Truth be told, a lot of B2B marketing is boring. Sorry, someone had to say it. But it doesn’t need to be that way. B2B, B2C, or B2B2C it doesn’t matter; we’re humans marketing to other humans.
There’s a ton of inspiration you can take as a B2B marketer from B2C brands. One of my personal favorites is Chipotle. Its mobile marketing strategy is second to none (plus, I just love its food). But there’s a second-place you can look for inspiration (hint: it’s a recent episode of a pretty awesome podcast).
Brad Beutler, Content Marketing Director at Terminus, and his team are on a mission to break traditional B2B marketing methods. And it all starts with content marketing and SEO. Let’s take a dive into some of Brad’s recommendations he shared in his Real Marketers episode to spice up your marketing tactics.
Embrace Crazy Ideas
Crazy ideas are like the secret sauce to a killer marketing strategy. They don’t always work out the way you thought, but when they do, they’re gold. They can pour some serious gasoline into your organization’s fire. 🔥
Brad’s team at Terminus has implemented their fair share of crazy ideas. First, there was Break Sh*t, an event designed to break old ways of thinking about B2B marketing...baseball bats may or may not have been used in their trailer to smash cakes and pineapples. Then they used a dumpster fire in their marketing efforts...yes, a real dumpster fire.
But Brad and his team aren’t smashing cakes just for the heck of it. It all ties back to their mission - to not make B2B marketing boring. Just like you shouldn’t write content just to have more content, you need to have a reason behind your crazy ideas.
Remember, just because it is a crazy idea doesn’t mean it has to break the bank. Rumor has it a mobile app development company was very successful in their outreach with baseball cards. 👀
Balancing Fun with Boring
Running on crazy ideas alone will only take you so far. Sure, you might see a huge spike in website views or content downloads, but is it stainable forever? Probably not. You need to balance your crazy ideas with the traditional methods of marketing.
Remember in school when your parents would tell you to finish your homework before you could go outside and play? Marketing is kind of like that. You need to have your SEO strategy planned out and an active blog to be able to get to the dumpster fires and breaking things. The strategy only works when you have all of the ingredients.
Putting Your Content to Work with SEO
Ever hear of the minivan analogy? No? Let me explain. During the episode, Brad admitted to loving the “boring” side of marketing. He stated if he could do SEO all day, he would. But that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. There are some people who dread SEO and would prefer to focus on perhaps a robust video strategy. In Brad’s analogy, he is the driver of the minivan while his team is partying in the back. 🚙
SEO drives the car...if of course, you put in the work.
Brad recommended before you launch, you plan out all of the SEO-related tasks. Set up a landing page for your content so it’s showcased appropriately. Make sure when your content is ready to go live, your sales team knows where to find it so they can promote it on their end. If you do all of those things, SEO will be your ticket to continued promotion.
Create What You Would Want
The last piece of advice Brad shared for all of the content marketers out there is to create something you would want to read. Let’s be honest content marketers, we sometimes get caught in industry lingo or wanting to over-explain everything which makes digesting our content difficult.
Keep it simple. Break up the text into bite-sized portions, add eye-catching graphics, and make it easy to understand. Our attention span is short as it is; don’t add another reason for your audience to ditch your content.
Brad shared even more insights about how to excel at your SEO strategy and couple it with your content. Take a listen to the full Real Marketers episode to hear even more marketing goodness.
Meet with one of our experts to see how easy it is to centralize your product data, manage digital assets, and create digital product experiences. Trust us…you’re going to be wowed.
