Content Quality, Brand Personality, Data Analysis, Creativity and More

During this virtual round table, we discussed different topics related to B2B marketing. It explores insights from experts in the field about the importance of content quality, data analysis, and cultural differences regarding personal data sharing. We also discussed the lack of creativity among decision-makers in this sector, as well as strategies that can help companies improve their ad effectiveness while creating an effective brand personality. Read on to learn more about these topics and how to use them to your advantage in this report.

Thank you Adam Davies, Anne-Catherine Kaiser, Carolina Costa, Claire Lambert and Serena Walker, for your contribution.

Host

Joaquin Dominguez, was joined by marketing experts to discuss the topic.

Guests

• Adam Davies , CMO, Synamedia

• Anne-Catherine Kaiser, Head of Marketing Analytics, DarkTrace

• Carolina Costa, AMB Specialist, CloudFlare

Generate interest in your content by being culturally and time relevant

Adam Davies is the Marketing Director at Synamedia, a cloud service for intelligence-led anti-piracy, advanced advertising, business analytics, broadband and streaming video platforms. He mentioned the difficulties of selling and explaining cloud businesses. However, because they are related to streaming, they can use news related to the entertainment industry to generate interest in their content. For example, they launched fantasy campaigns when everyone was talking about the Lord of the Rings. And, during NFL season near the Super Bowl, they use Football players in their ads. Most recently, they have been looking at the Oscars and considering using Top-Gun-related imagery. This strategy has significantly increased their Click-Through-Rate over generic campaigns.

“It is common to see B2C brands with their own personality on social media, making jokes about politicians, movies or TV series. However, B2B brands should also keep up with what's happening worldwide and use it as an opportunity to generate exciting content.” Adam Davies

Identify key problems that your customer may have during the year, show empathy and explain how you can alleviate that.

Anne-Catherine Kayser, Head of Marketing Analytics at Dark Trace, spoke about the importance of understanding each customer segment's needs and pain points. Knowing what customers are going through during different times of the year, such as tax season, can help B2B marketers create more targeted content that speaks to those needs. For example, during tax season, SAP created an online calculator to help small businesses figure out their taxes. This tool was not only helpful, but it showed that SAP understood the needs of its customers and was willing to help.

“The quality of content needs to increase considerably if the B2B industry increases its ad spending. And the quality level is set by other industries. For example, Google launched a series related to Cybersecurity, and the quality is comparable to a Netflix documentary” Anne-Catherine Kaiser

Consumer marketing inspires positive feelings that consumers have about themselves, B2B brands have learned about this

Anne-Catherine Kaiser gave the example of the marketing assets developed by Sage, a technology company focused on accounting, financial and enterprise solutions. If they try to sell accounting software, it's not really attractive; however, if they highlight entrepreneur stories as heroes that love what they do and work really hard to make that dream come true, that content will resonate with other entrepreneurs or accountants that are looking for a solution to help their clients. Have a look at the video, which shows a business owner in a legal dispute being really passionate about it.

In a saturated industry like Cybersecurity, using industry-specific language can help you reach the right audience

Carolina Costa, Account Based Marketing Specialist at Cloudflare, agrees that the content needs to generate value in solving customers’ problems. And to gain their attention, the content needs to be specific. For example, they create content for the financial industry, bringing experts to discuss Merges & Acquisitions, and how cybersecurity can help with those transactions. Then, using LinkedIn allows them to target specific accounts with the right content.

“In a saturated industry like Cybersecurity, using industry-specific language can help you reach the right audience” Carolina Costa

The biggest shift in lead generation over the last five years has been quality over quantity. And gate content smartly assigns intent data an extra value that generates good-quality leads.

Serena Walker, Head of Marketing at Ensono, believes that lead generation processes have changed dramatically in recent years. In the past, there was a requirement from sales and the business in general for high volume of leads coming through the funnel, therefore generating leads was about high volume top of the funnel and working them through to closed won opportunities, that can also create lead quality and data issues. As we become more sophisticated in our marketing practices and the growth of digital marketing, interpreting the data, it is much more about quality leads and looking at this from an account perspective and not a single person doing one or more actions, a holistic view of the prospect or client is essential and aligning to the right fit for your business. Today's marketers need to continue to focus on quality and an ABM approach to demand generation.

In addition, Serena mentioned the importance of gating smartly. She believes that creating high value, thought leadership and educational content that is ungated and relevant to your audience is crucial to generate interest in your brand, more and more individuals are self-serving. Consequently, the leads that come after a nurturing process are more likely to become customers.

Claire Lambert, Marketing Manager at Compusoft Group, shared an idea for smart gating, which is asking for different data at different interactions; for example, a telephone when downloading a white paper and an email when joining a webinar can help to assign intent data extra value. These leads have a value for the sales team that is exponentially higher than generic leads.

The previous idea is supported by Adam Davies. Synamedia have created a series of documents called the five-myths of media streaming. Eventually, a prospect can get it entirely for free, but they need to go through each of the five parts and provide data to access all the content. Despite the benefits of having more data, Adam warned about the risk of over-analyzing it. In other words, working with sample sizes without statistic significance.

If a company is planing to increase their ad spend, the content quality needs to support that strategy.

Anne-Catherine believes that the quality of content needs to increase considerably if the B2B industry increases its ad spending. And the quality level is set by other industries. For example, Google launched a series related to Cybersecurity, and the quality is comparable to a Netflix documentary. It is not enough to just create content better than competitors, it needs to be of a quality good enough to stand out from other industries. And the same is valid for a user journey; today's consumers compare you with Amazon, and it doesn't matter if you are B2B or B2C brand

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