Five highly underrated B2B content trends for 202​3

There are many new B2B content developments to stay on top of in 2023, like AI, neuromarketing, or micro-influencer content marketing, but I don't believe we need to overthink B2B content creation too much - especially at this time of year.

The good news? Not everything in life needs to be complicated. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that can have the most profound impact on how your content is received. Here are my thoughts on the B2B content trends that (still) deserve attention in 2023.

5 industry trends for B2B content

1. Brand personalisation: bringing back the human touch

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking B2B or B2C, there are still people behind every decision. This is why having a distinct brand voice is more important than ever. Customising your brand personality allows your company to stand out. Personalising your brand is important, but you’ll want to make sure that it reflects the voice of your target audience for two reasons:

1. You’re more likely to capture your target audience’s attention and connect with them on a deeper level if you reflect their voice.
2. A brand voice humanises engagement with the target audience, as it reminds people that they’re dealing with more than a company name and logo. I cannot stress this enough: if your audience is being bombarded with corporate speak, they're highly likely just to tune you out.

Consistency is the key element and above all, your brand voice should be consistent across all sales and marketing channels. This includes your B2B customer engagement activities, as well as your website, blog articles, social media channels, and marketing collateral. Consistency in brand voice is what helps earn and retain the trust of potential and present customers.

2. Pay more attention to visuals

Information design is what turns a whole lot of words into something people actually want to engage with. If you're not thinking as much about how your content will be presented, as you are about what it contains, you'll only win half the battle.

As people’s attention spans get shorter, video content particularly is becoming increasingly important in order to gain their attention.

• Video content accounts for 82% of all online traffic. (Cisco report).
• 84% of users are more likely to buy a product/service after watching a video.

Visual content has always been important, but as platforms increase their capabilities (e.g., videos, carousels, stories, reels, shorts) there are now even more ways to engage with your audience.

But you needn’t generate visual content for every platform. Instead, pick a few (stories and reels are particularly hot right now, so hot that even LinkedIn is doing them!) and experiment with ways to incorporate these into your content, and curate those visuals intentionally.

• Microcontent (disappearing stories and tweets, for instance) is an easy way to publish visual social media content. A good example would be to ask your team members to each share a tip that relates to your product/service. Creating a graphic that combines the tip with that employee’s headshot is a good way for audiences to see and connect with the humans behind the brand, while consuming useful content. This is a natural and organic way to use visuals intelligently.
• Alternatively, a simple data visualisation, illustration, or image can be extracted from a larger piece of content (e.g. article or white paper) and used for social media promotion. It’s all about repackaging and repurposing content.

Lastly, learn to play nicely with your designers - work as closely as possible on information hierarchy, layout and design, so that content like white papers, blogs, ebooks, and mailers are scannable, easy on the eye, practical, and deliver maximum impact for time poor audiences.

3. Bring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into your B2B content in a meaningful way

This should include thoughtful inclusion and a genuine acknowledgment of the importance of diversity, instead of generic press statements or social media banners once a year.

According to Deloitte research, the four top areas where brands can demonstrate DEI commitments are: talent acquisition, talent retention, brand messaging, and community investments. Obviously, content marketing can play a huge role in these areas.

The 2022 Global Marketing Trends Report (Deloitte) found that 57% of consumers are more loyal to brands that commit to addressing social inequities in their actions. To take advantage of this trend for your B2B content creation, start with the simple things.

From the images you use on your website and social media content, to the stories you tell about your brand, there is a huge opportunity to showcase your company’s approach to creating an inclusive workplace that prioritises diversity. Doing this is the best way to remain transparent and accountable to everyone invested in your brand, such as your employees and customers.

Whatever you do, don't just pay lip service for social media friendly content. B2B customers are more likely than B2C consumers to read your ESG and annual reports, and notice whether you're actually acting on your DEI goals.

4. Content for customer retention

2023 needs to be the year that B2B businesses grasp the importance of content aimed at servicing their current customers. Why is this important? You most likely already know that acquiring new customers is five times more expensive than keeping your current ones, and increasing your retention rates by just 5% can increase your profits by 95%.

So, make 2023 the year that marketing, sales, and customer service teams come together to produce content aimed squarely at current customers. Do this by producing content that covers topics related to onboarding, training customers in best practices, responding to FAQs, troubleshooting common issues, and more. Then you’ll free up your customer service teams to be able to provide more effective, bespoke solutions to major problems. This will keep your customers happy, and retain their business for longer.

5. Focus on user intent and user experience to guide your content

After you’ve identified your target audience, consider how they’ll interact with your material. How do you want your audience to see your company? What benefit does this content provide them? Understanding user intent and experience is a long-term B2B marketing trend.

When creating content, there are three sorts of user intent to consider:

• Buy, download, or register something, this is referred to as a transaction. (content that supports this is called transactional content)
• When a user types queries into a search engine to find specific information on an industry product or service, this is referred to as navigation.
• Content that is intended for educational purposes, such as information about industry-specific products or services, is referred to as (you guessed it) informational. When developing content, factor in its goal and decide what you want the user to do with the information you’ve provided. In other words, all content must have a purpose, a plan, and an audience.

Of course, AI, neuromarketing, and niche content are still going to be useful to watch too, but if you don't have the basics right, your content strategy is not likely to win.

A version of the article was originally written for Bizcommunity.