B2B technology buyers are thirsting for knowledge. Their jobs change incredibly fast, and it’s vitally important that they keep pace with the latest innovations so that they keep their companies on the cutting edge and help them to run securely and efficiently. However, finding reliable, believable information isn’t necessarily easy. And that’s the opportunity for …

When marketing content goes viral, it's more likely due to planning and execution than luck. Follow these three steps for developing content that gets shared far and wide. See the infographic.

New research from Ascend2 sheds some light on how B2B marketers can perhaps make that process a little easier. The firm surveyed B2B marketers worldwide in September on issues such as which online forms drive the most conversions.

It turns out the answer is the offer of a content download. Two-thirds of those polled said content downloads generated leads with the best conversion rates, more than webinar registration (45%), demo requests (37%), surveys and polls (26%) and even free trials.

• "Thirty-two percent of U.S. tech marketing executives are now delivering new content at least daily if not hourly, according to a study from Dimensional Research and 10Fold Communications made available to Marketing Dive. Additionally, 75% plan on generating 3x more content in 2017 over last year and 42% will spend $250,000 or more on content over the next 12 months.
• Social media, video and webinars were cited as the best content types among all respondents; top execs preferred video as a content type. However, 44% cited lack of subject matter expertise as the main barrier to creating high-quality content.
• Breaking down where the content comes from, 99% of respondents use third parties to create at least 25% of their content; 83% report the third-party content is as at least above average in quality. Eighty percent use basic tools like Google Analytics to track and measure content's impact and 60% use marketing automation software."

Our annual content marketing research with new insights useful for 2018 budget planning and benchmarketing. This new report focuses on business-to-business (B2…

A content upgrade is unique to a piece of content. It’s usually tied to a blog post. But there are other types of content you can uplevel with a free resource. Webinars, podcasts, and videos are examples. The point is to enhance the value of your content with this additional resource.

As you can imagine, there are several ways to achieve that.

You can create a resource that helps readers implement what you just discussed. An action sheet, workbook, or toolkit are excellent examples. You can give away something that saves them time, like templates or cheat sheets. The ultimate strategy is to create something that will help them delve deeper into the topic. This is where you give additional strategies, tutorials, case studies, etc.

All content strategies are not equal. B2B enterprise companies have to get these three content types down to fully engage potential buyers.

"Now is the perfect time for content marketers to get ahead of the curve. Here’s how:

• Evaluate repetitive, manual marketing tasks that could be intelligently automated. AI tech like Curata and Scoop.it are great for promoting, measuring, and analyzing that content’s performance.
• Assess opportunities to get more out of your data. There are plenty of ways to discover insights, predict outcomes, devise strategies, personalize content, and tell stories at scale with the right type and amount of data. However, the right type and amount of data are highly specific to your organization and your needs. 
  Consider the AI capabilities of your existing marketing technology.
• Platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot are actively integrating AI into their existing products. Existing platforms give content marketers a great place to start familiarizing themselves with AI capabilities. From there, explore the potential of emerging AI solutions."

Get insight into how content influences the purchasing process – from the buyer’s perspective – in research from SmartBrief and Content Marketing Institute

Marketers are investing heavily in content marketing, and many are looking to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to help shape their strategies, new research suggests.

Data from BrightEdge, an enterprise search engine optimization (SEO) and content performance marketing company, and SurveyMonkey looked at the probability that US market leaders will use AI or deep learning to develop their 2017 content marketing efforts.

Eighty-eight percent of the B2B enterprise marketers we surveyed use content marketing, and nearly all agree that it’s an important component of their marketing program. This 45-page report, sponsored by KnowledgeVision, shows where enterprise marketers are in terms of overall content marketing success—and how the top performers do things to set themselves apart from their peers.

Download the report to learn:

• How enterprise marketers organize their content marketing teams
• Where they’re at in terms of content marketing maturity
• The types of content marketing tactics they use—and which ones they view as most critical to their content marketing success in 2017
• How many are focused on building their audiences, crafting content for their audience versus their brand, agree that their leadership gives them ample time to produce content marketing results, and more.

I’d like to point out a handful of specific benefits:

• It’s one of the best ways to nurture leads. According to Marketing Sherpa, “73% of all B2B leads are not sales ready.”
• You can position your brand as an authority. “45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it.”
• It enables you to tell your brand’s story and convey your philosophy and values.
• It reduces skepticism. “In 1997, consumers indicated that they had a high level of confidence in 52% of brands. By 2008 that percentage dropped to 22%.” This is a great way to slash through any doubts your prospects may have.
• It’s an excellent way to educate consumers on your product’s features and the way it differs from the products of competitors.
• You can address any objections that may arise.

Which types of content most influence buying decisions?:

• White papers – 82%
• Webinars – 78%
• Case studies – 73%
• E-books – 67%
• Blog posts – 66%
• Infographics – 66%
• Third-party/analyst reports – 62%
• Video/motion graphics – 47%
• Interactive presentations – 36%

The concept is a simple one: no content plan is complete unless it's based around delivering content consistently. To do this requires a focus on strategy, not just on a few blog posts and the odd bigger campaign.

That consistent delivery — and the audience retention it creates — comes from the smaller content pieces, the glue that binds it together; the strategy in its entirety.

The discussion around the purchase funnel often turns out to be incredibly important: it ensures you look not just for ideas that help with awareness, but also further down the funnel. It's also possible to tie content types in to this to ensure variation between the types of content you produce. To do this we use the Content Matrix I created specifically for this purpose; you can see it above:

B2B buyers are now paying more attention to the trustworthiness of content sources when evaluating products/services, and they prefer mobile-optimized content. See charts and more study results.

The most common cause of marketing automation failure is the lack of well targeted, high-quality content. It takes true marketing expertise to illuminate buyer personas clearly and map messages to personas, buying processes and product lines. Few brands, even the largest, have this expertise in house.

The result is typically relying on a small handful of messages and content in all campaigns. Many companies create one white paper and use it for lead generation, lead nurturing and cold leads. The wrong messages end up in the wrong hands at the wrong time. When an active prospect receives messages about problems they don’t have or products they’ve already decided against, serious damage can be done to revenue.

• "Rich content
• Long-form content
• Content with “topical relevance”
• Using long-tail keywords
• Image-rich content
• Direct answers: Google is now starting to show direct answers when you use a “how to,” “what is,” “who is,” etc. type of search."

Simply put, the customer needs to be the primary design point for your content strategy – and your website will be the right place to foil content devils with great execution details. Buyers spend more time online researching and buying products, which means your content marketing practices must keep pace.

"Remember: Your content marketing strategy should define your social media marketing strategy — not the other way around. It’s best to evaluate each social channel before you start distributing content there. And when you turn this evaluation into an actionable plan, everybody on your team will know where, when, and what they should be posting on each channel, as well as what their efforts are meant to achieve.

Here’s how to create and implement a basic social media marketing plan that will help you do just that."

The Quarterly Content Marketing Strategy Template helps B2B marketers develop and execute content strategies the support full-funnel demand generation efforts.