Coca-Cola’s Innovative B2B Content Platform: A Must-See for Marketers

When is your viewers NOT your finish buyer?

When you’re a B2B marketer, you understand the reply.

Your job requires participating and successful over distributors, resellers, stores, brokers, and even influencers who promote and promote your services. It’s a core focus of nice content material advertising.

This month, one of many greatest manufacturers on this planet confirmed why that continues to be true.

Coca-Cola launched a brand new B2B content material platform and e-newsletter referred to as Coca-Cola Lens. It supplies business traits, data-backed insights, and different thought management to its community of present and potential retailers, meals service shops, and different sellers of their beverage manufacturers.

Why would a giant model like Coca-Cola launch a B2B content material platform? What does it actually imply?

Taking a look at Coca-Cola Lens

Coca-Cola fittingly introduced its new content material advertising platform on the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation Present. Coca-Cola Lens isn’t for shoppers; it’s for the retailers and restaurant companions who promote Coca-Cola merchandise of their institutions. It’s an awesome instance of utilizing content material advertising to distinguish your model for a particular viewers.

Coca-Cola Lens encompasses a library of thought management articles that study shopper habits and supply the financial context to assist eating places and retailers turn out to be higher enterprise managers.

It additionally publishes unique and proprietary analysis, third-party sources, and information on matters corresponding to multicultural shoppers and the expansion of merchandise like premium water. And it supplies tips about managing stock and optimizing different parts of enterprise.

Clearly, Coca-Cola designed the initiative to ascertain deeper ranges of belief and provides retailers and eating places but another excuse to align with the worldwide beverage model.

3 issues to note

When you suppose I’m pitching Coca-Cola, I’m not. I haven’t spoken to anybody on the firm, however I’m excited by a number of concepts seemingly evident on this launch.

First, Coca-Cola, one of many extra refined entrepreneurs on the planet, made its B2B-enablement technique a visual and notable piece of its model and advertising strategy. It publicized the location launch with a press launch and a session on the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation Present. It’s not just a few non-public undertaking.  

Second, with solely 16 articles at launch and a primary web site design, Coca-Cola doesn’t appear to interrupt into anybody’s piggy financial institution to do it. The price range for this was doubtless the equal of a rounding error on the rounding error of the general advertising price range.  

Folks can subscribe to the content material by way of e mail, so Coca-Cola appears intent on doing this long-term. And making it public signifies that they not solely need present prospects to suppose they’re a very good associate but in addition need to develop relationships with potential retailers and eating places.  In actual fact, the subscription type consists of calls to motion for non-customers, indicating an awareness-building technique for the platform. 

Lastly, I could also be a bit overexcited about Coca-Cola Lens as a result of it demonstrates an eagerness for brand spanking new content material advertising platforms. Even well-established manufacturers can see worth in doing one thing progressive that’s small in scope however mighty in ambition.

In current months, I’ve seen a decline in these sorts of experiments in small- to medium-sized campaigns. Manufacturers annoyed with natural search efforts will not be nurturing their blogs, useful resource facilities, social methods, and thought management packages as they could. Concepts for brand spanking new content material platforms get shot down as a result of they aren’t sufficiently big to make a dent or are too massive and dangerous to execute. Given the supply of AI and paid adverts, why hassle with a tough and long-term initiative like an natural content material advertising platform?

Whether or not Coca-Cola Lens succeeds stays to be seen. However that’s OK.

Coca-Cola didn’t overcomplicate it. They didn’t make it so big that they might take a giant threat if their restaurant and retail prospects didn’t discover it precious. Nevertheless, additionally they didn’t short-shrift the location and make it a touchdown web page for the commerce present presentation.

Be versatile and right-sized

As I’ve stated many instances, with at this time’s advertising expertise and processes, launching a brand new content material advertising platform like this one must be straightforward, fast, and right-sized.

I just lately talked with a world expertise firm that did not get buy-in for a thought management program. The rejection got here as a result of integrating it into their enterprise content material administration and advertising automation techniques would skyrocket the price to seven figures and eight months of technical growth. After all, it wasn’t price that degree of threat.

Your owned media platforms must be as versatile to deploy as the rest you need to do. The timeline must be talked about in days, weeks, and possibly months, not quarters or years.

Sure, Coca-Cola might discover the usefulness of Coca-Cola Lens restricted to some months, a number of quarters, or a few years. However by doing the attention-grabbing factor, they’ve demonstrated that at the same time as massive as they’re, Coca-Cola is open to doing new issues with out assured success.

When Joe Pulizzi and I wrote Killing Marketing, we made the premise about launching content material platforms that would present a lot worth as to turn out to be a worthwhile facet of the enterprise.  We opened with a quote attributed to Mark Twain (although he in all probability by no means stated it):

“It ain’t what you don’t know that will get you into hassle. It’s what you understand for certain that simply ain’t so.”

That’s why I like Coca-Cola’s launch a lot. If Lens works, it should in all probability shock them simply as a lot as the remainder of us. They don’t know what’s going to occur, and truthfully, that’s a extra thrilling technique to work on advertising.