Brand Growth: Customer Acquisition through Content Marketing

For B2B brands and SaaS companies, customer acquisition is always on the mind. These companies spend years coming up with their product, perfecting it, and finding product-market fit. They may start to grow organically and build a strong roster of happy customers. But at a certain point, these companies need to grow, and grow quickly.

The most important piece of this customer acquisition puzzle is defining and understanding the right customer profile for the product or service. Any team looking to grow quickly needs to know where to grow - who to reach, and what challenges they might be looking to solve for. Once that piece is done, the question becomes: “How do we reach this audience?”

There are many roads that companies can take to attract customers. SEO, email marketing, and even more traditional advertising efforts like radio hits, billboards, and print ads. But one of the most powerful modern tools that companies can master is content marketing. Content marketing addresses common questions that a company’s target audience may face, and it can come in many forms, such as whitepapers, blog posts (like this one!), videos, and webinars. Mastering content marketing can be a huge differentiator for B2B brands’ efforts to grow.

One person who knows a lot about the modern content marketing environment is Andy Groller. Andy is the President and CEO of Dragon360, a digital agency focused on helping B2B brands grow. Andy and his team spend their days in the weeds with companies looking to take their customer base to the next level. In the most recent episode of StudioPod’s B2B-focused Content Frequencies series, Andy joined our Co-Founder TJ Bonaventura to talk about specific ways to stand out in a crowded content marketing environment. 

Commune and Consume: Know your Audience

Brands have a wide range of options for how to market to their target audience. Particularly in today’s tech-heavy world, with a plethora of online platforms, social media profiles, and advertising channels, it can be difficult to know where to commit resources and budget. So how can B2B marketing decision-makers decide where to allocate their efforts?

Andy has a strategy that he uses with his clients looking to make an impact in the content marketing space. He likes to call it “Commune and Consume.” The idea is relatively straightforward, but it takes discipline and focus to execute correctly. “Commune and consume is this idea and approach to being audience first and channel agnostic,” Andy explains.

Being “audience first” should be a given for all marketing teams - of course all content marketing efforts should be designed with a targeted audience in mind. But the real thought and planning comes with channel flexibility. 

Think of the different platforms that can be utilized today: Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, and many more. Marketers may think they know what channels their customer base uses. They may see download numbers or demographic data that points to certain trends. But, as Andy questions, “Are they actually active on the platform? Are they consuming information? Are they communing there? Are they hanging out? And if they’re not, why am I going to spend my media dollars there?” 

In his conversation with TJ, Andy brought up an example from his work at Dragon360. One of their clients was an enterprise B2B company in the dental space. The company’s previous marketing efforts included a LinkedIn campaign, because they found over 80,000 dentist and hygienist LinkedIn profiles. But when Andy and his team took a closer look, they discovered that only about 1,000 of those 80,000 profiles were active. For that brand, marketing on LinkedIn made little sense. 

Marketers know that they want to reach the right people, and at the right time to make an impact. But focusing more intently on the right platform for the job, where their target audience spends time and consumes information, will help make a more sizable impact and drive results.

Brand Presence: Using Creators to Amplify a Message

One way in which companies can enhance the way they reach prospects and customers is by harnessing the power of individual brand advocacy.

Almost all companies set up brand pages on the relevant online platforms - home pages that serve as the central gathering point for that company’s content and messaging. But a more recent trend has been the rise of individual creator promotion. This trend has grown rapidly on the heels of the social media influencer movement that is more prevalent with B2C companies and products.

Having individual support in promoting a brand can help significantly. It can drive substantial results. “People buy from people,” Andy says. “People listen to people.” TJ echoes that sentiment, noting a StudioPod client who had a “Chief Evangelist,” someone whose purpose at the company was to represent the brand full-time. 

Some caveats do apply, though. For one thing, Andy notes that companies should not disregard or abandon their company brand pages. People’s buying decisions may come from individual people, but the brand still needs to be present and show activity to build trust. Secondly, an individual creator or evangelist needs to diversify their content. Not every post should promote a podcast episode, a video, or a new product release. This relentless promotion will wear on an audience and not provide them with value. So, creators do need to be thoughtful and purposeful with their content, providing value and keeping people engaged while also promoting when appropriate.

Where B2B Podcasting Fits In

A company podcast can certainly fit into a content marketing, customer acquisition strategy. In much the same way that content marketers need to define their audience and how to reach that audience, however, podcast planners also must ask some hard questions before determining to move forward with a B2B podcast.

Andy advises that podcasting “can be a useful tactic when you have really defined what the purpose of the podcast is, who your audience is, and what you hope to get out of it.” He clarifies that what a company might hope to get out of a podcast doesn’t always necessarily mean revenue or leads - but that the project does need to have a specific purpose.

Podcasts are significant investments. They take time, resources, and yes - money. They take a lot of coordination and commitment to succeed. A podcast can certainly move the needle for a brand’s content marketing efforts, but there needs to be significant planning beforehand and commitment once underway.

StudioPod’s mission is to help companies transform their businesses by leveraging podcasts and high quality video content. We provide full service content production for B2B brand and content marketing teams. Contact us today to learn more about how podcasting can enhance your customer acquisition strategy.