B2B marketers are always looking to B2C for inspiration. After all, B2C marketers get to have all the fun, right?!
Quick aside: I disagree, but that’s probably based on my jaded intern experiences of calling celebrity stylists, asking about shoe sizes and hoping freely shipped shoes would be worn and promptly photographed by paparazzi.
That aside, there tends to be a lot of talk about how B2C marketers do everything right, especially as it relates to content.
And, indeed, there are usually some general constructs that matter and constrain content in the B2B realm, like buying committee dynamics and time to purchase.
But when it comes to *how* buyers interact with content, I think there is a massive difference between B2B and B2C audiences.
Why B2B Marketers Fall For the Binge Trap
In our B2C lives, we are consumers of content. Take Netflix, for example; I can sit and consume hours of programming (probably Ozark, Schitt’s Creek and Peaky Blinders) and not pay any additional cost or be treated any differently by marketers as a result.
B2B marketers fall into the trap of wanting to be like Netflix.
I don’t want to be exactly like Netflix.
Sure, I want the experience I’m providing to buyers to be Netflix-like in design — that is, ease of use and recommendations. However, I *don’t* want my buyers to just binge my content.
In fact, if someone needs to consume a weekend’s worth of my webinars, they may just be bored.
What B2B Marketers Need to Focus On
Instead, B2B marketers need to focus on conversion. This is the delicate balance of offering content based on behavior — often from a prior experience — but not rushing a prospect to speak to sales.
While I would be flattered to learn that someone spent their weekend watching many of my webinars from 2021 (seriously this sounds like an amazing punishment for my kids… taking this note down), I would be thinking about how we could have made that B2B content consumption experience better for them.
What other items should we have presented to them along the way? Did we offer them the next best content or just repeated themes? How could an ON24 Engagement Hub be used to better curate that experience for someone?
By providing a better B2B content consumption experience — one designed around a prospect’s actual needs and their behavior — we can gather better insights to better judge whether that visitor may actually be ready to talk to sales or simply consume more of our content.
Marketers have so much to be inspired by from our consumer lives. I’m hoping that you can now rethink how you encourage B2B content consumption — with the goal of achieving conversion rather than just binging.