Digital Content Marketing in Business Markets: Activities, Consequences, and Contingencies Along the Customer Journey

For your marketing

Possible founder application

An operational map for B2B content: understand buying jobs, build problem-framing and problem-solving assets, and distribute them when buyers need them. Treat the proposed performance relationships as hypotheses to test.

Reported result

What the study found

The authors organize the work into journey intelligence, a portfolio of valuable content, and timely sharing matched to buyer needs. They propose contingencies involving marketing agility, sales alignment, technical systems, targeting, and brand position.

Research question

What the authors investigated

What activities support customer-centric digital content marketing in B2B markets, and what conditions shape performance?

Design

Discovery-oriented qualitative study using two rounds of interviews and a theories-in-use approach.

Sample and setting

56 interviews with managers at 36 B2B companies that had invested heavily in digital content marketing.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

The theory-building design produces propositions that require empirical validation; the cross-sectional sample does not show how the process develops over time.

Research sources

ScienceDirect publisher abstract and article page retrieved with Firecrawl; interview counts and stated limitations were checked.