Key Insights: B2B content marketing decoded, top marketing technologies, and AI spotlight

Recent times have increasingly added emphasis on “adding value” and “being at the right place at the right time”. Today’s article shows exactly how these can be achieved through content marketing, a great marketing technology stack, and AI.

B2B content consumption and marketing decoded

Content sits at the heart of all sales and marketing verticals and as several business heads face a variety of conundrums: 

• Are we creating valuable content?
• Are we capturing the audience we intend to capture?
• Are we able to tap into their attention at the right time?

Content marketing has the key to a lot of opportunities, we’re not just saying it, B2B Buyer Engagement Platform, NetLine Corporation analysed their first-party data sources and the outcomes strongly support this statement. NetLine’s analysis spanned across 300+ industries globally, with varying job levels, company sizes, and company revenue.

Here are some key takeaways:

• 76% of marketers saw webinars as a good source to drive more leads
• 80% of marketers said webinars helped reduce their CPC (cost per lead)

As of April 2020, ON24, NetLine’s partner company reported a 33% increase in webinar attendance.

Ebooks, whitepapers, and guides top the B2B content demand

The top 10 list shows ebooks, whitepapers, and guides hold the highest demand. Even though webinars were less demanded than ebooks, the COVID-19 pandemic has definitely given the demand for webinars a huge push and competitive edge. 

C-Suite executives vs Senior VPs: Who took more time to make a second demand?

Did you know, the average time between the first and second request for content was 19.4 days? NetLine shared an interesting peep into the content demand for different job-levels across an organization and here’s what it said.

The quickest demand generators

• Senior VPs
• Individual Contributors
• Senior Employees

The not-so-quick demand generators

• C-Suite
• Director
• Executive VP

Grabbing a CEO’s attention is obviously challenging, so what’s the “best time” to communicate? 10 am, Tuesdays (local time) is the best chance you’ll have to reach the C-Suite. 

For US-based C-Level professionals, these were the best time stamps:

• 10:00 AM EST
• 12:00 PM EST
• 9:00 AM EST
• 4:00 PM EST

The magic words for content engagement were…

Be it titles, meta content, email subject lines or even news headlines, the verbiage is the differentiator between “views” and “no views”. The seven most capturing words according to the NetLine analysis were:

1. Who
2. What
3. Why
4. When
5. Where
6. How 
7. How much

In addition to the above, words like “guide”, “report”, and “compare” came across as favoured titles that Executives preferred engaging with. The word “guide” performed well as executives are most interested in “how to” content. You could use these permutations and combinations to create strong content titles that can be click-worthy.

Another key indicator noticed was a huge gap in the targeting of content. VPs were targeted 10.43% of the time but only represented 3% of the “Total Active Audience”. 

The study also found that more than 60% of B2B buyers had technology affinities and that marketers have a strong desire to find the most effective ways to acquire quality leads. 

Content and experience technology peaked marketers’ interest

In light of all the factors discussed earlier, we dove into our pulse survey 2020 data to find more details on technology that marketers were keen on evaluating. 

“Content & Experience” topped the ranking in March, April, and May.

A further drill-down of the “Content & Experience” technology category revealed that these were the top technology:

• Email Marketing (52.1%)
• SEO Technology (52.1%) 
• Content Marketing (45.8%)

AI Spotlight: Growth rate, front-runners, and content marketing

Research and Markets expects the AI market to grow from  $28.42 billion in 2019 to $40.74 billion in 2020. The compound annual growth rate is expected to be 43.39%. The COVID-19 pandemic has surely been a catalyst for the wave of revolutionary technologies. The market is then expected to recover and reach $99.94 billion in 2023 at CAGR of 34.86%.

Quick facts you can’t miss

• According to Gartner, only 1 in 25 CIOs reported applying AI in their business verticals
• Retailers that implemented machine learning for personalization gained 2X as compared to retailers who did not
• According to a McKinsey, only 8% of respondents across industries said their AI-relevant data are accessible by systems across the organization
• Only 3% of an organization’s data meet the quality standards needed for analytics

AI front runners

Gartner’s recently released MQ (magic quadrant) report 2020 highlighted the front-runners of AI. No surprise that Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, and IBM are the yet unchallenged leaders in this space given the fact that each of their portfolios spread across various applications and niches.

AI in content marketing

AI is being applied to various segments of context-aware computing, sales, marketing, customer service, and several other segments. AI also provides capabilities to transform entire content production cycles, enabling marketing teams to make data-driven decisions on:

• What to write?
• Who to write for?
• What is the most efficient way to market content?

Business Insider accurately shared a graph that shows different content marketing segments in which AI was adding value. Of these content performance, audience behavior, and, content opportunities and customer experience were the best areas for application.

Five great ways AI can boost content creation and marketing

• Create topic clusters and help find actionable opportunities
• Maintain a consistent tone and writing style, org-wide
• Create content briefs and outlines
• Navigate changes in search engines and social media algorithms to help tailor content accordingly
• Automate content curation by assisting with content filtering and aggregation

ClickZ readers’ choice for the week

Here’s what our readers have been engaging with the most this week. We’re having AI month on ClickZ and as you can see in addition to the COVID-19 relevant content, readers have been keen on knowing how AI fits martech.

1. Three steps to prepare for the post-COVID-19 business world
2. Marketing strategies during – and after – Coronavirus
3. Five things to ask when seeking alternatives in a cookie-less world
4. The COVID-19 effect on the marketing world
5. How AI fits into the martech landscape