Today, supporting a B2B business strategy requires creating and capitalizing on new revenue opportunities, which are evolving just as quickly as the digital ecosystem is. To keep up with the shifts in the B2B world, along with expanding audience expectations, B2B publishers are tasked with aligning their tech stacks to current trends and opportunities—and at a rapid pace. This means it’s essential to find the right solutions that can adapt with the progressing landscape and drive transformation to elevate B2B publishers to the top of their game.
An evolving B2B publishing landscape
B2B publishing is catching up with its B2C counterparts, as experts within respective B2B industries increasingly seek content relevant to their fields of expertise, whether to learn about the latest technologies or read about new leading-edge trends within their industry sector. This has forced B2B publishers to zero in on creating digital-first content experiences; however, becoming digital-first can often result in high operating costs, inefficient publishing workflows and the inability to capitalize on digital engagement, depending on the publisher’s existing content management platform.
Feeling the pressure to accelerate digital transformation, one of the first steps B2B publishers need to take is to consolidate all of their publications and channels into a single instance, and integrate their existing workflows. If successful, they can create a program that executes across diversified revenue streams and includes personalized content for each audience, along with an efficient, effective way of serving that content in an omnichannel environment. Those that get it right will be able to market themselves as transformational leaders in the B2B industry—ones that can educate others about “what’s next” and provide guidance on how to overcome hurdles along the way.
A unique set of challenges for B2B publishers
Staying current with the latest publishing trends and technologies comes with a certain set of challenges, especially for those in the B2B world where their audiences aren’t the typical consumer market.
First, reaching and maintaining touchpoints with the right audience can be extremely difficult for B2B publishers. Knowing what stories to tell, how to tell them and where to tell them quickly becomes complex. Once B2B publishers have succeeded in reaching their intended customer, buyer and/or reader say, through an event, they often struggle to maintain interest through a continued, personalized digital content experience after the fact.
Secondly, while B2B publishing has risen in popularity, it hasn’t fully caught up to the often hyper-digitized content experiences in which B2C publishers have been engaged for many years now. Understanding how to integrate more traditional methods of customer engagement with digital channels that personalize the experience and make it continuous across all mediums is a work-in-progress, as many B2B publishers still rely on channels such as print distribution, newsletters and in-person events.
Finally, and related to the above, B2B publishers are often engaging with audiences through multiple touchpoints across both traditional and digital channels. From print and sponsored content, to web, mobile apps and email, it’s easy to lose sight of the full picture without a comprehensive view of where audiences are engaging.
B2B support from Brightspot
Marketing and publishing professionals are focused on creating tech stacks that are smarter, more connected and streamlined. The desire for a more efficient technology comes as no surprise, especially as marketing leaders reported only utilizing 58% of their martech stack’s potential, according to a 2019 Gartner Marketing Technology Survey.
With Brightspot, B2B publishers can quickly transform their digital experiences, support all their publications and integrate with critical revenue-generating tools and limited development resources. There are a number of ways this takes shape:
- Integration capabilities: At the heart of the multiple ways Brightspot benefits B2B publishers is its integration-ready approach. By integrating with print solutions, marketing automation tools, paywall providers, advertising networks and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, Brightspot makes it easy for B2B publishers to deliver a personalized experience through one central content hub.
- Personalization: Alongside these integration capabilities, Brightspot helps B2B publishers take advantage of data and machine learning to create more continuous personalized experiences. B2B publishers can, for example, pull data about a person from a customer data platform, personalize the website experience for that individual based on those insights, then learn of events in which he or she is interested. Once that person attends one of those events, the publisher can then take the data gathered from the event and use it to further personalize content, which can be delivered across a variety of channels (e.g. email distribution, newsletters, social media).
- Support of key revenue drivers: Brightspot’s capabilities, including digital-to-print workflows and rapid microsite deployment, support B2B publishers’ traditional channels and key revenue drivers like events, print content and newsletters.
When B2B publishers immerse themselves into the evolving digital landscape, they’ll quickly uncover new opportunities that drive forward their business strategy. Taking those first steps can be the hardest part, but they don’t need to go it alone—Brightspot is here to help.