How B2C Businesses Choose Social Media Content

Are you as effective as you could be with your B2C content marketing?

Are you producing and sharing the right B2C content your customer chooses to see?

What are the businesses who say they are effective doing differently from the rest of us?

“What is the single most effective content marketing tactic or strategy for B2C companies and why?”

Content marketing used to be a secret weapon used by the smartest marketers. Now it’s the default setting used by just about everybody.

What does this mean for you?

It means you can’t just shoot from the hip anymore.
Now you need to take aim and get strategic.

What is the difference between successful B2C content marketers and those that seem to be lost in the wilderness?

Last week we discussed B2B Content Marketing. Let’s take a look at some recent research into B2C Content Marketing.

This information will help you determine what Social Media Content is best for your business.

CONTENT CREATION & DISTRIBUTION

69% SAY eNEWSLETTERS vs. 72% for B2B

Most B2C marketers, regardless of effectiveness, company size, or other factors, focus mainly on eNewsletters and blogs.

ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS FOR B2C CONTENT MARKETING

How important will each of these content marketing goals be to your organization in the next 12 months?

83% SAY SALES IS AN IMPORTANT GOAL
In B2B – 85% SAY LEAD GENERATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT GOAL

Although many B2C marketers are focused on sales, the most effective among them place more importance on:

Brand awareness (91%)
Followed by customer retention/loyalty (86%)
Engagement (86%)
And sales (82%)

Lead generation and sales, in that order, are the two most important content marketing goals of most B2B marketers, while the two most important content marketing goals for B2C are sales, and customer retention.

Interesting for both Brand Awareness comes in 4th place, but not too many percentage points from the top goals for both B2B and B2C.

GOALS & METRICS

Capture what the business wants to achieve in the next 6-12 months.

How important are the metrics your organization uses?

SALES TOPS THE LIST

The most effective B2C marketers rate website traffic (86%) as more important than sales (84%).
They also view customer renewal rates as more important than do their B2C peers overall (84%
vs. 72%).
B2B – Sales lead quality, sales, and higher conversion rates top the list.

Regardless of how effective they are at content marketing, B2C marketers consistently cite Sales, Higher conversion rates, and Website Traffic as the top 3 most important metrics.

MOST IMPORTANT METRIC B2B CONTENT MARKETERS USE

What is THE MOST important metric your organization uses?

B2C 30% SAY SALES VS. 31% SAY SALES LEAD QUALITY

When presented with the same list of metrics—and asked, “which is the most important metric your
organization uses”—30% of B2C marketers said sales.

The most effective B2C marketers, however, were more equally divided on their top two important metrics: 19% cited sales and 19% cited sales lead quality.

It’s interesting to note that both Sales and Sales Lead Quality are the top for both B2B and B2C marketers. For B2B totaling 54% vs. 43% for B2C.

BUDGETS & SPENDING

Approximately what percentage of your organization’s total marketing budget (not including staff) is
spent on content marketing?

32% IS THE AVERAGE FOR B2C VS. 28% IS THE AVERAGE FOR B2B

B2C marketers are allocating a higher average proportion of total marketing budget to content marketing this year (32% vs. 25% last year). The most effective allocate even more (38%, up from 29% last year).The average proportion of total marketing budget allocated to content marketing last year was also 28%.

B2B marketers whose content marketing maturity level is sophisticated allocate the most (46%).

B2C Content Marketing Spending (Over Next 12 Months)

Both B2B and B2C plan on increasing their market spending over the next 12 months by 50%. The The largest B2C organizations (1,000+employees) are more likely to increase their content marketing budget over the next 12 months (60%).

51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget.
Even 57% of those who are least effective at content marketing plan to increase their budget.

Source: Content Marketing Institute B2C Report

FINAL THOUGHTS

Content is the single most powerful and most versatile tool in the bag of B2C marketing tricks.

If you want to make a success of B2C content marketing, there are several things you need to do.

Identify consumers’ goals: To be a successful B2C content marketer, you have to identify your customers’ goals, as the chart from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise shows.

Content marketing works because it starts with what your prospects need to know instead of what you need to tell them.

That’s why content is the way you succeed in lead nurturing, search, social media, email and outbound marketing. It’s what works.

When consumers buy products, they expect those products to solve their problems.The key question to answer with content marketing is: will my product meet my customers’ needs?

3 Mistakes to Avoid Whether B2C or B2B

Content doesn’t help sellers gauge purchase progress

Even good content can fail to provide a view into customers’ progress along their purchase path, as it’s not designed to reveal, through how customers engage with it, where they are on a purchase journey.

The best marketers design content so the timing of customers’ engagement with it indicates their location on the purchase path.

2. The content focuses on “thought leadership”

Only content that teaches customers something new about their business and provides a compelling reason to change their behavior proves sufficient to influence the decision process.

3. The content overdoes personalization

In short, personalizing content for each of a group of diverse stakeholders, often with differing priorities, amplifies disconnects rather than overcoming them. Thus, an effective B2C content marketing strategy must anticipate those disconnects and present a broader vision that allows purchasing group members to see their role in a collective solution.

About Blair

Blair Evan Ball is a Social Media Coach and founder of Prepare1, a company that works with businesses, individuals and non-profits. He is a former executive with a Fortune 50 company, and his national division did $1Billion+ in sales annually.

Blair has written three e-books: Facebook for Business Made Easy, Facebook Pages for Business Made Easy, and WordPress Blog Setup Made Easy.

Blair also educates, trains entrepreneurs and business professionals how to amplify their brand, increase revenues, and raise more funds.

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