B2B in international Marketing

What are the greatest challenges in content marketing in the B2B sector?

Based on a worldwide survey conducted in its second year with 1,092 marketers in August 2011 by the Content Marketing Institute, the following key challenges were stated:

• producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers (41% of respondents).
• producing enough content (20%)
• budget to produce content (18%)
• other (21%)

The  instruments mainly used in content marketing for 2012 are:

• articles (79%)
• social media (74%)
• blogs (65%)

Compared to the previous year, social media usage declined marginally, whereas there was an increase of implementation of blogs, white papers and videos.

There are two factors which I find interesting. Firstly, the challenge of measuring the impact of the instruments was not stated as a challenge. At this point the survey states that the effectiveness is still measured by clicks and positive perception of the marketers and only rarely by criteria such as augmented requests or actual sales figures.

The second discussion point I see is the continuously high deployment of social media in B2B. Due to the infrequent engagement it provides the company with its customer, I ask myself why it is utilised so often. Though you can target and connect with the individual via Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook, I doubt that these three instruments bring the most effective return. Furthermore, in an international strategy context, various cultures and within the region various targeted channels will require a large diversification of communication regionally and are resource and time consuming when done correctly.

The relevance of focused client relationships and strategic account management mentioned in the article by the Profit Guide regarding ‘4 Key Success Factors for B2B Marketing in 2012’, and the statement that marketers see a challenge in producing engaging content, contradict the high implementation rate of social media tools.

Depending on the company’s sector, target groups and markets it is active in there will be large differences in the strategy used. Nevertheless, in highly competitive, international market places the necessity to use tools that engage you and your target group in a sustainable one-to-one or peer-to-peer experience using other tools then social media will probably be more cost effective and enable you to produce enough content and especially such relevant to your customer.