience, Phyllis Davidson and Nicky Briggs of Forrester shined a light on customizing campaigns for ABM programs at various levels:
LOW
This is when you're running ABM programs to named accounts, said Briggs. For example, you have a couple hundred accounts, but you don't know everything about it. You're relying on basic information, like demographics, to develop content. This is like what McKay referred to as "internal personalization."
TIBCO launched an industry ABM program back in 2018 with a small team. With a robust tech stack, they clustered accounts down into small sub-vertical segments, or a one-to-few basis. That let the company develop highly targeted display campaigns, so when an account visits the website, they get a hyper-personalized buying experience with content curated from TIBCO’s inventory for different buyers.
I want to draw attention to the fact that TIBCO is not assuming that all hospitality companies have exactly the same needs,” said Briggs."
“They're recognizing that a casino has a very different set of needs to say, a restaurant, for instance, and so they’re only serving up the most relevant content as the recommended reading. Because of this approach, direct current engagement scores went up to 65%. And the MQL conversion rate doubled.”
MEDIUM
According to Briggs, this is for companies that have about 30 or 50 accounts in the program and a small team. These organizations won't be able to go too deep into personalization but since they have a slightly better level of insight, they can cater the content to general needs and interests."It's important to monitor the pipeline health for each account individually and understand when key opportunities or renewals may be coming up that might require special treatment," she said.
Briggs pointed to an anonymous investment firm that caters to financial services companies. The company's ABM program was supported by one person who developed one-to-one customization to 36 accounts.
“What made it possible is that they play to their strengths and leverage their own first-party data from the analytics platform that they sell to clients,” said Briggs. “They use that data to personalize their message on social display campaigns at the one-to-one level, bringing the data into headlines.
And then they think about the rest of the buying journey, too. So, when people click on the ad to read it, it will take them to a personalized landing page with a very high-value personalized asset to encourage the accounts to engage more deeply. And this landing page will also be used in their social outreach to later insight them to a customer event or webinar. So, they're really starting to get more engaged with the seller.”
HIGH
This tends to be reserved only for the largest and the most strategic accounts, where the focus is one-to-one, according to Briggs. This is the most resource-intensive and it involves a lot of new content creation."
The messaging components are all completely customized because you're going to be using the lexicon and the language that that account uses.
SAP’s ABM lead worked closely with the account team to gain a deep understanding of the account and some of the opportunities for pipeline acceleration within it. She identified a suite of assets that were targeted at different decision-makers within the account to help toward this goal. SAP customized animations of the value proposition, video cards, E-books, infographics and posters that it would put up in buildings.
Everything was customized to the account’s branding, all the way down to the colors and uniforms the “characters” in the content wore that masted the account’s uniform offering. Finally, everything was delivered in local language. “Everything was deliberately designed to appeal to engineers,” said Briggs.
Content Repurposing Enhances SEO Rankings & Provides More Bang For Your Buck
Content Repurposing Enhances SEO Rankings & Provides More Bang For Your Buck
Let’s face it: Creating more content for the sake of simply creating more content adds fuel to the fire and can be overwhelming for audiences. Research from Demand Gen Report shows that 32% of buyers are overwhelmed with the amount of content available. In turn, marketing teams are simply updating their existing content to cater to current events and buyer needs.
Deleted and redirected content that is no longer read can drive traffic to more recent content. We've always done something similar before, but now we are focusing on updating and repurposing our older content as a core part of our publishing schedule.
Michael Brenner, Author and CEO of Marketing Insider Group
We’ve generally done three posts a week this year in 2021 — two posts a week and one major update to an old post. Updating it with new information or republishing it for your audience can really help drive greater interest from customers, or greater conversions in our case.”
Vinas also explained how Content4Demand’s clients are auditing their existing content and using that information to inform new, more up-to-date assets. By analyzing old blog posts, research reports, surveys and advertisements for online webinars and conferences, marketers are positioned to reuse relevant research while presenting it in buyer-preferred formats.
“We've seen an uptick in content audits, with people looking for ways to repurpose their old content in new ways,” Vinas explained. “People were very interested in reusing content they already had for new ideas while helping them optimize their new content production, which can be very helpful for businesses looking to drive engagement or conversions.”
Brenner added that repurposing content can help companies rank higher in SEO. In fact, there has been a greater focus on understanding the value of SEO. “Ranking No. 1 is the new tradeshow booth, so to speak,” he said. “So, while SEO has been around since the internet, I think it’s become important for folks to gather this important buyer intent intelligence.”
Conclusion: The New Era Of Content Marketing Revolves Around The Customer
Conclusion:
The New Era Of Content Marketing Revolves Around The Customer
B2B organizations will continue to rely on content to engage buyers at every point of their purchasing journey. However, the stakes are higher than ever before. With most buyers feeling overwhelmed at the oversaturation of content, the mindset must shift to quality. Instead of pumping out more new content, content creators should consider re-purposing existing assets and organizing them in ways that cater to buyers’ needs.
But quality doesn't have to mean dollar signs. Lo-fi content is having a moment and helping small teams with small budgets stand out from competitors. If it is relevant, authentic, engaging and personalized, content teams will win.
"A diverse omnichannel approach is key," said McKay. "We need to recognize that not everyone wants to consume content in the same way. Repackaging and repurposing your content not only helps you operationally, but it also broadens your capacity to reach people in a format that fits their preferences."
Repackaging and repurposing your content not only helps you operationally, but it also broadens your capacity to reach people in a format that fits their preferences.
Kit McKay, Content Marketing Manager at Turtl
