Looking ahead to 2024 (it’s almost the New Year!), B2B marketers must know the challenges they may face in this ever-evolving marketing landscape. Specifically, let’s look at the challenges marketers may encounter with content marketing.
There is no denying that content marketing is still king. The content marketing industry is estimated to exceed $107 billion by 2026. Audiences like all types of content because it is an excellent way to provide them with educational information that is engaging and interesting.
Your brand will increase its marketing goals for B2B marketers who continue to invest in producing high-quality content.
To help marketers better navigate the content marketing landscape in 2024, we here at Skyline Studio have curated five content marketing challenges and how to overcome them in the New Year.
1. Develop a customer-centric mindset for the buyer’s journey.
Putting the customer first is essential for developing content that is personable and engaging for your audiences. Although this may sound like an obvious strategy, marketers still need help understanding this marketing tactic.
The first rule to understanding and developing a successful content marketing strategy is that content marketing differs from advertising. Creating content in the traditional advertising tone may seem tempting, but potential consumers will not resonate with that type of content.
The solution: Create content that tells your audience a story, which humanizes your brand and drives more engagement.
When creating content for your audience, marketers should develop a customer-centric mindset. In doing so, B2B marketers will begin to understand what their audience wants and what type of content to create for them. According to research, customer-focused companies are known to be 60% more profitable than those not paying attention to their audience’s needs.
Personalization is an essential part of customer-centric marketing. Marketers who research audience insights and develop social listening strategies can tailor content to specific audiences.
When your brand tailors content to target a specific audience, you will establish credibility and trust with potential customers.
Content marketing provides potential prospects with valuable and educational information throughout the buyer’s journey. You will see a higher conversion rate when B2B marketers engage with potential consumers and provide useful information.
2. Consistency with your content marketing strategy will drive engagement.
As marketers, we know that content marketing is a machine that churns rapidly, and we must continue to feed it. Since audiences have come to expect content daily, marketers must establish consistency in their content marketing schedule.
Often, marketers concern themselves with creating the perfect piece of content. Although, as marketers, we want content to be engaging and informative, overthinking your content can hinder your engagement and conversion rate.
Remember: The main goal for marketers is to create content mapped to the buyer’s journey.
You may wonder why the buyer’s journey is essential to content marketing. Well, prospects are constantly online searching for information about products or services. As potential buyers search for products or services, they actively search for content that will educate them.
The more relevant, informative, and consistent content marketers can produce for potential customers, the more engagement your brand will see on their website or social media outlets.
Consistency builds brand awareness, identity, and consumer trust. When brands consistently publish their content, consumers will appreciate it and likely become leads, ultimately becoming paying and loyal customers.
Marketers should note that content should always be high-quality when developing consistent content. Producing high-quality content tends to be a challenge for marketers, especially when resources are limited.
The solution: Use consumer research data to create high-quality content tailored to your customers’ needs and wants.
When B2B brands use consumer insights to develop content, they create valuable information addressing pain points while mapping the customer journey. Also, be sure to audit existing content. By doing this, you will identify issues that help when producing new content.
3. Create content that generates high-quality leads for your brand.
Content marketing is meant to generate high-quality leads to drive brand revenue. Since increasing leads is an integral part of B2B marketing, developing content that generates leads tends to be difficult for many marketers.
According to a survey conducted by Hubspot, 24% of marketers say their top challenge is creating content that generates leads. Although creating content that generates leads has always been a challenge in the marketing industry, getting those high-quality leads is becoming increasingly difficult.
Since producing content that generates leads has always been a problem, you may wonder why this is on our “Content Marketing Challenges of 2024.” Well, Google is posing an added layer to this challenge.
This past year, Google released its updated EEAT search quality guidelines. Google’s new guidelines challenge content marketers because the added “E” stands for experience. What does this all mean? Google wants content created by credible sources, as this will help increase your website’s value and drive more engagement.
Another challenge that has hit marketers is AI because it’s changing how people create and engage with content.
The solution: The best way to overcome these challenges is to have well-researched, credible, niche content with personalization. Remember how earlier we mentioned how personalizing content to your target audience will significantly increase engagement?
Well, personalization also humanizes your brand, which is an aspect that AI can not replicate. AI-created content tends to be generic, which hinders your brand’s identity.
Lastly, when marketers develop niche topic-like content, they establish their brand as experts in specific industries or topics. By doing this, you are building brand awareness and credibility.
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4. Grow and retain followers on your brand’s social media accounts.
Social media networks have become a part of audiences’ daily routines. People are constantly on social media for many reasons, including looking for information on products and services.
Since social media plays a huge role in purchasing decisions, B2B brands need to be consistent with social media publishing. According to LinkedIn, 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make buying decisions—a substantial percentage of B2B social users.
Social networks are an excellent resource for B2B marketers because these networks allow brands to create and publish different types of content. And brands can directly interact with potential prospects because social media makes it easy to connect with their audiences.
Yet, with all the fantastic capabilities of social media, marketers still have difficulty retaining and growing their audience on their brand’s accounts. For this reason, social media growth and retention is a challenge marketers must overcome in the new year.
With 18% of marketers reporting audience growth and retention as a significant challenge for brands on social media. So, what can marketers do to break through an oversaturated social network marketplace?
The solution: B2B marketers must leverage their business’s employees as influencers. Brands use their employees as influencers to build brand awareness and credibility.
Influencer marketing is becoming an increasingly popular tool for B2B marketers. And while using industry influencers is a great strategy, using your employees is an even greater strategy.
Your employees already know your brand, its story, and products and services. Their knowledge of their industry can significantly increase engagement and customer retention. When choosing employees to be featured as industry experts, brands can choose from various employee-level positions—not just executives.
Please include a range of employees at your company, as this will help build authenticity with your brand while increasing your social media presence and retention rate.
Content marketing tailored for your audience means a greater conversion rate.
Marketing is about trial and error. Some of these solutions may work; some may not, depending on your brand, marketing and sales goals, and customer preferences.
But we here at Skyline Studio hope the above solutions can help you better navigate the content marketing challenges in 2024. To better educate and inspire you, create high-quality content to generate leads and increase brand awareness and revenue.
Happy (almost) New Year!
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