Effective B2B content marketing first requires that you understand the type of demand you’re trying to generate. Content may have any number of objectives, but it won’t reach any of them unless you can capture prospects’ attention. That’s where demand type comes in.
SiriusDecisions defines three core demand types: New Concept, New Paradigm and Established Market. Each occupies different places in your buyers’ budget plans and priorities.
You can think of these demand types as New Idea, New and Improved Idea, and Same Idea With Differentiation. With a brand-new concept, you need to focus on raising awareness and educating your audience more about why they need a solution than the nitty gritty about the solution itself. When it comes to New Paradigm and Established Market solutions, your focus can move to loosening the status quo and motivating buyers to make a change. In the case of Established Market solutions, you’re likely to encounter more competitors selling niche solutions where they’ll battle for market share with differentiation.
Assess Your Solution
No matter how fresh your approach may be, few products and services fall into the New Concept category. More often than not, you’ll be marketing a New Paradigm or Established Market solution. If it’s a New Paradigm, your job is to persuade buyers to see your solution as a “must have.” You might prioritize specific metrics and demonstrate successful use cases.
For Established Market demand type, you want to focus more on key differentiators—and branding, if yours is a leader in the space. Here, you can also emphasize pain points in your messaging, which are more effective at gaining attention in these mature markets.
Moving the Needle
Innovations have ways of nudging solutions from one demand type to another, so a long-established solution can sometimes find itself transforming with digital components, customized features, evolving safety and security features or other major changes to compete among New Paradigm products.
It’s even possible that your solution straddles a line between one category and another, depending on the buyer. If your software, for example, is long-established in the financial services market but just entering the healthcare sector, each of those buyer types is likely to evaluate your software on entirely different playing fields. Your messaging for FiServ buyers will focus on differentiation to peel them away from competitors (Established Market) while your healthcare messaging may need to persuade medical offices that they need software for brand-new capabilities (New Concept or New Paradigm, depending on the application).
When you map out your campaign messaging, be sure you begin with a clear assessment of the demand type you need to generate. The decision will guide your content and help you tailor it best for the right audience.
Once you establish demand type and move on to developing an effective marketing campaign, you can think about the different types of content that will resonate best with your target audience. Explore our Content Format Discovery Tool to select fresh formats to engage them.
Holly Celeste Fisk
Holly Celeste Fisk is an accomplished marketing pro with 20+ years of experience in B2B and B2C. She’s responsible for Content4Demand’s internal marketing efforts, managing everything from content creation and email marketing to events and sponsorships, blog publishing, website management and social media presence. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sliding into third at softball, buried in a book or practicing her Italian.
