While most B2B marketers use some form of content marketing to explain their products to business customers without sales pitches, less than half say they’re effective at it, Oracle marketing expert Kristin Farwell says.

“If we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty,” Farwell said at Oracle Corp.’s recent OpenWorld 2014 conference in San Francisco.

Content marketing, she noted, is “the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent.”

Yet while 93% of B2B marketers say they engage in some form of content marketing through various forms of online as well as offline channels, including e-commerce sites, e-mail and social media, only 47% consider their programs effective, Farnell says.

Farnell, who works as a marketing specialist at the Oracle Marketing Cloud Academy, which helps businesses work with Oracle’s suite of marketing products, suggests B2B marketers use content to address the following common questions their customers are likely to ask when figuring out how to address a marketing problem:

Is what I’m experiencing a trend in the industry?

How are others dealing with this problem, and what are my options for dealing with it?

Who can help; what do I get with their solution, and what results have others seen from the solution?

How much does the solution cost, and how do I know it’s the right choice?

Can this provider meet all of my requirements; have other customers been satisfied?

Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly trade magazine Internet Retailer.

 

 

 

Favorite