B2B Content Marketing: Should You Use Traditional Marketing Methods?

B2B content marketing continues to have a vast creative palette of options, with no single method being the clear winner. While you might hear plenty about the power of blogs and videos, the truth is that you need various marketing content in order to properly reach the greatest amount of people.

You'll probably hear more than a few experts say that you should stick with digital outlets for all content marketing efforts. What might surprise you is that traditional marketing methods have never really gone away.

Integrated marketing has some universal agreement in how it brings success when combined with other avenues beyond the web. We tend to forget about the world outside of the internet, or even anything other than inbound marketing to capture buyer attention.

When using marketing integration with your content, what other avenues should you pursue to capture B2B buyer attention? As always, information on your products is what B2B buyers look for, and you still have great ways to present that in traditional forms.

COMBINING OFFLINE MARKETING WITH YOUR ONLINE CAMPAIGN

Don't ever write off offline marketing. It's a strong way to integrate with your online marketing campaign. While you should always focus on content in blogs, ebooks, videos (and be sure to focus on formatting for mobile devices) placing content in print is still just as effective under the right circumstances.

Since B2B marketing hinges on information about the products you sell, you can still do the same kind of informative content in a brochure or a small guide at trade shows. Even if print has different methods of proliferation, you can potentially reach as many people as you can online by way of surprise.

Yes, most people don't expect a piece of marketing in print anymore, simply because B2B buyers now expect to find everything online. Imagine the surprise of your own B2B customers finding a colorfully printed brochure in their physical mailbox that details the strongest attributes of your products.

When they see the efforts you put into print, this sense of surprise will entice them to take you more seriously. At the same time, you can still provide other information online to create a strong call to action.

The same applies to any printed information you provide at a trade show or a public event you set up yourself. Those who receive printed information will likely peruse it later at home rather than skim it, as they likely would with online material.

You can use a bit of psychology here to play up the idea that online content doesn't always hold attention like a surprising printed piece can.

INTEGRATING YOUR MEDIA WITH PAID MEDIA

This particular integration method in marketing works symbiotically, which is the entire point of integrated B2B marketing. Most attention goes to media you own, like blogs, your social media accounts, or content on your website. With this emphasis, it misses the point that outside advertising you pay for helps bring attention to the marketing content you create yourself.

Don't discount the power of traditional advertising, especially for the B2B industry where it's not usually common. Again, surprise is a major factor, as well as a more compelling visual method to check out your website and other marketing content for details.

Whether your advertising is in print or on TV, make sure you promote your website, so the media that you own gets seen. Advertising only allows a small taste of what you offer, yet it's also the fastest method of gaining attention over slowly nurturing relationships and conversations on social media.