Current Trends in B2B Content Marketing

Creating content is the hallmark of a typical marketer’s job in 2022. In B2C, content creation involves casting as wide a net as possible and hoping for conversions. But in the B2B world, marketers must understand the business challenges and operations almost as well as their clients do.

So what’s trending right now in terms B2B marketing content?

We spoke with a few marketers who told us what they’re doing to better-target their customers.

Back to basics: targeting pain points

Brandon Amoroso, Founder at electrIQ Marketing, says marketers in the technology B2B space shouldn’t feel as though they need to reinvent the wheel this year.

“It’s important for B2B businesses to emphasize any potential pain points with their target audiences when implementing content,” Amoroso says.

“For example, if you were to write something like, ‘feeling stumped on how to grow your business?’ in a social media post, then you would be tapping into the emotions that frustrated businesses may be feeling.”

It’s important to always  make your target audience feel like you know what they may be going through so that they’ll feel more open to learning more about your devices or services.

A less-generalized example could be that you’re a producer of an AV product which has a critical IT security feature. Now would be the time to focus on how integrators can communicate its security to IT buyers, who are very concerned about the security of their networks.

Spend more on creating less

Does the above subheading seem absolutely mad? Maybe it should — but let’s explore it’s meaning.

Daniel Nilsson, CEO at MuchSkills, says many B2B companies have low budgets per pieces of content. This means they create low quality content that later don’t give any effect and no one wants to read.

“If you want a better effect, spend more time/budget and focus on creating things that are truly valuable for your customers. Focus on ultra-high quality content that takes an experienced writer at least 2 weeks to research and make.”

You may end up writing less as a result, but in the B2B space, we’ve consistently seen that quality is better than quantity.

Don’t know what your audience wants to read? Use tools to find out

Jamie Irwin, eCommerce Manager at Straight Up Search says their content strategy centers around SEO tactics and in-depth keyword research.

We’ve written before about how pro AV marketers can utilize SEO, and we will certainly be covering more of that in 2022.

But in a nutshell: you can use tools like AnswerThePublic to search for a topic your audience might care about (“outdoor LED screens,” “secure matrix switchers,” etc.) and receive a list of specific things Google users around the world have searched for about that topic.

Mind you: the more broad your search term, the more likely it is that some of those keywords aren’t as relative to your target audience. But the more specific your search term, the less data there will be available for that term. So it’s a balancing act in many respects — but it will give you ideas for what topics and questions to address in your writing.

“As a tangible example: we identified that our target audience were searching ‘do you need a license to start a tutoring business?’ and we created an in-depth piece answering exactly this,” Irwin says.

“We also tailored this information to primarily cater for our USA audience while appeasing the core UK traffic.”

“Generally speaking, many B2B advertisers are already seeing the value in investing in creating and distributing content with businesses practicing in-house, while some outsource their content creation and distribution to agencies.

“We have a hybrid approach — our content is generated in-house with our subject-matter experts (naturally, we’re a tutoring software company), and then we use the expertise of a SEO consultant to make sure our content is optimized for search engines.”

The importance of user-generated content

Shaunak Amin, Co-Founder and CEO at SnackMagic, says one of the biggest B2B content marketing trends for 2022 is user-generated content.

“Our customers are typically B2B, specifically B2B2C- gift-givers such as event professionals, event decision-makers, senior-level execs or managers, and HR professionals who give SnackMagic to global teams, event attendees, or business partners.

Read Next: Some of the Best B2B Marketing Tools Trending for 2022

“We Send satisfied customers to our G2 reviews page, which is an industry standard for software companies to collect reviews and prospects to compare and contrast products/services. The reviews are all credible and honest, and interested prospects will come across these reviews when searching Google.

“This makes for an organic way to collect content that you can then share in your social media. And it’s customer-centric.”