In one of our recent webinars, Brightvision’s creative team presented five brave content ideas for B2B tech marketers. The webinar idea originated from a single problem: a lot of B2B marketing is boring. How do you get rid of boring content? Keep reading to find out! The on-demand version of the webinar can also be seen here.
Why isn’t B2B marketing engaging?
The simple answer to this question is: because we try to “act like a business,” meaning that in B2B marketing there's a tendency to use an overly formal tone and complex language. In general, B2B marketing sometimes lacks emotion, engagement, and curiosity — because sometimes in B2B we forget that we’re actually talking to humans.
B2B marketers also are more risk-averse. A 2019 survey found that 48% of B2B decision-makers think B2B advertising is boring. The same study also showed that 81% of business buyers say they would make better decisions if B2B advertising did a better job of engaging them.
Another piece of research, carried out by the Content Marketing Institute in 2021, revealed that only one-third of B2B content marketers believe that their efforts have been successful the past year. Therefore, we can clearly detect a need for B2B marketing to ramp up and be more creative.
"[A] 2019 survey found that 48% of B2B decision-makers think B2B advertising is boring"
What do we mean when by "creative"?
In advertising and marketing, we can define creativity as the combination of originality and relevance:
- originality = unexpected, novelty, divergence, newness
- relevance = usefulness, “on strategy”, “on brand”
"[Creative] marketing is a combination of originality and relevance"
A benefit of implementing a more creative approach is that creativity activates curiosity. Creativity stimulates curiosity and pulls attention. The reader then wants to satisfy their curiosity by figuring out the mystery. If they can, they receive a quick mental reward, which translates into good feelings towards the ad and the brand.
Don’t be afraid to get creative in your marketing!
• Look for opportunities to use metaphors that enhance your USP.
• B2B might stand for business to business — but your marketing should focus on human to human!
• Creative content actually performs better than safe content, so it pays off to stand out a bit from the crowd.
Five creative B2B marketing ideas for 2022
1. Explainer video
An explainer video is a short online marketing video that explains your company's product or service. In general, explainer videos focus on the "how" instead of "why" you should buy the product or service. The format of the video can be live action, animated, or a combination of the two.
"[According] to a Cisco report, video will account for 82% of all online traffic by 2022 and 84% of users say that they're more likely to invest in a product or service after watching a video."
When to use an explainer video?
When your product or your service process is a bit too complex or too abstract to explain within words, for example, like software that is non-tangible. So when you want to explain something a bit more abstract, then you can benefit by using an explainer video.
Also, if you have a very brand new technology or a product that the audience is unfamiliar with, then you might need more time to explain the new technology that you want to sell. Explaining the technology through a video can help you be more time-efficient. You can then instead spend more time convincing your target audience to buy your services or your product.
This can apply to older products as well, to stand out from the crowd and your competitors. Then you can try to use an explainer video to make the visual more interesting, instead of just stating facts about the products. In an explainer video, you will convey a concept, set the tone and manner which might make you a bit more special compared to your competitors.
Also, when wanting to communicate heavy statistics or numbers that are might not be very interesting to read, an explainer video can be useful. By having an explaining video, you could add some appealing visuals instead of just stating plain text or numbers that might not be as engaging to the audience.
What are the benefits of making an explainer video?
• Provides an in-depth explanation of the product and increases user engagement. First, an explainer video buys you more time to provide a in depth explanation of your own product and that could increase your user engagement, because then the audience can have more time to understand and digest the content. For example, in LinkedIn ads you only have 12 words on it, that is not enough to explain your idea. So explainer video might be more useful there, in order to get more time to explain.
• Can be embedded on a website for easy access or uploaded to YouTube to reach a wider audience.
You can upload the video on your own website for easy access, or even upload to YouTube. By doing so, it also saves you some advertising budget. Instead of having just an ad for a short period of time, having an explainer video that can last longer and then reach a wider audience.
Best practices for explainer videos
• Short videos under 2 minutes. as the video is getting longer, there will be more likely your viewer will drop off.
• Use a strong CTA and encourage users to take the next step
• Script: try and stick to less than 100 words/minute of video.
Examples of explainer videos
Zendesk Tales of Customer Service - The structure of an explainer can clearly be seen in this example, where a problem, agitation, and a solution are clearly presented.
2. Interactive website
What is an interactive website? It is actually just like any other website that you have come across, but this one tells a story.
An interactive website also allows for more engaging interactions with the user instead of just allowing them to simply click or scroll. Interactive websites usually offer a lot of different interactive features, such as:
- personalization
- live chat
- popups
- clickable maps
- user-submitted content (stories, photos, videos, and blogs)
- surveys, quizzes, or forms
- games
These features allow the users to engage, be amused, and collaborate with the website. By making the website more interactive, user-friendly, and personalized, you can actually achieve a longer-term relationship with your audience.
"[By] making the website more interactive, user-friendly and personalized, you can actually achieve a longer-term relationship with your audience"
Example of interactive website
The following interactive website, which can also be seen live here, is a great example of how a website can be interactive and engaging. There is an extensive amount of data that has been turned into animated elements, infographics, clickable objects, and so on. The originality of the layout engages the user to click around and interact, and brings about certain surprising elements while scrolling the page.
Why use an interactive website?
When you’ve got a lot of compelling information to share, a small widget just won’t do the trick. With an interactive website, you can share a wealth of data and fascinating information without worrying about losing the audience’s attention.
• Drives more engagement (less boring = more engaging). An interactive website makes the entire user experience more fun. When it is less boring, you will drive more engagement from your target audience.
• Increases conversion rate by providing more conversion touchpoints.
• Decreases bounce rate by giving the user more interaction options.
• Can boost your SEO too: longer time on site, etc.
• Creates a more personalized user experience.
• Engaged users are more likely to maintain a long-term relationship with websites.
• Can create lasting positive effects in users’ minds — which improves brand awareness and reach.
3. Podcast
Are customers only attracted to visuals? No! We are going into another era of marketing methods. Podcasts have become a mainstream B2B marketing channel.
According to a survey, searches for Spotify Podcasts are up 740% since mid-2016. And 53% of professionals whose companies leverage content marketing find podcasts or other types of audio content effective for engagement and brand awareness. Also, 80% of those professionals plan to invest the same — or more — budget into audio content and podcasts in 2022 as they did in 2021.
"[53%] of professionals whose companies leverage content marketing find podcasts or other types of audio content effective for engagement and brand awareness"
Why make a podcast?
- It provides value to prospects and customers for free.
- Thought leadership! Podcasts are a great way to show your expertise. You can tell the audience what your expertise is and convince them to trust you and you can gain brand trust from your target audience by doing so.
- Can create brand awareness and build lasting relationships with your audience.
- Invites interaction with your listeners.
- Reinforces your marketing message without being too ‘Sales-y’.
- Producing a podcast doesn’t cost a lot of money.
- Podcasting allows you to draw in new customers with a free value offering, warm cold leads over time
4. Comic book
"Comic books? Really?" - you might think.
Instead of using an e-book over and over again, with a lot of text and numbers, how about making a comic book? Comic books are actually a great way to tell a visual story and make use of metaphors. There are a lot of different characters and stories within organizations, and you might find one that fits with your USP.
If you think that: "yeah, maybe that's a little bit too risky". But maybe not, because there's a lot of people doing that too.
"[There] are a lot of different characters and stories within organizations, and you might be able to find one that fits with your USP"
Examples of B2B and marketing comic books
Why create a comic book?
- Comic books are a great way to tell a visual story and make use of metaphors.
- They're also a great way to bring some emotion into subjects and themes that might lack emotion.
- All a successful comic book story needs are three things: truth, suspense, and human connection.
- Visuals enhance the story and make it easier to retain information.
5. AR (Augmented Reality)
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that lets people place digital content (images, sounds, text) in a real-world environment. Nowadays, most of us own a smartphone, and we can make use of that by using AR. By using a real-world setting with an easily accessed smartphone, both the virtual and real world are enhanced with the help of AR.
"[By] using a real-world setting with an easily accessed smartphone, both the virtual and real world are enhanced with the help of AR"
If you think AR is a little bit too gimmicky or just a temporary trend, then you might be wrong. Actually, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are currently developing — or already have developed — AR technology.
Examples of AR:
Facebook/Meta – Nazare
- Mark Zuckerberg shows the future of AR with new glasses the company is developing under Project Nazare.
- The glasses as the company’s “first full augmented reality glasses” is a work-in-progress.
Microsoft - HoloLens
- Using multiple sensors, advanced optics, and holographic processing that melds seamlessly with its environment, these holograms can display information while blending with the real world.
- On February 21, 2020, Latin America’s first surgical procedure using see-through holographic lenses was performed.
In conclusion...
- Creative marketing attracts more attention, awareness, and affinity than boring marketing.
- B2B doesn’t have to be boring — and in fact, it’s more effective when it’s not boring.
- The trend in B2B marketing for 2022 is engagement and interactivity.
- New technology like AR is closer than you might think it is!
- Look for ways to use metaphor, storytelling, and tech in your marketing in a way that fits with your brand.
Those were the five content ideas we wanted to introduce to you. So when you start thinking about your next new marketing method, how about considering doing something new?
Notes and references
- https://envato.com/blog/marketing-trends/#marketing-tech
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13162-018-0131-1
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-trends
- https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/10/b2b-power-content-marketing-research/
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