No Such Thing as Content Marketing: How Content Fuels the Entire Buyer’s Journey

4 minute read

Upland Admin

Over the last several years, content marketing has become a household name among the B2B marketing community. There are conferences dedicated to it, careers built upon it, and technology to support it.

At Kapost, we have an entire team dedicated to content and we hang our hat on providing the top B2B marketing content solution—so obviously, we are all about content!

But amidst this growing support and respect for content marketing, our Kapost team has started to grow a bit concerned that “content”, as we know it, has pigeon-holed itself.  We are seeing a trend that identifies content as a segment of marketing that focuses primarily on top-of-funnel activity, such as blogs, social posts, and other easily digestible pieces.

And we disagree—BIG TIME.

Content is at the CENTER of a successful B2B marketing strategy—it is not a subset of marketing, pushing only top-of-funnel assets.

Content fuels the entire buyer’s journey, from a stranger’s very first engagement with your brand via a “how-to” blog, to closing the deal with a powerful user case study, to a renewing customer actively engaging in your online community. The common thread of an all-star B2B buyer experience is the quality, consistency, and relevancy of content throughout the entire buyer’s journey.

The common thread of an all-star B2B buyer experience is the quality, consistency, and relevancy of content throughout the entire buyer’s journey.

In short, content is what marketing does. So, don’t get caught in the trap of thinking content only belongs to your content marketing team. Every marketer creates content.

If you’ve spent five minutes on our Marketeer blog, then you’ve probably seen a reference to “content chaos.” If you’re a B2B marketer, the term likely resonates with you.

At Kapost, we address two primary types of content chaos: internal and external.

Internal Chaos

Internal chaos is something virtually every B2B marketer has experienced. For example, sales loses your pitch deck and makes their own from an older deck.The result? Watered down messaging and outdated product information.

Or how about getting input from your company’s internal experts for white paper content? Like many other B2B marketers, this process feels more like professional cat herding than cultivating professional expertise within your company.

To put it visually, internal content chaos throughout the content lifecycle looks a bit like this:

External Chaos

Like internal chaos, you’ve likely experienced creating ad hoc, reactive content based on urgent cross-departmental needs.

From throwing a blog post together overnight to announcing a new product, to creating a pitch deck for the sales team for an event in two days, to frenetically piecing together a nurture track for a customer upsell campaign—due yesterday—getting cross-departmental alignment can be the source of nightmares.

Creating a mash-up of content from experts and other teams without a unifying theme or approach results in a disjointed customer experience. To achieve a best-in-class customer experience, every piece of content must tell the same narrative, and it must be nuanced to the particular needs and pain points of every participant of the B2B buyer journey.

The struggle to get alignment across teams to create a seamless narrative for buyers and customers results in external content chaos that looks like this: 

 

In the weeks to come, I’ll be shedding more detailed light on how this chaos impacts your teams, prospective and current customers, and ultimately, your company’s bottom line. But I’ll also share insight into my own experience navigating through content chaos, and how we at Kapost address and currently work through both types of chaos within our own quirky walls. I look forward to sharing the ups, downs, and laughs we’ve had along the way to help you become a best-in-class marketing team that provides an extraordinary customer experience through a closed-loop marketing content strategy.

Stay tuned, fellow marketers, I can’t wait to share more with you!

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