5 B2B Content Marketing Trends
Thought Leadership: A Content Trend That Helps Build Customer Trust
The decision-making process for B2B customers is typically longer than for individual consumers. This process can take from several months to even years. Since the buyer represents an entire organization or business rather than an individual, this entails greater responsibility when making purchase decisions.
Therefore, B2B marketers need to "build trust" with customers. Specifically, marketers must not only inform prospects about how their company's products and services solve particular needs, but also help them feel confident in their decision-making. This confidence stems from customers' assurance that you thoroughly understand your field, possess professional expertise, have extensive experience, and can help them address emerging challenges. Moreover, you can contribute strategic insights and forecast trends to help them stay ahead of the market. These factors are precisely what make new customers choose your company over competitors and what retains existing clients.
This is also why many industry leaders in the B2B segment like Google, McKinsey, or Kantar focus on developing "thought leadership" content and establishing themselves as "thought leaders." This content demonstrates that you truly understand your work; you are an expert in your field; and the lessons and advice distilled from your practical experience help customers believe you are capable of recommending optimal solutions and supporting them in making critical decisions.
According to a LinkedIn study, only about 50% of "thought leadership" content creators (i.e., B2B marketers) believe their content effectively builds customer trust, while this figure rises to 83% when the same question is posed to their customer groups (actual decision-makers).
In the same study, only about 17% of B2B marketers believe that "thought leadership" content impacts business results (through increased company referrals). Meanwhile, this percentage is twice as high (37%) among customer groups and reaches 41% among leadership groups (C-suite Executives).
This indicates that many B2B marketers have not properly evaluated the value and business impact of the "thought leadership" content they create.
Identifying "Blockbusters"
"Blockbuster" refers to attractive, effective content that successfully captures attention and builds customer trust, allowing marketers to continue leveraging it while phasing out bland, ineffective content. So how do you identify a "blockbuster"?
When implementing B2B Content, marketers typically develop different types of "thought leadership" content. These can be categorized as follows:
Short-form updates: This type of content primarily provides information and periodic updates, usually focusing on current affairs rather than depth (such as newsletters or blogs). Therefore, this content doesn't require significant production time and can use pre-made templates that repeat periodically.
In-depth analysis (long-form): These are detailed, comprehensive pieces such as insights, case study analyses, trend forecasts, and actionable recommendations that customers can implement. This type of content usually requires significant investment in research and development time.
Series: This type of content can be concise or in-depth but is typically compiled and divided into different parts spanning a certain period. This format helps create habits of anticipation and following among customers. For example, if you're interested in a company's "thought leadership" content, you'll subscribe to their newsletter to receive notifications when new content is released.
By tracking metrics such as views, downloads, and shares, marketers can analyze and measure customer interest in different types of content to determine which are the "blockbusters."
Google's "E-conomy SEA" report, Kantar's Brand Footprint ranking, and Vietcetera's "Have a Sip" show are examples of "blockbusters" that marketers can reference.
To ensure high quality and success probability, "blockbusters" require investment in production, sometimes consuming considerable resources (budget, personnel, time), but the business opportunities they generate typically deliver returns many times greater than the investment.
Investing in and Optimizing Blockbusters
When planning content production for a year, businesses can focus on leveraging and repurposing previously successful "blockbusters."
After identifying "blockbusters," what should marketers do next?
While B2C often requires continuous content production to keep pace with changing consumer preferences, B2B experiences fewer such fluctuations. From my experience working in market research, approximately 60-70% of content in consumer trend forecasts from 2015 remained valid in 2020, with only 30-40% requiring updates.
Therefore, when planning yearly content production, instead of investing resources in creating entirely new content with uncertain effectiveness, businesses should focus on leveraging and repurposing previously successful "blockbusters." This approach optimizes ROI.
Consider this example from a 2017 LinkedIn report on Walt Disney's Film Release Schedule:
You can observe that 80-90% of the broadcast schedule consists of blockbuster films that have been successful for many years, with only about 20% being newly released films intended to identify future blockbusters. This is Walt Disney's formula for sustained success. B2B marketers can apply similar principles.
Here are some suggestions for leveraging and refreshing "blockbuster" content:
Develop new installments or versions periodically—monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Build multiple series with the same format (motif), changing only the theme, such as season 1, season 2, etc.
These are two of many approaches to leverage and enhance "blockbuster" content that I have implemented. These strategies have proven effective not only in increasing brand value through greater recognition and trust but also in generating revenue by creating new business opportunities and enhancing current customer loyalty.
In the next section, I'll discuss another approach to leverage and optimize "blockbusters."
Replicating Blockbusters
Beyond creating new stories and installments for "blockbusters," diversifying formats also increases their value and maximizes reach across target audiences.
Consider "Star Wars" in the B2C segment as an example. With its success, "Star Wars" expanded beyond films into games, toys (Gundam, Lego), and merchandise (stationery, etc.). The characters have become influential figures with impact across fan communities. When new media formats emerge, established blockbusters like "Star Wars" have tremendous potential for adaptation to engage and attract target consumers. Specific examples include creating a metaverse virtual universe simulating the Star Wars world or developing Star Wars characters in virtual reality.
Similarly, in B2B, marketers can repurpose initial content ideas—articles, blog posts, or reports—into various formats such as videos, podcasts, infographics, or even develop them into books, webinars, or in-person events to connect with potential customers.
An important consideration when replicating "blockbusters" is maintaining consistency in imagery and messaging across all touchpoints: website, social media, email, in-person events, press releases, and all platforms. Rather than completely changing imagery and messaging, marketers should retain key elements of a product or campaign and maintain them over time to ensure consistent brand identity in the customer's mind. When customers encounter these familiar elements, they immediately associate them with your brand.
Additionally, marketers must ensure regular, consistent frequency of appearance. By ensuring these two factors—consistency and frequency—your brand is more likely to be top-of-mind when customers need related products or services.
Distributing Blockbusters
The final aspect concerns distribution channels. One of the most effective touchpoints is through people, specifically the company's own personnel. This is particularly important as personal branding receives increased emphasis, resonating with LinkedIn's growth and development—a platform where businesses and experts connect to exchange expertise and personal perspectives.
While B2C marketers are familiar with influencers, B2B operates similarly. This touchpoint is particularly effective because psychologically, individuals trust recommendations from peers or experts more than corporate advertisements (which are impersonal and unattributed). When that person can verify their identity on social media, or has established influence and a substantial following, their credibility increases further. Therefore, having at least one influential person with strong personal branding provides an advantage in amplifying the company's image and building value and trust.
The era of marketing exclusively through corporate accounts has ended; now, any company employee can serve as an effective touchpoint worth developing, especially key figures. When they share "blockbusters" along with personal views, perspectives, and evaluations, they add value to the content and help the company reach more people through their professional networks. Receiving newsletters or messages about a company from a specific individual's account (business owner, executive, or sales professional) has become commonplace. This approach helps increase email open rates and engagement, thereby improving conversion opportunities.
I increasingly observe individuals within companies developing their personal brands and becoming representatives for their organizations, similar to what I'm doing with this article.
Even when not explicitly promoting the company in the content, through my thought leadership posts, people learn about my company, and if interested, they begin exploring it further.
With regular visibility, when someone needs marketing consulting, multi-channel campaign implementation, or communication effectiveness measurement, they're likely to think of me and Mad About Marketing Consulting—my company—first.
Through this article on five B2B content marketing trends, I hope fellow marketers can extract valuable insights to apply to their work. For a comprehensive overview and deeper understanding of B2B marketing approaches, marketers can explore my B2B Marketing courses available here.
Mad About Marketing Consulting
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