For B2B companies, getting product content into the right hands can prove tricky. Despite all efforts in building enriched content, pushing it out across channels, and constantly updating it, many manufacturers and distributors do not succeed in expanding their reach to potential customers.
In such a scenario, one way by which B2B companies can drive content to the right audience in the right way could be omnichannel content syndication.
What is B2B content syndication?
The amount of product information B2B companies need to handle today is growing tremendously. The volume, variety, and velocity of this data compel them to put a robust MDM strategy in place. Often this strategy is driven by a dedicated enterprise team that ensures the data is constantly cleansed, analyzed, and updated. By constantly gathering information about products, customers, suppliers, locations, and domains, the discipline of MDM ensures that all the required best practices needed to unify workflows and ensure consistent, accurate, and relevant data are applied.
However, just gathering and analyzing data is not enough; B2B companies need to constantly seek ways in which they can push this data to a larger audience of prospective customers and distributor partners to drive better sales.
B2B content syndication allows organizations to send their content to third parties to use and promote while retaining full rights over it. This helps in driving traffic or conversions to their website or business. By hosting content on content syndication networks, B2B companies can leverage the existing reach of those networks, drive traffic to their assets, generate inbound leads, and close sales.
Why should B2B companies care?
Omnichannel content syndication through third-party networks allows companies to expand their reach and introduce products and services to new audiences over a trusted and convenient channel.
When done right, content syndication can help:
- Optimize SEO and drive higher ROI through shared product content on networks that have higher credibility and reach.
- Enter new markets and expand the target audience, without having to put in a lot of extra time, effort, or cost.
- Guide prospective clients towards more detailed content such as product features and price comparisons and ensure a seamless sales funnel journey.
- Discover qualified prospects interested in your products and services and provide an easy way for them to find you by directing their search experience.
- Cut through the clutter by delivering content to a chosen audience in a specific industry with unique needs and wants.
- Gather more leads (and eventually more sales) faster from several different channels at the same time.
- Integrate strong calls-to-action while constantly being visible and reachable to existing and new customers.
- Be part of a strong syndication network to increase exposure and boost brand reputation.
How can B2B companies make the most of content syndication?
Although B2B product content syndication can open the doors to a world of new sales opportunities, companies need to be aware of the many pitfalls and challenges that come with this strategy.
Making the most of omnichannel content syndication takes strategic planning, new and updated product content, constant research to pinpoint relevance, and skillful negotiation with publishing partners. Companies also need to periodically compare popular advertising engines, tweak their marketing initiatives, and nurture their relations with syndication partners.
Here are some things B2B companies should be aware of when it comes to omnichannel content syndication:
- Generalization doesn’t always work: One of the biggest drivers of content syndication is to broaden the business reach. However, while partnering with content publishers, generalization doesn’t always work. If you’re looking to cater to a new audience in a new geographic location you’ve never catered to before, translation and localization of content become critical, so the audience in the targeted region can better understand your capabilities and can better interact with your brand.
- Syndication success cannot be achieved without MDM: Many B2B companies venture into the content syndication space – without first working on building content that resonates with their audience. In the absence of a robust PIM strategy, the chances of content syndication efforts crashing and burning are extremely high. For content syndication success, companies need to realize that syndication is only a subset of the MDM and PIM backbone that comprises unified workflows and accurate, relevant, and consistent data across product, supplier, customer, location, and domains.
- Different product homes need different syndication approaches: Given that B2B companies have a massive portfolio of products, serving customers across a range of use-cases, it is important for them to use a different syndication approach for each of their product homes. Understanding customer needs, having a detailed idea of what content they have that aligns with those needs, and what channels they need to use for syndicating the said content is important to tie content syndication goals to overall business goals.
Embracing content syndication provides several opportunities for forward-thinking B2B organizations, especially when the tactic is not being exploited by their competitors. Content syndication offers a great way of expanding reach, connecting with new audiences, and accelerating business outcomes by providing prospective customers with the right information at the right time and in the right channel. However, for syndication success, B2B organizations must first have a robust MDM strategy in place, must plan for translation and localization, and must use a different syndication approach for different products and different channels.