Why B2B Content Gets a C+ Grade

5 A+ CMO Strategies for Elevating Content Marketing Quality

Content Marketing Is Complicated. For B2B sales, we simplify your path to being recognized as industry experts with the highest sales closing rates. As B2B founders, we know how to create content that positions your business as an authority, makes the case for your technology, confronts rational/emotional hurdles, and elevates your salespeople to trusted advisors—your competitive advantage in an ABM sales world. OUR PROMISE is to make your reputation a powerful and effective addition to your company’s core competencies.

Why are most B2B companies producing C+ content?

Let’s start by saying that a C+ grade for content across the industry might be too generous. Why?

96% of B2B buyers review thought leadership content before making a purchase, yet 71% of B2B decision-makers say “half or less than half of the thought-leadership content they read or watch gives them any sort of valuable insights.”
57 percent of sellers say they don’t pay much attention to content produced by their marketing teams, feeling it is generic and unresponsive. – McKinsey
Sales reps don’t use 60 to 70% of marketing content. That means that about two-thirds of the investment in content development — often as much as 12% of the entire marketing budget – might simply be wasted.
According to Forrester, an estimated 65% of content marketing assets that are produced go unused because they are irrelevant.

Why is content quality falling short for buyers and sellers despite its importance?

Research from Gartner shows that 83% of typical B2B purchasing decisions (from researching solutions to ranking options) happen before a buyer engages directly with a provider.
62% of B2B buyers said they engage with three to seven pieces of content before connecting with a salesperson, and are 57%–70% through their buying research.
55% of buyers said they now rely more on content to research and make purchasing decisions than they did a year ago.

Poor content quality may be a leading factor for why 31% of salesperson’s time is spent searching for or creating their own content.

B2B companies cannot afford to provide C+ quality content or have their reps’ time spent creating it. If you want to garner the attention of your B2B buyers and improve alignment with sales, start by creating higher-quality content.

There is an opportunity for companies to level up their content and outpace the competition. – Forbes

The pandemic forever changed the B2B buying process, creating more reliance on digital content. This means that B2B companies must reconsider marketing and sales approaches in an environment much more reliant on digital information.

Continue reading as we outline five of the most important and overlooked strategies for solving the content quality dilemma and what will elevate the quality and effectiveness of B2B content marketing to an A+ grade.

Tapping into the industry’s best sources for quality content
Using your data advantages that fuel digital transformation
Creating the right content, at the right time, in the right way
Addressing the most important and overlooked B2B purchasing influencers
Producing the content that sellers want most

How to Solve the C+ Content Dilemma

Solving the C+ content dilemma means having the right backing internally, the right strategy, and a plan to execute.

Only 41% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.

Most B2B companies know they need content to fuel their lead generation efforts, but are caught in a major dilemma. Poor quality content creates poor lead flow and erodes internal support and the ability to continue to garner sufficient resources—it’s a catch-22.

Investing in content marketing success comes down to time, cost, and quality – the magic triangle.

TIME: 57% of the most successful B2B content marketers outsource content marketing activities.
COST: 32% of the most successful B2B content marketers spend 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing.
QUALITY: Among content marketers who said their organizations were extremely/very successful with content marketing, the #1 factor contributing to B2B content marketing success is “the value our content provides.”

The key to higher quality content across the buyer’s journey is exactly the same as what buyers want in a salesperson—expertise from a trusted advisor.

78% of business buyers seek salespeople that act as trusted advisors with knowledge of their needs and industry. – SalesForce
88% buy only when they see a salesperson as a trusted advisor. – LinkedIn

As a result, successful content marketers know they need the expertise and a plan to:

Produce the highest quality content on an evergreen basis
Source, aggregate, and distill perspectives and trends from throughout the industry by tapping into thought leaders, luminaries, peers, prospects, and clients
Create a competitive advantage with a unique point of view that cuts through the industry noise
Influence the 57%-70% of buyer’s research being conducted before contacting sales

To accomplish all this requires dedication, support, research, and a unique approach that rejects the typical C+ quality standards that run rampant throughout the B2B industry.

How to Elevate the Quality of Your Content to an A+

Higher-quality content takes more work to create. This is a truth that is inescapable. But with the right strategy, you can create higher-quality content extremely efficiently. The desire certainly exists, as just 32% of B2B marketers are proud of most of their content.

Below are the Top 5 recommendations for elevating the quality and effectiveness of your content on an evergreen basis.

1. Tapping Into the Industry’s Best Sources for Quality Content

Become the aggregator of the best thought leadership, predictions, trends, and problem-solving ideas from throughout your industry.

No one company has the lock on unique perspectives, insights, and value. But you can be the source of this knowledge—wrapped in your unique point of view and aligned with the benefits that only your technology provides.

According to Gallup, “More than ever, B2B customers demand tailored knowledge, insights, and perspectives.”
- B2B customers increasingly expect suppliers to possess the deepest and timeliest information on their most important business issues. These include the economics of customers’ businesses, emerging challenges within customers’ industries, and trends within a supplier’s customer portfolio.
- The problem is, only 31% of B2B customers believe their supplier understands their needs.

This is why your content marketing plan needs to source, aggregate, and distill perspectives and trends from throughout the industry by leveraging the expertise of thought leaders, luminaries, clients, peers, and prospects—providing a never-ending stream of valuable knowledge and insights that eclipses the content quality expectations of your buyers and internal sales teams.

How?

Start by aggregating industry thought leadership through podcasting. Below are seven unrivaled advantages of podcasting.

First and foremost, podcasting gives you EASY ACCESS TO VIRTUALLY ANYONE you need to talk to for a full 45-60 minutes, no matter how important of an industry player they are, providing plenty of time to glean their knowledge—and they will be happy to share it. At the same time, you’ll be able to record the conversation and use the interview for all kinds of repurposed content.

A second advantage of podcasting…

GARNING YOUR BUYER”S TIME: More than half of B2B buyers are tuning in to PODCASTS and are willing to spend at least 20 minutes or more listening. Few forms of content can boast that. The most exceptional podcasts feature dialogues involving multiple individuals, guest appearances by industry experts, diverse viewpoints, and not a singular, heavily managed brand communication.

A third advantage of podcasting…

PODCASTS AS RESEARCH CHANNELS: Podcasts are now a top channel for B2B content, with 43% of decision-makers saying they use them to get business-related content, and 56% of buyers using them for early-stage research. Podcasts are tied with email newsletters, webinars, and social media as the most preferred channel for buyers. Podcasts can also be used to deliver any type of content for any stage of the buyer’s journey, from comparisons to thought leadership.

A fourth advantage of podcasting…

PODCASTS ARE EXCELLENT FOR GETTING MEETINGS WITH PROSPECTS: Since podcasting has become so popular, being invited onto a podcast as a guest is now a prestigious opportunity. This means it is an excellent opportunity to reach out to prospects as podcast guests. This gives a good 45 minutes to an hour to have a conversation, learn pain points, understand how they are solving their challenges, and prove value with your own insights and industry knowledge. Podcasting, just like webinars (but in a one-to-one manner), builds relationships in a single meeting. A wise use of podcasts is to get time with prospects, prove value as a trusted advisor, and save the last 15 minutes to segue into how your company solves their very same problems and challenges—and would they like to know more? This is anything but a cold call and has everything to do with building a rapport and extending value.

A fifth advantage of podcasting…

GAINING CUSTOMER AND PROSPECT INSIGHTS: This is the most important part of the role of any B2B CMO. Gartner says it best when they talk about the evolving role of the CMO to “Chief Customer Officer” as pivotal to a company’s success.

The highest voice of authority in any company is the voice of the customer. Understanding and representing that voice in marketing, aligning with sales, and supporting all internal departments isn’t a finite project but an ongoing requirement. Podcasting provides the ability to understand the customer better than anyone by having an ongoing and organized process for getting you in front of and talking to customers, prospects, and industry thought leaders across an unlimited range of topics. Not having a podcasting strategy with these goals and benefits is akin to de-prioritizing your focus on the customer.

A sixth advantage of podcasting…

THIS ADVANTAGE IS ALL ABOUT EXPOSURE. By attracting influential podcast guests, you are also creating a means to reach their following—not only through another form of content for paid media promotion but also because guests love to share where they have been asked to speak. A strategy for creating easily shareable posts for guests not only gets a lot of exposure for your content but also starts providing incredible back-link opportunities. And because podcasting can be used to create any type of content that you want, it can be aligned with the right SEO and long-tail keyword phrases to create multiple supporting pieces of content that will get any organization starting to come up in the search rankings.

A seventh advantage of podcasting…

CREATING OWNED MEDIA: In the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, owned media reigns supreme as the powerful tool that allows companies to exercise complete control over their online presence. From the brand’s website to social media and even podcasting, owned media channels empower businesses to curate their messaging and engage with their target audience in a more meaningful way.

Moreover, owned media channels offer an unprecedented opportunity to maximize the impact of paid and earned media efforts. By leveraging owned media to amplify the reach of paid media and increase the credibility of earned media, digital marketers can create a holistic and impactful marketing strategy that delivers tangible results. So, if you want to stay ahead in the digital marketing game, investing in owned media should be at the top of your priority list.

Podcasting as a means to stay in tune with customers’ needs, elevate your content marketing quality, garner the valuable time of your buyers, and influence their decisions on an evergreen basis cannot be matched.

2. Using your data advantages that fuel digital transformation

It’s time to project at a whole new level how important your company is to your clients and prospects.

- Deloitte states, “Digital transformation is the essential bridge between the business of today and the business of tomorrow.”
- Accenture says, “Today, all companies are tech companies; all CEOs are tech CEOs. Digital transformation puts technology at the core of business strategy.”
- “Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that “more than 80% of companies plan to accelerate their companies’ digital transformation.“

Here is the main question to ask yourself as a B2B executive:

If the world’s largest consulting firms think this highly of digital transformation opportunities, do you? And do your sales and marketing strategies reflect it?

In a recent strategic insights interview that I conducted with a partner at one of the world’s top 5 consulting firms on behalf of a client, the partner characterized a recent working relationship with a company helping to enable digital transformation this way: “It would have made it very difficult for our team to deliver without them. There would have been a lot more pain, a lot more blood, sweat, and tears.”

A major media publisher said this about the relationship with their ad management partner, “From my perspective, we really couldn’t grow the company without them.”

In our role as B2B executives, we need to strive to seriously enhance the role that the industries, companies, departments, or individuals whom we represent play. The digital transformation you make needs to be positioned in a way that matches the impact that you create.

B2B companies should be positioning themselves in terms of being revenue acceleration enablers. When it comes down to it, B2B companies that provide digital transformation benefits provide the visibility to get eyes on elusive, siloed data that maximizes automation, insights, and profits. From identifying key metrics for growth to discovering gaps and new opportunities, real-time, accessible data allows teams to skip the guesswork, collaborate across functions, and focus on the few things that will have the most impact on the business overall.

What can you do to add value from the vast amount of data that runs through your company? Your clients only have access to their own data, but you have the ability to add valuable insights on a much broader basis.

A recent survey showed that 39% of B2B Marketers said “using unique data and insights” was particularly powerful in attracting new audiences. Just think if all B2B marketers had the same perspective on the digital transformation benefits of their data?

The more that B2B companies can connect the dots beyond the more generic promises of growth, efficiencies, collaboration, or automation and focus on their core business model of a buyer organization’s processes, problems, and decision points, the better.

Start elevating your importance to B2B buyers by framing yourself at the heart of the digital transformation that will take them into the business of tomorrow. Use your content marketing strategy as the full-funnel face of your company, from thought leadership to core solution offerings.

3. Creating the right content, at the right time, in the right way

Since B2B buyers are 57%-70% through their buying research before contacting sales, it makes sense that the most popular content formats have the highest engagement in the early and mid stages of the buyer’s journey.

Below are findings from a recent report among B2B buyers on the importance of different content formats by buying stage, plus the factors that made the content more memorable and useful. These findings help establish goals for what should drive content execution.

For early-stage research, the most popular content formats are:

Infographics (62%)
Blogs (58%)
Podcasts (56%)

Mid-stage research was more focused on the following:

Assessments/Comparisons (49%)
Webinars (48%)
Case studies (44%)

For late-stage research, buyers reported these content formats as most useful:

User reviews (29%)
Third-party analyst reports (29%)
ROI calculators (26%)

Gartner speaks to the importance of providing a lot of high-quality content that maps to the buying process as a crucial part of sales enablement.

The factors that make content memorable for B2B buyers and what most often prompt them to take a sales call are:

51% emphasized the significance of utilizing data and research to substantiate the content’s assertions.
41% highlighted the importance of having research-based content.

Another common theme was the desire to share the content with their buying team. Nearly half (49%) of respondents said the content must tell a strong story that resonates with their buying committee, and 41% said the content should be packed with shareable stats and quick-hitting insights.

A key takeaway is that when B2B buyers conduct research for a purchasing decision, they select research/survey reports as the most valuable content source.

Does the importance of drawing data, insights, and conclusions from the vast database you have as a company now stand out as even more important?

When asked about the key drivers for sharing content, respondents said it is important that the content:

Includes relevant/shareable links that can be shared immediately (48%)
Is packed with shareable stats and quick-hitting insights (42%)
Tells a strong story that resonates with the buying committee (41%)
Is ungated and easy to share with colleagues (37%)
Will influence peers/other internal stakeholders on the buying team (34%)

B2B buyers also suggested curbing sales messages (39%), creating shorter content (37%), and not overloading content with text (36%). However, they did want more insights from industry thought leaders and analysts (30%).

One of the most important takeaways from this section is not only getting the right type of content created but how it can be organized and presented in ways that are easy to find and follow.

Below is the B2B buyer’s reflection on how content should be organized on the websites of the companies they are considering for a purchase:

By issue/pain point (52%)
By topic (51%)
By industry/vertical (46%)
By business role (42%)

Content pathways should be created on websites based on all of these organizational approaches, making the buyer’s research and evaluation that much easier for your company. The buyer should have landing pages (aligning with the four organizational methods listed above) that navigate to all relevant content resources across each stage of the purchase process. How much of your best content is scattered across blog posts, podcasts, case studies, testimonials, eBooks, etc.? These landing pages provide easy and complete content pathways that organize all the content that your B2B buyers want and need.

Among B2B buyers, a “Supplier’s Website” is the top marketing channel used when forming the consideration set.

4. Addressing the most important and overlooked B2B purchase factors

56% of final B2B purchasing decisions are based on emotional factors.

B2B buying involves more emotional factors than most marketers are aware of, which is why most B2B companies don’t do what it takes to address these emotional purchase accelerators.

According to Gartner, “Customers are making complex decisions that may put their job at risk, negatively impact their organization, or cause distrust with other stakeholders when it comes to allocating budgets in the future.”
95% of decision-makers state that, even before contacting a supplier, feeling a sense of connection to a supplier’s brand is as important as feeling confident about what they do.

Brand affinity is most important at the very beginning and at the very end of the buyer journey. It is critical for suppliers to have a strong brand in which customers feel emotionally invested.

Sure, companies need to satisfy customers’ rational needs and wants – having the right product at the right price – in order to enter the consideration set but in the race between silver and gold, emotion prevails. – The State of B2B Survey: Winning with Emotion.

Four key emotions dominate when influencing purchase behavior:

Trust in the supplier’s credibility
Confidence in the supplier’s ability to deliver
Optimism about what they could do for the buyer’s organization
Pride in the prospect of partnering with the supplier

Addressing these four emotions alone increases the chances of the supplier winning the business by 50%.

To get ahead of the competition early on, thought-leadership expertise represented through content marketing is critical. Thought leadership paves the way to communicating a differentiated value proposition that allows your brand to stand out from the crowd.

Forbe’s #1 recommendation for taking advantage of emotions in B2B marketing is to create thought leadership content:

“Thought leadership content provides a connection point for B2B marketers and their target audience. This is especially true when content is specifically written to appeal to the human side of buyers. With this, brands can foster understanding and credibility among prospects. They do this by providing knowledge that will elevate them from anonymous employees to trusted advisors who have insights into their products or services.”

The supplier which establishes a thought leadership position is the supplier which carries favor with potential buyers. Business decision-makers reported that a demonstration of expertise via content marketing was the third-most important factor in evaluating suppliers under consideration. For enterprise decision-makers, thought leadership was even more influential (ranking as the second-most important factor).

Our own thought leadership content at ContentStrategies.io proved how powerful emotions can be in engaging an audience. The emotionally charged nature of the email content shown below created click-through rates that are more than 7 times higher than industry averages.

5. Producing the Content that Sellers Want Most

The information so far has given us a lot of clues that help us answer the question of what type of content sellers want most. B2B buyers want content that:

Is easy to share
Is short and concise
Has stats and quick-hitting insights
Utilizes data and research
Incorporates thought leadership

If we overlay all of this with the advantages of case studies, there are obvious conclusions:

73% of the most successful content marketers use case studies.
Nearly 50% of B2B companies say case studies drive sales.
When conducting research for a purchasing decision, B2B buyers selected case studies 40% of the time , second only to research or survey reports.
37% of buyers will send case studies to their fellow buying committee members.
55% of larger companies create case study videos.
44% of companies that have yet to incorporate video into their case studies plan to do so this year.

And remember, nearly half (49%) of B2B buyers said the content must tell a strong story that resonates with their buying committee.

Case studies can:

Use any format (including multimedia) to tell any success story.
Be shared in virtually every imaginable way, from social media to email campaigns, newsletters, sales presentations, websites, speaking engagements, and ads.
Address very specific problems and obstacles to the largest benefit statements overall for your company—while still tying into any industry trend, thought leadership idea, or overall business objective.
Target industries, personas, roles, communities, and more.

Recently, the Chief Business Officer of a well-funded B2B company requested two things for this year’s marketing plan. She said that the company’s success was first and foremost going to rest on its content marketing. Second, she wanted to create as many case studies as she could.

Having the goal to produce case studies continually isn’t enough on its own.

Too often, we create case studies on an ad hoc basis where and when we can get them. What needs to be done is to look at the problems being addressed and solved at various stages of the buyer’s journey and target creating new case studies to match.

A perfect example for many B2B companies is the common bottom-of-the-funnel problem. Buyers wanting to switch over to your solutions can be worried about the difficulty of the transition, the adoption rate of a new system by employees, and thus the overall impact and cost to their organization. This is a great opportunity to create case studies addressing this issue and showcase how smooth, timely, and efficient transitions are the norm at your company.

Case studies work best when aligned with the buyer’s journey and success stories addressing the problems buyers must solve.

Conclusion

B2B buyers today are looking for content that empowers them with confidence when selecting and evaluating companies to solve their problems and improve bottom-line performance. Thought leadership content influences the beginning and end of the buyer’s journey, including 56% of final B2B purchasing decisions that are based on emotional factors.

Harnessing the potential of the market is easier than you think.

B2B marketers can hold a unique advantage by positioning themselves as trusted advisors and partners, leveraging the massive amounts of data they collect to fuel digital transformations and the highest-level business decisions. This gives rise to new perspectives and key performance indicators that engage buyers at a whole new level. However, this remains mostly an untapped opportunity waiting to be seized.

B2B marketers can harness the potential of the market by unleashing a consistent flow of premium content, which is smartly structured and navigable through user-friendly pathways. This strategy can earn the trust and loyalty of buyers, leading to an impressive business boom.

To learn more about ensuring an A+ content grade to support your unique solutions, CLICK HERE to schedule a 20-minute strategy session with our founder, Steve MacDonald.

Steven MacDonald

Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies. Follow Steve on LinkedIn.