A Google search on “Are white papers dead?” brings up a long list of articles and blog posts. The same is true for the printed book. A recent blog post stated that eBooks are overrated for B2B content marketers. Email is in a “fatal” decline said Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz in a Wired article. Oh, and by the way, did you know that the blog is a goner as well?
What’s going on here? As someone who develops B2B Marketing content, all of this talk of the death of many of my favorite content types might seem rather alarming.
Clearly, all of these tactics are hardly on their last legs. The Eccolo Media 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey Report found that 49 percent of B2B buyers consume white papers; 29 percent read blog articles; 24 percent peruse eBooks. A whole raft of statistics show that email is far from moribund. What’s happening is that more content channels are available. Each one gets less use. And that it’s more important than ever to choose the right tactic for the job.
A Decline in Usage
While reports of the death of these tactics are highly overrated, these proclamations wouldn’t gain traction if they didn’t contain a grain of truth. The use of all these media is declining. For example, according to the Eccolo Media survey, even though white papers remain the most consumed media type, their usage has been falling year over year: from 62 percent on 2011 to 55 percent in 2012 to 49 percent in 2013. Case study utilization has fallen from 50 percent in 2011 to 45 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2013.
The question is what do these numbers mean? Rather than look at what’s going on with each tactic, you need to look at content marketing as a whole. The number of B2B marketers using content has gone up—from 91 percent in 2013 to 94 percent in 2014—and 73 percent of marketers are using more content than they were a year ago, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
What’s going on is that the content produced is being spread out over more tactics. Years ago, before the term “content marketing” was even in vogue, the primary content-marketing tactics were white papers, brochures, case studies, press releases, customer publications, and placed articles. Today, a plethora of types of content are now available that never existed before, such as social media, blogs, web slideshows, micro sites, mobile apps, and much more.
Another factor that goes into the “death” predictions is the fact that tactics get overused. If everyone is using a particular tactic in a given year, it loses its novelty and thus loses its effectiveness—at least in the short term.
The Solution
The solution is take a contrarian approach—and to carefully match the medium to the message.
Contrarian approach—When a medium is overused, it can lose its effectiveness. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad medium. It just means that for the moment, people are temporarily tired of it. And then ultimately, marketers back off on using that tactic. One approach to choosing content is to take a contrarian approach. If everyone is using eBooks this season, look to produce a less hyped medium, like print publications.
In the post “6 Ways to Make B2B Content Marketing That’s Better than the eBook,” Jay Acunzo suggested that instead of creating eBooks, it’s better to create content assets that help people do things easier and faster. He recommended looking at all the steps in a particular process and giving the readers ways to help do it better, whether that’s providing a bunch of free clip art to make it easier for people to create their own blog posts, or create workbooks, project and reporting templates, and apps.
While these are great ideas, all manner of specialty publications have long included versions of the tactic of giving readers tips and tricks and how-tos for doing things better, easier, and faster.
Utility approach—A second approach is to continue to use whatever tactic you like; but to think long and hard about what’s the right tactic for the job at hand before you use it. Don’t for example use video for the sake of video. After all, video is expensive and difficult to produce. Use video when you need to show someone how to do something complex or when you want to make an emotional appeal.
So, if you’re concerned about choosing a content tactic, start by putting approaches that are not overused on your list. Consider putting a new spin on an old approach. And then before you make a decision, carefully match the advantages and disadvantages of the approach to your marketing goals.
In my next few blog posts, I’ll be looking at different types of content and when it’s best to use each one.
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