Top B2B Content Marketing Trends of 2023

Trend – a word that needs no introduction! Anything can trend, be it in fashion, or sports,  entertainment or even marketing! And why not? If it’s engaging, it’s trending! The same is true for  B2B content marketing. Every year the industry is abuzz with new trends and best practices. Wondering what’s trending this year? Read on to find the trends that are shaping the content marketing arena and the brands that are leveraging them

But first, let us see what’s your opinion on the matter. Take this poll on the possible content marketing trends of 2023 and find out if your opinions match ours!

1. Internet of Things

Consumers no longer want to stay limited to the screen to consume content. No wonder we have adapted ourselves to interacting with devices and new technologies like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa! Internet of Things is virtually affecting almost all industries and is having a tremendous impact on traffic.

According to Statista, there were 8.6 billion connected devices in 2019, with the number expected to grow to 15.4 billion in 2023 and 75.4 billion in 2025. This is reflected in the projections for the revenue it can bring.

According to a research, the revenue from the Internet of Things is expected to increase from $892 billion in 2015 to $4 trillion in 2025.

All this data indicates that IoT will have a huge impact on businesses, especially where marketing is concerned. Here are the 5 ways that IoT will improve marketing ROI. Easy exchange of sales data, Better CRM, more predictive social media, and better CTR, to name a few!

IoT is surely a gigantic wave of new possibilities that are all set to change the face of marketing as we know it.

2. Live Videos

With so many platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram coming up with the Live Videos feature, it is no surprise that customers and marketers alike are aware that it is the next big thing!

According to Facebook, users spend 3x more time engaging with live videos as compared to older videos that are no longer live! With reactions, comments, and viewer numbers shown in real-time, you can prompt responses by asking and answering questions in your broadcast. This makes it more interactive for the customers. 

Many top brands have started going live with their events. Take Starbucks, for example, back in September 2016, their first live event was held in Jamaica on the occasion of National Voter Registration Day. This brought attention to Starbucks’ involvement in the community. Starbucks representatives also encouraged viewers to send in questions to promote engagement, thus making the event successful.

Live video is also a great tool for breaking industry news and showcasing new technologies. Space X manages to accomplish both using live webcasts of rockets launches. Because of the compelling visuals, these videos are inherently viral. However, Space X also creates a sense of camaraderie around the brand, as people from across the world are able to participate in historic milestones together.

When you consider that 4X as many consumers prefer to watch a video about a product than reading a sales copy, it’s easy to see why live videos are ideal for showcasing products.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is not something new. However, this does not diminish its value as a smart tactic to reach out to a larger audience and market your content through an influencer. Influencer marketing boosts loyalty and trust among your customers. As it is an industry leader who’s reviewing your product or sharing a recommendation, it is quite reliable. 50% of millennials trust product suggestions from influencers. This drops to 38% for product suggestions from celebrities.  

Let us share Pepsi’s influencer marketing campaign success story with you as an example. Pepsi aimed to increase its sales at Walgreens, so they created limited edition packaging and the #SayItWithPepsi hashtag. The purpose was to sell especially created emoji bottles exclusively found at Walgreens to the customers. So, they got influencers onboard who created about 200 original Pepsi emojis and shared the content with their followers.

The shared content included original blog posts, photography, and branded video content. It created a lot of buzz and soon their sale at Walgreens increased drastically! The campaign was topped off with two Twitter parties celebrating #SayItWithPepsi and the Pepsi Emoji bottles.

The #SayItWithPepsi campaign ended up receiving 46 million impressions and there were more than 50,000 engagements with campaign content.

Related Read: 10 Instagram Influencers

4. Interactive Experiences

Interactive Experiences are all set to revolutionize the content marketing trends globally.

Content forms such as quizzes and calculators easily engage your customers by making them a part of the narrative.  It’s interactive (as the name suggests), it sells and trust us here, it is indeed becoming the next big thing!

Let us show you how this Millennial Brand Got 1000+ leads in under 1 month using Interactive Experiences. Thomas Edward, Founder, The Professional Wingman, works with millennials to get them the love of their lives. Thomas created an interactive quiz on the Outgrow platform which helped people learn more about their dating capabilities – how dateable they are! The quiz sold like hot cakes. By the end of the campaign, they had nearly 9609 visits and over 2782 leads, plus nearly 270 social shares.

Still not convinced? Here’s another example! VenturePact, a software development firm, partnered with Outgrow to build a calculator to help their users find out the estimated cost of building an app. . Within 2 weeks of launching a calculator, traffic at VenturePact increased by 15% and their conversion rates were going as high as a whopping 28%. It also brought in more than 11,000 leads as the calculator went viral. 

5. Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is one of the best online marketing strategies that you can invest in. Therefore, it is another content marketing trend to watch out for in 2023. 

Guest blogging brings with it both personal and professional benefits. One might think that it is a waste to invest in writing for someone else. But in fact, it is a good way to engage with more people and reach out to a larger audience. Guest blogging is also a  great way to improve your SEO and visibility on Google. You can always put up a link back to your website. 

The most famous example of a company which had success with guest posting is, of course, Buffer. When the social media scheduling app was new to the market, Leo Widrich the co-founder wrote approximately 150 guest posts. He managed to grow the customer base for Buffer from zero to 100k customers within 9 months. Read more about Buffer’s success story here.

Related Read: 11 Benefits of Guest Blogging

Did we miss out any major trends? Let us know in the comments below.

Cheers!