B2B doesn’t stand for “boring to boring.” Although the intended audience for B2B content marketing is other businesses, the content created should be as snazzy and engaging as content created for a consumer audience. Check out a few top B2B content marketing examples brands who are doing it right.
GE InstaWalk
Goal: Bring GE and its history to life.
Tactic: GE invited fans and influencers to its aviation facility in Peebles, Ohio. The fans took photos of the facility, which were then posted to the brand’s Instagram.
Results: This one of the B2B Content Marketing examples netted 3,000 new followers to GE’s Instagram account, and more than 200,000 engagements with #GEInstaWalk posts.
John Deere’s “The Furrow”
Goal: Provide a useful resource to customers.
Tactic: John Deere has been publishing “The Furrow” since 1895.
Results: This one of the top B2B content marketing examples has been around for more than 120 years (it’s now digital), so “The Furrow” must have done something right.
ZocDoc Unsick Day
Goal: Encourage employers to offer employees days off (to see a doctor), or encourage employees to take a day off (to see a doctor).
Tactic: ZocDoc, a website that lets people find doctors and schedule appointments, learned that 2/3 of its employees weren’t scheduling preventative care visits. It created the UnsickDay microsite to encourage people to schedule those visits.
Results: When this one of the top b2b content marketing examples concluded, 12 employers signed on as sponsors for the program. It also had more than 70 million social media and earned impressions within its first few weeks.
DDB Chicago’s Instagram
Goal: Use Instagram to recruit talent and spark interest in potential clients.
Tactic: DDB Chicago used historical metrics to create new, timely, and relevant content for its Instagram profile.
Results: Of the top B2B content marketing examples, this one averaged a nearly 1,000 percent increase in likes and 1,358 percent increase in followers in 2015.
Grant Thornton LLP at the Tony’s
Goal: Raise awareness of the Grant Thornton brand.
Tactic: Provided exclusive content and access to Tony award nominees and presenters on Twitter and YouTube. Created a GT at the Tonys microsite.
Results: This one of the top B2B content marketing examples netted a total of 3.7 million impressions on Twitter on the day of the Tony’s broadcast, the best ever for Grant Thornton. YouTube videos exceeded view goals by 115 percent.
BallotBriefcase From PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Goal: Three-fold goal: Make PwC appeal to a younger audience, increase brand’s visibility around the Oscars, and generate excitement among employees.
Tactic: Use Snapchat to promote the #BallotBriefcase in the days leading up to the Oscars. The briefcase also had videos on YouTube.
Results: This one of the top B2B content marketing examples earned PWC between 8 and 10 outreach Snaps a day from employees and followers, and 2,000 employees waited in line for a chance to “meet” the Briefcase. The BallotBriefcase campaign increased Twitter impressions 136 times compared to posts from PwC without #BallotBriefcase.
Cisco’s Global Cloud Index
Goal: Drive global awareness, education, and heightened social conversations around Cisco’s Global Cloud Index Forecast.
Tactic: Cisco took a multi-pronged approach. Its campaign included YouTube videos, Instagram, white papers, and a Slideshare.
Results: Of all the top B2B Content Marketing examples, this one earned more than 1,250 conversations about the forecast over the course of a week, including more than five million impressions.
Callaway Hit the Links
Goal: Use LinkedIn to connect with a new generation of golfers.
Tactic: Using a special LinkedIn app, people were invited to assemble their four-person dream team for a golf tournament (picking from people in their LinkedIn network). Each submission had the chance to win a golf vacation from Callaway.
Results: Results were 300 percent higher than expected. Nine million people learned of the contest, and 10,000 professionals on LinkedIn were connected to other professionals with an interest in golf.
HP Propel IT!
Goal: Make a demo video people want to watch.
Tactic: To promote its Propel SaaS and get customers to actually pay attention, HPE created an exciting, visually engaging demo video.
Results: The video was one of the most watched HPE videos the year it was produced. It now has more than 2,500 views, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but is pretty impressive for a demo video.
Microsoft BizSpark
Goal: Turn today’s young start-ups into loyal Microsoft customers.
Tactic: Create a “coder T-shirt” campaign on Twitter designed to address specific concerns Microsoft BizSpark customers were having.
Results: The campaign outperformed other Microsoft social campaigns and led to an extension of it, which also included real T-shirts.
SAP BetterRunWorld
Goal: Position SAP as a “business innovation partner” and change businesses’ perceptions of the brand.
Tactic: Used SAP’s own software to listen on social to what customers were saying they wanted, shared audience stories to better connect with customers, and produced blogs and other content.
Results: There were 30,000 views of the landing page consistently over a 10-week period, including nearly 9,000 unique visits each day. There was also a 42,995 increase in Twitter followers over 10 weeks.
SurePayroll Business Blog
Goal: Increase brand awareness among small businesses (with 1 to 10 employees) to boost consideration during the purchase process for payroll services.
Tactic: Create a blog for SurePayroll that offers thought leadership and advice on topics ranging from payroll to running a small business.
Results: Both owned and earned content generated shares and likes on SurePayroll’s social media accounts.
Ryder Project Rebirth
Goal: Announce that Ryder’s team of technicians is available to service any truck at any time.
Tactic: Create a video depicting a Ryder truck being completely destroyed, then restored by technicians.
Results: The video has almost half a million views on YouTube. The first two weeks of the campaign, there were 313,000 organic views on YouTube, and more than 6.5 million paid media views.
Olo Draw on the Bag
Goal: Make customers’ day by offering custom drawings on bags.
Tactic: Olo noticed that some of its customers were asking for custom art on their food delivery bags. So it launched OloBags, where the company’s illustrator creates gifs that illustrate specific requests.
Results: Olobags refers traffic to Olo. The average visitor from Olobags is likely to stay on the Olo site longer than the typical user.
UPS Football Towns
Goal: Connect with college football fans while speaking to UPS’s core small business audience.
Tactic: Created video, sponsored a “Top 5 UPS Football Town Business Landmarks.”
UPS also created a series of business content highlighting UPS’s role in supporting the evolution of college football.
Results: Videos created for the campaign were among the top performing for UPS in 2015. The total cost per view was only $0.37, with more than 1.3 million views total.
Campaign conversations were 100 percent favorable, a rare feat.
