2014: The Year Social Content Dominated B2B Technology Marketing?

The irrepressible rise of social, and four more trends that rocked our copywriting world last year

Hi, we’re Radix Communications.(Pleased to meet you.)

Our team writes marketing content for top B2B technology brands.Like Oracle, Salesforce.com, Sprint and Veeam.

We work with some of the UK’s top B2B agencies, as well as a number of tech brands directly.

In 2014, we wrote copy for 716 content projects, for over 30 different brands.

(That’s quite a lot of content.)

This presentation is about the trends we noticed when we crunched the numbers on those projects.

We wondered how our own experience stacked up against research done by the Content Marketing Institute and others into the types of content marketers said they were creating in 2014.

So we’ve crunched those numbers, too.

So what changed for us during 2014?

1. We worked on more content types than ever before

But are marketers experimenting more with content marketing or just producing more content?

This hasn’t

changed over the past 12

months.2

However...70%

of B2B Marketers are

now creating more content than they did previously.3

1 & 3 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Bud-gets, and Trends—North America, p. 19 and 172 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Bud-gets, and Trends—North America, p. 9

Research from CMI and

MarketingProfs shows that marketers

use 13 different content tactics, on

average.1

What was our experience?

Here at Radix, we worked on 25 different content formats for clients in 2014 – up from 15 in 2013.

New for us in 2014 were: ad copy, direct mail, press releases, workbooks, branded magazines, slideshares, parallax scrolling sites and webinar slide decks.

Here’s how our 2014 work stacked up against previous years

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

2014

2013

2012

In 2014, Radix saw a 36% increase over 2013 in the number of client

content marketing projects we worked on.*

* Based on analysis of 716 individual projects across 31 different client organisations in 2014.

2. Social media continued to dominate our order book

…with social-native content enjoying a huge

boom

For the

previous two years, usage had

remained at 87%.5

4 B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, p. 205 B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, and Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, pages 5 and 9 respectively

Industry research shows that social media

content saw a 5.7% increase in usage over

the past year, with 92% of B2B content marketers now employing it as a

content tactic.4

What was our experience?

Our social copy work has grown every year since2012 and is by far the most common type of project we work on here at Radix.

In 2014, we saw a swing towards social-native content. Our clients aren’t just using social as a means to an end (getting people to click through to something) but as a valid content medium in its own right.

So we’ve been writing copy for lots of social-native content designed to be consumed on social media platforms (and liked and shared).

In 2014, social media dominated our output

Types of content we wrote copy for in 2014, based on 716 individual content projects for 31 B2B technology brands.

0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00%

Social Media

Case StudiesInfographics

White PapersAd Copy

Video ScriptsBrochures

Datasheets

ebooks

Blog PostsAccount Based Content

Articles

Webinar Slide DecksDirect Mail

Web CopyPress Releases

Newsletters

Slideshares

Checklists

Survey ReportsAdvertorial

Workbooks

Branded Magazine

Comic StripsParallax Scrolling Sites

We’ve seen a

steady climb in social media

copywriting work, with a 41% rise between

2012 and 2014.

3. Visual content is still in high demand

But do infographics and video still dominate?

6 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, page 19

CMI/MarketingProfs’

research shows that video is the most popular visual tactic, used by 76% of B2B marketers, while

illustrations/photos are used by 69% and infographics

are used by 62%.

There was a 22%

increase in usage of infographics by marketers in

2014.6

The range of content used remained mostly unchanged in the wider B2B community - here are the main tactics used in 2014, with 6 out of the 14 main tactics being visually focused.

Illustrations/photos are a new category for the report by CMI and MarketingProfs.

At Radix, we

saw demand for infographic copy decrease by 52% in 2014 and video scripts decrease

by 49%.

What was our experience?

Despite the decrease in infographic and video work here at Radix, overall demand for copy for visual content was high. 2014 was the first year we wrote copy for slideshares, webinars and parallax scrolling websites.

And four of the case studies we worked on in 2014 were video case studies.

4. The strange case of the B2B blogs

Who’s writing them for marketing teams?

7 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, page 19

… blogs are now used by80% of B2B marketers.7

After recording

a minor dip in blogging during 2013,

the latest CMI/Marketing Profs benchmarking

survey reveals that…

Radix saw a

59% reduction in the number of blog

posts commissioned from us by clients

during 2014.

Meanwhile, here in sunny Cornwall…

Blog posts were in the top 3 content types Radix worked on in 2012. By the end of 2014, they were just about ready to drop out of our top 10.

Could it be that B2B marketers prefer internal subject matter experts to write authoritative posts, due to Google’s recent algorithm changes? Or could they be outsourcing to cheapo, blogs-by-the-yard content farms*? We’re not sure, but…

* Radix is not a content farm. Or if we were, we’d be one of those farms where everything is hand-reared, milk-fed and 100% organic.

8 Holger Schulze - B2B Content Marketing Report, page 16

... industry research from Holger Schulze suggests that blogging is the most

outsourced B2B content marketing format, second

only to analyst research reports.8

5. Traditional content ‘not dead’ shocker

Is it possiblethat the death of the

white paper has beenover-exaggerated?

9 The CMO Content Marketing Show, 10 December 2014

“[...] I haven’t really seen an actual white

paper in quite a few years.”Sylvia Jensen, Director of EMEA Marketing,

Oracle Marketing Cloud9

During the past year,

research by CMI and MarketingProfs

shows thatwhite paper usehas increased by

8%.

And over the

same period, the use of case studies as a content tactic has also increased

by 8%.10

10 B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, pages 19, 9 and 5 respectively

From 2012 to 2014,

Radix has seen a 229% increase in client

demand for white papers and a 26% lift in requests for case studies in 2014,

after a lull in 2013.

What was our experience?

In 2014, Radix’s work on

ebooks almost halved from 2013, but...

Despite their hype

over the last 3 years, industry research shows that ebooks have

yet to be adopted by 40% of B2B

marketers.11

11 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, page 19

White papers? Surely everyone’s doing ebooks nowadays?

…our white paper work is increasing year on year.

Despite rumours of its demise, could it be that the white paper is in fact healthier than ever? And could that be because white papers are actually extremely useful for guiding buyers to a decision?

(We think so.)

12 Eccolo Media - 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey Report Volume Two

When asked by

Eccolo Media to rank the top 5 content assets

they found most influential in buying decisions, only 7% of B2B technology buyers

ranked ebooks in their top 5...

But white

papers were in the top 5 for 33% of survey respondents.12

So that was 2014 – but what does 2015 hold for B2B copywriters?

There’s still room for plenty of change.

Content will go non-linear

Fiona Campbell-Howes, MD, Radix Communications

“Based on our experience over the past few years, the traditional white paper isn’t going away any time soon. They’re too useful as a format to help tech buyers make a decision. But I still expect to see marketers experimenting with new formats in 2015 – including more non-linear, user-driven narratives, more account-based content, and

more humour.”

“We expect (and are planning) a lot more interactive content. Things like graders, quizzes and online calculators – that deliver value and collect great data about the prospect. I also expect more rich web experiences and hard-working content that lives on a web page,

with little, sugar-filled feeding troughs for when the Google spiders visit.”

Richer interactive experiences for B2B audiences

Doug Kessler, Creative Director and Co-founder of Velocity Partners

“For us it’s less about how you say it in 2015, and more about what you have to say. Today’s canny customers can see through artfully

produced content. Don’t start with ‘We want to do a slideshare/infographic’; start with ‘What do we have to tell the world?’ Having

said that – in a crowded marketplace, go for the element of surprise in 2015. Experiment with new formats. Surprising content that makes

people smile will work well this year.”

It’s time to surprise people

Sonja Jefferson, Managing Director and Founder of Valuable Content

Sources

Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America

Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America

Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs - B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America

Holger Schulze - B2B Content Marketing Report

Eccolo Media - 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey Report Volume Two

About Radix

Radix is a copywriting agency for the content marketing era. We work with marketers to develop programmes of content that guide customers through every stage of the buying process.

We specialise in the B2B technology sector, with expertise in enterprise hardware and software, networking and electronics.

We’ve written for innovative tech companies large and small, including Sprint, Fujitsu, Gemalto, Civica, Salesforce.com, Veeam, Experian, Oracle and Spirent.

We have a monthly podcast explores trends and issues in B2B technology copywriting. You can listen to it here.