July 19, 2024
by Neelam Goswami / July 19, 2024
Content marketing plays a key role in both customer acquisition and retention.
Whether you're selling an everyday commodity or advanced business software, getting found on relevant searches is more important than ever, as everyone is looking for answers online. Influencing B2B buyers is difficult, so your B2B content marketing strategy is vital.
However, creating and managing a winning B2B content strategy can be challenging. Tools like content marketing solutions are perfect for streamlining workflows, making it easier to plan, create, publish, and analyze your content.
A B2B content marketing strategy is any content strategy that targets businesses or organizations. Let's say your product or service aims at businesses, not individual consumers. In this case, a B2B content marketing strategy will help you get the attention of key decision-makers in your target organizations.
A strong B2B content marketing strategy makes your target companies aware of your brand, products, and the problems you solve, bringing B2B buyers closer to purchasing.
Some content creation statistics show that content creation and distribution are the most cost-effective ways to generate leads organically. This is why almost 40% of B2B marketers prefer a documented content marketing strategy.
But what should your B2B content marketing strategy look like? How do you lead hard-to-convince B2B buyers to a purchase decision? Let’s find out.
In B2B content marketing, your audience personas are people who make purchasing decisions on their organization's behalf.
These purchasing decisions typically go through multiple approvals and depend on the organization's budget, immediate or long-term goals, and several other factors. This makes B2B content marketing far more complex than B2C, where you only need to persuade the individual buyer.
B2B marketers rely on in-depth educational content that addresses the needs and challenges of a business buyer rather than a TV commercial or Facebook ad that typically appeals to individual consumers.
In B2B content marketing, purchasing decisions are driven by factors such as return on investment (ROI), ease of company-wide adoption, integration with existing systems, and projected outcomes. In B2C content marketing, however, it’s mostly emotional triggers that drive sales.
The sales cycle for B2B deals is also much longer than for B2C. Organizations look for long-term solutions and take more time to purchase, but this doesn’t necessarily apply to a B2C buyer.
B2B marketers need to map their content at every stage of the buying journey. Although the sales funnel also applies to B2C customers, the journey from the top to the bottom of the funnel is much faster here.
B2C marketers, on the other hand, focus on quick and engaging content like social media posts, user-generated content, reels, and shorts.
Despite all the differences, B2C and B2B content marketing strategies can overlap in some areas. For example, many B2B brands use billboards and transit advertising on buses and trains, just like a B2C company. The idea is to onboard individual users, show them the product's value, and get them to promote the product to their teams and organizations.
Here's how using content as a B2B marketing tool benefits your business:
Now that we understand why a strong B2B content marketing strategy is necessary and how it differs from a B2C content marketing strategy let's dive straight into the nuances of building one.
The first step in building a content marketing strategy, whether B2B or B2C, is knowing what you're offering. Thoroughly examine your product and brand positioning to target the right buyers and convince them to invest in a product.
Content marketers should work with the product team to learn more about their product. Similarly, marketers should be regularly updated on product features and functionality changes.
B2B content marketers should also understand that the same product can have different uses and value propositions for different customers. For example, a project management platform can have different use cases for a marketing agency and a SaaS company.
So, as a B2B content marketer, create content that highlights these different use cases with appropriate brand positioning where product knowledge is key.
The next step is to understand the role of content in achieving your business goals. B2B content marketing can help a business in various aspects, such as building brand awareness, generating marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), acquiring demo requests, and even customer acquisition and retention.
Before you start building a content marketing strategy, set clear goals. Identify what you want to achieve with the content you publish and set key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure performance.
To assess whether your content marketing strategy delivers the desired results, know where you're going and monitor your progress. This will also help you identify gaps and optimize your strategy.
When setting goals, follow specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goal setting.
Audience research helps identify your target audience's needs, wants, and preferences and develop a successful marketing strategy that resonates with your target market. Reach prospects and create meaningful relationships in these simple ways.
Knowing your target audience is another vital ingredient in building a strong B2B content marketing strategy.
To understand who will benefit from your product or service, create audience or buyer personas based on the demographic information you have about your target audience. Additionally, segment these personas based on their buying behavior, interests, and interactions with your brand and competitors.
You can then decide whether you want to target some or all of these audience segments. This audience research provides useful information that will help you tailor your content to your audience's needs.
Working with sales and customer success teams can also support your audience research. Having interacted with prospects and customers firsthand, they clearly understand customer pain points and challenges.
Another great way to understand your audience's needs is to review comments and conversations on social media and other relevant channels. You could go to your competitor's social media feeds and see what their audience is talking about in the comments. You can also join relevant social media groups and forums and follow the conversations to gauge customers’ interests.
Review portals are also a good source of information. Check out reviews of competing products and see what your audience likes and dislikes. This will give you an idea of audience preferences and help shape your content strategy.
With a specific product, audience knowledge, and clear content goals, you’re ready to start building your B2B content strategy. B2B buyers go through a lengthy process before making a purchasing decision. Naturally, they consume different content types at each stage of their journey.
When choosing the content format, ask yourself:
Also, research audience preferences and what kind of content they engage with. For example, when capturing the attention of busy professionals (like most B2B buyers), you have a better chance with videos, short blog posts, or easy-to-use infographics. This content should answer some of their basic but critical questions and familiarize them with your brand.
Some businesses prefer more in-depth content, such as case studies showing how your product has helped other customers. Prospects at this stage may already be considering your product but need further proof of its value. The goal is to move each lead further down the sales funnel and closer to a purchase.
Creating content is time-consuming, and having an efficient workflow can save time. Here's how to build an essential content creation workflow that outlines your process from ideation to completion.
You can create content in-house or outsource your content creation. Many B2B companies find a fine balance between internal and outsourced content. Decide which model to adopt based on your priorities and resource availability.
If you create content in-house, define all the steps that content goes through before it’s published. This workflow guides your internal content team and keeps the content consistent.
Here's an example of a content creation workflow.
A content creation workflow typically begins with content planning.
This is followed by content creation and optimization, where you further align the content with SEO requirements to increase its ranking chances. Each piece of content should undergo at least one round of editing or more if needed. After approval, the content is published.
Building a content creation workflow also involves defining the roles and responsibilities of the various team members. Successful content marketing typically requires a project manager, content creators, and editors.
Clearly state how each member contributes to the content creation process.
Everyone on the team should be aware of their responsibilities and be accountable.
Include the tools you need to speed up the process and increase productivity. Here are some key content tools:
You can use many tools to streamline your content creation workflow. Decide which tools to prioritize based on your teams’ needs and content marketing budget.
Content distribution and promotion are critical aspects of any B2B content marketing strategy. The channels you target will determine whether or not your content reaches the right audience.
Content marketing channels for B2B and B2C marketers may differ, so you need robust research to determine where your buyer personas spend most of their time.
The most popular owned media channels for B2B content distribution are:
Among organic platforms for content distribution, the following are at the top of the list:
Guest posts and PR articles also give you valuable link-building opportunities for your content. Getting backlinks from high-authority websites can improve your search ranking tremendously.
Distributing and promoting content across multiple channels is less time-consuming when repurposing your content. For example, each new blog post can be turned into an infographic for social media or a presentation for a webinar. Any video you create can be cropped and turned into YouTube shorts or an Instagram reel. Content reuse ensures you get the most out of your content creation efforts.
When building your B2B content marketing strategy, remember that any content strategy requires ongoing monitoring. Your content has a lot of potential, but you need to review it regularly to identify opportunities for improvement.
Regular content audits are integral to your B2B content marketing strategy. Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to determine how your content performs, including the number of impressions and clicks it gets. Any gaps in your content or SEO can be easily identified, and necessary changes can be made to improve results.
You should also measure your content performance against your KPIs. For example, if one of your content goals is to increase sales, the associated KPI could be your conversion rate.
A noticeable increase in conversion rates after publishing an article could indicate that your content is performing well. You can track conversion sources and see how your content contributes to them.
These insights will help you determine which parts of your content strategy are working or need rethinking.
Many content formats are available to support your content marketing strategy. To help you decide what content to invest in, here are the most popular content types for B2B marketing.
Blogs are one of the most powerful content types in both B2C and B2B content marketing. Short blog posts under 1,500 words are the most frequently created content type by B2B marketers in the past year. They’re also one of the top-performing ones.
Blog posts help you spread your message, build brand awareness, and gradually build a loyal following.
Real-world facts and figures are compelling data for a B2B audience and provide a solid argument for your product or service. Publishing original research makes your content link-worthy, which means other marketers would be willing to link back to your content as a source, building authority for you.
Research reports are the third-best content type in terms of results.
White papers help you explain complex concepts in a detailed and simple way. B2B audiences are typically interested in long-form, research-based content that helps them better understand their industry's challenges.
Publishing well-researched white papers could help you address your potential customer's pain points and offer a solution. White papers can also be offered as gated content to capture leads.
Case studies show your audience how your product or service helped another company overcome its challenges. They explain your product's capabilities in detail and provide data and numbers as proof to build trust with readers.
B2B products can be complex and have more features than meets the eye. Buyer guides tell your prospects why they should choose your product. They can also offer product comparisons to strengthen your arguments and give honest suggestions on choosing the right product.
Over the past year, video content creation has increased from 66% to 75%. Videos of any length are a good choice for B2B content. Explainer videos and tutorials seem to work particularly well as they’re educational and valuable to the audience.
Infographics help condense information into a single, concise visual format. They make browsing information easier and grab people's attention. Infographics can be very impactful as top-of-the-funnel content and are easy to share on social media. You can easily create infographics from your guides and listicle posts.
Here's an example of how key insights from a blog post can be summarized in an infographic.
Social media is growing rapidly. Your content strategy needs social posts to capitalize on this emerging trend. Depending on the platforms you choose, you can decide what type of content to create.
For example, on LinkedIn, long posts and text with images perform better. Instagram is a visual platform for sharing infographics, reels, and carousel posts. A regular social media posting schedule and engaging content can do wonders for your brand.
Although in-person events are back, webinars remain a popular content marketing format, likely due to their reach. Choosing trending and highly relevant topics for your webinars and encouraging participation from around the world can be great for B2B brand building.
Most countries are seeing an increase in podcast engagement every year. Since many people listen to podcasts on the go, they help get the attention of busy professionals who might need more time to read a blog post or watch a video.
This is not an exhaustive list; you can always experiment with other content formats. Choose what works best for your audience and brand.
Building a B2B content marketing strategy seems challenging as every customer gained is a long-term win. Every lead that falls out of the funnel is a missed opportunity. You need a content strategy that will give you an edge over your competitors.
Approach content marketing from the customer's perspective, keeping their needs in mind, and offering useful content to earn their trust. However, remember that your B2B content strategy may need to pivot to accommodate external and internal changes.
Keep your eyes and mind open and stay on your feet with these ten content marketing examples that'll add that extra spark to your content marketing efforts.
Neelam Goswami is a content specialist at Narrato. She has written for several reputed digital and content marketing brands, including ClickUp, Jeff Bullas, and Neal Schaffer.
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