Content marketing is an incredibly valuable tool.

Once you peel away the initial facade of it, it’s actually a toolbox with many many different tools within it, and using the right tool for the content marketing for b2b makes all the difference in the world.

How are B2B and B2C different?

Let’s say for example you want to go and cut a board. You need to use a saw. You’re not going to use a hammer to try to go and cut the board. Well, you could, but it’ll take a lot of work and it’ll look horrible. Using a hammer is not the right solution. The same thing applies to the different types of content marketing solutions that fit within the content marketing toolset.

So let’s start by talking about the differences between B2B and B2C content marketing.

B2B content marketing is where you are targeting other businesses to purchase your products or services just by the very nature of the target markets. The marketing tends to be very narrow and very focused. So an example would be “How many people are interested in buying this titanium cup maker,” which is a piece of equipment.

There’s probably a thousand companies in the country that would be interested in a titanium cup maker. The companies then have an end user audience of millions of people who are interested in titanium cups for camping. So, that’s a really good analogy to use.

In this example, a B2B company is the one that’s making the machine that creates those 10 million cups. A B2C company is the one that’s using the machine to create the titanium cups for camping. So it is very narrow-focused and very targeted. Think of B2C as being broad and one-to-many. The marketing for B2C has a closer one-to-one approach.

What are seasonal and evergreen content ?

Let’s take it a step further. B2B and B2C have different target audiences. B2C targets consumers. The types of content that need to be created here from within the toolkit need to be more visually oriented, more video-oriented, and more perishable. An example of perishable content would be the latest fashion that Kim Kardashian wore this week. An example of evergreen content, which is the opposite of perishable content, is “how to make apple pie.”

• Perishable Content: Matters now but won’t be important in the future. The Kim Kardashian outfit topic, no one’s going to care about it next week. It’s no longer important.
• Evergreen Content: Information that will remain relevant. You’ll need to know how to make apple pie now, 6 years from now, and even 20 years from now.

Seasonal content can be perishable, especially on the B2C side. Although it is possible to make seasonal content semi-evergreen. An example would be an annual manufacturing MRO trade show that happens every single year. While the content that you create for it could potentially be repurposed, each and every year, you know it’s a seasonal thing.

For B2B, it’s all about educating the potential customer. It’s not about the sizzle; It’s about the substance. So the types of content that are going to be valuable there are going to be long-form pieces of content or long-form blog posts, case studies, e-guides, white papers, and other related content assets. You can also use, though to a limited degree, infographics. The perishable forms of B2B content marketing would include things such as news commentaries as well as press releases.

There is no absolute, one size, fits all. There are pieces of content or types of content that are non-perishable or evergreen that can be used on the B2C side. Likewise, there are perishable pieces of content that could be used on the B2B side. However, the tendencies are that B2C is more perishable while B2B is more evergreen. B2B is more visual and more educational.