We live in an era of technological progress, and it has affected every single sphere of our lives tremendously. Whether in your personal life, business, or education, you can feel the digital impact. This means that digital transformation in publishing is only natural.

Today we are going to talk about the influence of major digitalization on publishing B2B enterprise clients. Let's start by stating the obvious: in a world of fast technological development, B2B communication needs an entirely different approach.

What does that mean? The answer is quite simple: no matter what you do, you are bound to adapt to what modern customers and consumers expect from you. Due to this, it is safe to say that every company or business needs a certain digital plan to incorporate into their marketing strategies.

Digital Transformation in the Publishing Industry

What does digital transformation in publishing look like? Every publishing company rushes to adapt to constantly changing technology as well as to the needs of its customers. That is precisely what digital transformation means. To put it simply, there are at least five main areas of development that every publishing B2B enterprise must address to keep their business on top. These areas are:

Content storage

Metadata

Discoverability

Content agility

Automated collaboration

Let’s have a closer look.

Content storage

Not so long ago, every enterprise needed millions of folders and various network drives, not to mention shared-content systems. These days, all that is required for a successful operation is a global, cloud-based repository. Such an approach ensures that any necessary information can be shared between the people involved within seconds and without piles of different documents stacked on a desktop.

Metadata

Some unlimited labels and tags can be applied to files manually or automatically. This ensures that any file can be found in the system with the help of a keyword or semantic search.

Discoverability

As the name suggests, this is where content storage and metadata sync together to provide the user with the best and most relevant content.

Content agility

This is when an enterprise client learns how to respond to the demands that come from the outside. Valuable content is being reused, which means that no matter how old the content is, or what its original format was, it can still be presented as a new digital copy.

Automated collaboration

There is no need to send separate copies to multiple editors for review. These days it is possible for different editors to work on the same document at the same time. Such an approach speeds up the process and improves the quality of the enterprise.

The authors among you may be wondering: what’s in it for me? The faster the publishing process, the sooner your work will see the market, and that is clearly a tremendous benefit to consider.

Essential Digital Strategies That Modern Publishing B2B Enterprise Clients Use

Besides the areas which every enterprise must address in order to transform digitally, there are also essential strategies that they need to stick to in order to thrive in an overcrowded market. There are six main strategies that every B2B publishing enterprise is quickly adopting. They are:

Website development

SEO and content development

Integration

Social media

PPC campaigns

Redefining targets

Website development

A high-functioning website just doesn't stand out these days. Considering modern trends, it is safe to say that today's audience is more demanding than ever. This means that when digitizing your publishing B2B enterprise, you need to consider every tiny detail to win over the customers.

Your B2B website should:

Correspond to the target audience’s needs

Be mobile-responsive

Be updatable

Be informative

Include links to all social media pages

All in all, a proper and functioning B2B publishing enterprise site should be as informative as possible, simple to use, and better than what the competitors have to offer.

Read also: Website Development for Publishing Industry

SEO and Content Development

No SEO = no customers. It's as simple as that. And a business with no customers is as good as dead. This means that investing in productive SEO is one of the most important things to consider when trying to digitize your enterprise. These days, many businesses hire a personal SEO specialist or use companies that offer SEO optimization services.

Content development is also an important component of a productive digitized website, which is why many companies opt for blogs. Such an approach allows you to spread the word about yourself faster. The more people know about your site and your services, the more customers you will attract.

Besides the blog on their own website, some companies also use guest articles that are posted on other platforms but link back to their site.

Last but not least, video content is the best type of content. People prefer a short and informative video to combing through page after page of text.

Integration

Integration is your interaction with possible customers. The easier it is to get in touch with you, the more involved the targeted audience will be. To achieve that interaction, many companies invest in reliable customer service.

Social Media

It's not a secret that most people can’t imagine their lives without Facebook or Instagram. That is why publishing enterprises that want to increase their influence over their target audience must use social media to their advantage. It's very easy to popularize your content via interesting posts on Facebook. Informative visuals are also helpful when it comes to spreading the word of what you do and what you are experienced in.

Many publishing enterprises tend to leave the strategy out. However, that is surely their mistake, which may result in tremendous target audience loss.

PPC Campaigns

This is a paid strategy, and it needs to be emphasized that, if your budget is low, this may be a strategy to avoid. However, companies that can afford pay-per-click campaigns tend to admit that it is more than resourceful.

Redefining Targets

These days there are all sorts of analytics available so that you can easily decide whether or not your target will prove to be productive. What is more, it is possible to redefine the target, even in the middle of the campaign. Such an approach ensures that most B2B publishing enterprises can easily influence a successful outcome of the campaign.

Read also: Why Use Drupal for Media and Publishing

The Main Publishing B2B Enterprise Client and Its Approach

Taking all the above information into consideration, it seems like there is only one thing missing – suitable examples. We are going to discuss Time Inc. and their successful approach to the digitalization of their production.

To begin with, they provide their own successful strategy:

Interesting content.

Innovative design.

Data visualization.

Videography.

Impactful storytelling.

Targeted brand positioning.

Using this 6-step strategy, the company has become one of the leaders in the UK market, which proves that the strategy is highly effective.

Summary

To sum everything up, it is safe to say that the modern world is developing at a rapid speed and any business, be it online or offline, has to adapt to it. As the technology is developing and improving, so are the needs of the average customer. This brings us to the point when it becomes clear that publishing as we know it will soon be extinct. Major B2B publishing enterprises have got the point and changed as well as upgraded their strategies already. If you want your business to be as thriving as Time Inc., then you should take all the above information into careful consideration!