Content Curation Proves to be Valuable Tactic Early in the B2B Sales Cycle

Data recently published by inboundli has revealed that B2B content marketers commonly rely on content curation early in the sales cycle to overcome production hurdles such as lack of time, budget and resources.

“This lack of resources, be it time, budget or employees, is the reason curation attracted the attention of marketing departments worldwide,” wrote the authors of the infographic. “It allows you to fill up your content calendar and consistently publish a variety of high-quality content at a fraction of the time and cost that is required for creating content.”

When curating content, B2B marketers list raising brand awareness (84 percent), engaging targeted audiences (81 percent) and establishing thought leadership (76 percent) as their primary goals. Each of these goals also support larger initiatives such as lead generation, lead nurturing and up-selling (sending visibility and engagement to in-house and promotional content).

Once content has been generated, 92 percent of B2B marketers leverage social media to distribute it. LinkedIn (94 percent), Twitter (88 percent) and Facebook (84 percent) top the list of channels used, with Google+ being used at a slightly lower rate (64 percent). The authors also suggest looking at communities such as Reddit, Hacker News, Inbound.org and GrowthHackers.com when thinking about promotion.

Using Curation to Introduce Buyers to Branded Content

Content curation has the ability to introduce B2B buyers to content they will give their information to access. As seen in our “2015 B2B Web Usability Report,” B2B buyers are willing to fill out forms for trial offers (62 percent), product demos (48 percent), product evaluations (44 percent), research (41 percent), and brochures & datasheets (40 percent).

Screenshot taken from inboundli infographic.