LONDON: Creating timely, relevant content is a given for B2B marketers but it is only half the battle, a leading industry figure has argued.

"At least as much effort should be going into your distribution strategy as your content itself," according to Philip Trippenbach, digital strategist and planner at Edelman in London.

Writing in the current issue of Admap, the focus of which is B2B content marketing, he notes that customers are coming to businesses later and later in the purchase funnel while their media use is "fragmenting use into individual shards of personal web".

Marketers need to get good content to the top of key minds and get their message across with power and elegance, says Trippenbach. And he outlines a four-stage approach which takes in intelligence and analytics as well as content and delivery strategies.

Intelligence is essential to creating a content strategy – an understanding of customer interests will inform subsequent content creation. That in turn will need to be relevant to brand values and business goals and delivered in a format that will penetrate the media habits of the target audience.

"Ideally, content delivery channel is determined strategically across the full spectrum of communication modes," Trippenbach says.

So, paid, earned, owned and social media each have a role to play and when all four of these are properly integrated and deployed, "the result is that the people you need to reach see your content every time they go online, authentically embedded in their online experience".

Marketers also have to recognise that much of the online content people are consuming is determined by algorithms, so Trippenbach suggests they develop an understanding of the principles under which these systems operate.

In the fourth stage, accurately tracking and measuring how that content is performing enables marketers to both report effectively and to optimise further iterations as a campaign progresses.

"Bring it all together and you have powerful, emotionally engaging content, developed based on a genuine understanding of what your audience is thinking about," says Trippenbach.

"Best of all, it will be delivered to your key audiences through their personal web. With the right analytics in place, this content can be adjusted and tracked to reflect the evolving media environment."

Data sourced from Admap