My new column is live in The Drum:
In 2022, should B2B content marketers focus more on advertising?
Many B2B marketers focus on ‘content’ rather than advertising, but is that the best thing to do in 2022? For the answer, columnist Samuel Scott interviewed the person who created the term ‘mental availability’, professor Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
In 2005, Rand Fishkin – then the chief executive of SEO software platform Moz – published the first edition of their beginner’s guide to search engine optimization. To this day, the material remains one of the best examples of what has become known as ‘content marketing’.
For years (and even still today), I would refer people to the e-book whenever they would ask how to learn about ranking in organic search results. The guide has remained extremely popular over the years – it even ranks higher than Google’s own resources for many related search terms – and has undoubtedly gained many customers for Moz.
In advertising terms, Moz was ‘top of mind’ for me and others whenever people would ask about learning SEO. Moz’s senior executives and the company blog have been known throughout the industry for having some of the best ‘thought leadership’.
But in 2022, producing such content – a popular substitute for doing traditional brand advertising – might not be enough to build real ‘mental availability’ in B2B categories.
Based on the increasing B2B interest in brand that I saw in 2021, I foresee that more teams will ask themselves the following question this year: Is constantly publishing informational material and trying to become a thought leader actually a good way to get remembered in future buying situations?