If you’re looking to refresh your B2B content marketing strategy in 2019, now’s a great time to get started. However, you can expect a lot to change in the coming year, so it’s important to pay attention to emerging trends. Read on to learn more about how you can integrate of the latest content marketing trends into your 2019 strategy, so that you can generate more leads and make more sales.
1) Engage Your Social Following
LinkedIn is the social media platform of choice for B2B marketing. Use the tools LinkedIn provides to target high-quality leads, craft effective advertisements, and engage with your community to build a strong following of hungry fans. While having a complete LinkedIn profile is essential for your business, using other social media platforms can increase awareness of your brand and give you another opportunity to connect with prospects. You can also use social media to engage in social listening, and find out what customers are saying about your business. Social listening tools are still a new technology, but you can still use tools to crawl the internet and find mentions of your business’ name. Engage the people who are talking about you, no matter if they’re saying positive or negative things. And finally, use social media as a real-time communication tool, so customers don’t have to wait hours to get in touch with you. You can focus on creating a great customer experience across all platforms and aspects of your marketing strategy.
2) Video Is Still Key
Video in all forms has been dominating content marketing, and it shows no signs of stopping. Blog posts are fine tools to post informative content, but short- and long-form videos and webinars are essential when it comes to showing off your product or service. In the coming year, we can expect to see live video become even more popular. Live video is an especially great tool for B2B content marketing, as you can use it to host product demonstrations and have a real-time question and answer session. To create great video content, make sure you’re delivering what your prospects need. Strive to answer their questions and solve their problems in an entertaining and attention-grabbing way, or use case studies or testimonials, or even stream live events you’re business is attending.
3) Take Advantage of Technology
Change is a constant in the marketing landscape, so it’s best to stay on top of all the latest technology and use it to your advantage whenever possible. For example, machine learning tools like chatbots can interact with prospects to answer simple questions and gather data, which can improve customer service without draining your resources. And artificial intelligence is a huge element that’s driving marketing changes as well. More and more customers are using artificial intelligence to conduct voice searches, which means SEO is changing. And as SEO changes, so must your content strategy. Strive to make your content conversational and natural, while keeping it richly informative. And don’t forget about virtual and augmented reality. While this tech is still in its infancy, you can see the potential to use it for product demonstrations, tours, or hands-on experiences.
4) Automation Saves You Work
Automating parts of the marketing process can end up saving you time and money in the long run. It’s already quite easy to automate email marketing and social media posts, but you can also use automation tools to increase lead generation, and measure the results. You can automatically score, nurture, and segment your leads, which will result in shorter sales cycles. Because it’s easy to segment and score your leads, you can identify the best prospects and take action. In addition, you can also create interactive content like polls and forms that can help you figure out exactly where a prospect is along the buyer’s journey. When you get the menial tasks out of the way with automation, you can spend your time focusing on more high-level strategy.
5) Measure Everything
It’s important to measure all of your content marketing efforts so you can see which elements of your strategy are working the best, and which still need improvement. The great news is that more and more tools are becoming available that you can use to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. With Google Analytics, you can map out which of your content is getting the most attention, and see exactly how people flow through your website. However, sometimes these tools give you tons of data with no real way to comb through it. But reporting platforms like Google Data Studio, Geckoboard and others will allow you to make sense of the massive amount of data you collect. Using tools to collect, analyze, and report on data can give you a clear picture of how your strategies are working, and what you can do to improve them.
6) Create A Great Customer Experience
Using all the elements above, you can learn exactly what your audience wants and needs, and use it to create an excellent customer experience. Above all, your goal is to help your customers achieve success, and show them what you can do to help them get there. Pay attention to what your prospects need and want, and what they’re saying on social media, deliver great and helpful content with video, and try out all the emerging technologies. Don’t be afraid to try something new if you have the resources to do so, and keeping on top of the latest tech can put you ahead of the curve. As long as you are measuring all your efforts, you’ll be able to see what is bringing you the best return on investment.
Make 2019 Your Year!
Now is the best time to get started on crafting your content marketing strategy for the upcoming year. It’s important to pay attention to the trends so you can get a leg up on the competition and stay on top of your game. If you’re looking for some more great content marketing tips, contact us.
