The Future of B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation

KNOWLEDGESTREAM AT-A-GLANCE

ABSTRACT

Future of content marketing and lead generation for B2B companies and agencies.

PARTICIPANTS

Himanshu Bharadwaj

Creative Director.

Christine Hade

Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

Jay D

Laureen Schroeder

Chief Marketing Officer

Gary Desjardins

Marketing & Innovation Leadership | Medical Device | Healthcare | Consumer

Nayyara Rahman

Director Digital Services; Ethics At Work Advocate

David Berkowitz

Serial Marketer: marketing & strategy leader connecting ideas, people, and technologies

Joana Santos

Digital Marketing Consultant

Deborah Dixon

Beehive Biotech Consulting, Owner

Michael Phelan

Start-Up CMO, Founder & Principal Go-to-Market Pros

Camilla Nymann

Funnel coach for ambitious business owners!

Thomas Molfetto

Product Marketing (AI)

Fehmida Kapadia

Helping organizations adopt a customer-centric approach to manage their innovation and marketing strategy.

Nancy Lowd

Marketing and Management Consulting

Tim Ryan

Digital Marketing, Brand, Content, Product, Research

Patty Soltis

Principal Analyst - Customer Experience

Patrick Marino

Marketing Executive and Digital Specialist

JUDY FOLEY (MBA)

VP Director Supply Chain with Expertise in Consulting, Change Management, Strategy, Sourcing | Open to New Opportunities

Vikas Chadha

Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer at Berggruen Hotels Pvt. Ltd. Angel Investor &Mentor, Start up specialist

David Peake

Co-founder of Wild Pursuit Digital Marketing

Sarah Barnes

Director of Marketing & Business Development at Campbell & Company

OBJECTIVES

1. How are you planning to change your budgets: Are you increaseing your spend and if so on what?

2. Customized Content: How are you creating high quality customized content?

3. How are you converting leads from content: What do you planning and what are you keeping an eye on?

4. What are your future plans?: Is video important and how are you planning to use it?

100% Complete

Start Date: Apr 10, 2018
End Date: Nov 27, 2018

1462

CONTRIBUTIONS

ACTIVITY

231 Days

13 Themes

42 Contributors

813 Posts

649 Comments

426 Followers

OUTPUTS

12 Slide Deck

7 Video

CALLS ATTENDED

• 2018-10-04 17:54:45 - A recording of the Theme Interview for Theme #4: "How are marketing teams producing content today and how are they measured?" was uploaded

THEME #1

Are you increasing your spend and if so on what?

THEME SUMMARY

B2B marketers got more invested in the effectiveness of inbound and content marketing

Leveraging Storytelling, Thought leadership and Market Education have become essential goals of the B2B content strategy. Reaching an ‘authority status’ in the ind, can be a competitive advantage.
High-quality content will always win. Greater focus is placed on the quality of the content. Sales still count but what we have to say is more important than which channel or tactic we use to say it.
We don’t need in-house writers to produce great content.To ensure both quality + consistency of the overall produced content, freelance writers are trained to get the ‘look and feel' of the brand
More and more B2B marketers use personalization and ABM to speed-ip their sales process.

Teach, don’t sell. Educating your customers and reaching an ‘authority status’ in the industry can be The competitive advantage.

Informative webinars that don't pitch a product are showing a huge payoff from a couple companies that I work with, and is really driving the lead funnel. The information provided during such sessions -- as long as it's good -- helps to position the organization as a leader in their respective markets.

Scott Rupp Partner

Research indicates that 60% of the purchase decision by the modern consumer has been made before getting in contact with a business. [...] While the sales rep still continues to be critical, it is no longer enough to rely on the sales team.

Priyanka Malik Making things happen

Getting micro with your customers is now an important marketing strategy

I see companies spending more and more on ABM (Account-Based Marketing) The smarter ones focus on "Net New Prospect Meetings" as the critical metric

Michael Phelan Start-Up CMO, Founder & Principal Go-to-Market Pros

A professional freelancer should possess interview and storytelling to turn any good brand brief into a compelling narrative.

For my teams the best outcome in tech B2B has been a team of freelance professional writers that interviews SMEs and then writes the content, with SME confirmation that the copy is accurate. [...] the content team goes through line edit, copy edit, proof, layout, publish.

Doug M

Storytelling has become an essential marketing tool for B2B companies. B2B buyers are more likely to buy when they see professional, social or emotional benefits in addition to the actual product.

Overall, the best story teller wins... Whether you are using digital tools, traditional tools or any other media vehicles to communicate your story, the ultimate driver is content.

Chris Teague Global Marketing Manager at Smith & Nephew

THEME #2

How to improve the B2B customer experience

THEME SUMMARY

Moving to a customer experience-focused business takes a top-down and shift of mindset from the CEO.

The traditional model looks to identify the willingness to pay, but it is important for those to incorporate CX & customer journey into their core decisions.
A few tools exist that address some customer needs, while also integrating into the workflow.

The obstacles and challenges to customer-centricity

Ingraining a CX mindset into the organizational culture and processes is a CEO job and it's a shift in mindset, it will take some time until companies embrace true customer centricity.

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

Oftentimes CEOs, instead of looking for pain, they keep looking for fit (what is the 'willingness to pay'? how interested are customers in the product’s features?), which is still a big challenge.

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

What tools exist?

As a NPS tool, I love AskNicely. It has integration with Intercom, it collects both the score and the comments, it shows the response rate metric, and it has integration with Slack which I found to be so valuable.

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

So far ZenDesk and Hubspot have been the only tools we have been to implement for customers for CX.

Ebony Grimsley-Vaz Founder | CEO | Chief Digital Marketing and Public Relations Strategist for Brands, Causes and Events @ Above Promotions

THEME #3

What is the value of authentic voice of customer / customer engagement?

THEME SUMMARY

We explored the need for authentic customer engagement now and in the future.

On a scale to 1 to 10 (1 being least, 10 being greatest), we determined that it has never been a higher priority for CMO offices to create customer engagement through voice of customer & market.
Influencer marketing must come off as authentic and help aid the company's brand in establishing thought leadership; verse pitching a product or sales pitch.

Authenticity: Having an authentic voice and point of view delivered by customers/influencers is key to establish brand credibility and earned media attention.

As long as the influencers are not selling the product/service and just aiding the company's brand in establishing thought leadership, it will not feel like a promotion/sponsored pitch. This has worked well for us.

Sukanya Samy Content, Communications and Digital Marketing

Anything that smells of marketing -- even from someone positioned as the CMO -- and is salesy will not get even the least bit of attention in the media -- in regards to the work that I do in PR and content marketing.

Scott Rupp Partner

Voice of Customer: Letting the customers lead the conversation will help your brand establish credibility, earn media, and win with your market.

It's never been more important to let the customer lead the conversation, amplify that voice and then use it to reach like-minded audiences. Definitely a 10.

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

71% of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals have documented personas

Thomas Molfetto Product Marketing (AI)

THEME #4

How are marketing teams producing content today and how are they measured?

THEME SUMMARY

We explored two primary questions that focused on (1) the various approaches for producing content and (2) how are teams measured.

Approaches: With time being the most important asset, buyers need content that gets straight to the point, not another 16 page report. Customer communities are another good outlet for feedback.
KPIs: Run A/B campaigns to determine the effectiveness of content SEO vs. paid search. Acquire new audiences via SEO/SEM, social-sharing, media relations, promotion, etc. Focus on category growth!
Formats: All the B2B winners are amazing sources of inspiration. These are brands combine creativity with their data and leverage emotions and touched people in authentic ways.
Creative vs. In-House: Freelancers and agencies need to feel as part of the team, while also getting direction from In-House. Agencies can bring a fresh source of thinking.

Approaches: With time being the most important asset, buyers need content that gets straight to the point, not another 16 page report. Customer communities are another good outlet for feedback.

Consumers of content want alignment with their industry, business outcomes, and validated results. They don't want to read 16-page white papers to find an answer.

glenn gramling Vice President

We have few clients so we run a user community and a technical advisory board of sorts where our existing clients gather and tell us what they would like to see in our products/services and how we can help them. A lot of our content is driven through this dialogue.

Sukanya Samy Content, Communications and Digital Marketing

KPIs (1): Run A/B campaigns to determine the effectiveness of content SEO vs. paid search. Focus on category growth!

Use content for SEO purposes and then measure its effectiveness against paid search ad cost-per-click rates, so that the content can be scored similarly to how ads are scored internally.

David Berkowitz Serial Marketer: marketing & strategy leader connecting ideas, people, and technologies

Another approach for larger enterprises is to focus on category growth such as contact lens giants trying to switch spectacle lens wearers. The KPI's then would seek to identify the size of these populations and then determine close rate, reach, frequency and then retained purchase.

Gary Desjardins Marketing & Innovation Leadership | Medical Device | Healthcare | Consumer

KPIs (2): Microsites & LI Groups. Acquire new audiences via SEO/SEM, social-sharing, media relations, promotion, and advertising. Engage via distributed content aligning to professional interests.

New audiences attracted to microsites -- Acquired via SEO/SEM, social-sharing, media relations, promotion & advertising, etc.

Thomas Molfetto Product Marketing (AI)

New audiences attracted to microsites -- Engaged via posted and distributed content of direct interest to their jobs, plus comments on the microsites

Thomas Molfetto Product Marketing (AI)

Formats: All the B2B winners are amazing sources of inspiration. These are brands combine creativity with their data and leverage emotions and touched people in authentic ways.

We need to invest more in video , high-quality productions and creative storytelling. Do you remember HP Campaign on the security of printers? Or Mailchimp even throwing in some humor with their "Did you mean Mailchimp' campaign?

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

B2B marketers tend to undervalue the importance of design. With mobile devices and video playing an important role in today’s B2B research process (and we know +90% of B2B buyers conduct research online before making a purchase) and B2B researchers using smartphones throughout the buyer’s journey.

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

Creative vs. In-House: Freelancers and agencies need to feel as part of the team, while also getting direction from In-House. Agencies can bring a fresh source of thinking.

With an internal content creation group, creativity can start to stagnate over time and the brand no longer infused with fresh thinking. Agencies are always exposed to a variety of businesses/ business problems/customer studies etc which increases their potential for creativity and authenticity.

Andreea Leonte Creative strategist with an expert-generalist approach, walking the line between business development and marketing.

It's possible to work with a freelancer or agency, but they have to be treated like part of the team. Ideally, at least there should be some strong direction coming from in-house.

David Berkowitz Serial Marketer: marketing & strategy leader connecting ideas, people, and technologies

THEME #5

Events: What works? And what's missing?

THEME SUMMARY

Trade shows and events have always been a way to put yourself out there and stay ahead of trends. While nothing beats in-person interactions, the ROI from sponsorship and VoC can be elusive.

While nothing can replace face-to-face interactions, events are costly, labor intensive, and are difficult to capture inputs and measurable ROI.
Event ROI is realized if your team goes in with a game plan.
There are ways to capture VoC before, during, and after the event, but, today, requires editorial chops.

While nothing can replace face-to-face interactions, events are costly, labor intensive, and are difficult to capture inputs and measurable ROI.

Capturing pre & post audience polls, thoughts, ideas, desired topics & feedback so you can build into your pre & post event communication.

Michael Phelan Start-Up CMO, Founder & Principal Go-to-Market Pros

Event costs are high and planning is labor intensive.

Michael Phelan Start-Up CMO, Founder & Principal Go-to-Market Pros

Event ROI is realized if your team goes in with a game plan.

The point of the money spent was letting our current clients know we were there, and that we cared about what was taking place in the sector.

Scott Rupp Partner

Use the learnings to create content that you can share with the attendees after the event forming a level of trust, thought leadership and consideration.

Kershnee Hermanus Segment Market Manager at Liberty Group

There are ways to capture VoC before, during, and after the event, but, today, requires editorial chops.

Get to work crafting editorials about how you or your solution is applicable to any number of the key points that will be discussed at the event and get that editorial published in the sector's publications that are likely to be attending the event.

Scott Rupp Partner

VOC is captured during the event. Questions are captured in a lead repository and associated with the requestor. Often the prospect will arrange a follow up meeting with contacts in the office.

glenn gramling Vice President

THEME #6

Social media strategies for B2B companies

THEME SUMMARY

There are a range of strategies one can deploy on Social Media, but the reasons all point back to more sales.

IT'S ALL ABOUT SALES
ENGAGEMENT MATTERS IF IT LEADS TO SALES

Measuring Business Impact

The main objective of our social media strategy is always to get sales. Followers and likes are great for top funnel branding and social proof, so they are the runner-ups.

Camilla Nymann Funnel coach for ambitious business owners!

The main KPI that matters is sales, but for the use of social media in particular, the question is where the impact comes from. Will it increase the likelihood a prospect will buy from you? Will it convert someone into a lead? Will it generate sales directly?

David Berkowitz Serial Marketer: marketing & strategy leader connecting ideas, people, and technologies

Social Media Strategies

But if we (or our clients) want to get a considerable number of sales, paid traffic is a must on social media.

Camilla Nymann Funnel coach for ambitious business owners!

THEME #7

Help Design the KnowledgeStream Offering

THEME SUMMARY

KnowledgeStreaming is not yet a verb and the ability to make it one is not yet well understood. We do have some ideas to nudge it in that direction

Potential tactics we can take
Compelling value prop attributes to focus on
Potential limiters if not careful

Potential Tactics

creating marketing campaigns with success stories

Nicole Seibert Creator of Aircell/gogo, Eloqua and Ariba, President/CEO Niketas Marketing Automation, Inc.

Advertising in business journals

Nicole Seibert Creator of Aircell/gogo, Eloqua and Ariba, President/CEO Niketas Marketing Automation, Inc.

Compelling Value Prop Attributes

ability to extract and simplify knowledge is valuable

glenn gramling Vice President

fresh & future driven predictive insights are what companies want

Michael Phelan Start-Up CMO, Founder & Principal Go-to-Market Pros

Possible Limiters

General insights, without credible examples, are not generally useful to our customers

glenn gramling Vice President

I'm comparing it to a $45,000/year junior content marketing hire who can produce lots of content that can be fully owned, shared, and tracked.

David Berkowitz Serial Marketer: marketing & strategy leader connecting ideas, people, and technologies

THEME #8

B2B Thought Leadership: Best Practices of Executive Teams

THEME SUMMARY

Corporate Thought Leadership is high sought-after but surprisingly under-leveraged

Executive Thought Leadership is powerful when done well, however, most companies fail to effectively plan for it.
Companies have far more Thought Leadership that they think, this includes all functions on the executive team and in some case, your entire employee base

SURVEYS

| 12

What doe you think will have the biggest impact on "Executive Thought Leadership"

A well thought through, actionable & detailed plan developed and managed by marketing

50.00% 6 votes

A platform such as currnt to allow executives to gain a broader perspective and engage with experts who are "outside-in-thinkers"

41.67% 5 votes

A corporate council consisting of executives with marketing resources to help plan and execute

33.33% 4 votes

A documented corporate "Thought Leadership Content Plan" to proactively seek speakers and to access focused content

33.33% 4 votes

Training on social media content curation and publishing

8.33% 1 vote

Training on "Thought Leadership Content Development"

25.00% 3 votes

Training for executives on speaking effectively.

8.33% 1 vote

Rewards for publishing content and gaining followers or likes

8.33% 1 vote

A platform offering opportunities to develop and or publish content at upcoming conventions

16.67% 2 votes

A library of corporate thought leadership content (presentations, white papers, research)

25.00% 3 votes

Ongoing future-oriented research initiative (trends, changes, evolution)

33.33% 4 votes

A marketing analysis and insights group who regularly publish content

33.33% 4 votes

A competitive analysis portal with pertinent competitive thought leadership programs & related content

16.67% 2 votes

A corporate team responsible for networking into each function and extracting thought leadership by encouraging, supporting or building corporate thought leaders

41.67% 5 votes

Funds to help company associates attend and or speak at industry conferences

41.67% 5 votes

Program for associates who attend industry events to write up and publish their findings

25.00% 3 votes

Program to tap into associates with large business or social networks and encourage them to publish on behalf of the company

16.67% 2 votes

Education program for sales, what exists for corporate thought leadership, what is coming and how to leverage it with clients, prospects & partners

16.67% 2 votes

Program to promote thought leadership content to associates, customers, prospects, media, investors and partners.

33.33% 4 votes

Program to capture and promote prestigious industry awards

16.67% 2 votes

There are many pitfalls, eco-centric & disconnected CEOs is one

the CEO craves the lime light and uses being the "face" of company for his/her own personal gains. when this is happening it is clearly not authentic to all but the leader. It can have a significant impact on employee morale and engagement.

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

in a worse case......what happens when the CEO "face" leaves, makes a snafu on social media or unsavory behavior.

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

Many CEOs do a great job of Thought Leadership

Steve Jobs was a visionary and because he was a thought leader, he created the vision for Apple in terms of product features and what markets to enter. To be honest, there are enough smart (and a lot cheaper) people available to actually invent all sorts of crap once you tell them what it is.

Jay D

Ritz or Chick-fil-A which establish their brands as leaders. Is Dan Cathy known as a leadership thought leader, service thought leader

Gary Desjardins Marketing & Innovation Leadership | Medical Device | Healthcare | Consumer

Most companies fail to effectively plan for Thought Leadership

Good Executive thought leadership starts by knowing the company process from top down. In many corporations, senior executives have no idea how the lowermost employee chain is functioning. How the call center communication is happening,

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

consistent, agile foresight and application Thought leadership is not stagnate. Great leaders surround themselves with people and have "mechanisms" for identifying and synthesizing wide range of data, events and happenings to focus on those that are most impactful today and for the future.

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

THEME #9

Review and comparison of "LinkedIn Groups" versus "Currnt KnowledgeStreams"

THEME SUMMARY

The panel sees "currnt" as very different than "LinkedIn Groups" & not really comparable

currnt panels have professional moderators, panelist are recruited and with incentives to contribute
Liniked In Groups have no content moderations, no incentives to contribute and no reporting

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups were popular a while back but are now in decline. Mostly used by people trying to sell something instead of sharing ideas, engaging in dialogue etc.

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

From a functionality point of view LinkedIn lacks a proper enrollment process , often anyone who has a small interest will be allowed access. Some groups have hundreds/thousands of members, with such a large audience its not possible to have a proper online dialogue.

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

Current KnowledgeStreams

KnowledgeStreams are created to explore a particular topic over a period of time with expert facilitator guiding the group, encouraging engagement, synthesizing and reporting the learning. This results in a richer knowledge.

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

Currnt provides a more efficient process to distill knowledge from a global panel in a matter of days, if necessary.

Jay D

THEME #10

Best Practices in Leveraging Thought Leadership in Corporate & Content Marketing

THEME SUMMARY

Companies who break through are generous with their time, have empathy & share openly

It is more than just content, leaders have a vision to make things better
Leaders are generous with their time and are not self-serving with their message
Leaders are consistent (staying with the mayor theme via a constant speaking presence)

Best Practices in Corporate and Content Marketing

add more_vert Bench marking Nothing breaks through the clutter like a bench marking study. Why? everyone wants to know how others are dealing with similar changes, best in class approaches and real examples to inspire them or validate what they are doing is right.

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

What EY and McKinsey are so good #1 They DON'T use the word marketing. #2 It's pushed as a free knowledge tool, not as marketing collateral #3 It always appears to be well-grounded in research.

Nayyara Rahman Director Digital Services; Ethics At Work Advocate

Best Practices in Corporate and Content Marketing

Panera Bread is constantly innovating to better serve their customers. At first they called your name...now they use a tracker and bring it to you. They introduced digital ordering via app and self service kiosk. Introduced home delivery. They have an ever evolving menu & use natural ingredients..

Gary Desjardins Marketing & Innovation Leadership | Medical Device | Healthcare | Consumer

Shea has an ethnic target, they launched a TL campaign: "Break the Walls". It was about ethnic inclusion & empowerment. It started a movement & that took hold/changed the landscape. The CEO spoke to industry & consumers. It caused a some controversy & press! In 2017, they were acquired by Unilever.

Laureen Schroeder Chief Marketing Officer

THEME #11

How can "Influencer Marketing" and "Thought Leadership" be combined & magnfied

THEME SUMMARY

Thought Leadership and Influencer Marketing are combining, however they are both different and require dedicated strategies & resources to maximize and integrate

Thought Leaders are focused on predicting, analyzing and visioning the future
Influencers are focused on network growth, on sharing relevant content, hot trends, interesting ideas, views likes/dislikes, on entertaining, on education, and on monetizing their networks

Ideas to combine Influencer and Thought Leadership Program

TL can become good influencer marketers. It depends on what kind ofTL the individual is pursuing. Guy Kawasaki & Seth Goodin do well in what they do. Guy Kavasakhi is promoting Canava. Gary ‘Vee’ Vaynerchuck on the other hand is a thought leader and an influencer. He markets his agency Vayermedia

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

TLs of today in order to be representing corporations as influencers, should be creating a marketing strategy for themselves first. Today's CEOs/TLs + influencers need to be like Richard Branson or Elon Musk who do this successfully. But there is lot of space for improvement and be noticed..

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

By engaging with readers, journalists, and industry influencers on social media, companies can greatly amplify their efforts on creating and pitching contributed content.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

Ideas for currnt

My recommendation to Currnt would be to tap into the experts on the panel. I have a huge LinkedIn network that I would be more than happy to share relevant information. It could be a "points for performance" addition for the experts. Post/Comments/Likes count.

Laureen Schroeder Chief Marketing Officer

Currnt panelists are part of a community that can be built. Prepare a toolkit to enable each panelist to create its own influencer brand. Just like REI, imagine our TL efforts being supported by Currnt and in return we provide a rich community for Currnt that it can sell to its clients.

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

Build a community of panelists to shares ideas outside of the sponsored panels. 'TL Exchange' where lot of TL content will be posted that does not have Sponsor IP Currnt can repurpose this content in multiple places and channels, Imagine compiling POVs on a current topic & selling it to media

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

Concerns about Influencer Programs

The key is "trust." You need to know the person referring you to a new service. We all know how compensation has corrupted professors, think tank experts, and even doctors.

Jay D

Recently kickback incidents have surfaced (Insys, eg) What added fuel to the fire was that the use of a product was being advocated by thought leadership (bogus conferences) but not actual advocacy from people who'd used the product, i.e. influencer marketing if it existed, was not credible

Nayyara Rahman Director Digital Services; Ethics At Work Advocate

One of the key factors for the success of influencer marketing is establishing authenticity. Instead of merely promoting a brand, the influencer needs to be authentic and honest.

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

Best-in-Class Examples

Simon Sinek: Start with WHY. He gave a TED talk in the early 2000s that became widely popular and he shot to fame. He has a company, but we don't know anyone in the company. If Simon stopped talking, we would not listen to anyone else.

Fehmida Kapadia Helping organizations adopt a customer-centric approach to manage their innovation and marketing strategy.

The Points Guy: He started talking about how to build points and use them to travel the world (free, in Business class, first class). He started small and as he built a massive following, the airline companies started hiring him to advertise their airlines and/or credit cards.

Fehmida Kapadia Helping organizations adopt a customer-centric approach to manage their innovation and marketing strategy.

Humans of New York: He moved to New York and started taking pictures of people and recording their stories. He started on fb, amassed a massive following which led to books and him being hired by other countries, companies to do similar stories for them.

Fehmida Kapadia Helping organizations adopt a customer-centric approach to manage their innovation and marketing strategy.

THEME #12

The core differences & similarities between B2B Thought Leadership and B2C Thought Leadership

THEME SUMMARY

How is B2B Thought Leadership Different or Similar to B2C Thought Leadership

B2B Thought Leadership has traditional been more predictive or problem-solving in nature , more research- oriented and more data-centric
B2C Thought Leadership is typically more consumer-benefit and emotionally centered

Characteristics of B2C Thought Leadership

olay What a long way this brand has come from when it was Oil of Olay sitting on my gradma's bureau. rebranding and innovation and demonstrating skin expertise. the skin adviser feature is a a tangible way to signal thought leadership and expertise.

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

B2C - On the other hand, part of B2C’s content marketing efforts are blog posts, the copy on a company’s website, the tweets, and every other piece of content that a company publishes with the B2C market’s emotions in mind.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

Similarities

Both B2C and B@B models achieve TL through a thorough understanding of market and customers, their problems and then uniquely providing a solution. Often times challenging long standing paradigms in the process. GE is actually one example which does it well both on both sides of the equation.

Gary Desjardins Marketing & Innovation Leadership | Medical Device | Healthcare | Consumer

Characteristics of B2B Thought Leadership

B2B is more rational, more technical. difficult to access and with a decidedly limited audience. The objective of B2B Thought Leadership is to INFORM.

Nayyara Rahman Director Digital Services; Ethics At Work Advocate

The primary goal is ROI. What matters is the concrete data, the numbers, the tangible features a company offers that demonstrate that. The informative ads and promotional content are concentrated on the ‘what, why, how’ of business processes. Appealing to hard data over marketing on emotions wins

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

Differences

language - the targets speak & react to different words & benefits who delivers the message - b2b leadership has more credibility. 3rd party endorsements are important for both, much more so for b2c channel - comes down to where your customer is expectation - business expect vendors to bring value

Christine Hade Omni Channel Brand Marketing & Innovation Executive

Best-in-Class Examples

TED is built on thought leadership. The nonprofit talks and conferences & represent the world’s most relevant & influential thinkers, ideas are distributed through videos & blog posts impact a widening range of industries and disciplines. TED influences audiences in ways that most brands dream of.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

Patagonia launched The Footprint Chronicles, which is a content hub that publicly reveals Patagonia’s life and habits as a company. The focus is to be transparent and educate their audience about their supply chain management and what they are doing to preserve the world’s natural resources.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

IBM stays ahead of the competition. IBM’s content marketing campaign computers to biotech—illustrate how they use innovation to crush its competition. Campaigns show advanced & game-changing technology. Public & private universities, research institutions, hospitals & medical centers targets

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

THEME #13

Final advice on "Thought Leadership Planning" for 2019 & pending board closure

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