Seismic’s recent purchase of Percolate is the latest evidence of how vital a content operations platform is within any high-performing marketing and sales enablement suite.
Seismic had been a leading player in distributing content to sales teams, but it rightly recognized that what gets distributed is only as good as what gets produced. As it looked to add the critical, upstream capability, it set its sights on the content marketing software vendor, Percolate.
From afar, the choice seems prudent. But there’s a disconnect: Seismic is 100% focused on serving sales teams within B2B organizations. Percolate, on the other hand, has long been focused on social media marketing and brand management for B2C companies.
So, having missed the first pickings in content operations platform acquisitions, Seismic no longer had leading B2B options available to them and bought a company that is not well aligned to its user base.
Percolate makes no bones about its social media marketing focus. Its videos and webpages clearly describe functionality to manage presences on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and the like. Analysts like Forrester rank Percolate for its social media functionality alongside Sprinklr, Spredfast, and other social media vendors.
Posting to Instagram is mission-critical to B2C brands like L’Oreal, Colgate-Palmolive, and Unilever, which Percloate lists as customers (alongside Levi’s, Albertson’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, Petco, Walmart, Boss, LL Bean, Adidas, Guess, McDonald’s, Pabst, Dr. Pepper…). Such social networks are where consumers are, and Percolate built its functionality to enable B2C marketers to engage those consumers.
But while social media plays a needed role in the B2B marketing portfolio, it is only a fraction of the total set of critical channels. B2B marketers need to instead focus on producing not just brief, snackable content assets but also much longer-form assets (such as sales presentations, competitive battle cards) all across the complex, long B2B customer journey. And thus, they need a technology platform that reflects this particular set of challenges.
Seismic, of course, focuses only on such B2B organizations and their sales teams. Certainly, they will look to promote Percolate into their customer base. But B2B organizations should take care: B2B content and the channels it focuses on differs significantly from that of B2C marketers, and one size does not fit all.
B2B teams should be sure that they utilize a tool that is fit for the purpose.