B2C marketing
Guess the Top Content Marketing Goal for B2C and B2B
What’s your organization’s top content marketing goal? Would you like to know if it’s the same as 79% of B2C (business-to-consumer) and 82% of B2B (business-to-business) companies?
A study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says that “B2B marketers remain slightly more likely than B2C marketers to be using content marketing (93% and 90%, respectively), per the studies, with the former also more likely to rate their efforts as being effective (42% and 34%, respectively). Adoption and effectiveness appear to be on the increase for both groups.”
Before I get to the top content marketing goal, here are some interesting comparisons between B2C and B2B:
- This year, 72% of B2C marketers said they’re creating more content than they did one year ago, about on par with the 73% of B2B marketers increasing their level of output. Meanwhile, 60% of B2C content marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months, as do 58% of B2B content marketers.
- B2B marketers still allocate a higher share of their budgets to content marketing than their B2C counterparts, though (30% and 24%, respectively).
- For B2C content marketers, the most widely used tactics are social media other than blogs (88%), articles on their websites (78%), e-newsletters (76%) and blogs (72%), with the same order of adoption apparent among B2B marketers.
- Facebook is – predictably – the most commonly used social platform to distribute content among B2C content marketers (by 89%), and is also rated the most effective by its users (62%). For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is both most-used and most-highly rated.
- Web traffic is the top content marketing metric for both B2C (66%) and B2B (63%) marketers. Social media sharing is relatively more important to B2C respondents, who are far less interested in measuring sales quality and quantity.
- Lack of time is the top challenge faced by both B2C (57%) and B2B (69%) content marketers. B2C respondents are relatively more concerned with producing the kind of content that engages, while B2B marketers are more concerned with producing enough content.
- 39% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy, compared to 44% of B2B marketers.
Okay now. The TOP content marketing goal for both B2C and B2B: Brand awareness! B2C (79%) and B2B (82%).
Customer acquisition (71%) and retention/loyalty (65%) are the next-most common goals for B2C respondents, while lead generation is next among B2B respondents.
And, again… what’s your organization’s top content marketing goal? Is it the same as this study indicates? Please share.
Chart: MarketingCharts
What You Need to Know About On-Demand Marketing
Never heard this term? You will. On-demand marketing is exactly as it sounds. Servicing customers 24/7. “Not just always ‘on,’ but also always relevant, responsive to the consumer’s desire for marketing that cuts through the noise with pinpoint delivery.”
According to a recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly, “Emerging technologies are poised to personalize the consumer experience radically—in real time and almost everywhere. It’s not too early to prepare.”
The authors claim that this new technology will have a profound effect on B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing, so chances are that it will also have a major impact on B2B (business-to-business) as well as nonprofit and public marketing. Bottom line? It’s going to affect every small business and nonprofit organization in the next few years, beginning now.
First, let’s look at what your customers will expect:
According to Peter Dahlström and David Edelman, consumer demands will rise in four areas:
1. Now: Consumers will want to interact anywhere at any time.
2. Can I: They will want to do truly new things as disparate kinds of information (from financial accounts to data on physical activity) are deployed more effectively in ways that create value for them.
3. For me: They will expect all data stored about them to be targeted precisely to their needs or used to personalize what they experience.
4. Simply: They will expect all interactions to be easy.
(Want to see this in action? Check out the infographic below.)
One thing is clear, they say: “The consumer’s experiences with brands and categories are set to become even more intense and defining. That matters profoundly because such experiences drive two-thirds of the decisions customers make, according to research by our colleagues; prices often drive the rest.”
Sure, it sounds exciting! Yet, if the objective is to “mobilize to deliver high-quality experiences across sales, service, product use, and marketing,” I can’t help thinking of the resources required to stay in the game. How will smaller-budget entities keep up?
Perhaps, the first thing to acknowledge is that small businesses and nonprofits cannot do it all. You will never have the funds that large organizations have. But, you will need to adopt some new technologies you can afford. Before you even reach this juncture, there’s one thing you can do to prepare.
How to prepare now:
If your business or organization is not 100% customer-oriented now, it is at risk. That means that every individual - from the CEO to the newest hire - must have a customer-focused mindset. No organization can substitute technology to do this. It must be holistic and fluid with technology complementing the culture. Every touchpoint needs to showcase an amazing brand experience.
You can’t offer a customer service training session and expect this to change the culture. Organizations - no matter their size - will need to subscribe to customer-orientation programs that include training, integration with performance expectations and reviews, incentives and rewards, and ongoing measurement. If a marketing and customer orientation doesn’t exist internally, it can’t exist externally.
Marketing is about to change - again. How will your small business or nonprofit prepare?
