More Content or Better Content Experience? What’s the Answer for B2B Marketing

Gone are the days when B2B marketing is just trade shows, price sheets, and a company brochure. Content marketing has become common practice in the B2B space, but now B2B marketers face a new challenge: audiences are getting harder to reach. So, what’s the answer? Some B2B marketers think that producing more content will help them cut through the noise and reach their audience, but a recent post by Demand Gen offers a different solution.

The Deman Gen article argues that more content won’t reach audiences any better unless the content experience improves. In the B2B space, consumers are more likely to want to read as much content as they can at one time when they are searching for a new solution. Even Google recognizes the growing trend among searchers looking for a depth of content, not necessarily a breadth of shallow pieces.

So how can B2B marketers improve their content marketing to better reach their audience? I asked this question of a few B2B marketers on LinkedIn and the answer I came up with is to make the content more personalized for the audience. B2B marketers need to segment their email lists based on interest and distribute content that is relevant for where the specific customer is in their buyer’s journey AND to their interests. Is that enough? I would argue that it is not.

B2B marketers need to provide a streamless content experience where consumers can move organically from one piece of content to the next. Demand Gen made the point that drip campaigns are no longer enough, but it fell short on providing actionable strategies for content distribution. Where Demand Gen left off, the concept of “topic clusters” picks up. Google has started to value long pages of content that link out to other relevant articles.  Topic clusters are made up of one long “pillar page” and several other supporting blog posts. This HubSpot post gives an excellent overview of topic clusters and also functions as an example of a pillar page.

If B2B marketers want to improve the content experience and provide answers on demand, topic clusters provide one excellent path forward. Pillar pages can be created for key frequently asked questions or market segments to make consuming content seamless for the audience. This way, the audience will be able to move from one article to the next in a natural progression and get all of their questions answered at once.

What do you think? Are topic clusters the answer, or should B2B marketers look at more sophisticated marketing automation solutions to improve the customer experience?