Turn your lackluster B2B content marketing strategy into a standout customer experience

Wanna make sweet CX with your content marketing strategy? Well, marketers, get a load of this…

Got 5 minutes? Want to explore differentiation and give your content marketing strategy a kick up the ass? Then you’re in the right place. But firstly, I’ve got to get something off my chest…

The growth of the internet, smartphones and tablets, along with brands (both B2B and B2C) joining the content marketing strategy bandwagon means that the world is awash with content. Some good, some bad.

But what makes a piece of content good? Is it readability? Is it the experience that comes with it? Is it the calibre of its design, the level of authority, or how shareable it is?

Personally, I think it’s all of those, but I also believe what makes a piece of content great, rather than just good, is how different it is.

Differentiation is a fairly big word, and an even bigger task. I know you’re struggling to differentiate your content marketing strategy (hey, most marketers are) — but with 88% of B2B marketers using content marketing in their strategies, and 40% of them thinking that their content is “about the same as the competition”, differentiation isn’t just a nice to have. Differentiation is crucial to sustaining relevance in your market and saving yourself from irrelevance.

I get it. It’s easy to see why most marketers struggle with their content marketing strategy. They fall down in three key areas:

• Planning a differentiation strategy (69% of marketers just don’t have the time)
• Getting the buy-in to do something different (almost 50% of marketers struggle)
• Using their data as differentiation rocket fuel (44% of marketers say this holds them back).

With content being everywhere we look now, it’s not enough to simply do it better than your competitors — you need to do it differently to them.

To achieve differentiation with consistency and at scale, you need to work with a content marketing agency. By doing so, you’ll give yourself the time, space and resource needed to build that competitive edge you need and stand out from the competition.

And another thing…
What’s the fascination with eGuides, reports, and playbooks in a static format? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the PDF is quite dead yet (it has its place) but come on, we need to think a little differently here! How can we take information and present it in a way that’s something other than just a PDF?

I also don’t believe content alone supremely reigns as king anymore — I think the question we should ask is if content is king, then what kingdom is it overseeing? Is it differentiation?

And keyword stuffing — why are we still doing this? Google is a lot smarter than it used to be. You need to plan your content around clusters, not keywords.

Don’t become one of these content factories, where everyone churning out that identical sales messaging believes themselves to be a content creator. That’s like saying everyone with a smartphone and the ability to type is a journalist.

Truly differentiated, standout content is created with relevance, purpose, and grit. And across specific industry verticals, it takes an expert’s influence and domain knowledge to control a conversation. That’s where you want to be, not just owning your audience, but owning the conversations they have.

I’ve left this question til last for a reason: is gated content the evil troll or the golden savior? There’s a question for you, right? We tend to think gated = generation of leads, ungated = building of trust.

Really, it all comes right back to your objectives. But while almost 80% of B2B content marketing is gated, and while we’re covering all things differentiation in this blog, it’d be silly to put our latest showcase behind a landing page.