We all know that the B2B buying cycle is much longer than the typical B2C cycle (hello, <5 mins?). B2B selling is about building relationships with potential customers and being a knowledge resource. Producing quality content can help B2B companies connect with potential customers and build up relationships that may lead to a sale. Forrester has found that B2B buyers found 70% of the content they used to make a purchase decision themselves (as opposed to through marketing or advertising efforts). While a good marketer can be fairly invisible in their content distribution methods, it does show the need for making sure your content gets in front of the right people (and not just on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn).
Content marketing has therefore become much more than product and solutions collateral, campaigns, mailings, and fulfillment. B2B marketers have to be great at being found by buyers in their early research phase (the phases we call discover and explore). In a way, successful marketers will “fool” their buyers into consuming their thought-leadership and educational content in stages 1 through 5 — while hardly realizing its source. And the most successful marketers will learn how to mix their brand “scent” into that content without appearing to be selling — to the extent that buyers will count it as part of their 70%. — STRENGTHEN YOUR B2B BRAND WITH BETTER CONTENT DISTRIBUTION by Peter O’Neill
