Happy New Year and welcome to year three of the pandemic 2022! We’re hoping you and your loved ones are healthy and well (even if that means screaming into the abyss every now and then). Over the holidays, we reflected on last year — what we learned and what helped us grow — and created a list of B2B tech marketing resolutions for 2022. (You’ll be happy to know none of them involve a plant-based diet or a Peloton bike.)
Our B2B tech clients have amazing products and brilliant subject matter experts. But sometimes they aren’t sure what content to produce and how much (and how to measure it and what to do with it after it’s published… the list goes on!)
The world of B2B tech marketing is shifting and changing, especially as the pandemic drags on and we begin to embrace hybrid work and fewer in-person events on a longer horizon.
In our experience, clear communication — both within our own team and with clients — is the gateway to success amidst change. With that in mind, here are Megawatt’s five resolutions for the year ahead.
We Won’t Produce Tech Marketing Content Without Purpose
We established a rule in 2021 that we’ll abide by in 2022: We must solidify a client’s purpose for content (overall and piece by piece) before we produce anything.
The 2021 B2B Content Marketing Benchmark Report from the Content Marketing Institute revealed that 79% of B2B marketers now utilize a content strategy. Some of that content is great; some of it is pretty bad. But there’s a lot of it.
One thing we never want to do in a content-saturated world is throw more irrelevant content pieces into an echo chamber.
So, before we start creating, we need to know how content aligns with our clients’ business goals. Do you want to boost brand awareness? Enable your sales team? Drive conversions (what kind, how many)? All of the above? If you don’t quite know, we’ll help you figure it out. But by mapping out a content strategy first, we’ll be able to deliver the most successful content for your brand.
We’ll Help Reduce B2B Tech Content Clutter
Similarly, in content marketing, it’s a hard lesson to internalize, but less is often more. Bombarding your target audience with hastily written blog posts won’t set your business apart from the competition.
You’re better off producing fewer, but more useful, posts. We’ll help you glean insights from your own data and subject matter experts that can turn into content that’s unique to your brand. Sometimes clients need to update – or even delete! — old content that’s reached the point of diminishing returns and then stop covering topics that are no longer delivering traffic, engagement or leads.
That said, there are times when it makes sense to go whole-hog on a giant SEO project that will lead to the production of a lot of content. As long as quality is always the first metric, that strategy can absolutely be a good one under the right circumstances.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but whatever the case, we resolve to help clients reduce content clutter in 2022 and concentrate on content tailored for your audiences’ needs and interests.
We Won’t Be Afraid to Say No
It’s not uncommon for agencies to become order takers. You need a case study but have no good data to use? On it. Press release for a tiny product update? Sure!
This isn’t how we roll at Megawatt.
When we sense a client is making self-sabotaging decisions about content, we’ll push back. For instance, if a client’s main goal is to increase marketing contributed leads (MCLs), but they keep asking for pie-in-the-sky thought leadership content, we won’t be afraid to point that out. We’re not here to tell you what to do or what your goals should be, but we’re here to be honest when the content we’re tasked with strategizing and producing doesn’t line up with your goals.
In 2022, we’ll refocus on the goals we have established together so we can deliver content to the right people for the right reasons.
We’ll Be Mindful Listeners
We can’t overstate the importance of listening in client interactions (and in all human relationships, for that matter!) B2B tech companies have a lot to say about their products, customers and industries. In the coming year, we resolve to listen intently, engage in rumbly dialogues, and ask plenty of follow-up questions.
This is a practice we also apply internally at Megawatt as our team grows. We recently had VP of Operations and Client Services Andrea Schiavone lead us through an exercise in mindfulness and mindful listening to help us tune in to each other and our clients more effectively.
In a world full of digital distractions and Zoom fatigue where many people “wait to talk” rather than listening (or zone out altogether), being a mindful listener has never been more important for successful collaboration.
We’ll Focus on B2B Tech Content Distribution & Measurement
Content production is our bread and butter, but a big resolution for 2022 is to keep expanding our content distribution and analytics services. As any B2B tech marketer can tell you, content marketing doesn’t end when content posts. It begins. There’s nothing worse than watching an awesome, insightful, actionable piece of content go … unread.
To be clear, we offer creative and strategic guidance with social media promotion for clients, and we also provide analytics as a core service offering. In 2022, we’ll continue prioritizing distribution and analytics, so clients have the most well-rounded B2B tech content marketing program possible. (We’re also exploring new service lines and would love to hear from you what you’re missing in your B2B marketing mix and how we might be able to help.)
So, there you have it: Our five new year’s resolutions! What are yours? Hit us up on LinkedIn or Twitter @megawattcontent — we’d love to hear!
