Here, There & Everywhere: What Does Best-Answer Content Mean For B2B Marketers in 2022?

B2B marketer man walking through airport past colorful mosaic image.

Fundamentally by its very nature, there will always be a single truly best answer to any question.

So how is best-answer B2B marketing content any different in 2022 than it’s previously been?

Providing that best solution — or to use the term our CEO and co-founder Lee Odden has been using since at least 2011 — being the best answer, may indeed be a singular solution, however the effort that B2B marketers need to make in 2022 to achieve it has changed in several important ways.

Let’s take a look at the key ways that being the best answer in B2B marketing has changed in 2022, and what steps marketers can take to earn best-answer status when it comes to the questions buyers and customers are seeking.

1 — Expanded Digital Touch-Points & Channels

Best-answer B2B content doesn’t only involve providing the best information needed to solve customer questions, because it can’t truly be the best answer if the customer never finds it.

Today’s B2B landscape is undoubtedly more a digital one than ever before, with few fewer in-person and live two-way conversations. These have been significantly replaced by greater time spent on information gathering by buyers and customers, as well as an expanding number of touch-points in more digital channels than ever before.

Information gathering transactions that were formerly face-to-face have increasingly moved to all-digital destinations, with just a few including:

Brand websites
Search engines
Mainstream social media platforms
Specialty social platforms
Informal third-party review sites

For today’s B2B content to win out and become a genuine best-answer solution, it can’t exist only in one online location, however, and certainly not just in the echo-chamber of a brand’s own website.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that all best-answer content needs to have at least one element on every single digital platform and channel, however. Although that may someday be the case, today’s best-answer content is presented on the majority of digital channels where B2B customers are seeking specific answers.

Best-answer content also consists of more touch-points along the way, no matter what the digital destinations may be.

Winning content gets that way not only because it provides the best information in the places where people are looking, but also because top content is now often nurtured at each step of the buyer journey. A digital buying journey that includes even one helpful online interaction along the way will pay dividends when decisions are eventually made, and competitors haven’t offered a single nurturing touch-point.

[bctt tweet=”“A digital buying journey that includes even one helpful online interaction along the way will pay dividends when decisions are eventually made, and competitors haven’t offered a single nurturing touch-point.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis” username=”toprank”]