In 2022, should B2B content marketers focus more on advertising?

Many B2B marketers focus on ‘content’ rather than advertising, but is that the best thing to do in 2022? For the answer, columnist Samuel Scott interviewed the person who created the term ‘mental availability’, professor Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

In 2005, Rand Fishkin – then the chief executive of SEO software platform Moz – published the first edition of their beginner’s guide to search engine optimization. To this day, the material remains one of the best examples of what has become known as ‘content marketing’.

For years (and even still today), I would refer people to the e-book whenever they would ask how to learn about ranking in organic search results. The guide has remained extremely popular over the years – it even ranks higher than Google’s own resources for many related search terms – and has undoubtedly gained many customers for Moz.

In advertising terms, Moz was ‘top of mind’ for me and others whenever people would ask about learning SEO. Moz’s senior executives and the company blog have been known throughout the industry for having some of the best ‘thought leadership’.

But in 2022, producing such content – a popular substitute for doing traditional brand advertising – might not be enough to build real ‘mental availability’ in B2B categories.

Based on the increasing B2B interest in brand that I saw in 2021, I foresee that more teams will ask themselves the following question this year: Is constantly publishing informational material and trying to become a thought leader actually a good way to get remembered in future buying situations?

The theory behind ‘content marketing’

For those who might still be unaware, ‘content marketing’ is when marcom departments operate similarly to media companies and regularly publish informative material (often blog posts, online guides and explainer videos) that would interest their target markets. Then, the goal is to convert readers into email subscribers, blog readers and customer leads.

The mantra that everyone repeats is ‘thought leadership’. The prevailing wisdom is that if a company’s ‘content’ is seen as the best in industry, then its product will be viewed in the same way. So, the idea is to publish, publish and publish – or perish. To the practice’s adherents, brand advertising is indeed ‘dead’.

In the past, I have stated that ‘content’ is the worst word in marketing because, to me, ‘content marketing’ is often a waste of time and money as well as a cliche that has turned everything a person puts online for any reason into just a ‘piece of content’.

But I must admit that it is popular. Just before the holidays late last month, Evan Hughes, the vice-president of demand at Refine Labs, discussed the newest buzzword of all on LinkedIn: “Demand generation focuses on ungated (free) content distribution to build brand/solution awareness with a targeted ICP [ideal customer profile].”

‘Demand generation’ just sounds like a jargon-laden description of ‘advertising’ to me. Regardless, Hughes’s post shows the problem that has always plagued the B2B marketing world. People always discuss using content to build ‘awareness’, but never the ‘mental availability’ that B2C people have cherished for a long time. (There has always been somewhat of a civil war between B2C and B2B within the marketing industry.)

What is mental availability?

According to research published last year by LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and EBI professor John Dawes, roughly 95% of companies in a category are not in the market for a B2B product at any given time. For example, a business might purchase payroll software only once every five to 10 years.

What does that mean for B2B marketers? First, lead generation and sales teams should focus on the 5% that are in the market. Second, most other marcom activity should build and refresh memory links to the brand among the other 95% to be remembered by them when they do want to buy in the future. Basically, it is creating ‘brand-relevant memories’.

That latter activity is building ‘mental availability’ – making a brand become ‘top of mind’ specifically during future buying situations. It is more than just ‘awareness’. A B2C example: when I view a supermarket shelf with 20 hot sauce brands, I am aware that they all exist. But I only consider buying either Frank’s Red Hot or Sriracha. All 20 brands are physically available, but only those two are mentally available to me.

Read the full article in The Drum.