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The B2B Content Marketing Derby: When & Where to Place Strategic Bets

When & Where to Place Smart B2B Content Marketing Bets

When & Where to Place Smart B2B Content Marketing Bets

The Kentucky Derby has long been referred to as the fastest and most exciting two minutes in sports. And when it comes to your B2B content marketing efforts, getting your audience to sit on the edge of their seats, glued to your content for two whole minutes can be a major feat.

To generate Kentucky-Derby-like attention for your B2B brand, your content marketing strategy needs to leverage the right tactical mix for your audience, industry, product mix, and objectives. However, over the last decade, the content marketing field has become crowded and even convoluted with hopeful tactical and strategic champions. The field has evolved from traditional winners like blogging and eBooks to include a new breed of favorites like influencer marketing, interactive content, and more.

So, when and where should you place your B2B content marketing bets? Read on to learn about the latest content marketing tactics and their odds of putting your brand in the winner’s circle.

The B2B Content Marketing Derby Contenders

1. Old Reliable

What: Blogging

Racing record: Blogging is the trusty content marketing steed: It’s Old Reliable, with origins dating back some 25 years. With the right audience focus and SEO insight, blogging allows B2B marketers to consistently create relevant, quality, best-answer content for every stage of the buyer’s journey.

But having been the reliable favorite for so many years, the blogging field has become crowded and fiercely competitive. Anyone and everyone can have a blog—and topical and target keyword overlap with your direct (and indirect) competitors is inevitable. In fact, the number of bloggers in the United States alone is expected to reach 31.7 million by 2020.

via GIPHY

Odds: Old Reliable is a smart bet for your content strategy if you have dreams of creating a consistent content drumbeat to educate your audience at multiple stages of the funnel. For the best odds, SEO—another favorite content marketing stud—needs to be part of your blog ideation, creation, and ongoing optimization. This helps ensure you’re creating data-informed blog content around keywords and topic clusters that can boost search visibility and capitalize on white space.

Read: Nearly 3 Years Later, Antea Group USA Still Seeing Triple-Digit Growth Thanks to SEO-Driven B2B Content Marketing Strategy

2. Hollywood Heartthrob

What: Video Marketing

Racing record: Over the last few years, video has become a top consumption channel for audiences. Now that bingeing TV shows and movies on streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have become the norm, so too has bingeing video content on social media networks, Vimeo, TikTok, and others. Research supports this trend with 57% of consumers saying they want to see video content from brands. Plus:

However, professionally produced video can be time, budget, and resource intensive. In addition, live video featuring more unscripted commentary and scenarios in the B2B space can be hard to get buy-in on.

Odds: If you’re looking to bring your brand to life and infotain your audience, strategic use of video content, who we like to call Hollywood Heartthrob, is a horse to add to your betting roster.

The key of course is choosing the right video content type and style to engage and nurture your audience, and align with and support your marketing goals. Generally speaking there are four video content marketing types:

  • Teasers
  • Trailers and Previews
  • Explainers
  • Video Essays and Companion Videos

As far as keeping production costs down, there are plenty of free apps that can turn your phone into a studio any director would love. Vidyard is tool that can help you produce, publish, and track high quality videos without expensive equipment.

As a more general rule for creating great video, you need to be able to tell a story—a story that doesn’t focus on hitting all your product talking points, according to seasoned B2B marketer and comedian, Tim Washer.

“For example, we did a mini documentary for Cisco that showed how smaller service providers are serving third-world countries,” he mentioned in an interview. “It focused on how our customers are making a difference, and of course inferred that our technologies are helping them make that difference.”

[bctt tweet= »As a general rule for creating great video, you need to be able to tell a story—a story that doesn’t focus on hitting all your product talking points. @timwasher #B2BContentMarketing » username= »toprank »]

3. Fact Not Fiction

What: Infographics

Racing record: Infographics are loaded with information. But so is an encyclopedia. One of the best benefits of infographics is that they provide valuable information in an easy to read, easy to understand way. It pairs text-based information with data visualization, graphs, and pictures to help educate audiences. And it is for this reason that 40% of marketers listed infographics as their top performer for driving engagement.

Odds: When it comes to educating your audience in a simple, easy to understand way, infographics are second to none. Plus, they’re extremely shareable, extending your reach to a larger audience. Fact Not Fiction is a smart bet for your content strategy when awareness and education are top of mind, or if you’re attempting to simplify a complex topic.

4. The Proof Is in the Pudding

What: Case Studies

Racing record: Evidence is some of the most compelling content you can create. Testimonials, case studies, and reviews show audiences that your products and services actually work. It also allows them to envision themselves as a customer and see how they could benefit from similar services.

According to the 2018 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Report, 73% of marketers found case studies to be the most successful tactic for converting and accelerating leads in the middle and late stages of the funnel.

Image credit: 2018 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Report

Odds: When prospects are in the consideration or conversion stage of the buyer journey, proof and evidence can help guide them towards a purchasing decision. If moving more buyers through the funnel means winning for your brand, relevant and insightful case studies are a great bet.

5. One for the Record Books

What: eBooks

Racing record: According to the 2017 Demand Generation Content Preferences Survey Report, 63% of buyers are willing to share information about themselves (e.g. email addresses) in exchange for eBooks. By creating longer, more visual content through eBooks, studies show that eBooks are a great lead generation tactic. In addition, eBooks rank in the top five most effective content marketing tactics for both the top and middle of the funnel.

Odds: One for the Record Books is able to last for miles, diving deep into a niche topic to further educate audiences and provide valuable information in great detail. This is helpful for both the top and middle of the funnel when education is key.

When gated, eBooks are also great lead generation tools that open up new paths for audience nurturing—as long as the content delivers the kind of robust insight and value that warrants an exchange of information.

Read: To Gate, or Not to Gate? Answers to an Age-Old Digital Marketing Question

6. Social Butterfly

What: Social Media Marketing

Racing record: The number of active social media users is expected to reach 3.02 billion by 2021, according to Statista. And the average person spends nearly 2.5 hours on social media each day. If you want to meet your audience on their turf, social media marketing needs to be a part of your content marketing betting strategy.

Because social media allows you to share content on a channel where your audience spends a great deal of time each day, there are opportunities for growing a following, building a community, delivering customer service, and boosting engagement.

However, the social media ticket is evolving thanks to a few scandals, abuse concerns, and platform changes to aimed at enhancing the user experience. So, if you’re getting ready to double-down on your bet, go in with eyes wide open.

Odds: Savvy B2B marketers said goodbye to organic-only social strategies built on “post it and they will come” a long time ago. But still, Social Butterfly can be a great community building tool for B2B brands if you’re providing relevant, thoughtful, and valuable content and insights.

via GIPHY

Take the time to research your audience’s content consumption preferences (e.g. leverage your website and social analytics, survey your existing customer base, etc.) to uncover patterns and top content types, as well as gauge which platforms deserve your care and attention.

7. Dapper Don Draper

What: Digital Advertising

Racing record: Organic visibility and reach are anything but guaranteed on today’s content marketing track. But digital advertising can give you a competitive edge, supplementing your organic efforts at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Studies have shown digital ads to be an effective method of top of funnel lead generation and awareness with findings like:

However, it’s important to note that a quarter of U.S. internet users blocking ads. The good news is that the real beauty of Dapper Don Draper is it’s versatility, with options including native text and video advertising, paid social, search, and display.

Odds: With clearly defined objectives and the right content, Dapper Don Draper is a well-placed wager. Whether you’re breaking into a new market and need some quick brand awareness wins or you’re promoting a new interactive influencer asset, Triple D can help your other efforts win, place, and show.

For the highest probability of generating results with your digital advertising, it’s important to use all of the audience targeting features available to you. In addition, native advertising units are very effective as they appear similar to the other content on the page.

8. Black, White & Gray All Over

What: SEO

Racing record: SEO, which we’ve affectionately named Black, White & Gray All Over, has one of the longest and wide-ranging B2B content marketing records. She’s won some and certainly lost some, but her place in the B2B Content Strategy Derby Hall of Fame is confirmed. Why?

Because as TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden has often said: “Content is the reason search began in the first place.” And according to Internet Live Stats, there’s currently an average of 40,000 Google searches every second. That’s the equivalent of 3.5 billion searches per day on Google alone. But search is growing more crowded by the second, with trillions of website pages already indexed and counting, and algorithms growing more sophisticated.

[bctt tweet= »Content is the reason search began in the first place. – @leeodden #B2BContentMarketing #SEO » username= »toprank »]

Odds: SEO is a fickle filly, with her training regime and environment evolving at the speed of machine learning. But she’s built for the long haul if the content jockey builds good rapport at all stages of the funnel.

Increase your odds by regularly reviewing results and identifying opportunities to attention to optimize existing and future content to better match search intent, volume, competition, and more. In addition, look for white space that you can fill with relevant, best answer, SEO-informed content.

9. On Good Authority

What: Influencer Marketing

Racing record: Influencer marketing, aka On Good Authority, burst on the content marketing scene a few years ago and has proven to be a rising star. In fact, Instagram influencer marketing is expected to hit $8 billion in spend by 2020. But that growth trajectory is not limited to consumer brands. B2B companies are also realizing the value of collaborating with influential thought leaders for marketing purposes and count the practice as one of the top 4 tactics planned for 2019.

On Good Authority’s efficacy and worth have been questioned, but the results speak for themselves. (Checkout our cheat sheet of inspiring B2B influencer marketing examples.)

Odds: Fast out of the gate with a strong finish, On Good Authority has great odds when it comes to increasing brand awareness, thought leadership, and even lead gen.

But place your bets wisely. Topical relevance, for one thing, is absolutely critical. So, for the best chance of success with your influencer marketing programs, make sure you’re working with the right influencers that have the appropriate levels of expertise, relevance, and reach.

10. All That and a Bag of Chips

What: Interactive content

Racing record: All That and a Bag of Chips is perhaps the prettiest horse in the race. It grabs attention. It encourages interaction. It improves the user experience. And it’s been known to work well with all of the other horses listed above. But just because this horse is a team player, doesn’t mean it’s not here to win.

In fact, 87% of marketers agree that interactive content is more effective at grabbing attention than static content. Plus, one of our interactive campaigns drove three times the average share rate and a 500% increase in pageviews.

Prophix Crush It Interactive Quiz

Odds: If you’re looking to go bold at every stage of the funnel, All That and a Bag of Chips is as good as gold. To ensure that this horse is crossing the finish line first, consider pairing it with another horse in the race to slingshot it to victory.

For example, create an interactive infographic, eBook, or influencer-driven landing page. You might just see your results compounded.

Place Your B2B Content Marketing Bets

To win big at the B2B Content Marketing Derby, the “watch and win” approach isn’t advised. You need to place smart bets on multiple horses, pairing them together and investing in different heats to hit your marketing goals.

Depending on variables like budget, objectives, or time, any combination of the above contenders could win their way into your content strategy—there’s a time and a place for each of them. So, step on up and place your bets … wisely to win.

via GIPHY

Need a little help selecting your strategic bets? Follow this three-point checklist for documenting your B2B content strategy.

The post The B2B Content Marketing Derby: When & Where to Place Strategic Bets appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

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Content Creation Services Key to Business Growth

Using content such as expert Articles, Blog posts, How-to-Guides, is a key online business strategy to get more traffic and to trigger product, company, or service awareness, as well as to boost a website’s online visibility. The power of written content creation, specifically, will depend on the right strategy being utilized – paying little heed to whether the business is an online one, or a brick and mortar type.


Content Forms
Text: When communicating with a target audience through direct message, it’s the written word that is always the preferred option. Articles which use the language, expressions, terms, and words unique to a specific industry, niche or market spontaneously set the context and tone of the message. With this form of content, immaculate grammar is the top priority, followed closely with respect to importance by the correct structuring of sentences and paragraphs, so as to gain audience attention and send clear messages.
Infographics: Pictures in company with a little bit of content alluded to as infographics are the most recent Internet and Media craze. Infographics are an inevitably popular, visual approach to present data, information and on rare occasions complex ideas and messages. Advantageously wiping out the obvious sales pitch, infographics can be used to, successfully share a company’s story in a creative and engaging way.
Standard unique content creation can furthermore, be used into different forms of content such as Microsites, White Papers, Webcasts, Digital Magazines, eBooks, Mobile Content, and more.
Purpose that Content Creation Services Serve: Information is the heart of content creation with respect to what a business, wants to share with its market and potential customers. Through information sharing businesses can augment brand awareness, boost their client base and create and maintain positive relationships with their current customers. 
Content can further be utilized for various other purposes, such as: 
  • The engagement of workforce through company blogs.
  • Smooth hiring through company website pages which are exceedingly representative of the company’s vision, direction and objectives. 
  • More effective and faster business growth, especially when such content is shared between businesses (B2B). 
Conclusion
When commissioning content creation services determine that they understand the unique strategies, being practiced currently in the online business world.

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Importance of Social Media Training in Healthcare Industry

Social Media today has an undeniable power of spreading information, growing the business and developing community. It is also a vital communication tool in various industries including healthcare. Both individuals and businesses in healthcare industry use social media to stay connected, communicate and sometimes market their products and services. The general public uses social media to research symptoms, local doctors, treatment, and compare options. In fact, social media today is a necessity for the healthcare industry. Even though it’s not an entire answer to improving patient engagement, it plays a huge proponent in connecting with target audiences.


Interesting Facts on the Impact of Social Media on Healthcare
  • In a survey, 41% of general consumer said social media would affect their choice of doctor, hospital or medical facility.
  • Only 31% of healthcare providers use social media to networks.
  • 26% of hospitals currently use social media.
  • Group of 18 to 24 year old are 2 xs more likely to use social media for health-related discussions than the group of 45 to 54 years. 
  • 54% of patients don’t mind with their providers asking advice from online communities for treating their condition better. 
  • 31% of healthcare institutions have their social media guidelines in writing. 
  • 30% adults are ok sharing information about their health on social media sites with other patients, 47% with doctors, 47% with hospitals, 38% with a health insurance company and 32% with a drug company. 
  • 22% of parents look for medically related answers using Facebook and 20% use YouTube. 
  • 60% of doctors say social media improves the quality of care delivered to patients. 
  • There has been a 119% increase in YouTube traffic year-after-year

Although the impact is greater the healthcare industry has somehow still been slower in adapting the world of social media than other industry. On the other hand, healthcare industry also requires some key considerations and etiquette to perform, unlike other industry. Still, there has been a major disconnection in the anticipation and actions of consumers and responses from the healthcare industry. So to meet consumer’s demand and prevalently reaching out to customers, healthcare professionals should constantly learn how to effectively use social media technologies. The best way to learn social media marketing in the healthcare industry is by attending social media training by experts. 
5 Reasons Why Social Media Training in Healthcare Industry is Important: 

Meet Experts – Social media training is probably the best way to meet social media marketing celebrities you ever wanted to communicate with. These experts understand healthcare industry can play an important role on social media by educating people about various diseases and treatment. Social media training usually has 3 to 4 experts addressing the audience. Meeting face-to-face enables a better understanding of how your online presence can benefit your business. Apart from the live sessions you also get to talk to them in person during breaks. Connecting with these professionals can be a fun string apart from getting valid and useful solutions for your queries. 
Connect and communicate with Peers – Training in social media marketing in healthcare industry opens up many opportunities for the healthcare system. It allows professionals to build connections, share their discoveries, and extend credibility as thought leaders. You can learn what motivates them and what’s important and noteworthy. Such training is an opportunities to create valuable in-person relationships and understandings each other’s strengths and weakness. Healthcare industry is very different from other industries, while others focus on likes and followers; healthcare is more about creating impact. For health professionals, social media marketing training is not about sharing the promotional message, but the real value comes from engagement.
Enhance Social Media Skills – Social media is changing constantly with new updates coming up all the times. And healthcare by nature is a busy industry that finds it difficult to keep on top with the latest news and skills about these networks. Chances are an expert trainer will be able to advise plus train you on the most updated changes on each platform. By enhancing social media skills, health care provider can understand patients’ concern by monitoring and tracking, social media forums, blogs and other digital sources. Collecting such insights will further help them create useful and relevant content for the targeted patient segment. 
Hands-on Training – One of the major reasons why healthcare professionals are even interested learning social media is to educate patients. It includes sharing innovative medial cases and responds instantly to patients’ problems. Sharing information regarding outbreaks or health hazards on social media has become an effective way to provide accurate information to patients. By attending social media in healthcare training, professionals get hands-on training on how to live tweet, do Facebook posts or share on LinkedIn forums. In fact, hands-on training includes extremely basic things such using #hashtag, creating Facebook Page, creating a Facebook ad, using LinkedIn profile, social media analyzing, tracking and monitoring etc. Also, you will get an idea on how to maintain professionalism as a health care professional on social media. 
Ongoing Support – Most good social media marketing trainers will not disappear after delivering the session. They will offer you ongoing support and mentoring relationship to ensure you maximize your chances of success. Some of the celebrity trainers also share video lessons, give lifetime access to digital marketing forums to interact and discuss ideas with like-minded people and send weekly e-mail tips as goodies. So, you can be sure of spending the time at the event by listening and engaging with people and not anxiously taking notes.  
It is no secret that people still prefer face-to-face interaction when it comes to consulting healthcare professionals. Yet patients these days are actively participating over social networks for resources to gain guidance on their health decisions. And innovative health care providers are smart at adapting to the dramatic shifts in patient expectations. For any healthcare organization that wants to remain competitive and embraces this digital era of patient interaction should take social media training for healthcare industry very seriously. As such training will teach you to connect to the audience and amplify your messages on social networks in an effective way. The opportunities are endless!
Author Bio
Sorav Jain has been recognized as one of the ‘Top 25 Social Media Professionals of India’. He is an avid blogger and has written several social media blogs not just on his own blog site but has guest blogged as well. He has delivered numerous informative lectures at the Confederation of Indian Industry, NASSCOM. He has hosted over 300+ social media workshops across India, Sri Lanka, and Dubai. His numerous writings, on the social media subject, range from the latest social media marketing strategies to be implemented on Facebook advertisements to Instagram marketing and a lot of other related topics. He also spearheads EchoVME, that was recognized as ‘The Best Social Media Agency of 2013’ by CMO Asia.

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Google AdWords a Popular Form of Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay Per Click Perth

« Pay Per Click » is typically an advertising system which is quite effortless to decipher and master. Daily nearly three hundred million searches are carried out on the Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. These outcomes eighty percent of online traffic. So, to reach the maximal number of prospective customers, it is highly imperative to put your business website on all of these major search engines. Nonetheless, so that people see and click your site more often, it needs to be viewed at the top of the search list. If your website ranks lower, there is a less chance for it to be clicked, since net visitors tend to reach up to the 3rd page of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. « Pay Per Click » advertising is a paid service where the sponsor pays only when someone clicks on his ad, online paid search ads that are displayed on search engines.

Pay Per Click Perth allows you to target keywords that are commonly searched or ones that relate to your niche, & the highest bidder attains the highest ranking. This advertising is unique since you don’t need to pay anything in advance, and you pay after someone clicks your link.

Is Google AdWords Different From PPC?

Google AdWords is a system wherein to promote a business the advertiser bids on specific keywords so that clickable ads display on Google’s search results. The advertiser pays for every click that occurs. In turn, Google earns money from every search conducted on its search engine.

Google AdWords is a leading internet based marketing and advertising system today, which is the favourite of businesses, who are looking to promote their products & services online for a higher return on investment. So, said, Google AdWords is a form of pay per click advertising offered by Google that allows the advertiser to display their website or Ads on Google search results pages (SERPs) and pay when a visitor clicks on his ads.

It is a simple, user-friendly advertising platform and can even be used by people, who are amateurs or have little knowledge about Google AdWords management Perth and augment their digital marketing campaigns.

Google AdWords the Front Runner

Google’s AdWords leads from the front as one of the most popular PPC management programs and constitutes nearly ninety percent of PPC ad dollars. Both veterans and novices find it to be the most effective alternative because of the large percentage of online traffic on Google. Anyway, Google Adwords, Perth is turning very competitive and costly day by day. Multiple competing networks are giving it a tough ride and are providing attractive traffic to advertisers seeking a larger piece of Google’s pie. Nonetheless, Google AdWords is still the most popular platform and cost-effective a well.

How Google AdWords Stands Apart from the Rest of the Crowd?

You need to pay Google to display your website on the search engine results page, however, by doing it, you are genuinely in a position to list your business in any of the spots you want, on the supported listing area. If Search Engine Optimization is a long process to attain relevant, authority organic traffic, with Google Adwords you can achieve traffic instantaneously, back to your site. Moreover, most of the traffic is high quality and relevant, with a better chance of getting converted to leads and sales.

Conclusion
To conclude, the concept of obtaining traffic whenever one wants for money makes Google AdWords a unique online advertising system. That’s why it is the favourite of online businesses looking for a higher return on investments.

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