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Seasonality affects B2B businesses and B2C businesses differently. For B2B enterprises, the goal is not to inundate potential customers with a bunch of sales, holiday-themed content and emails (unless that’s what your research shows they want). Instead, you need to consider how you can use the seasons to discuss your business more broadly and explore new trends within in your industry:
B2B Content and Seasonal Marketing
B2B marketers often prioritize hyper-specific targeting over mass communication—your seasonal strategy should reflect that. Look for opportunities to tie your product or service into only the seasonal events that make sense. For example, if you sell software that helps with project management, the end of the year might be a good time to discuss how your product can help organize New Year’s resolutions.
It’s also important to consider how corporate budgets play into your seasonal marketing. A company might have money left over at the end of the year that it wants to use, so Q4 is often an excellent time to reach out. And then, as new budget planning commences in Q1, you can queue up another campaign.
Quick Ideas for Seasonal B2B Content
Are you getting stuck on where to start? Though no audiences are the same, here are a few ideas to start your next content planning brainstorm:
- End of Year/New Year: looking back at the past year and setting goals
- Spring: focusing on growth, new beginnings, and change
- Summer: taking a break, vacations, and slowing down
- Fall: harvest time, getting back to work, preparing for the end of the year
- Winter: reflection, nostalgia, and looking ahead to the future
To nail your engagement goals, focus on solving a specific problem or addressing a pain point instead of exclusively promoting your product or business. Seasonality provides an opportunity to do this in a timely and relevant way without feeling like a hard sell.
How to Create Impactful Seasonal Content
Most B2B content marketing covers the same information over and over. If you can bring a unique perspective or fresh take on a topic, you’ll be ahead of the game. Seasonality can help with this—focus on events that might be important to your audience.
Focus on Value-Driven Content
A punchy headline is helpful, but your content can’t be superficial and must be well-researched and up-to-date. Seasonal content is only valuable if relevant, so keep an eye on events or new trends that might affect your audience (and then double-check your research).
Not sure what type of content to produce? Educational content that benefits an audience in a specific industry is always in demand, so consider how you can produce helpful guides, tips and advice related to your business. Seasonal content provides unique opportunities to do this. For example, a construction company could write a guide on winter weatherproofing tips.
When in doubt, always consider what would be most helpful to your audience and go from there. Producing quality content targeted to audience needs will help you build trust and credibility.
Highlight the Research, Data, and Action
Remember that B2B buyers are research-oriented, so your content needs to be well-researched and up-to-date. Make sure to back up your claims with data and expert sources.
And more often than not, appealing to emotion is less effective in B2B content marketing unless claims are supported by expertise. Focus on providing beneficial, actionable advice that your audience can use. Keep your audience’s needs in mind and produce content that will help them, regardless of the time of year.
Leverage Relevant Trends
Analyzing seasonal trends can help you understand how sales numbers fluctuate and how to adjust your content strategy accordingly. Look for patterns in previous years and use them to predict what might happen in the future.
For example, January through March and September through October are considered “back to work” periods after the holidays. Both supply and demand usually increase during these times, and prices may be higher, thus creating more extended lead teams. Insights like this can help you shape your content topics and the perspective from which you write about them.
Use Google Trends to track activity for specific keywords related to your business and your client’s needs. This tool can help you understand how interest in your industry changes over time and adjust your content strategy accordingly.
Always Be Authentic
Seasonal promotional material is essential for many companies, but without a strong content strategy, it can become inauthentic. By leveraging cultural holidays, specific events and trends in your industry, you can produce content that will benefit your audience in a meaningful way.
Honing-In on a Seasonal Content Strategy
Creating a content calendar is one of the best places to start when it comes to seasonal content planning. You can create a proactive strategy to target your audience during those crucial moments throughout the year. But if you need help to get started, our team is here to help. Talk to the experts at 10x digital today about developing a winning content marketing strategy that connects with your audience all year long.