2. Introduction
2014 has been a big year for business-to-business (B2B) content
marketing in the technology industry. Some of the most interesting
content marketing we’ve seen has come from more traditional
household names like GE and Intel, but also fast-growing tech
companies like Asana and Zendesk.
!
Consider Zendesk, a customer relationship management software
as a service (SaaS) platform. When the marketing team at Zendesk
noticed the term “Zendesk alternative” was on the rise and search
rank was dominated by competitors, instead of creating standard
product literature describing how Zendesk differentiates itself from
alternatives, the marketing team launched a creative experiment.
!
Rather than boosting their SEM budget, Zendesk built a responsive
website for a fictitious alternative rock band called Zendesk
Alternative, complete with Facebook and Twitter pages and a short
documentary-style video of the rockstars on the landing page. The
tactic went viral within the tech community shortly after its creation,
charming visitors and achieving a higher customer conversion rate
than Zendesk’s actual website.
3. spent on content marketing by most
effective technology marketers 16 Number of content tactics used by most
35% Percentage of marketing budget
effective technology marketers
Stories like Zendesk Alternative highlight something that B2B
technology companies all know: marketers need creative content that
tells delightful, human stories that connects the user to the product.
!
For B2B technology companies, compelling content is becoming an
increasingly critical tool to continuously engage customers over longer
buying cycles. These marketers are not just in the business of
promoting, they are in the business of educating customers too. B2B
tech marketers are being tasked to not only tell interesting, visual
stories about their products that capture attention, but also provide a
curriculum to educate prospective buyers.
!
In this report, we’ll take a look at the emerging content trends in the
B2B technology industry, examine case studies of brands taking
content to a whole new level, and analyze where the industry is
headed in 2015.
5. Ultimately, the job of the marketer is to create stories that move people.
Stories that inspire emotion and action, stories that help close business -
stories that build a brand. Most B2B technology companies struggle to
elevate conversations with customers above the product features and
functions. In the fragmented technology landscape, it’s not enough to
simply create a product that’s different.
!
What has been missing from a lot of the product-speak and business
jargon inundating B2B content marketing is a connection to the human
experience.
!
Recently, some of the oldest and most iconic technology companies like
GE and Intel are reimagining themselves by using content and
storytelling to forge human connections to their products.
!
For example, in the commercial “The Boy Who Beeps,” GE imagines a
child with an unusual handicap: instead of talking in human speech, he
communicates in beeps which allows him to talk to machines like power
grids and aircraft. This poignant advertisement tells the story of an
extraordinary boy ultimately celebrated for gifts which bring the world
closer together, with only minimal branding from GE. In just three weeks
the “Boy Who Beeps” has already garnered over 700,000 views on
YouTube, a milestone that few B2B companies ever achieve.
!
Trend: Companies are embracing the human experience
through original, creative stories that connect real people
to the product - sometimes in unusual and surprising ways.
7. B2B tech marketers are increasingly using non-traditional, visual
mediums like videos, infographics, and online presentations to reach
audiences. According to a 2014 report by the Content Marketing
Institute, technology marketers say that webinars and videos are
among the most effective tactics they use. One interesting stat to take
note of: 71% of more effective B2B technology marketers use
infographics to - a medium which was barely recognized in 2010.
!
This summer, task-management software company Asana turned
heads with a product video showcasing the release of their fully-native
iPhone and iPad app. The video was sleek and had great
production quality, but most importantly was able to integrate digital
and physical with the human experience of the app at the center.
!
During the video, a business owner plans a launch party with a
business partner and chef. The app features just product shots with
background noise - zero dialogue - as the team members move
through bustling scenes of New York City. The commercial highlights
the clean user interface of the native app and the ease in
coordinating multiple project workflows on the go - without
communicating in any way other than the product itself. A smart way
to create quality top-of-funnel awareness of Asana and its newest
features.
!
Trend: B2B tech marketers are increasingly using highly
visual mediums like video and online presentations, as
well as non-traditional media like infographics to capture
attention and tell memorable stories.
Channels Used/Planned
for Lead Generation
Email
Trade shows/conferences
Social networks
Online registration/opt-in
Content Marketing
Direct Mail
Telemarketing
Online directories
PPC/Display
Webinars
DR print
Live events
Affiiate Marketing
Retargeted ads
Rented Lists
Compiled data
Other
2013 2014
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Percentage of B2B Marketers Planning or
Using Channel
Chief Marketer 2014 Lead Gen Survey
8. Content Marketing Usage Among Technology Marketers (by Tactic)
Percentage of Marketers Reporting Using
Tactic
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Social Media
Case Studies
Videos
Blogs
eNewsletters
In-Person Events
Articles on Your Website
Webinars/Webcasts
Whitepapers
Articles on Other Websites
Online Presentations
Infographics
Research Reports
eBooks
Microsites
Branded Content Tools
Mobile Content
Books
Licensed/Syndicated Content
Mobile Apps
Podcasts
Virtual Conferences
Print Magazines
Annual Reports
Digital Magazines
Print Newsletters
Games/Gamification
B2B Tech Marketers
Use 15 Tactics on Avg
Content Marketing Institute | Mar 2014
10. 73%B2B tech companies have
someone to oversee content
marketing strategy 57% Technology marketers
outsource content
creation, with 56% doing
some combination of both
In 2014, 57% of B2B tech marketers outsource their content creation.
And while only 1% of tech marketers rely entirely on outsourced
content, 56% of marketers are doing some combination of both in-house
and outsourced content creation.
!
Numbers like these make it evident that outsourcing content is an
effective and cost-efficient approach to content strategy execution for
technology marketers. However, the balance of knowing when to
outsource content versus when to keep content creation in-house
remains a hotly contested debate. With time and in-house expertise in
short supply, more B2B companies are outsourcing design and
writing work - and tech companies are no exception.
Through technology platforms like Percolate, B2B marketers can
directly submit content briefs and receive finished work from
marketplaces like Scripted and Visually as an alternative to in-house
production. In some aspects, content creation has become analogous
to manufacturing for B2B tech marketing teams, with the marketer
acting as product manager and the creator in the role of an engineer.
!
The advantages of outsourcing content creation to marketplaces
revolve around both cost and time. External vendors often have
shorter creative project cycles, more variable capacity and lower rate
cards. By comparison, the primary challenge for brands procuring
external content is quality control and brand governance, making it
important for marketers to implement standardized processes and
checkpoints with their content vendors. In the enterprise, more and
more agencies are relying on these third party marketplaces for spare
creative capacity to keep their operating models more lean.
!
Trend: Low costs and a booming freelancer economy is
driving a growing number of tech marketers to embrace
outsourced content.
11. Functions Tech Marketers Outsource
Percentage of respondents that reported they outsourced a particular function
Writing
Design
Content Distribution/Syndication
Editing
Buyer Persona Creation
Content Planning and Strategy
Measurement and Analytics
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Percentage of Respondents
2014 B2B Technology Trends— North America: Content Marketing Institute/Marketing Profs | Mar 2014
13. “Not only have [Ambassadors] affected the user community, but we’ve also
brought [it] into the products as a way to educate others. It’s a global campaign
and one that’s impacting how the core products themselves function.
According to Edelman’s 2013 Trust Barometer, 41% of people think
a company’s employees rank higher in public trust than a firm’s PR
department, CEO, or Founder. Ambassador programs, or programs
which provide systems and processes for supporting employee use
of social media to talk about the brand, are quickly becoming the
norm at B2B tech companies from established giants like Cisco, to
rapidly growing companies like Evernote.
!
Research from Zuberance points out that audiences trust their peers
within the personal networks more than any form of advertising.
81% of shoppers say posts from friends on social platforms like
Twitter and Facebook directly influence their shopping and
purchasing decisions, and a social share of an online product will
drive an average $2.04 in revenue.
!
Consider Evernote, a brand which began as a simple note-taking
app and has now built itself into a platform for organizing all kinds
of information and collaborating with co-workers across devices in
real-time.
!
Evernote attributes its rise primarily through word-of-mouth, which is
perhaps why the company hasn’t made traditional advertising a
priority, and instead has focused on growing initiatives which harness
user loyalty like its Evernote Ambassadors program.
!
Evernote Ambassadors is a fresh take on the employee ambassador
program. Instead of focusing on social conversations by employees to
drive sales, Evernote identifies enthusiasts around the world who are
experts in Evernote and uses the platform to improve a particular area
of their lives. Users are experts in a wide array of issues - from
healthy living and blogging, to parenting and home cooking.
Ambassadors hold events and attend meetups that focus on how
people can use Evernote to improve their personal and professional
lives. In exchange, Evernote Ambassadors are seen as experts by
their peers and join a network of 26 global ambassadors.
!
Trend: Ambassador programs are becoming more
common as companies catch on that potential customers
find ambassador voices to be more trustworthy than
official communications by senior leadership.
— Andrew Sinkov, VP of Marketing at Evernote
15. Personalization is more than just inserting name, title, or company into
email messages. Personalization is about giving content that is timely,
relevant, and valuable to visitors with each brand interaction.
!
Email is arguably the oldest form of communication on the web, and
is a very solid foundation for a B2B marketing program. However,
gone are the days that a marketer could insert subject line with a
product pitch and expect to get the attention of a buyer. Buyers are
getting savvier, and are making early assumptions about potential
vendors from their own research or what they hear on their own
social networks. Technology marketers have to give buyers something
that helps them do their job better, and once they permission to have
this relationship, the marketer needs to protect it.
!
What personalization ultimately boils down to is knowing your
audience. We are seeing a growing number of systems that help
automate personalization efforts, collect buyer data, and manage the
processes in an efficient, repeatable, and scalable way. But it’s
important for technology marketers to not see these solutions as a
standalone solution to personalization or, frankly, engage in
marketing tactics that are downright creepy.
!
One company that has both seamlessly blended automated
personalization and timely content marketing is the marketing
automation provider Marketo. Marketo takes great pains to nurture
leads by tracking where a customer has visited on their website, and
then send out automated email messages that are relevant to a
particular viewed page, and are more explicitly personalized with the
email coming from an account manager.
Personalization is more than just
inserting name, title, or company
into email messages.
Depending on the number of times a potential customer returns to the
main website, and the places they visit (for example, the white papers
section versus the pricing page), the cadence and aggressiveness of
the personalized emails also increases.
!
According to Monetate/Econsultancy, 94% of businesses stated that
personalization is critical to current and future success, and 64% of
companies are – or plan within the year – to deliver more
personalized experiences on mobile devices.
!
Ultimately, personalization is about customer empathy, and the
seamless integration of relevant, timely content with technology that
can deliver it at scale.
!
Trend: Personalization has been around for years but we
are increasingly seeing marketers procure technology to
help scale personalization and take advantage of the
large amounts of available customer data.
16. Conclusion
B2B technology marketers have been pushing the limits of content
marketing, creating some of the most interesting content we’ve seen to
elevate conversations above features and functionality, often using a
variety of non-traditional mediums to accomplish their goals. They are
embracing the value of outsourcing content creation while directing
content strategy in-house, mobilizing ambassadors, and building
scalable digital systems that can reach buyers on a more personal
level. These benchmarks tell us that in order to capture a buyer’s
attention and build relationships, B2B marketing is increasingly about
telling personal, human stories.
17. Percolate is the system of record for marketing.
Our technology helps the world's largest and fastest-growing
brands at every step of the marketing process.
!
Want to learn more?
Contact learn@percolate.com for more information
or request a demo today at percolate.com/request-demo
