The EU's General Data Protection Regulation which is coming into force next year is a huge opportunity for Content Marketers. A very short precis, of what the regulation will require of marketers is that from next May on your marketing list will need to be properly opt-in. 

There is loads of detail about this on the Wiki page below but getting your target audience to opt-in means you will need to be offering marketing as a service; that is to say your marketing will need to be of sufficient value to your audience that they want to receive your communications. 

There are plenty of ways to deliver value (offers, tickets and competitions spring to mind) but I would argue, that in a Business-to-Business context, the best way to build a list is to deliver content that is helpful to your potential customers. 

This is especially true of expert-oriented businesses where the knowledge of the experts in an organisation are one of the  key assets. These organisations are able to deliver content their clients want to read with comparative ease; they have a resource that is simply not available to others. 

GDPR is a nightmare for fire-and-forget marketers, the penalties are very real. However, for those with knowledge assets that are valued by others the regulation plays to their strengths.

We will be discussing this in more detail at our event (in collaboration with Kingpin): 'Digital Privacy in the B2B Landscape' on 4th April - do join us.