Creating Engaging Content for Humans: Five B2B Brands That Nailed It

We touched on this earlier in the year with the story, “Why Your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy Wants—and Needs—to be as Dope as B2C.” Now, let’s go deeper and explore some great examples.

While ninety-three percent of business-to-business (B2B) marketers are creating custom content, nearly half (forty-seven percent) struggle to create engaging content. Marketers are right to focus their efforts on exploring ways to increase the engagement potential of their blogs, white papers and social media efforts.

Ninety-one percent of B2B buyers prefer interactive or highly visual offerings. For brands in technology, manufacturing and other B2B industries, adding an innovative twist can be more challenging than it is for their business-to-consumer (B2C) counterparts.

These five brands prove that it’s not impossible to create fascinating, engaging or visually rich custom content around products or services that are typically perceived as “boring.”

1. General Electric

Products manufactured by General Electric (GE) include incredibly high-tech, cutting-edge medical technologies that aren’t naturally very accessible to the average consumer. Their “short films” series does a brilliant job of adding a human element to their products by showcasing the stories of real-life patients suffering serious diseases who have benefited from GE’s technologies. One such example is “Fire with Fire,” a heart-warming showcase of a six year-old cancer patient.

2. Cisco

Cisco deals in innovative network technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. Their focus was portrayed in an engaging way in the “Internet of Everything” video, which took a humorous look at how sensors could shape the homes of the future.

3. IBM

Technology giant IBM wasn’t shy about staking their claim over big data technologies. Their content marketing repertoire includes The Big Data Hub, a robust website dedicated to publishing the latest big data news, technology overviews and research reports. This engaging, prolific site has become a community for their target customers.

4. Caterpillar

There’s no possible way to make heavy-duty construction equipment interesting and fun, right? Caterpillar proves otherwise in their “Built for It” series,” which includes custom hashtag #BuiltForIt. In the “Stack” video, viewers can feel the tension building as Caterpillar’s machines compete in a giant game of high-stakes Jenga.

5. Intuit

Intuit is likely best known for QuickBooks, although their products include a wide range of software options for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Intuit’s content marketing includes a wide range of interactive infographics, which inform and delight their customers. One example, their “Mobile Payment Trends,” allows users to engage with a series of slides that display beautifully visualized data.

In the B2B space, creating engaging content can be a continual challenge. However, these five brands prove that it’s indeed possible to create fascinating, visually rich content around even the most “boring” topics. They prove that it’s not always simple, but it is possible, to make sensors, medical technology and small business software truly shine.

For more on how to eliminate the gap between B2C and B2B marketing, and really inject an emotion story into your brand, download our free white paper, “The Emotional Journey to Better Content.

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