Creating content marketing to support the customers’ buying process for a B2B Industrial Manufacturing Company
Bui, Ha (2022)
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022060214647
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022060214647
Tiivistelmä
This research-oriented bachelor's thesis explores critical factors in creating a B2B content marketing strategy to assist sales activities for an international manufacturing B2B company. The primary outcomes of this thesis are a content segmentation grid for the case company and a list of valuable content types.
The thesis contains a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical section includes a literature review of B2B sales management, B2B digital marketing, and B2B content marketing. The organizational buying process, B2B decision-making units, forces shaping the decision, buyer persona, and key content marketing types are discussed in-depth. The theoretical part builds the fundamentals for the research. The empirical part includes how the research is designed and implemented.
The research is divided into two phases. First, the thesis author collects and analyzes secondary data from an internal qualitative survey. The survey was pre-collected by the case company. The thesis researcher analyzes the secondary data with the documented-based analysis to build the hypothesis for the following research phase. The second research phase contains the collection of primary data from semi- structured interviews. The thesis author conducts 3-6 in-depth interviews with customers and salespeople of the case company, then analysis data with the thematic analysis method.
The key findings from the two research phases suggest a list of content topics during the case company's buying process, illustrated in figure 30 and appendix 4. The content topics focus on the specific industry. Besides, the collected data allows the customers to map our most valuable content types to the B2B clients. In general, B2B content consumption behavior is changing due to the growth of digitalization. As a result, the B2B clients are more skeptical about sales-oriented topics, requiring B2B marketers to focus on the thought leadership contents. In addition, many B2B managers use social media and are more active in an online search nowadays. Hence, B2B marketers should not neglect online channels and influencers in their marketing campaigns.
The thesis contains a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical section includes a literature review of B2B sales management, B2B digital marketing, and B2B content marketing. The organizational buying process, B2B decision-making units, forces shaping the decision, buyer persona, and key content marketing types are discussed in-depth. The theoretical part builds the fundamentals for the research. The empirical part includes how the research is designed and implemented.
The research is divided into two phases. First, the thesis author collects and analyzes secondary data from an internal qualitative survey. The survey was pre-collected by the case company. The thesis researcher analyzes the secondary data with the documented-based analysis to build the hypothesis for the following research phase. The second research phase contains the collection of primary data from semi- structured interviews. The thesis author conducts 3-6 in-depth interviews with customers and salespeople of the case company, then analysis data with the thematic analysis method.
The key findings from the two research phases suggest a list of content topics during the case company's buying process, illustrated in figure 30 and appendix 4. The content topics focus on the specific industry. Besides, the collected data allows the customers to map our most valuable content types to the B2B clients. In general, B2B content consumption behavior is changing due to the growth of digitalization. As a result, the B2B clients are more skeptical about sales-oriented topics, requiring B2B marketers to focus on the thought leadership contents. In addition, many B2B managers use social media and are more active in an online search nowadays. Hence, B2B marketers should not neglect online channels and influencers in their marketing campaigns.