Recently, we examined the increasingly important role that content is playing in B2B marketing. Unfortunately, the growing popularity of content as a marketing tool has led to one of its challenges: now, everyone is publishing and distributing content, including the biggest firms across professional services, financial services and technology, who have entire departments dedicated to generating whitepapers, research reports and other thought leadership.
One of our clients, a national accounting firm not in the “Big Four,” found itself in this content-marketing conundrum. The firm published all kinds of content, mostly around their opinions of accounting rulings and other obvious topics, and distributed it regularly to clients through email marketing campaigns. But research revealed that their content went largely unnoticed by clients, who didn’t read the publications, or, in some cases, didn’t even know that they had received it.
“If we wanted information on accounting regulation, we would go to one of the Big Four,” clients told us upon further inquiry.
Does that mean that the firm shouldn’t publish content?
Absolutely not. It just means that they need to produce content that others aren’t creating. They need to align their content strategy with their brand strategy.
If you’re PwC, you’re one of the industry’s top thought leaders. You can publish content about accounting regulations and clients will pay attention. But if you’re not PwC, or any of the other three, you need to find that content niche that is true to your brand, with content that is most credible and unique coming from you. That is the content that clients will pay attention to.
Read our whitepaper “B2B Marketing: Why Content is the New Creative” for more details on how to leverage content in B2B marketing.
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