The Only Visual Content Marketing Guide For B2B That You’ll Ever Need

Here’s something that’s known even amongst people who have little knowledge of marketing: almost all B2C brands are starting to look similar. If not, a little tweaking or changing of color or adding some perks is all it takes to brand themselves different from their competitors. 

But B2C brands can easily sway customers and get away with it. How? By providing excellent visual content that grabs people’s attention.

The more trendy, stylish, and lifestyle-centric their visual content looks, the more it’s going to be easy for them to establish a steady online community base, acquire customers and basically… winning the consumers’ hearts and minds with what they have.

Meanwhile, observe how B2B brands’ visual branding and social media content typically looks like. Some people would describe it as monotonous or formal, while others would think of it as plain.

But the reason for being described as such visually is because B2B companies are targeting businesses and in order to succeed with that, they have to create content that delivers useful information with a sense of neutrality.

How powerful is visual content marketing when it comes to successfully market B2B brands and how can you create visual content that will grab other business’ attention? Find out in this article.

How Does Visual Marketing for B2B and B2C Differ?

Why do B2C companies always get the bigger slice of the cake? Because that’s their advantage. The target for B2Cs is ordinary people, people who consume almost anything that resonates with their interests or way of living on the daily.

It’s easier to appeal to their senses and make their wants a constant human need and vice versa, regardless if they all look strangely the same. Another factor that can be considered is that B2C sells easier because there is a wider range of creative techniques or simply the use of diverse colors they can execute than a B2B can. 

For B2B, their market tends to be more formal because they’re more reliant on these factors before purchasing: risk reduction (45%), information efficiency (41%), and added value (14%). But the thing about looking too formal is that it doesn’t sell much, considering that consumers tend to be more attracted to visuals rather than an all-text type of content. 

Meanwhile, here’s the good news. Being a B2B company won’t stop business owners to create visually-appealing content. In 2018, 58% of marketers have spent more on content creation and 70% of the marketers who are using visual content for their campaigns have been more satisfied than the previous year. 

Considering the concept of consumer psychology wherein consumers tend to make major purchasing decisions based on what they see, does visual content marketing for B2B and B2C have a thicker gap? Well, it’s quite the opposite, at least recently. 

But how? Simple. Because real creativity knows no boundaries. 

Today, B2B companies are tapping into establishing an emotional connection and creating personalised relationships with their audience because let’s face the fact that even in B2B,  human-centric marketing works.

Information content without superb visual elements tends to look too conventional while content that provides information and engages the human sense gets more attention.

Putting B2B on a Higher Visual Perspective

No one can argue this time: visuals play will continue playing an important role in content marketing, regardless if you’re a B2B or B2C company.

But for B2B brands, aside from providing the usual advice on diversify using visual content formats such as infographics, video, stories, or user-generated content to name a few. 

But these won’t be the things we’ll be telling you because these are already given that in a world where there’s a constant need to consume visual content, it’s a given that any kind of business has to become invested in visual content marketing. 

What we’re going to give you are three things that every B2B marketer must do to create a visual content marketing that’s gonna drive more acquisitions and help you improve as an owner who will deal with one thing until the end: your target audience.

Start adapting the creative mentality.

Not everyone was born to have a good eye for design, but we all have the capacity to think creatively. Have you noticed that behind the most successful brands, either B2B or B2C, there’s a creative visionary who understands how things work and how humans think and apply what they observe through breakthrough innovations?

How does it start? Having a keen sense of observation.

Besides having a competitive edge in terms of connecting with your market, everything starts with the ability to see what’s beyond. Here’s the most useful guide on how to help you jump start thinking like a creative. 

Master the art of creative storytelling.

Here are 4 ways on how to tell what makes a good story: 

• It doesn’t sound too complicated. 
• A good story brings people together.
• It motivates and defines beyond the norm.
• The abstract idea transforms into something real. 

People love stories. And when they come across a good story, they stay because they want to know more. Storytelling is itself is a form of art, because it requires expertise and patience to create something that consumers will fully bite into.

That’s what makes exceptional businesses stand out from their competitors — storytelling is the most powerful component of inbound marketing. That’s why now is the best time to exercise, develop, and master your creative storytelling ability.

Experiment on what type of visual content feels closer and works for your brand. 

An exceptional B2B company can provide an optimal experience for their audience if it truly knows what it wants and what works for their brand.

Putting out visual content without a solid visual content marketing strategy can cause mayhem later on, but experimenting on different visual content formats and finding out the best option that keeps your target market tuned in to what your next post might be.

As competition for B2B brands will get denser, so will the need to produce top-notch, genius visual content marketing.

It’s not sufficient to just know that there are several visual formats that you can utilise for your next campaign or know who your audience is, or tell something that they want to hear.

B2B marketers must be able to adapt creativity as one of the main skills in order to create striking visual content that best addresses their brand’s message to other businesses.