The role of customer journey in B2B content marketing

Abstract

Constantly developing technologies and marketing methods increase the importance of content marketing as one of the main communication channels. Content marketing is a new division of digital marketing. It has a revolutionary nature, and has changed the way of communication with customers, from a one-way, broadcasting, approach to a customercentric. Due to the development of social media and user generated marketing, modern companies are learning to consider customer journey in their digital marketing strategy. Content marketing plays an important role for business-to-business (B2B) companies due to the higher (than for business-to-customers (B2C) companies) dependence on customers. The latter could be explained by longer purchase decision time, smaller amount of customers and longer business relationships. It is often believed that large global companies disseminate best practices due to high level of available resources, process optimisation and the effectiveness level. The aim of the current research is to identify by means of a content analysis whether the largest global B2B companies listed in Global 500 make use of the concept of the customer journey in their digital marketing strategy. The provided analysis helps to identify a link between content types and customer journey steps.