Add Some Pumpkin Spice to Your Digital Marketing Content - Content4Demand
One look at your own inbox can give you a sense of how much content your prospects are drowning in. According to the 2021 Content Preferences Survey published by Demand Report, 32% of B2B buyers say they’re overwhelmed by the amount of available content. It’s not easy to stand out in such a crowded space. Creativity can help your content get heard over the white noise of so many bland offers.
Examine your buyers’ content preferences and consumption habits first to get a clear understanding of what they want. Here are some insights from the Content Preferences Survey to get you started:
- 40% of respondents listened to audio content in the past year, and 46% have engaged with video and interactive content
- 35% prefer interactive content they can access on demand
- 32% want mobile-optimized content
- 52% share content that tells a strong story that resonates with their buying committees
When you’re juggling deadlines and managing a vast task list, it’s tough to prioritize things like brainstorming. But the time spent considering creative ways to tell your story and promote content will pay big dividends down the line.
Even a well-crafted asset can get lost in a sea of similar-looking content. Experimenting is almost always a good idea, and formats is a great place to start. Buyers are eagerly embracing fresh formats and interactive content.
Take a look at what you know about your target audience and their unique content preferences. If interactive content looks like it might be a good fit, experiment with one or two projects—an interactive infographic or a motion graphic video, for example. Monitor shares, downloads and other key metrics to gauge success before you scale up your interactive content plans.
We went all in on interactivity with the Content Format Discovery Tool, which B2B marketers can navigate by answering a series of questions to discover the best interactive content formats to achieve an array of marketing goals.
Buyers still value tried-and-true formats like case studies (46%), white papers (55%) and E-books (57%). But they’re also using assets like audio content (40%), videos (46%) and assessments (26%) to make purchasing decisions.
Boost engagement with your traditional formats by adding interactive elements or creating supplementary assets. Embed “click to tweet” callouts that encourage white-paper readers to share key data with their social networks. Embed relevant videos or audio clips into E-books or case studies to add color and detail to your story.
We included LinkedIn and Twitter links for the influencers we featured in this Maximizing ABM Success E-book, plus videos embedded directly into the content.
Webinars continue to attract audiences, with 39% rating them as the most valuable content format for researching B2B purchases. There’s no reason to turn our backs on these valuable digital presentations. But as competition has stiffened in a largely remote world, it’s a good time to take a fresh look at your webinar formats to prioritize engagement.
With so many webinars and events centered on account-based marketing, we opted to add a creative touch to our own webinar about the importance of content to ABM strategies. We took a risk last year with an edgy theme that played with the questions swirling around ABM at the time. Thanks in large part to our cheeky title, we earned record-breaking attendance and high engagement with ABM Without the WTF: 8 Lessons from Top-Performing Brands.
It’s easy to keep rolling with standard landing pages and forget to consider potential design possibilities. Buyers want faster and easier access to content, and that means streamlined landing page design with shorter forms.
Sure, we want as much information as we can get about the people downloading our content. But lengthy forms could be preventing that download from happening at all. Many buyers are willing to share some of their data for a robust asset like an E-book or a webinar, but the more data you require the more likely they’ll skip it. And they’re not generally inclined to fill out anything for a short-form asset like an infographic.
So if you’re really married to those forms, consider grouping content into bundles or toolkits that offer them more value for their information—one form for a bundle of content centered on a specific topic, industry, trend or pain point.
There’s plenty of room for creativity in the B2B space. In fact, it’s getting difficult to get buyers’ attention without it. Push your creative limits with new tools and platforms that can help you reach buyers with fresh content that stands out from “business as usual.”
Need help pushing the creative boundaries? We love to brainstorm and meet new people! Schedule a complimentary brainstorming call with us, and we’ll talk about creative ideation to help you boost engagement with creative and strategic marketing content.
This content was originally published here.
