According to a brand marketing report regarding B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America, it was reported that B2B marketers use a variety of media types to deliver their marketing message. The most popular B2B content marketing channels used by marketing experts include print materials, online presentations, videos, white papers, social media, blogs, and more.
If you are experimenting with new tactics that go beyond traditional print marketing, it can become hard to consistently share your story across multiple channels. The more marketing channels you use, and the more people on your team creating content, the harder it is to deliver a consistent message online and in printed materials. You need to tell a consistent story to grow your brand awareness. Proper branding helps you to attract quality leads and convert them into paying customers.
The TechTarget Media Consumption Research Brief revealed 65% of B2B technology buyers take their time when making a decision. They normally review at least four pieces of content before they make a list of vendors they are interested in working with on a regular basis. If a buyer views four pieces of your content that are not related to each other, they will not understand your value because you are not making an effective case for your products or services.
Think of Your Audience First
Your team can likely create educational ebooks, informative videos and engaging social media content. Unfortunately, these brand marketing efforts will not do you any good if your target audience doesn’t find them relevant. TechTarget found “media is only effective if the information that it features is relevant to their research and is helpful for them during the process.” In other words, if your marketing channels content is not relevant, your buyers will check out the content of the competition until they find what speaks to their company.
Choosing the Personality of Your Brand
Do you have an established voice for your brand? Is it funny, relaxed or instructive? The voice of your company is a huge brand identifier that determines your audience and how the public perceives you. Make sure your brand voice appeals to your target audience, stands out from the competition, and is used consistently across all social media platforms.
Setting Brand Guidelines
If you use multiple people when creating a blog or other content, you must create a style guide that is followed by everyone. The guide contains information about your target audience that content creators will keep in mind. Some of the information in the style guide includes:
- The desired tone of the content
- The proper topics for your content
- Ideal blog post length
- Tips on formatting content
- How to submit content to a content manager or editorial team
Stay focused on your long-term business goals
Many B2B marketers live in the moment and they don’t think about long-term goals when they create content. They get caught up in short-term planning (such as promoting upcoming events or specials) instead of thinking about driving business for the next year or two. If you want to attract additional high-quality leads to convert into playing customers, your messaging should focus on properly moving customers through the sales cycle. Each piece of content should guide customers to another piece of content where you expand on your story, gain their trust and convert them from prospects into customers.
Empower Internal Advocates.
Beyond the marketing team, your entire staff needs to understand the story of your brand including your values, tone and style so all marketing messages are consistent from phone calls to emails to print communication. If your staff is not inspired by your message or values, your content will become boring to your market and interactions with the public will slow down. Make your team part of the process of defining your brand personality to ensure they “buy into” your message.
If you need help establishing a consistent brand message across your print marketing channels (and beyond), call Innvoke today.
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