According to the Aberdeen Group, content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic. What’s more, content marketing costs 62 percent less than outbound marketing, while generating more than 300 percent more leads. And companies that adopt content marketing get six times higher conversion rates than their competitors.

One of the biggest problems content marketing has these days? Saturation.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, the three most commonly used tactics by B2B marketers are social media content, case studies, and blogs. Most companies are implementing these tactics, which means it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate to grow your business.

This year however, we have seen the arrival of new content marketing trends that are changing the way content marketing works.

Next you will learn five content marketing trends that could help you gain the edge on your competition.

Live Video, A.K.A. Streaming

Video marketing is by far one of the most effective marketing tactics.

According to Wordstream, video attracts two to three times as many monthly visitors as other types of content. Video can also help increase organic traffic by 157 percent. And that’s not all.

The Aberdeen Group found that companies which use videos in their marketing enjoy 27 percent higher click through rates (CTR) and 34 percent higher web conversion rates [pdf] than those which don’t. Wyzowl found 77 percent of consumers say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video.

Despite these benefits, video marketing has one big problem: it can be hard to create. Buffer, the social media scheduling company, found that 43 percent of marketers said they would create more video content if obstacles like time, resources, and budget were reduced.

However, thanks to companies such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, marketers can now easily create and publish video content without incurring the costs previously associated with it. It’s the reason why video is one of the content marketing trends of 2017.

Video is Easier Than it Used to Be

With Snapchat’s launch of Stories in October 2013, it allowed users to send photos or videos directly into their feed for all their friends to see. At first glance, Stories may not look very interesting for companies. Snapchat is a social app used mostly by young people.

But companies using Snapchat have achieved great results from it. Snapchat users watch over 10 billion videos every day. Somewhere between 10 and 20 million people watch Stories each day. Snapchat Stories represent an incredible opportunity for companies to showcase themselves and their offerings.

Soon after Snapchat launched its Stories feature, Instagram, Facebook, and even Whatsapp followed in their steps. In 2017, live video streaming has become a big part of the content marketing strategy of any business.

Take a look at the following example from Cisco. They are one of the largest IT and networking companies in the world—not the most famous industry for using social media. Despite this, they pull off great work in their Snapchat channel.

Setting up and recording a regular video is complex. Live video however, allows you to stream a message using an Internet connection and a smartphone with a camera that can shoot in HD quality.

The Advantages of Live Video

Live streaming is a powerful content marketing tactic because of transparency. People love brands that are real; brands that talk, act, and look like them. They want to know what’s happening behind the scenes, how brands actually are when others are not around. People want to feel as if they are having a one-on-one interaction with the brands they like.

You can use live streaming to educate your followers. Each interaction with them is an opportunity for your company to help, and to show them what your company is all about. This education happens in real-time. Instead of waiting for a solution, you can proactively talk to your followers in a personal and relatable way.

Video interaction doesn’t have to just be unilateral either. You can use live streaming to get real-time feedback from your followers, furthering engagement.

Live streaming is also becoming popular because it helps create a feeling of community. You aren’t just communicating with your followers—they are also talking to each other. This takes the idea of social communications to the next level. Brands interact with their customers, and their customers interact with each other. Since a community is not something you can artificially create, this can be a big win for your company.

Furthermore, if you want to use a live stream later, you can easily record it and play it back to make it into a conventional video.

The power of live videos is only just starting to be harnessed. In 2016, only 14 percent of marketers had used live videos. In 2017, 50 percent of marketers plan on using them.

User Generated Content

One of the secrets of successful content marketing is trust. That’s what marketing is all about. A company messages people, and if they trust the message, they will follow the company. But how do you build trust when there are so many ads out there?

Here’s an interesting fact:

According to AdWeek, 85 percent of people trust content made by others more than they trust brands’ content.

In other words, you can more effectively convince new people to trust your company by using content created by customers, rather than using your own content.

The good news is there’s a marketing tactic to help you achieve this: user generated content. (It’s one of those content marketing trends to be careful with though: it can backfire if not used carefully.)

User generated content is all the content your customers create to talk about your company. This can include social shares, reviews, comments, videos, and more. Such content transforms customers into micro advertisements—ads that others trust more than ‘real’ ads.

In 2009 Iconic British fashion company Burberry launched The Art of the Trench, a website where users can upload and comment on pictures of people wearing Burberry products. Thanks in part to that initiative, Burberry grew their ecommerce sales by 50 percent year-over-year.

Some ways you can leverage user generated content (UGC, for short) to grow your company include:

• Incentivize customers to write reviews and include photos or videos. This works not only for social proof, but to create a community-like experience around your company.
• Stimulate both online and offline word-of-mouth. If you give your customers a flawless shopping experience and make your products valuable to their problems, that will increase the probability of your customers becoming evangelists for your brand. This is free and highly valuable marketing.
• Participate in social media. This goes without saying, but if you want to make your shopping experience social, be social. Open an account in at least one social network, and actively participate in it. Talk to your customers, answer their questions, create valuable content.

Augmented and Virtual Reality

A few years ago, augmented and virtual reality sounded like futuristic technologies that seemed amazing but belonged firmly in the realm of science fiction.

In 2017, it’s now possible for companies to use both augmented and virtual reality, making them two of the content marketing trends of the year.

As you may know, augmented reality technology (also known as “AR”) allows digital content, like video, text, or images, to be superimposed over a view of the real world. Virtual reality (also known as “VR”), shows digital content in a fully-immersive headset. These technologies allow brands to showcase new content that can change the way their audience experiences the world.

According to a study done by Digi-Capital, the AR/VR market could hit $150 billion in revenue by 2020. AR is set to take the majority of the pie with a share of $120 billion, with VR getting $30 billion.

In this context, VR could be great for games and 3D films, while AR could be a game-changer for content marketers. “AR has the potential to play the same role in our lives as mobile phones with hundreds of millions of users,” says Digi-Capital managing director Tim Merel. “You could wear it anywhere and do anything.”

There are many ways content marketers can use AR, including:

• Augmented reality ecommerce
• Voice calls
• Web browsing
• Apps for both enterprise and consumers
• Advertising
• Games

British retail giant Tesco used augmented reality to help website visitors visualize Tesco’s key products in their own home with an augmented version of their Home Book catalog.

Personalization

All successful marketing campaigns have one thing in common: they were relevant to the target audience. Crafting a relevant marketing message is therefore one of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign. To do that, marketers must understand what people care about, and then create an ad people want to see. The more relevant, the better.

With the amount of data marketing tools collect, marketers can create more relevant and successful marketing messages through personalization, one of this year’s top content marketing trends. With personalized content, consumers better remember a brand, which then creates a positive feedback loop.

According to the IBM Digital Experience Survey, 56 percent of marketers believe that personalized content promotes higher engagement rates. A study done by Demand Metric [pdf] found that 80 percent of marketers say personalized content is more effective than non-personalized content.

There are multiple ways marketers can use personalized content. The following research from Forrester Consulting and Persado shows the most common ways content marketers use personalized content:

The results from personalized content are persuasive. Research by OneSpot shows 87 percent of consumers believe personalized branded content positively influences how they feel about a brand. In that study, 72 percent of the consumers surveyed believe companies that deliver relevant personalized content consumers are more relevant themselves. This drives even further positive perceptions of the brand. And 60 percent of consumers feel a stronger connection with the brand thanks to the content’s relevance.

The results of such studies are driving marketers to invest in personalization. According to a study by Evergage, 96 percent of marketers will maintain or increase investment in personalization this year. Meanwhile, 73 percent believe personalization should be a higher priority in their companies than it currently is. It’s one of the most talked about content marketing trends for 2017.

Chatbots

Imagine being able to talk to your customers when you aren’t around. Blog articles and videos won’t do it; you need to have real conversations with your customers.

Now you can with the help of chatbots, programs that exist within messaging apps such as Kik or Facebook Messenger. They allow you to have automated conversations with your customers in real-time.

Chatbots can help you change your communication from a brand-focused perspective to a customer-focused one. You create a more personal relationship while addressing the specific needs of your audience.

Two Types of Chatbots

1. Rule-based, in which a user receives a pre-defined response based on an input.
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP) based, in which the bot analyzes the user message to extract intent and create a more individualized response.

Both types of chatbots allow your users to interact in a conversational format to get a solution to a need. If your bot has that solution, your user leaves the conversation happier and satisfied with your brand. On the other hand, if your bot can’t give them an answer you can use the information taken from that conversation to create content around them.

Using chatbots represent a win-win for both parties. Your company increases the relevancy of its content, and your visitors get better solutions.

In 2016 preppy fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger used a Facebook Messenger bot during New York’s Fall Fashion week to display their products and answer questions. It ended up with over 7,000 responses and an engaged audience.

Conclusion: These Five Content Marketing Trends Aren’t Going Away

Content marketing is undoubtedly one of the most important marketing avenues for any company to use. And it’s still growing, incorporating new technologies along the way.

Today, you have seen how five content marketing trends have been changing content marketing in 2017 and beyond. (Which of these technologies do you think will be the most effective in the future? Let us know in the comments.) Another way to ensure your 2017 is successful is to up your SEO game. Download Curata’s eBook with Andy Crestodina: The Future of Search Engine Optimization: 5 Ways to Adapt Your Content for 2017.

Knowing that something works, and knowing how to do it are two different things. Instead of us telling you how content marketing works for B2B companies, we decided to show you examples of 10 companies achieving excellent results with it.

10 Best Content Marketing Examples

1. LeadPages

LeadPages designs customizable, mobile-friendly landing page templates and testing services to help businesses increase their reach.

Founder and CEO Clay Collins knew they had to be scrappy to be able to compete against VC-funded giants like Hubspot and Infusionsoft, given LeadPages were a bootstrapped company since inception. Instead of spending $10,000 on customer acquisition as some of their competitors did, Collins developed a growth hypothesis based on the idea that “a content team of four people could outperform an 80+ person sales team at most companies.”

Based on this hypothesis, LeadPages developed the following content marketing assets:

• A popular marketing blog which covers lead generation, A/B testing, and all sort of related topics.
• A set of marketing resources, including seven marketing courses, two eBooks, 10 case studies, and eight infographics, all of which are free.
• ConversionCast, a highly popular marketing podcast run by Tim Paige, a world-class podcaster.
• Weekly webinars on different topics related to online marketing.

Clay Collins’ hypothesis was correct. Thanks to his content marketing strategy, LeadPages ended up with an extremely high lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratios. This helped them grow on a massive scale, acquiring 35,000 customers in under three years, hitting over $16 million in revenue in 2015, and in 2016 becoming the #148 fastest growing company in America. LeadPages success makes them one of the great content marketing examples.

2. WP Engine

Web hosting is one of the most competitive sectors in the technology industry. There are hundreds of companies trying to reach the same customers, many of whom aren’t that tech-savvy. Not only that, many compete on price, rather than features or quality. Competing on price lowers the margins of the industry as a whole and makes the competition play hard in acquiring each customer.

WP Engine, a managed hosting platform focused only on WordPress, knew they had a big challenge to overcome. Given they exclusively target WordPress users, it made sense for them to focus on content marketing targeting bloggers and other WordPress users.

Following the vision of WP Engine’s CMO, they segmented their content marketing strategy into five buckets:

1. Product: Focused on product and content information about their new features, and other related company news.
2. Industry: Focused on how marketers and agencies use WordPress to build their digital presence online.
3. Business impact: Focused on how people use their online presence to drive growth, including leads and sales.
4. Torque: Focused on the WordPress open source community. They don’t brand this kind of content as much so they can create a community feeling around it.
5. Support: Focused on solving their customers’ problems through written and video content.

WP Engine’s content marketing strategy has driven significant results. These include acquiring 300,000 sites, applications in 128 countries, and raising five rounds of funding worth over $40 million.

3. STR Software

The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software industry is full of companies like STR Software working to attract large businesses with big budgets and long, complex sales cycles. So instead of investing thousands of dollars to acquire each customer, STR Software decided to to set themselves apart by developing a content marketing strategy.

They put all their content and into a centralized hub they called “BI Publisher University.” They gated each piece of content with a form that captured relevant data for lead nurturing. Then, using Pardot’s email automation system, they created email autoresponders that included further content.

STR Software promoted their “University” extensively throughout their site, including on their homepage, sidebar, and other articles. They also used email marketing to promote it to their audience.

Some of their results made a big impact on their bottom line:

• The campaign had the highest performance of any they developed.
• Increased the quality of their lead generation initiatives.
• Attracted high-quality inbound links, which helped increase their organic traffic.
• Averaged a 10 percent conversion rate on forms, up from 1-2 percent on other forms.
• Saw a 54 percent increase in website traffic, and a 67 percent increase in pageviews—while increasing average time on site.

4. Simply Business

Industries like insurance aren’t famous for being popular and exciting. In many cases, businesses deal with insurance not because they want to, but because the law says they have to. Even if they wanted to, the process tends to be boring and complex.

Simply Business, the UK’s largest insurance broker, aimed to attract leads with content marketing. Since they cater to small business owners, they decided to create content that helped that audience, even if it didn’t have anything to do with insurance. Some of the guides they created include these content marketing examples:

• An email productivity guide
• A Google AdWords guide for small businesses
• WordPress for small business guide
• A guide to business blogging
• Social media success road map

The results were magnificent. Simply Business increased their ranking for their main keywords, including reaching first place in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for “professional indemnity,” “public liability insurance,” and “employer’s liability.” Even though they launched some guides before Google’s Penguin algorithm change, they significantly increased weekly organic traffic, meaning their link building practices were white-hat and high-quality.

Simply Business offers great content marketing examples of thinking laterally and strategically to utilize content for bottom line results.

5. Single Grain

There are thousands of digital marketing agencies in the US, many of which focus on small businesses or Fortune 500 companies. Single Grain however, focuses on tech startups. One of the key ways they attracted companies such as Amazon, Salesforce, and Uber was thanks to their content marketing strategy.

Single Grain’s content marketing strategy can be split into three sections:

1. Their blog, which focuses on all sorts of topics around online marketing.
2. The wildly popular Marketing School podcast, run by CEO Eric Siu, and marketing legend Neil Patel.
3. Their resource section, which features courses, guides, infographics, and webinars.

Some of their articles have gotten thousands of shares and links, attracting both social and organic traffic to their site. Their podcast is one of the most popular in the industry, helping them create a lot of buzz and awareness. Finally, they focus their resources around two goals:

1. Convert visitors into subscribers; and
2. Start a conversation around their services.

6. HubSpot

The inbound marketing software industry is flooded with companies, including behemoths like Marketo, Pardot, and Infusionsoft, amongst others. The king of the bunch, however, is HubSpot, whose CEO actually coined the phrase “inbound marketing.” The main reason HubSpot has grown so fast is because of their content marketing strategy.

Their blogs are central to their content strategy: one focused on marketing, the other on sales. The goal of these blogs is to help HubSpot acquire traffic to their funnel. Since HubSpot caters to small businesses, their focus is to teach everything there is to know about inbound marketing, including SEO, blogging, and social media.

That’s the top of the funnel covered. The resources section then, features all sorts of mid to bottom-of-funnel content focused on converting people into leads, including eBooks, webinars, a marketing kit, case studies, and even a quiz. Each of these are excellent content marketing examples.

Content marketing has been one of HubSpot’s main growth drivers. It helped the company go from being funded in 2006 to a $75 million run rate public company worth over a billion dollars in 2016.

7. Scripted

Content marketing is one of the most important acquisition channels for any business. Given the high demand for content marketing, Scripted developed a marketplace for companies to find and hire writers for their content marketing efforts.

Scripted competes with other, more popular marketplaces, such as Upwork and Fiverr. So they needed to differentiate themselves from being “just” a marketplace, to being the best place to find writers.

To achieve this, Scripted developed a full-fledged content marketing strategy focused on touching on each of a buyer’s steps along their journey:

• Top of the funnel: In this stage, Scripted uses their blog and podcast to talk about common problems their visitors have.
• Middle of the funnel: In this stage, Scripted focuses on making people sign up to their email list, and creating awareness of their solution through white papers and webinars.
• Bottom of the funnel: In the final stage, Scripted uses case studies to convince subscribers about their services.

As you might surmise from these content marketing examples, their strategy has provided amazing results:

• Forty six percent of visitors were driven by their blog posts and other content marketing methods, outperforming other traffic sources by at least three times.
• Their bounce rate from content was almost three times lower than any other source.
• People that entered their site through one of their content hubs visited 4.06 pages per visit on average, the second-highest of all traffic sources.

8. Salesforce

The CRM space is one of the largest and most competitive industries in the IT sector. Despite being the world’s largest vendor, Salesforce has had some problems maintaining steady traffic and leads. This was the case for Salesforce UK, which could have been a cautionary tale in content marketing examples. They had to drastically change their content marketing strategy to increase their search and paid traffic sources.

In a short period, Salesforce UK launched a new set of content marketing tactics, including:

• Fun videos on sales and marketing.
• The world’s first stop-motion slideshare.
• A Prezi presentation on a customer success story.

Thanks to their renewed content strategy, in a three-month period Salesforce UK got amazing results, including:

• An 80 percent increase in traffic YoY.
• 2500 percent more traffic from social media sites.
• 10,000 eBook downloads.
• 6,500 email newsletter sign-ups.

9. SAP

SAP is one of the world’s largest and most powerful enterprise software vendors, serving over a dozen industries around the world. With this diverse set of customers, running a content marketing strategy that fits each customer’s needs is hard.

Despite this challenge, SAP developed a customized content marketing strategy for 19 customer segments, while still maintaining a consistent look and feel.

SAP tailored the messaging for each industry around a popular topic, such as digital transformation. This enabled them to appeal to each customer’s audience, while demonstrating the benefits of their solutions with examples.

To make content easier to digest for each persona, their campaigns feature content types as diverse as:

• Email
• Tweets
• Blogs posts
• LinkedIn status updates
• Posts on the SAP Community Network
• Radio ads
• Virtual events
• In-person events
• Outbound and responder follow-up calls
• Account Based Marketing
• Individual account meetings

The results from SAP’s marketing strategy have been impressive:

• Marketing generated opportunities (MGO) equaled $3,675,000. MGO’s are new opportunities created from marketing leads that have been accepted by sales and converted into opportunities.
• The marketing touched pipeline (MTP) equaled $50,037,709 in this campaign. MTP comprises all open opportunities that have at least one qualifying marketing activity after the opportunity creation date.

10. SecureWorks

Cybersecurity is a key concern of any company that takes their online presence seriously. The key is to detect potential sources of attack before they happen—and to respond rapidly once they do. SecureWorks helps companies achieve this.

One of the keys to SecureWorks’ content marketing success has been developing clear personas for each target customer. This allowed them to create content focused on solving customers’ problems, which includes executives and VPs of security in large corporations.

SecureWorks segmented their content marketing strategy in two ways. First focusing on attracting traffic, then on converting that traffic into leads:

1. Their blog answers common questions people have about information security and compliance.
2. Their resources feature webinars, white papers, reports, case studies, solution briefs, data sheets, and videos.

SecureWorks thorough content marketing strategy allowed them to streamline their marketing and sales teams, making one out of every two qualified leads that marketing sends to sales becomes an opportunity. They also doubled their conversion rate, thanks to the increased efficacy of their marketing initiatives.

Conclusion: 10 Best Content Marketing Examples

These content marketing examples show how B2B content marketing works in real life and the results you can expect from it. What results have you seen from your content marketing strategy? As good as your strategy is, it could always be better. Download Curata’s eBook: The Future of Search Engine Optimization: 5 Ways to Adapt Your Content for 2017 and make the most of the content you already have!