Table of Contents
The rise of content marketing has transformed B2B connections. With lengthier sales cycles, the consumer has more time to weigh the pros and cons of many firms before making a purchase decision. However, finding the right balance of excitement and curiosity in what may be a rather dull subject matter is complicated.
Here are some fantastic B2B content marketing examples to get you started on your content marketing journey.
Examples of B2B Content Marketing
Cisco
Cisco is a well-known manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and other types of electronic equipment. However, despite tough Cisco is a famous name, and most individuals have no idea what the company has to offer.
Cisco’s marketing team wanted to separate from the competition by generating truly unique material: a definitive book on internet safety.
The plot revolves around SuperSmart and her quest to close a security breach. The comic ended up being eight pages long, which is remarkable given the number of panels on each page.
Why It Works:
- Simply said, this idea succeeds because it is original.
- Graphic novels have never previously been linked to cyber security. It’s a stroke of absolute brilliance. Comic readers may become so engrossed in the antics of SuperSmart that they fail to see Cisco’s sales pitch. However, because it’s only a few pages long, even those without huge comics enthusiasts are likely to finish it.
Key Lesson:
- What you utilize as content has a significant influence. A social media post does not necessarily have to be a blog entry. When it comes to how you deliver your material, think outside the box.
The Furrow and John Deere
One of the first instances of B2B content marketing may be found in John Deere’s The Furrow magazine, published 125 years ago.
The magazine’s pages were filled with stories about the difficulties farmers face and suggestions for overcoming them. As a result, the articles avoided any mention of John Deere goods and instead focused only on the problems they addressed.
To this day, The Furrow has a readership of over a hundred thousand people and is still being printed.
Why It Works:
Today, The Furrow is read by over 550,000 people in the United States and Canada. Of course, there are some John Deere customers amongst this group of people, but they’re by no means all of them.
According to magazine reading studies, nearly 40% of readers read the whole magazine from cover to cover, resulting in approximately 25 million impressions every year.
Key Lesson:
The most important thing to learn from this is to avoid self-promotional hard selling in your material.
In the end, the goal of your content marketing strategy is not to make a sale but to educate your potential clients about their problems and your solution.
Caterpillar
Construction equipment sales should not be tedious, as long as they are fun!
A Jenga game with 600-pound wooden blocks is demonstrated above by two Caterpillar (also known as Cat) excavators.
Caterpillar is a global leader in construction equipment manufacturing. Excavators and the accuracy with which they can move massive loads are demonstrated in the video above.
More than 7 million people have seen the video as of this writing on YouTube.
It’s still a success, even if the vast majority of viewers aren’t from Caterpillar’s target demographic.
Why It Works:
- What’s so special about this video? Does anyone see a Jenga game using two enormous construction machines? That’s all there is to it.
- The video’s makers had the option of using chess or checkers machines. They could have even produced a film showcasing the Cats’ impressive lifting and moving capabilities, such as moving massive logs.
- They decided to play Jenga instead.
- This is a wise decision on their part.
- Jenga needs a steady hand and precise, controlled motions from everybody who has ever played it. Otherwise, you’ll be eliminated from the contest.
- This clip is practical because it demonstrates just how much these massive machines are capable of.
- Not to mention, the video has an embedded CTA that appears on the left side of the screen when you play it (screenshot below).
Key Lesson:
- Use your product or service uniquely or amusingly.
- Also, wherever possible, utilize concepts that are already well-known (in this case, Jenga).
Hubspot
HubSpot is well-known among those in the marketing industry. Software for inbound markets, sales, and service at the enterprise level is made by this company.
Marketers (and a wide range of other professionals) recognize it because it regularly releases a large number of really excellent marketing tools, many of which are available for free.
Do you want to know what sorts of resources are available?
Take a peek at it…
These include blog postings as well as other types of content such as case studies and eBooks. As for the resources inside each category, you’ll find hundreds upon hundreds based on data-driven insights to help you manage your business more efficiently.
If you’re looking to bring more organic traffic to your business, this is a great strategy (no ad spend required).
Why It Works:
- Both the quantity and quality of the material in HubSpot’s content marketing make it so remarkable. HubSpot’s content marketing is excellent.
- According to HubSpot’s data, which you can see below, users enjoy their marketing techniques.
- 674.9 million dollars in sales were generated.
- Increase in Revenue over the Previous Year: $162 Million (+31.56%)
- 1.9 million Facebook fans and 30.2 million monthly website visits.
Key Lesson:
- Keep things fresh by implementing a variety of content marketing methods.
- Don’t simply write a blog article once in a while. Be consistent. Don’t just compose a couple of eBooks and call it a day.
- In the same way that diversifying one’s investment portfolio is likely to yield better results, doing so will increase the number of leads you receive and the percentage of your target demographic that you appeal to.
Newscred
When NewsCred’s content marketing campaign #ThinkContentSummit launched in 2016, the company created an infographic to go with it.
‘How Marketers Create and Consume Content’ was the title of the infographic.
Why It Works:
- Notice how the infographic looks like one giant GIF animation? That’s because it is.
- Information visuals, particularly huge ones like this, maybe daunting. It’s challenging to keep up with everything that’s being said at once.
- Animating this infographic, on the other hand, adds some variety.
- Because of the accompanying animations, it’s much simpler to understand what NewsCred is trying to say.
- When it comes to content marketing, NewsCred excels in specializing in several types of media.
- They also employ videos, seminars, and newsletters, in addition to infographics.
- In addition, it appears to be functioning effectively for the company in question.
- They claimed earlier this year that content marketing accounted for 40% of their income.
- In addition, they had 2,463 visits for a blog post they wrote about scaling content in October of last year. In addition, it brought in over $950k in profit.
Key Lesson:
- The use of GIFs isn’t limited to communicating with others. Additionally, they have a role in infographics because of their visual appeal.
- Additionally, using dynamic pictures to break up long infographics improves the overall attractiveness of the infographic.
Deloitte
Deloitte is a household brand in the professional services business in terms of research and services like taxation, consulting, and audit assistance.
It’s no surprise, however, that their primary tactic for attracting new business is communicating directly to senior executives.
That’s why the Business Chemistry system was developed—a highly sophisticated and research-backed evaluation that determines your leadership style and provides you with resources to improve and broaden your skillset.
It’s a C-Suite version of a Facebook quiz with a lot more features.
As a result, it was a huge success.
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Why It Works:
- Thousands of professionals all around the world have benefited from the usage of Business Chemistry. According to the website, it’s been up and running for over a decade.
- Additional content marketing assets, including a podcast, large-scale surveys, essays published in the Harvard Business Review, and webcasts, have been born out of the exam itself.
- $21.9 billion in revenue was generated in fiscal year
- Increase in Revenue from the Previous Year: $2 Billion (up 10%)
- There are 7.7 million unique visitors to the website every month.
- People love highly personalized content, which contributes to its success.
- Brain Chemistry makes use of this by classifying CEOs into one of four distinct leadership styles.
- After that, you’ll have access to a slew of additional tools tailored to your particular leadership style.
- The fact that their material spread out to produce new content opportunities is another thing that Brain Chemistry performed successfully.
- They’ve generated many contents from a single quiz, such as blog posts, surveys, podcasts, and manuals. And they all contributed to making the examination even more worthwhile in the first place.
Key Lesson:
- Make your material more distinctive by customizing it.
- Personalization aids communication with your target audience. As a result, you may see an increase in your conversion rate.
Brennan Dunns Email Course
Double Your Freelancing was founded by Brennan Dunn, who is also one of the authors.
This man’s website is for company owners who are primarily freelancers or solopreneurs.
This year, Brennan revised and reintroduced his free email course “Charge What You’re Worth,” which was previously available for download.
Each of the nine courses in this course will be sent through email over three weeks. Therefore, recipients are required to attend three lessons a week.
Six years later, students are still enrolled in the course.
Why It Works:
- As long as it comes within the broad category of “content marketing,” it’s still considered such even when it’s not done the usual way (by creating a blog entry and then pushing publish).
- This is because it makes use of engaging information to motivate consumers into action.
- You’ll be assigned “homework” at the end of each class. This entails filling out a form with a series of questions about each course.
- After that, you’ll receive an email with the answers to your queries.
- Prospective clients have access to an extra (and unanticipated) layer of active learning by using these services.
- To make your emails stand out, Drip recommends including interactive information like this.
- The Save, Your Token ad from Monopoly featured interactive content from Drip’s case study around a year ago.
- And it drew attention from 185 nations across the world, with over 1 billion people seeing it on social media and in print.
Key Lesson:
- There’s a way to make your information more engaging that’s often overlooked: interactive elements.
- The reader-publisher connection is strengthened through the use of tests, surveys, and homework assignments.
- In addition, they raise the perceived value of the information they provide.
Glassdoor
Recruiting and job posting website that is rapidly expanding, Glassdoor allows you to browse through millions of jobs for information on salaries, CEO approval ratings, business benefits, and other factors that matter to you.
A principal aim of their brand is to promote openness in the employment market. As a result, job seekers may use this information to make educated decisions about applying for jobs and locate the appropriate profession for them.
Glassdoor is a beautiful example of content marketing since they develop material around the things that they want their brand to be associated with (in this case, employment) (presumably, transparency).
For example, in their 25 Tips from Top CEO’s eBook, they give insight into the techniques that top-rated CEOs live by to motivate their workers to do better work.
Glassdoor incorporates simple statements from their list of the world’s most highly rated CEOs throughout the eBook.
Additionally, job seekers can peruse this list to understand which CEOs are the most communicative and receptive to employee feedback.
Why It Works:
- This example from Glassdoor is particularly representative of their strategic content marketing, and it is effective for various reasons.
- For starters, they post just enough information on their blog to pique the reader’s curiosity before urging them to sign up to read the book in its entirety.
- Second, they expanded the reach of their material by reusing the article on Slideshare, where it has been seen more than 7,700 times.
- In 2016, Business Insider picked up on this and re-posted the slides on their website, resulting in over 87,000 visits 2016.
- When they distributed the eBook internally through email, they had a click-to-download rate of 70 percent, which was impressive.
Key Lesson:
- To ensure success, ensure that your content is congruent with the problems your firm wants to be renowned for fixing.
- Don’t just throw an opt-in form or a download button for your free eBook up on your website at random.
- Consider adding them in a blog post, with an opt-in at the bottom, to encourage readers to download the eBook from your website.
- Repurpose your content to get the most exposure possible.
Inside Design
Invision is a firm that develops a design application of the same name for professionals.
This program assists designers in presenting and testing their designs for usability without needing a developer to convert the format into a functional website first.
In addition to publishing profiles of designers and designers’ cultures, Invision publishes blogs that position them as thought leaders in the field of design.
In addition, the organization offers efficiency tips and hacks, as well as inspiring blogs.
So far, it appears to be functioning correctly.
For example, this biography of the shoe business Toms has received more than a thousand shares on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Similar posts were published by Invision a few years ago, in 2015, featuring a design from the Netflix studio.
This post received more than a thousand social shares, which was identical to the previous one.
In terms of traffic, Invision’s content approach is outperforming the competition.
Following statistics from the online measuring tool Alexa, the site has been steadily climbing in the rankings on a national and international scale over the past few years.
In addition, did I explain the type of traffic volume this represents in terms of unique visitors?
According to the most recent data from Similar Web, the site has around 7.4 million unique visits every month.
Why It Works:
- First and foremost, reading the information on Invision is a pleasurable experience due to the structure and styling of the content.
- There are specific quotes that stick out and are a little longer. The piece is presented as a dialogue through bolded subheadings, which correspond to the interviewer’s queries.
- There are also several photographs of the entire office area and the members of the Invision team.
- Each “Inside Design” segment offers the human narrative of what design “looks like” at the organization being highlighted, as the designers themselves tell.
- Invision takes advantage of the Law of Confidence. They do this through the creation of extensive design profiles of individuals and businesses that are more well-known than Invision itself. This will undoubtedly increase incoming links and the number of individuals who share the material.
- Every piece of material is produced professionally and is simple to read due to the layout described above.
- Readers are more likely to be drawn in by a diversity of content (Law of Range). Thus, if one form of material does not appeal to a reader, there is a good chance that another will.
Furthermore, Invision’s sales funnel is a knowledgeable sales funnel. - If you haven’t registered to use Invision’s app, an offer at the top of their page and a call-to-action at the bottom right of their page will vary based on whether or not you have.
- Before registration, consider the following scenarios:
- Now, have a look at how it seems once you’ve registered.
Key Lesson:
- When trying to catch diverse portions of a vast audience, it is best to use mixed material.
- When developing your content strategy, consider how visitors to your blog might be converted into paying clients. Take, for example, the clever sales funnel strategies discussed above.
Clambr
Clambr.com was founded by Richard Marriot, who is also its CEO.
This website is dedicated to educating individuals on ranking well in Google search results and earning money online.
Will we begin by looking at the findings for this one right away, shall we?
In 2013, Richard increased his inbound organic traffic by more than 350 percent in only seven days by publishing a single piece of content on his website.
Here’s what it looked like in practice:
First and foremost, there is a great deal of information in this narrative. To get the whole story, you may read Brian Dean’s blog article on the subject, in which he goes into further depth on the subject.
To cut a long tale short, Brian has developed an internet marketing strategy known as the Skyscraper Technique that has shown to be successful.
According to this principle, the greatest, longest, and highest quality content would get the most links, shares, and traffic from search engines like Google (along with a bit of promotion to get the ball rolling).
After reading about this strategy, Richard put up a post in which he asked other professionals in the field to give their ideas for link-building tools.
His practical search terms were “link building tools,” which he hoped would increase incoming traffic.
Following that, he organized the replies he got and turned them into a blog entry, which he subsequently published.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Richard put forth a lot of effort into advertising the piece, which included the following activities:
People who contributed to the article should be notified when it is published, and they should be gently instructed on how to share the content on social media.
He also went a step further by focusing on broken backlink chances that had been overlooked.
As a result, what happened?
More than 3,600 views, more than 2,000 social media shares (in only the first week), and hundreds of inbound referral links have been generated thus far.
And bear in mind that this is an article that ranked #1 for the phrase “link building tools” for several years (it has now dropped to the second page of Google search results). As a result, it continues to deliver a significant amount of inbound traffic to Clambr.com to this day.
There was a significant amount of labor required in advertising this piece to reach the outcomes described above, but most of the content itself was not generated by the author himself in the first place.
And, unlike some of the other examples on this list, it is a freely available resource that is not restricted to those who have chosen to participate.
Why It Works:
- The most crucial reason this campaign was successful was the extensive planning and execution into promoting this piece of content on social media.
- Those who contributed to the piece had a strong motivation to spread the word about it. By promoting the article, they were also advertising themselves along with their ideas and websites.
- That was incredibly thorough and appeared to be a high-quality reference resource on the surface.
Key Lesson:
- Consider using the self-interest element in the development of your content strategy and subsequent advertising plan for maximum effect. People want to market themselves as well as their products.
- Invest substantially in promotion once your book has been published.
- When you go all out like this, you should focus on a particular term that you want to rank for.
- Decide on an issue (for example, “What tools do the experts use and recommend?”).
Asana
Asana aims to contribute to the flourishing of humankind by enabling teams all around the world to collaborate seamlessly. As a result, when the CEO of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation told the Asana team that he could “genuinely state that there are more dolphins and whales alive today as a result of Asana,” the Asana team was taken aback by the incredible things that people can accomplish as a result of the company’s products.
The next day, they had an inspiration: why not cast a spotlight on the essential job their users are doing? So Asana shot virtual teams (containing more than 80 individuals) in the manner of Richard Avedon for this one-of-a-kind ad and then shared their experiences. Whether it’s the Food Assembly, which is working to create a more equitable food system, or the Glassdoor team, which assists people in finding their dream jobs, each story demonstrates how the teams use Asana to work distinctively.
Why It Works:
- In this narrative, the dots are precisely connected between how Asana assists these teams and how these teams assist the world—assisting the brand in achieving its objective one client at a time.
Key Lesson:
- Concentrating on how your business solves problems or improves people’s lives is an excellent method to establish a connection with them. Try these strategies for creating compassionate marketing that demonstrates your understanding of what people want and need in their lives.
Mailchimp
Werrrk was created by Mailchimp Presents (the brand’s in-house studio) before the epidemic took over the planet, and humans could still share the same place. During this 12-episode reality series, three charismatic specialists take on failing small companies and attempt to restore order to the chaos by changing their management style, strengthening their team, and renovating their workplace. It’s like a cross between Queer Eye and Bar Rescue.
Creating unique content that promotes the entrepreneurial spirit is central to Mailchimp Presents’ mission, and this evening is a shining illustration of that. Not only is the brand generating fresh and exciting content, but they are also adding actual value to the viewers’ lives by allowing them to apply the skills learned on the screen to their real-world enterprises.
Why It Works:
- Even though they are following a tried-and-true structure, each episode is just about 10 minutes long.
- These pieces of content are great snackable content because they combine education, entertainment, and inspiration in a way that is entertaining, fascinating, and relevant for their target audience.
Key Lesson:
- We urge every brand to go out and do something different from what they are used to.
Salesforce
It is not always necessary for good content marketing to be show-stopping, ground-breaking, or beautifully crafted. However, although a program like Werrk is fantastic, well-executed basic ideas may be equally as compelling. That’s why we’re digging this series of testimonial films from real people.
The Salesforce Customer360 platform is being promoted on Instagram, and the company is inviting users to explain how the product has benefitted them in 60 seconds or less. From the comfort of their own homes, we witness a diverse group of individuals working in various businesses and sharing their success stories.
Why It Works:
- Allowing others to talk about your product is usually a good idea, but snackable material is incredibly beneficial.
- As a promotional tool for Salesforce, this straightforward style gets right down to business, explains the brand’s benefits, and allows viewers to get on with their day.
- This step alone demonstrates that the brand respects its consumers’ time and is only concerned with assisting them.
Key Lesson:
- This type of microcontent is very effective for social media platforms. Learn how to include it into your content strategy by downloading this free e-book.
First Round Magazines
One other company that does an excellent job of using multiple types of expertise can be found here.
Entrepreneurs and leaders at First Round, an early-stage venture capital firm, understood that there was information among them that was not being shared — knowledge that might be extremely useful to their colleagues — and launched the First Round Review as a forum for such expertise be shared.
Specifically, it is intended to release ideas and knowledge that have been “stuck in other people’s minds,” according to the manifesto.
Why It Works:
- When you liberate all of that previously untapped information, you run the risk of creating the same problem we discussed above: an unfocused mass of stuff that makes it challenging to find precisely what you’re searching for.
- First Round arranged the Review as a collection of nine online periodicals, each focusing on a different facet of starting and growing a business. This is how the Review came to be.
Key Lesson:
- If you’ve ever wondered how to make use of the amount of information available outside your business — as well as within your professional network — here’s an excellent example.
- Don’t be hesitant to approach our entrepreneurs and leaders you’ve met, or even those you simply admire, to see if they’d be interested in collaborating with you on material that includes instructive experiences that your audience would find valuable.
- Sharing helpful, relevant first-person tales fosters empathy, which helps build trust among readers and other stakeholders.
NextView Ventures: Better Everyday
We get a kick out of discovering B2B enterprises with a strong presence on the Medium platform. For instance, NextView Ventures’ Better Ordinary, a Medium site that features “stories, analysis, and tools to help seed-stage companies reinvent the everyday,” is a fantastic example.
Why It Works:
- The question is, why would NextView want to build another blog that isn’t even linked to its main website? Instead, it’s a training exercise in developing off-site content, which is content that you control but does not appear on your website.
- When done effectively, it may provide publishers with a significant increase in discoverability, diversity, and quality, mainly when using a widely used platform such as Medium.
- Because Better Everyday is not linked to NextView’s main website, it gives the organization the chance to experiment with new tones, voices, and tales — all from a range of specialists who may already be using Medium to find and create original material.
- Because of Medium’s built-in capacity for users to suggest, highlight, and search internally for relevant information, the published work becomes much more easily shared.
Key Lesson:
- Take advantage of the availability of content platforms that are not on your website. When it comes to gaining significant attention for your company’s blog, as my colleague Sam Mallikarjunan explains in “Why Medium Works,” it can take up to six months of continuous publication before it acquires considerable traction.
- Your audience is more diverse due to off-site material, attracting visitors who have not discovered your website.
- Medium, for example, helps you link your material with the individuals who are most likely to be interested in reading it. Apart from that, you’ll be developing your magazine on a platform with an existing audience of at least 6.3 million members.
Final Thoughts
This shows that it just takes a little innovation to transform even the driest material into helpful and engaging content that will bring prospects farther down the sales funnel.
