B2B Content Brilliance

In today’s competitive digital marketing landscape, it’s not enough to just tout the features and functionality of your product or solution. What buyers remember as they move through the purchase process is whether you’re able to meet their actual functional, emotional and social needs. In other words, what clear customer promise can you make in your marketing messaging that both adheres to those needs and is one you can keep?

In this new webinar series, B2B Content Brilliance we’ve gathered the best minds in B2B content and we’ll be exploring content from every possible angle, from using research to graphic design, and much more. In episode one, John Steinert (CMO, TechTarget) talks with Jann Martin Schwarz (Senior Fellow, LinkedIn and Founder, The B2B Institute) about the importance of customer promises, how insights can be used to identify a promise that customers will value and who needs to be involved to make sure the motion is fulfilled.

Every time we communicate with prospective buyers, we’re making promises, consciously or unconsciously. Get them right, and you’ll grow buyer trust and brand affinity. Get them wrong, and you risk losing confidence and consideration. If your content isn’t delivering on your marketing goals, there’s a good chance that you’re either missing the mark on what your target audience is seeking or your content isn’t coming from a source that they trust.

In this webinar, Susan Smith (Sr. Director, Product Marketing, TechTarget) and Dave Gruber (Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group) will build on the research-proven “customer promise” concept (discussed in our Creating a Memorable Marketing Message that Lasts webinar), and provide actionable steps on how to improve your content and messaging. They’ll share proven near-term content options to bolster any tech marketing program, strategic approaches for developing promises that will resonate with target audiences, and a “good, better, best” framework you can put to work immediately to better understand and engage buyers, and build buyer trust in your customer promise.

It’s amazing to realize that Forrester research shows Millennials and Gen Zers made up 71% of B2B buying teams in 2023. What’s more, their clear preference for video-based content means that in your content portfolio, video is absolutely critical as a source of information for B2B decision making and vendor selection. And our own research shows clearly that busy executives are also consuming more video: Across tech buyers, 48% say webinars and 31% say video are the most important media formats they use to build a vendor shortlist. Suffice to say that in the absence of a good video-based content strategy, marketers will struggle to capture these buyers’ attention, get on their short list and influence their purchasing decisions.

In the next episode of B2B Content Brilliance in Action, join Jeff Kunken (Vice President Integrated Solutions, TechTarget) and Susan Smith (Senior Director, Product Marketing, TechTarget) as they discuss how to design effective video-based content and overcome common impediments to creating a successful video-based content strategy. Jeff will draw from his experience at the Sundance Channel and IconicTV and share examples of how BrightTALK’s Studios team develops compelling video, webinars and virtual events for our customers. You’ll walk away with practical tips on how to create a library of effective video content, within your budget and timeframe, that successfully engages buyers and communicates your solution’s value.

In this edition of B2B Content Brilliance, TechTarget CMO John Steinert is joined by Chief Creative Officer Victoria Azarian (Cannes Lions, Effie, One Show). One look at her work and you’ll understand why it’s accelerated millions of dollars (and likely billions) in value for clients and for their customers.

Our latest strategic session in this series examines the importance (and challenges) of using graphic design to help successfully communicate promises of value. The goal is to aid marketing and business leaders like you in identifying substantive design gaps and the impediments standing between where you are and where you want to be. We look to help you better recognize these, consider them, and articulate them to other leaders towards successful implementation of business-critical improvements.

If you’re a content marketer, you can probably relate to that feeling of being on a hamster wheel – focused and working hard but knowing the pace is unsustainable – and needing to find an off ramp. You’re under pressure to keep your content fresh, generate content in different formats, personalize content for target buying teams, or just generate more and more assets. Or maybe you’re challenged to come up with new ideas and topics that will resonate with your audience. You (rather quickly) surmise that you don’t like being a hamster.

With all the hype around artificial intelligence, you’re probably wondering if generative AI (GenAI) can solve your content creation problems. However, many B2B tech buyers are wary of AI-generated content and, in response, are leaning into expert-authored content. So, if AI isn’t the panacea (and you don’t want to be a hamster), how do you get a sustainable stream of the right content to engage your target audience and move them swiftly to a decision to purchase your solution?

In this episode of our B2B Content Brilliance series, Lauren Whitehouse (Enterprise Strategy Group) and Susan Smith (TechTarget) talk about “classic” content – its characteristics, why you need it and how to create it for each stage of the buyer’s journey. They’ll look at the role of subject matter experts in creating this type of content and how it can make your content engine more efficient.

As the drum beat for high-quality and valuable content from B2B buyers grows stronger, marketers are under pressure to identify new and innovative types of content, while also scaling their content engine. For some teams, this means exploring new resources, like generative AI (GenAI), while others look to creating new content formats. At times, the endless cycle can feel exhausting, if not a bit maddening.

Join Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Officer at The Content Advisory and Content Marketing Institute, for an in-depth discussion with Fiona O’Connor, Sr. Manager, Marketing Programs, TechTarget, on the impact of classic content – content that provides new audiences with value and provides existing audiences with ongoing value – can have on your audience engagement. They’ll cover the characteristics of classic content, why it’s different from evergreen content and why it should be a part of your content strategy. You’ll leave with a blueprint for creating classic content and how to balance it with other content types for an effective content marketing strategy.