What role does content marketing play in B2B versus B2C strategies?

When you do B2B content marketing, you always have to keep in mind that you are targeting decision-makers. That's why you need to consider several steps: to create awareness, gain consideration, and ultimately generate some leads. You have to be technical and have a great understanding of the industry you're working in, otherwise, you may fail.

Content marketing is all about humanizing your brand and connecting empathetically with your audience, whether it’s B2B or B2C. B2B: Here, the goal is to form trust through expertise. Content like detailed guides, webinars, and case studies shows you understand the complex needs and challenges of business clients. B2C: In this space, it’s about sparking an emotional connection and getting quick engagement. Use fun blogs, catchy videos, and lively social posts to make your brand relatable and memorable.

In the delightful dance of content marketing, it plays a crucial role in both B2B and B2C strategies, albeit with some nuanced differences. In B2B, content typically focuses on educating and informing potential clients about industry trends, best practices, and solutions to their specific challenges. It aims to build credibility, establish thought leadership, and nurture long-term relationships. On the other hand, B2C content tends to be more emotionally driven, aiming to engage, entertain, and inspire action from a broader audience. It often focuses on storytelling, brand awareness, and creating a memorable experience to drive conversions. Ultimately, in both realms, content serves to attract, engage, and retain customers.

Here you have to find out who the decision maker is. For example, if you're a digital marketing agency, your clients will be marketing directors, freelancers or start-up founders. This way you can produce content that reaches to the right people and brings value to your business.

When you do content marketing in B2C, it could be a great idea to talk about your customers' general questions and present your product as an answer to their needs. Let me give you an example. Imagine you are working for an e-commerce company and you're responsible for creating content for your smartphone devices. You can write an article about the smartphones you are selling, or you can create an article with a headline like 'Top 5 Flagships to Consider in 2024.' Then explain those top 5 products, link them to the product page, and on the product page, write a detailed review about each product

B2C content marketing is about attracting as many eyeballs as possible while providing value, a great way of doing this is edutainment vs 100% education. Your conversion will be a lot lower, that's why your funnel needs to be optimized for that.

The biggest mistakes B2C content marketers make: - Not trying new platforms and features such ads Threads and LinkedIn Audio events (Yes, LinkedIn works for B2C as well) - Focusing too much on keywords in blogs, and not connecting with the audience. - Not building customer journeys in emails. How to fix these: - Invest in a good media house/media development activities - Churn content like a crazy machine (But also don't compromise on quality and relevance) - Build strong relationships with customers. Conduct polls and events. Learn what they need. - Make offers exceptionally attractive.

Content marketing plays a vital role in both B2B and B2C strategies by aligning goals with audience needs and expectations. Whether targeting businesses or consumers, the aim is to deliver valuable content that builds trust and drives desired outcomes. By aligning content goals with overarching business objectives, organizations can effectively leverage content marketing to achieve sustainable growth.

In B2B marketing, where purchasing decisions are often more complex and rational, a professional and serious tone is essential to build trust and credibility. On the other hand, B2C marketing seeks to connect with consumers emotionally, appealing to their desires, needs, and aspirations. An informal, conversational, and even humorous tone can be more effective in this context, creating an accessible, friendly, and approachable brand image. Remember that tone and style are not isolated elements but should be aligned with your brand voice and marketing strategy goals. By choosing the right tone and style for your content, you can effectively connect with your audience, build trust, and achieve your business goals.

I don't belive that B2B communication, tone, and style needs to be 100% professional. After all, the businesses may be, well businesses, but the people behind the screens making decisions are humans. Talk to them. Not their bank balances and job titles. That being said, it's still better to steer clear of crassness or teenage-y jargons. But no need to sound too high-minded and corperate-y either.

More and more, B2B is progressing to be more like B2c in the sense of tone and style. While it’s important to create in a way that is professional - that doesn’t mean that the tone and style can’t be approachable and fun. No matter who is consuming the content - simple and straightforward is always the way to go. Formal shouldn’t mean complex. Formal has more to do with taking the buying decision and considerations of the B2B buyer seriously - than it does with the exact word choice or style of writing.

Last time I checked, people are people. Not sure if it has changed since I last checked though so perhaps it's different now? Sure, you might want to use more mainstream, large-audience media when you are selling to 'consumers' instead of an 'entire business', but I am pretty sure that emotions are still something people understand (unless you're a psychopath I guess?). Whether funny, sad, happy, nostalgic (is that an emotion?)... try sticking to the human condition and leverage all different emotions. Sure, FEAR works (be very afraid if you don't buy our software!), but we all contain multitudes.

Keep in mind that for each of your channels, whether in a B2B or B2C industry, you need to have a separate strategy and tailor your content based on your customers' personas. One piece of content never works for all your platforms, and you need to present your content in different ways to get the best results out of it.

7-11-4 formula is about building bonds with people and potential customers and is based on the average time and interactions someone needs, to trust and buy from you. 7 hours worth of interesting content available - blogs, videos, articles, interviews, books, etc – so people can spend time with you. 11 is about the number of interactions you have with those people. 4 relates to locations and suggests that you connect in at least 4 different ‘places’ – face to face, blog, as an author of a book, seeing a presentation or meeting socially then levels of trust increase. Video is the easiest medium for people to build up the 7 hours spent time with you. The best platform for this is YouTube

Success depends on your goals, the usually with B2B marketing, leads and sales are the measurement as conversions are fewer. With B2C traffic/eye balls is a good metric as you then have your average conversions from that. Your goal from there would be to improv your content for more conversions.

This article makes it seem like B2B content marketing shouldn't be focused on top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) metrics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yeesh.

When my friend Yazz told me that she had recently received a diagnosis for ADHD, it came as no surprise. Some of the telltale signs were there, but others weren't. Sure, she was hyper-social and loved to be involved - and not in a dominating way, just naturally inquisitive. It piqued her interest and got her brain firing and connected her to the moment. And that's what I wanted to say: get your audiences' brains firing. Think about that when you're producing content and strategy and stuff: will this get Yazz off her sofa and to come and join the conversation?