Content Strategies

Most B2B companies are investing in content marketing, in fact the Content Marketing Institute found that 91% are using this tool while 80% of business decision-makers said they prefer to receive information about a company in a series of articles versus an advertisement.

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules, broke down the five steps to content creation for B2B companies in a recent interview with the consultancy Open Labs. Join Handley and other content marketing experts during the B2B Content2Conversion Conference on April 22-23 at the TimesCenter in New York.

Content marketing leaders will come together this month at the B2B Content2Conversion Conference. Among them is Ardath Albee, B2B marketing strategist and CEO of Marketing Interactions Inc. Recently, Demand Gen Report had the opportunity to discuss current content marketing trends as well as tips on distributing content across social channels with Albee.

Albee will share insights on crafting a killer B2B content strategy during a C2C Power Panel featuring Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute and Ann Handley, author of Content Rules.

Demand Gen Report recently caught up with Michael Brenner, VP of Global Marketing and Content Strategy for SAP, to discuss the process of creating a successful content hub for your brand. Brenner developed an award-winning inbound marketing content destination site for SAP called Business Innovation and will speak on the topic of content management at the upcoming B2B Content2Conversion Conference, to be held April 22-23 at the TimesCenter in New York.

Demand Gen Report: What does it take for a vendor to become a trusted source for content?

Michael Brenner: Stop acting like a vendor for starters. The biggest challenge for content marketers in any size organization is convincing everyone else that to become a trusted source of content you have to act like a trusted source of content. The content has to be something that people actually want, are looking for, or that they will find valuable or entertaining. In short, you have to act like a publisher who (mostly) makes an effort to appear like their content is not swayed by their need to make money.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth an inbox full of email, E-books and white papers. B2B marketers have been increasingly adding video to their content playbook as vendors roll out tools that enable them to gather more precise information about not only who downloaded their video, but how long they viewed it, what sections they played back and other unique metrics that marketers can’t track with other types of content.

As executives become more engaged with video, it is becoming a more powerful way for B2B marketers to communicate. The Echo Effect Study 2012 by IDG found that 58% of B2B tech buyers watched videos to find information on products they wish to buy, and 54% watched videos for product reviews. After watching a video, 66% researched a product; 46% visited a vendor web site or contacted a vendor for more information; 42% purchased a product; and 25% added the vendor to the short list for consideration.