Are you struggling to find inspiration for your latest marketing campaign?
Are you tempted to just do the same thing you usually do?
This is especially common in tech B2B where, despite all the industry innovations taking place, even the most enthusiastic marketing team can be guilty of just sometimes running out of innovative ideas. New product launch? Let’s just do another brochure and maybe a tweet.
As Rita Mae Brown once said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.
So, if you want different results, then you’re in the right place!
We’re going to share with you nine awesome B2B content marketing examples that will inspire you to refresh your marketing pipeline. They should show your that B2B marketing can be just as bold, brilliant, and entertaining as B2C marketing.
Let’s dig in!
1. Humanise your business through your team
Humans trust humans. There’s a tendency in tech B2B to hide behind corporate-speak, but by showing the human side of your brand you can help people connect with it.
This short video we’ve created to celebrate Hike with a Geek Day was not only a fun team bonding activity, but it also:
- Humanised our business
- Developed our employer brand
- Generated interest from prospects on social media
There are so many ways you could showcase your team too, from social media takeovers to employee spotlights to social media ambassador programmes.
2. Add value to people’s lives
The best content marketing understands what their audience needs. For example, busy people working in tech need to stay up to date with all the evolving tech trends, but they don’t have time.
The solution? The Daily Charge is a 15-minute tech podcast that shares the latest trends without taking up too much of their listeners’ time. Presented by Roger Cheng, this weekday podcast helps its audience with bitesize analysis, context, and perspective on all things tech.
You don’t have to create a podcast to add value to your audience, but you should definitely ask yourself what you can do to help them. Perhaps your solution will be an app, an ebook, a webinar, an event, a series of short videos, or something else entirely. You could even go a whole step further, check out our next example to find out how.
3. Educate your customers
Canva has quickly established itself as the no-design-skills-required app for marketing teams worldwide. But did you know it’s created a whole Design School too? From courses to how-to’s, their extensive content hub not only helps their users better understand Canva, it can also guide them to become better designers too.
Canva noticed a few years ago that real traffic gold came from organic search rather than social. The advantage of a content hub is that the content is evergreen, meaning it’s not tome sensitive.
“Publish an article geared for social and it will hopefully explode. But because it’s not a topic people search for, it delivers a limited traffic life” – Canva
Creating a content hub your customers will love is not a feat achieved overnight, but don’t worry: we’ve created a content hub workbook to help you get there.
4. Showcase your customers
Who says you have to create all your content? Sometimes the smartest move is to let your customers do the talking.
And it’s not just for B2C either. HomeByMe for example has a dedicated section on their website for user-generated designs, which is also a powerful selling point for the retailers they sell their solution to. Win-win!
There are numerous ways you could create user-generated content for your B2B brand. For example, by encouraging video testimonials using a tool like Vocal Video, sending prompts or challenges on social media, or building self-help repositories on your website. These are just the tip of the iceberg of what you could create.
5. Ask for advice
What’s the best way to engage someone? Ask them for advice. People looooove giving advice. And it can work as indirect sales enablement if you get it right.
Coworking space Andco found this to be a highly effective strategy for their email campaign. They essentially asked freelancers for advice on how they could reach out to other freelancers. Genius! This led to a 65% click through rate with a staggering 55% of recipients hitting ‘reply’.
This campaign worked for several reasons: it didn’t go straight for the sales pitch, it was personalised to the recipient, and it was sent to the right target audience.
You could ask yourself how you could turn asking for advice into content gold elsewhere, such as social media.
6. Master the humblebrag
The gold standard for funny tech B2B content has got to be this Slack video.
Shot in a mockumentary style inspired by The Office, this video features a fictional company transitioning to Slack. It’s fast-paced, funny, and still manages to explain the advantages of Slack for a growing company.
If you don’t have a whole film production crew in your back pocket, don’t worry. You can still use humour to promote your brand. The most effective part of Slack’s video is that everyone was a clear character with clear motivations, whether that was showing off a magic trick or wanting to share funny cat pictures.
7. Turn disruption into opportunity
If you can be the guiding light during uncertain times, your audience will love you for it.
International workspace provider HB Reavis addressed their audience’s concerns about a post-pandemic return to the office. They did this through a research-led campaign aimed at their C-suite audience.
Not only did this lead to fantastic results, but it also won them (and us!) numerous awards.
How could you help your target audience navigate challenging times?
8. Gamify your CTA
If delivering marketing-qualified leads is one of your goals but you’re struggling to meet it, then you’ll love Veryable’s clever tactic.
Veryable is a manufacturing marketplace with an on-demand labor platform. Instead of settling for a boring old contact form, they’ve created a quiz.
Who can resist a quiz, after all?
In the quiz you’re required to answer a few qualifying questions, and, if you’re the right fit, you receive personalised recommendations on how to reach your operational goals.
This approach won’t work for everyone, and using such a strong filtering method might seem aggressive to some, but that’s the point. The quiz filters leads for you, doing all the legwork so you can focus your attention where it’s most needed.
Could you create a similar quiz for your business?
9. Embrace episodic content
In the era of streaming, it makes sense to consider episodic marketing. This is essentially storytelling teased out over a period of time, such as a long piece of content distributed in chapters or episodes. It’s about thinking of your content marketing in terms of seasons or shows.
That’s exactly what subscription software ProfitWell do with their content hub ‘Recur’. Click on a “show” and you are offered the opportunity to watch a trailer or subscribe for updates.
It certainly adds drama to the content experience, and also showcases their subscription acumen as a bonus.
But episodic marketing doesn’t have to be a high production series of videos – the right email drip campaign, a well-thought-out podcast, these can all help you stand out from the crowd.
Where will your content journey take you?
Next time you’re feeling stuck for ideas, why not go through these nine examples to feel revived:
- Showcase your team
- Give your customers what they didn’t know they needed
- Educate your customers
- Put the spotlight on your customers
- Ask your audience for help
- Deploy humour
- Turn disruption into a differentiator
- Gamify lead acquisition
- Think of your content like a streaming service
If these examples inspired you but you’re still not sure where to start, we’re here to help. Just drop us a line at: hello@isolinecomms.com.
