SEO Reseller Tips: The 4 Most Used B2B Content Marketing Tactics

Today’s white label SEO resellers must use or offer the following content marketing tactics: social media, on-site articles, newsletters, and blogs. These are the most used tactics by business to business (B2B) marketers when it comes to marketing with content, studies by reputable marketing organizations found.

According to the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Marketing Profs, social media is now the most popular method to distribute content. Social media (with the exclusion of blogging) garnered an adoption rate of 87%. This is four percentage points higher than on-site articles, which was second most popular among B2B marketers. The third and fourth places were a close content between electronic newsletters (78%) and blogs (77%).

Social media tops B2B content marketing tactics (CMI/Marketing Profs)

Also notable in survey results is the increase in the number of tactics being used. The number is up from eight in 2011 to a dozen in 2012. In the previous survey, articles proved to be most popular.

LinkedIn Dominates Social Media Distribution

Digging deeper, the researchers found that LinkedIn was the most popular social channel for B2B marketers. The professional social network posted an adoption rate of 83% in 2012, up from 71% the previous year. 2011’s top performer, Twitter, was No. 2 at 80%, dropping six percentage points. Tying the micro-blogging site at the bridesmaid spot was Facebook, which also has an 80% adoption rate. The biggest social network posted a 70% rate the previous year.

Google properties rounded up the top five. YouTube was fourth with 61% while Google+ was fifth at 39%. In the previous year, the video-sharing site posted a 56% mark. Social layer Google+, meanwhile, leapfrogged from only 13%. SEO resellers who are also offering social media optimization should pay particular attention on this piece of data.

LinkedIn leads social media channels in content distribution (CMI/Marketing Profs)

Needless to say, these five online networks should be part of an SEO reseller’s social media optimization offerings. In a separate social media study by Social Media Examiner, the importance of LinkedIn was even stressed. Forced to choose only one platform, surveyed marketers opted for, as expected, Facebook (49%), and then LinkedIn (16%).

On Site-Articles, Newsletters, Blogs

(CMI/Marketing Profs)

The three other “tactics” chosen by respondents are also important so they must also be part of any reseller’s product line. The approach and intent may differ from platform to platform but in essence, you will need written content to publish any of these three.

Off-site articles used to be the norm but with Google’s algorithm updates Penguin and Panda cracking down on poor and massively submitted off-page articles (with rich backlinks), marketers now are focusing on generating quality content onsite. What white label SEO resellers need to remember here is that their clients need high quality written content to publish articles, newsletters, and blogs.

Based on Social Media Examiner’s findings, 66% of marketers plan to increase blogging activities this year. Some 62% want to learn more about it. At present, nearly 60% of marketers use blogs for their marketing activities.

What SEO Resellers Should Do Now

From these two studies, we know that there are four types of tactics that content marketers use today. The first is distribution via social media. Business owners and their marketing teams will be needing help in implementing social media optimization. As a reseller, you should be able to extend your hand to clients, especially when it comes to five important social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. These are the social networks that require your attention today.

B2B marketers plan to spend more in the next 12 months (CMI/Marketing Profs)

Marketers and business owners are also expected to use of on-site articles, newsletters, and blogs for their marketing efforts. It is important to check with your recommended white label SEO reseller provider if they provide content generation. If they do, you’ll be in a great position to fill and profit from businesses’ need to create and publish onsite articles, newsletters, and blogs. Should you really expand your offerings to content creation and social media optimization instead of focusing purely on search engine optimization?

Will Marketers Spend More?

Good thing the CMI/Marketing Profs study also asked B2B marketers about their planned spending for the next 12 months. Some 45% answered in the affirmative! This already means 45% of your clients right now are likely to spend more for marketing in the coming months. Another 9% said they will “significantly” increase their marketing budget. Of the total, 34% will retain their exiting budgets. Only 2% said they will spend less this year while 10% are unsure.

Based on these studies alone, you now have an idea on where B2B businesses plan to spend their marketing budgets. As they say, luck is when opportunity meets preparedness. There is an opportunity to cash in on, but it will require that you prepare for it by learning more about the top four tactics used by marketers.  You need to start learning more about these services so that you can begin offering them, initially as an add-on to existing clients and then as a standalone product to new clients.

SEO Reseller Tips - The Definition of the Ideal Modern Marketer

Perhaps the most difficult part of being a white label SEO reseller is balancing parties on two different ends. On one end there's the client, the person who pays you in exchange for services. On the other end, there's the provider, who you pay to give your client the services they need. But here’s how you can make it less complicated. Think about it this way: you're simply dealing with two "customers" with different needs. That’s something a modern marketer can easily do.

But what exactly is a “modern marketer” anyway? Is he simply someone who is able to change his approach based on the kind of customer he is serving, just as how resellers change their approach to bridge providers and clients? Is he someone who prioritizes testing to find out which campaigns actually work? The definition will always change per person, primarily because this is very a subjective topic. But then again, there's a way to quantify what people often qualify. And that's exactly what marketing software company Eloqua did.

Defining the Modern Marketer: From Real to Ideal

Eloqua sponsored a research (conducted by BtoB Research Services) to find out marketers' perception on what a model marketer should be. The survey, which we here at SEO Reseller Tips are lucky to have secured a copy of, asked over 550 professionals who are active in digital marketing.

Among its goals were to define "modern marketing," get a picture of who an ideal modern marketer would be, and where marketers currently stand compared with this ideal marketer. And true enough, knowing your audience and adjusting your approach seem like some of the best qualities needed to become an ideal modern marketer.

Respondents said the "ideal" is composed of 30% targeting. The researchers cited the following as examples of "targeting": knowledge of people involved in the buying process, clearly defining roles and responsibilities, and dynamic profiling to adapt to changing environments. The second biggest chunk was engagement, which accounted for 24%. For instance, delivering the right content at the right medium at the right time is good engagement. Our SEO reseller followers can check the full composition of the ideal marketer below

The ideal Vs. actual modern marketer (Source: Eloqua)

How the Actual Marketer Fares Vs. Ideal

As you may see in the graph above, today's marketers rate themselves as being only 65% of what the ideal benchmark is. For example, they rated themselves only 21% when it comes to targeting, which is what the biggest concern of an ideal marketer should be. They were also short when it came to the second biggest factor, engagement, grading themselves with only 16% out of the possible 24%.

Of the possible 19%, actual marketers are only 12% when it comes to conversion. Researches gave an interesting example of conversion, and frankly one that is often the disconnect in online companies these days: collaboration with sales and delivering high quality leads. When it came to analytics, which accounted for 13% of the ideal marketer's composition, actual marketers were graded only 8%. Marketing technology accounted for 14% of the modern marketer but the actual is short at 9%.

Transformation of Marketers to 'Modern'

What's transforming the "modern" marketer (Source: Eloqua)

The BtoB survey defined a modern marketer as someone who pays attention to the following areas: targeting, engagement, conversion, analytics, and marketing technology. These are the factors that make a marketer "modern." But what exactly led to the transformation of the traditional marketer to a modern one?

The study found that "tracking marketing ROI via technology" is the most transformative factor today's marketers are coping with. It's the biggest change that contributed to the formation of the modern marketer, being rated as No. 1 by 60% of respondents. The surveyed professionals also believe the use of social media in marketing (58%), shift of power from brand to customer (42%), and maturation of demand generation and lead nurturing (42%) are also important changes that "modernize" marketers.

How is Modern Marketing Success Measured?

As the tracking of marketing ROI via technology is a massive concern for today's marketers, it's also not surprising that appeared as a key indicator of marketing success. Researchers asked respondents what measures are most important in gauging marketing success and "marketing ROI" topped results at 35%. This is quite difficult to achieve for businesses that employ various strategies to market their products. On the contrary, those who use purely white label PPC advertising are able to track ROI easily. The ability to influence sales (24%) and conversion rate (16%) also garnered double-digit percentages.

How "modern" marketing should be measured (Source: Eloqua)

Customer retention (9%), customer experience (9%), revenue per customer (7%), and social media metrics (7%) were the other measures for gauging marketing success.

How 'Ideal' Marketers Help Resellers

White label SEO resellers are in essence marketers because they conduct various online efforts geared toward marketing the brand. For example, search engine optimization is of course aimed at landing on the page 1 of Google to that the website can be visible online, and so it can be used to market products. PPC advertising is of course aimed at sending targeted traffic to a sales funnel, and that is essentially marketing. That is why it is important to pay attention to what the modern marketer is up to nowadays.

In a nutshell, the benchmark marketer wants data to see the progress of campaigns and to prove whether his activities are bearing fruit. The use of technology is also crucial. As a reseller, this translates to being able to provide your clients "quantifiable" or "measurable" data on your reports. They also want data that's mined through technology, such as the dashboard technology of white label SEO reseller provider Endlessrise. The dashboard enables your clients to check data about their campaigns just by logging into the system. Remember, it is easier to prove the success of your efforts by providing data to clients and using technology to gather and present that data.