By: Shawn Young
Everyone knows that there are fun B2C content marketing campaigns — think Old Spice, Doritos, or Coca-Cola. But B2B marketing campaigns can — and should — be fun, too!
Readers, even in B2B marketing, are more interested in valuable and relevant content, and less interested in being marketed to (especially in the obvious “hit me in the head” sort of way). Even if the the now-clichéd phrase “content is king” weren’t true, a great-looking microsite or eBook should engage and inform, and not just tantalize mental tastebuds.
With 91% of B2B marketers using content marketing in some form or another as a way to share information, there’s a lesson to be learned as to how doing it well actually works.
Here are three great examples of how B2B marketing campaigns have worked better than expected.
SunGard: Move to the Cloud and Survive a Zombie Attack
IT professionals at SunGard helped to create awareness with the IT crowd by comparing migrating to cloud storage with surviving a potential zombie attack. It was a very successful take on the Zombie Apocalypse campaign that was began by the US Center for Disease Control in 2009, where the idea is that if you can successfully survive a zombie apocalypse, you can make it through anything. “Security is hand’s-down everyone’s number one concern.”
Xerox: Get Optimistic
Not long ago, Xerox partnered with Forbes in a campaign effort to connect with 30 top account holders. What resulted was a magazine full of business tips called the Chief Optimist. After its release, 70% of the targeted companies interacted with the microsite — a nearly 400% increase over Xerox’s previous venture. The magazine also helped to add 20,000 new contacts, over 1,000 scheduled appointments, and resulted in $1.3 BILLION in pipeline revenue.
Limelight Networks: For Dummies
Playing off of the widely-popular ...For Dummies books (as in Dungeon Mastering For Dummies), Limelight Networks implemented its own education-based campaign that focused on the highlights and lowlights of companies and their digital presences, by featuring its very own version: Digital Presence for Dummies. The quite successful campaign garnered exposure through almost 10,000 social media and press release views, and resulted in almost $200,000 worth of sales opportunities.
Content marketing comes in a variety of forms, including email, eBooks, white papers, infographics, and (our speciality) blogs! Don’t have the time or the money to kickstart your very own content marketing campaign for your business? Let us help you out and do it for you. For additional information on how we can fill your blog, make your life easier, and get you on track to being the next Xerox, feel free to contact us any time.
Editor’s note: This blog is an example of the kind of writing you can get for your blog. The only thing that’s different is that it has the name of the writer. For your blog, you can say you wrote it. That’s fine with us. We’re happy mutts. Click here for more explanation of this series of posts. — Scott
