What is B2B Content Marketing

These days, there are so many terms floating around – content writing, content marketing, digital marketing. Throw in the B2B angle and we can raise the confusion up a notch. Let’s try and allay the doubts and dig more into B2B content marketing today.

Content Writing versus Content Marketing

To get this, we need to first understand what content is. Here’s what my guru, Wikipedia, has to say:

So, content can exist in various forms, such as text, images, videos, audio, etc. However, when you want someone to write about their experience in your resort on their travel blog, what you are looking for is content writing. Content marketing, on the other hand, is the use of any form of content for marketing your products. So, Dhinchak Pooja is a content marketer, but definitely not a content writer! If you go by the name strictly, this could include marketing through various media, such as internet, TV, radio, etc. But the term is widely used to define content marketed on digital platforms on the internet.

Life of content writers and content marketers

Content Marketing versus Digital Marketing

The difference is more unambiguous in this case. Content marketing is but a subset of digital marketing, the latter being a much wider umbrella that includes content marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click and pay per impression advertising, affiliate marketing, email marketing, online PR, etc. Each one of these service offerings needs help from content creators and content marketers, but involves much more, such as adding keywords to webpages’ HTML code and creating records in online directories, to name a couple.

So then…what is B2B Content Marketing

I love examples. So I’ll explain with a few. Think of the last ad you saw on Facebook. Here’s a screenshot from my FB page.

Best Coffee Gadgets content marketing

Who do you think is going to buy a coffee maker? You’re right, an individual. Maybe for themselves or their family. But it’s a direct consumer being targeted here (we’ll ignore the 6 startups that may be interested too, because that is a miniscule number). That makes this ad part of a Business-to-Consumer or B2C content marketing campaign. Notice how the title and captions are of the click-bait kinds.

Let’s do the same thing with LinkedIn, which is known to be a professional platform. Here’s the latest ad on my feed.

B2B Content marketing on LinkedIn

Totally different. Now here’s a campaign asking me to enter a campaign for some award. Obviously, this is targeting someone who works in a marketing agency. Thus, the audience is another business, making this a Business-to-Business or B2B content marketing campaign. Notice how this is a much less colorful ad with straight and simple text. No click bait.

B2B content marketing usually tends to be more serious and to-the-point. Virality isn’t so much of a consideration as much as other parameters are – such as clicks, leads, or in this case entries.

Want to know more about B2B content marketing? Get in touch and we’ll have a chat. Or watch this gif.

What is B2B content marketing