Content Marketing is a marketing tactic focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, timely and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. Content marketing can be hard as it concentrates on communicating to your customers and prospects without selling, but rather to change consumer behaviour.
Content marketing is so important in the Agricultural industry as it’s a way to deepen longstanding relationships and impart highly technical information. If you get content marketing right, you will be giving customers in-season valuable content in exchange for deeper customer loyalty.
If your Ag business is at a turning point and you are wondering how you can assist in enhancing your brand to be seen as thought leaders, then content marketing must be an imperative part of your strategy.
Contents
Why is it important for B2B?
Most agricultural companies sit in the Business-2-Business space. There are some key characteristics of B2B that put content marketing into context:
1. Rational customers: B2B buyers are more rational than B2C; they research and buy based on business decisions not on impulse.
2. Complex decision journey: more on this later, but the B2B buying journey is more complex than B2C.
3. More complex products: the products/services being sold in B2B are more complex, technical and require more informational support.
4. Higher unit cost: B2B products generally are far more expensive than high street B2C products. Another reason to increase the perception of value through good supporting content.
5. A long tail: a small number of customers can count for a large percentage of income. This means that your high-value customers must be treated very well with product support plus pre and post-sales care.
6. Less behavioural diversity: in B2B there are generally smaller audience segments, so you can use one piece of good content for multiple demographics.
7. Long term buyers: B2B buyers can maintain loyalty with companies for many years if they are looked after correctly.
The customer decision journey
The B2B customer decision journey is complex and content marketing can assist in moving customers through the cycle. This diagram from McKinsey is a great example of the journey and the parts of the journey that you can influence with good content.
Who in Ag does Content Marketing?
John Deere’s ‘In the Furrow’ publication is used as an example of best practice in the Agricultural Industry and between marketing professionals. The Furrow‘s first issue was printed in 1895. Circulation grew to reach more than 4 million consumers at its peak in 1912.
Today, the magazine reaches about 570,000 consumers in the U.S. and Canada, and about 2 million globally, through the same legacy network of John Deere dealers that distributed the original magazine. John Deere believes in their content shouldn’t be just about their equipment: “Even the most technical subject has to have a human story behind it”. The difference between now and 1895 is that ‘The Furrow’ can now be accessed online.
Bayer has also taken their Magazine online with a dedicated area of their website, plus they publish additional content behind a registered area for loyal customers of a certain value.
Look at any of the big players in the Ag industry, and they try to provide timely/seasonal, relevant and brand-enhancing content to their customers. If you also want to be seen as a thought leader in the space, you need to think about doing it too.
For assistance with your content marketing strategy, we conduct 1-2-1 Ag Clinics to help farming businesses. Please contact us for more information.
If your Ag business is at a turning point and you are wondering how you can assist in enhancing your brand to be seen as thought leaders, then content marketing must be an imperative part of your strategy.
Owned or rented media?
Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behaviour. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.
