Articles

The impact of the novel coronavirus on B2B Content

by David Jones Digital Marketor
The impact of the novel coronavirus continues to be enormous around the world. With the onset of extended furloughs, the closure of brick-and-mortar stores, and a possible recession, B2B marketers are more determined to keep their heads above water. Having a profitable content strategy has become more difficult because a content marketing agency has very limited options to explore today.

Not being able to operate in the physical world has turned our focus to the internet - which is now filled with online activities 24/7. The disturbing increase in internet usage has put marketers in a small predicament as they address COVID-19 through content marketing.

Needless to say, this is a rough time for marketers to understand how the market changes in real time. To understand this better, we compiled a more accurate, vendor-agnostic analysis of how content consumption has disrupted the B2B space.

Packed with content ideas, insights, and concrete consumer data, the goal of this article is to give marketers a clear view of the volatile market, to understand how to churn out efficiently. content, try a possible content marketing effort to navigate their online business to new standards. Let's dive.

Work from Home
Americans spend more time online than ever before. As more of the world has remained indoors, online activities have reached unprecedented heights and remote work is gaining momentum. Mentions of working from home reached its peak on March 13, showing some readiness to close early.

We have become more dependent on solutions that allow us to learn and work from home. This dramatic shift, from standard working from our offices to operating from our homes, has also brought with it the need for technological input. 23.1% of work from home conversation takes place around WFH technology and related matters, which mainly fall into these three categories:
  • The new technology needed to work remotely
  • The technology required to be contacted
  • Cybersecurity risks

Many meetings happen in Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Teams. Brands invest heavily to ensure that their processes and workflows are updated so that collaborations can proceed seamlessly from afar. Cybersecurity is an important part of this equation because employees need the right tools and solutions to stay productive while protecting confidential company data.

Zoom has seen a significant surge in its use since the lockdown. It has also become a popular tool for socializing. As a result, the company recently had to address security and privacy concerns when it was reviewed by the New York Attorney’s office for privacy and data security practices.

Web, Search, and SEO - What Will Your Audience Enjoy?
With events and conferences canceled, it appears that marketers are more focused on increasing the top of the marketing funnel to help retain the target audience and expansion efforts rather than following new deals.

According to a survey done by Chief Marketer’s 2020 B2B Marketing Outlook, the key elements of a content marketing strategy that has proven to be more effective in moving prospects out of the sales funnel are articles and blog posts. (55%), reviews, and customer testimonials (43%), and whitepapers (38%).

A new Centerline Digital report looks at how VPs and managers versus C-level executives respond to different content marketing strategies for making their decisions. C-level executives have shown that it takes 21% more time to consume content than managers, while VPs eat content the fastest-typically within 24 hours. The report also ends infographics as the highest rated content type the highest rated funnel, with 59% of senior executives preferring videos in text format. Visual content has been recognized as the most engaging content on the internet nowadays.

Your website is a major source of moving your business right now because it is one of the first places for you for content creation. Originality and your thought leader ideas can definitely be placed on your website or your target audience to read. Customers spend more time on websites and interact more with online businesses than last year. Therefore, you should prioritize the focus on education rather than promotion. In any form or any type of content, you decide to publish on your website, it still remains an integral part of your content marketing strategy. Hubspot’s benchmark data indicated a significant increase in average website traffic, with a 13% increase in March compared to February. Weekly chat volume via onsite chat and Facebook Messenger also rose 5% after March 16 compared to the previous Q1 global weekly average.

Instead of focusing on brand awareness and increasing promotions for your products and services, focus on nurturing a lasting relationship with your customers by identifying where you can help them.

How Do Sales and Marketing Teams Reach Prospects in This Crisis?
The 2020 Chief Marketer B2B Marketing Outlook Survey highlights that B2B marketers use email, search engine results, and content marketing to find leads with the highest ROI. However, the biggest challenge to generate leads is to find the persona of the consumer, engage with targeted prospects (57%), and find converts (48%). While companies were conducting an email marketing campaign, open email rates rose in the month of March. This change from traditional marketing to date can be attributed to corporate communications carrying COVID-19-related messages and expects the metric to change over time.

The chart above shows that average email marketing volume climbed 29% in the week of March 16, while open rates jumped 53% in the same week. Throughout the month, open rates rose 21% overall. However, the sales team has difficulty establishing engagement with their sales content asset. Hubspot benchmark data shows that companies sent 23% more sales emails with great content on a weekly basis starting the week of March 16th.

Response rates to those emails began to plummet from the first week of March, with an overall decline of 27% from the month of February. The data shows that chat volume has increased somewhat in the last two months; experts believe this number is higher.

Conversational marketing can help a potential customer and sales engage in real time because it also automates the lead routing process. Now is the time for you to swoop and respond to customer queries, so your business can serve a potential customer and existing customers even if you work remotely.

Another content marketing strategy that a content marketer should also invest in is chatbots to answer customers faster, automate lead qualification or book meetings, and meet the increasing demand for in customer queries.

Some of the major industry search trends ranked charts include e-commerce (toilet paper near me, hand sanitizer near me, facemasks near me, thermometers and sanitary wipes), information health and wellness (coronavirus symptoms, home remedies, hand washing techniques, antibacterial essential oils, antiviral foods, antiviral herbs), and social media.

Food and recipe websites also saw an increase of 22%, while travel -related searches declined by 46%. Some useful SEO / SEM tips for marketers:

  • Keep a regular check on your analytics data
  • Stay on top of Google Trends with great content creation
  • Reduce search fees and settle for day-to-day management
  • Maximize your email reach
  • Continue on the path of SEO and content marketing
  • Do not promote sales or deals with coronavirus
  • Help and support your community
  • Start thinking about Q4 initiatives from now on
  • Focus on customer support and aggregation rather than acquisition, depending on your industry

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About David Jones Committed   Digital Marketor

612 connections, 24 recommendations, 1,480 honor points.
Joined APSense since, October 6th, 2020, From La Jolla, United States.

Created on Mar 31st 2021 06:23. Viewed 299 times.

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