Content is king. But how do companies ensure their content sticks out in today’s cluttered marketing channels? We asked Pia Müller, Co-Founder and CEO at forsch&wild.

Pia, everyone talks about the importance of content in B2B marketing. Why is that?
 

Also in the B2B sector, competition is getting tougher. There are fewer and fewer unique selling points for products and services in the B2B sector. So much has already been tried and testes across many marketing channels. Brand experience is also becoming increasingly important in the B2B sector. Therefore, unique communication strategies and unique content with distinctive tonalities are needed in order to prevail on a communicative level. Many products and services - especially in the B2B sector - require a lot of explanation. Since the B2B customers of the product or service providers also tend to retrieve information mostly online, they have to be able make sense of the content they find there. It doesn't help to "just" have a website or an online presence.

One of the biggest challenges is to really understand the target group of the respective providers. B2B audiences are particularly diverse - while B2C is all about emotion, B2B contacts are not only individuals with personal interests but also function as representatives of their companies, brands and corresponding corporate interests. This means that you have to reach the emotions of the recipient while also paying attention to the qualitative and quantitative challenges behind the B2B role.

What's more, content is an incredible lead magnet. Especially in B2B, lead generation is essential for subsequent marketing and sales processes. There are insanely smart methods here, such as gated content.
 
 

A lot of marketing departments struggle with content marketing and creation. What are the main challenges you see in your daily work with clients?

The main problem of content marketing is the content creation itself. Unfortunately, many companies just do things without strategically planning them first. Therefore their ad hoc reaction along the lines of "we urgently need a blog article on topic X", often overrules a strategic long-term approach that would be much more promising. Only those who have a content strategy will succeed with their content. A common objective is for example to generate leads. Reacting here and there is not goal-oriented. It needs clear strategies as well as selected instruments and channels based on that. Implementation should follow afterwards.

Another point that is related to the first one: content planning itself. Once the strategy is in place and the instruments as well as channels are defined, the content itself must be well planned. In the best case, this means that the content is planned at least roughly six months in advance – twelve months would be even better. If you stick to short term planning, you are diluting your strategy and waste precious resources, such as time.

In a lot of companies, capacities are much underestimated. Especially in B2B marketing, content marketing is a topic that runs "on the side". It is "covered" somewhere in the team. In order to develop a good strategy and implement it consistently, it is essential to rely on sufficient resources and to create capacities accordingly. The topic can be covered by dedicated marketing specialists in the team, a separate department or, for example, a third-party agency.

One of the biggest misconceptions of content marketing reads: "It works only if it works immediately". This is to the detriment of the good reputation of content marketing. Many content marketing measures only achieve success in the long term. Results only become visible after a certain amount of time. But that doesn't make the results any less valuable. I think this still needs to get through to B2B management teams in particular: content marketing is not a sprint, content marketing is a marathon. And who would deny the marathon runner his athleticism? Exactly.

How can marketing and communications managers overcome these challenges?

It is essential to define a clear strategy, clear to dos and clear responsibilities. When seeking third-party support, the focus should be on long term goals rather than quick solutions.

Tools for better knowledge management can also help to pick up teams and approach challenges more productively. In my experience, workshops where everyone works together to identify pain points and solutions lead to strategies having a more stable foundation with more commitment from all sides.

But the most important factor in facing challenges: allocate time. Content marketing is admittedly a time eater, but it is one that's worth it. So it's essential to schedule that time in order to benefit from it later.

You founded your own content agency. Can you tell us more about your business and why clients love working with you?

At forsch&wild, we specialize in the strategic and operational implementation of internal and external content with a focus on text. We develop unique brand languages, individual namings and claims, draw out great strategies and write texts that suit our clients and their customers.

We want to support and empower our clients to authentically and honestly present their brands. We don't like unnecessary embellishments; we focus on honest communication. Our goal is that all communication content aligns with what the service or product can fulfill later on. For us, brand experience only works when companies and brands communicate honestly and at eye level with their target group. At that, we always take the matter at hand, but never ourselves, too seriously. And our customers love it.



What also sets us apart is that we are female owner-managed. A point that is particularly important to us in this day and age. Our agency is led by two women who have a fresh perspective on communications and who know about the importance of emotions in marketing. At the same time, we bring a lot of expertise from the fields of copywriting, digital marketing, sociology and brand management. We also have a very diverse team that add different industry expertise. This allows us to find very individual solutions for each client. You could say that we do needs-based content marketing –  we don't rely on tried-and-tested strategies and wordings, but address each challenge of our clients as well as the respective brands and target groups individually.

Pia, thank you so much for this interesting interview and insights on content marketing and creation. To our community, feel free to connect with Pia on LinkedIn!