Two (More) Content Marketing Predictions For 2013

B2B organizations, especially big ones, face two major marketing challenges this year. They need more content to feed their campaigns, and they need better content to satisfy rising expectations.

 

These requirements aren’t a well-kept secret. We saw them surface time and again this year in key B2B marketing studies, and they’re one of the most visible themes in our upcoming C4D 2013 Content Marketing Expert Forecast. (We’ll share more details on that during the days to come.)

As we head into the new year, however, I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about what these content-related challenges mean, in strictly nuts-and-bolts terms, for B2B marketing teams. Let’s focus here on two things:

Content marketing teams will specialize. Many B2B marketing organizations are already busy hiring new employees with skills once associated with their companies’ IT departments. This specialization will also transform the creative/content side of the organization; we’re going to see more demand for video producers, managing editors, research directors, blogging-team leaders and other specific job roles.

It’s also worth noting where many of these new employees will come from: traditional publishers and editorial teams. As these organizations struggle, their employees will continue to seek out greener pastures – and they’ll find them in the B2B space.

Content management will take center stage. We talk a lot here (and over at Demand Gen Report) about the relationship between marketing automation and content marketing. Many B2B marketers, however, will pay closer attention to content management system (CMS) technology as part of their core technology platforms.

Many marketing automation systems already offer basic CMS functionality. As an organization’s content production scales up, however, marketers need a bullet-proof solution to create, publish, catalogue, manage and (especially!) repurpose very large asset libraries. These organizations must also find a way to integrate enterprise CMS with their existing marketing automation, sales enablement and CRM tools – and believe me, that’s as difficult as it sounds.

-Matthew McKenzie

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