B2B Content Marketing Budgets are on the Rise: Get Involved!

By Eleanor Slinger, Regional director for New Statesman Media Group

Good B2B content educates the audience in a way that social media posts and press releases simply can’t. Good content helps customers make more intelligent, more informed purchasing decisions. You can amplify content and improve website SEO by aligning yourself with a tier-one media partner, helping you to both attract more targeted companies as well as add backlinks for SEO.

Yet paid content marketing in PR is still an enigma. 79% of B2B marketers currently run a content strategy according to the Content Marketing Institute, July 2020. The same survey showed that only 7% of the marketers think their company’s content is exceptional, while 43% said it is somewhere in the middle.

If you’re not yet advising your client’s marketing colleagues on their content strategy, you’re missing out. Get involved!

 

Five ways to achieve great B2B content marketing

1. Offer relevant and valuable content: Working in partnership with the media on a paid basis may go against the grain for some. But consider the time, effort and impact your client’s brand can have with a ready-made-already-engaged-audiences on reputable media sites (vs. owned). Isn’t it time we worked together to support the media? Read our very own Press Gazette’s ongoing coverage on declining ad revenues for the much-needed media.
2. Marketing is designed to enhance experiences rather than disrupt: Every single piece of commercial content should be strong enough to be valuable to the target audience, found easily via SEO and boosted by using top tier media sites that are aligned to your brand. If possible, target companies on those media sites for a hyper-personalised user experience, using B2B marketing solutions like Lead Monitor.
3. Personalisation is critical: 70% of millennials are willing to let retailers track their browsing and shopping behaviours in exchange for a better shopping experience, according to SmarterHQ, 2020. The same goes with B2B marketing – personalising the user journey, targeting the right clients will make it more worthwhile and impactful for that all-important data exchange for lead generation.
4. Short and long-form written articles: Written content is a time-tested way to portray meaningfully, sometimes complicated, concepts in a way an audience finds friendly and approachable. Publishers of media sites know this too well, as they have access to highly engaged users ready for a conversation with the relevant brands. This is the opportune moment for brands to align themselves with the media (not tech giants with no editorial ethos). Clients want brand association and to publish relevant journalistic content to relevant, engaged high-quality audiences.
5. First-party data is IN – third-party cookies are OUT: Third-party cookies – cookies stored under a different domain than you are currently visiting – allow companies to track your journey across websites easily. Without this, brands need to step up their first-party cookie game. New Statesman Media Group owns the very sites we publish on so we provide first-party data to our clients.

 

Support the media

For great integrated B2B marketing support the media, find a media partner that can adequately measure results, provide first-party data, develop insights, data and learnings; as well as write great content published on a reputable channel.

This will help your client to break through the digital noise, meeting your clients KPIs and objectives in a more meaningful way.

Download New Statesman Media Group’s free B2B marketing whitepaper on the importance of content in building your brand here!

Eleanor Slinger is the regional director for New Statesman Media Group launching its very own B2B marketing solution, Lead Monitor. NSMG recently opened an office in Abu Dhabi. Eleanor is formerly the head of partnerships of The New Statesman magazine and head of content for Edelman Middle East working with many large UAE public and private sector clients.