b2b content marketing

Two decades into the 21st century, the fierce competition in B2B niche marketing has never been tougher! Your B2B content marketing strategies need to be on point if you want to take the lead in your industry.

When did B2B marketing become all about technical jargon, and industry buzzwords? When did presenting a professional brand image become synonymous with cookie-cutter copywriting, and dull as dishwater advertising?

Somewhere along the way, marketing departments seem to have forgotten that even the largest business is made up of individuals at the end of the day. Despite the massive influence of technology and analytics in digital content planning, creativity, and human instinct are still necessary factors in any sort of successful promotional campaign.

At Content Development Pros, we’re all about bringing the excitement back to the B2B domain. With that in mind we’ve compiled this exhaustive B2B content marketing guide to help you create real, sustained interest amongst your professional clients.

What Is B2B Content Marketing?

It’s all in the name! B2B marketing utilizes multiple types of content to launch new businesses and further develop established brands.

Through the various techniques involved, your company can reinforce brand awareness, and build customer loyalty.

Ultimately, effective B2B content marketing strategies are your ace in the hole for promoting your products and services to other businesses in a manner that ensures long-term success.

Why Focus on B2B Content Marketing Now?

Before investing in any business strategy you need a complete understanding of the facts on the ground.

Consider these B2B content marketing trends and factors before making up your mind:

  • Product brochures aren’t enough to differentiate your brand from larger industry competitors. You need a consistent method of connecting with key decision-makers in a way they understand. Content marketing helps you inform stakeholders about your brand, and depth of knowledge without explicitly promoting your products and services. That sort of exposure sticks with executives at every step in the customer journey.
  • Business decisions can be slow and painstaking, with several decisions makers and influencers involved at each stage. Your business needs to nurture leads throughout this entire process without seeming too pushy. Content marketing is the perfect way to refresh your brand image, and keep yourself foremost in the client’s mind.
  • 90% of B2B buyers indicate that when they’re ready to go through with a sale they’ll talk directly to the seller. It’s a statistic that goes to show how outdated, traditional sales strategies have become in modern B2B transactions. Content marketing is the perfect way to put yourself in front of these companies, so they can make a fully informed buying decision.
  • If business clients have questions or doubts about your business, a simple search through Google or Facebook should clear up any misconceptions. With good content and an optimal SEO strategy in place you can ensure that prospects will find the answers you want to give them.
  • Think of how much money the average B2B company spends on optimizing their offerings in preparation for big industry tradeshows, now think about how many conversions these events actually create over the course of the business year. The truth is, investing all your time and money into one-off promotional campaigns won’t lead to long-term interest. You need content marketing to augment those big-ticket strategies, and generate year-long revenue.
  • It positions the brand in a specialized market niche.
  • B2B content marketing helps you reach out to businesses that would have otherwise been unaware of your brand offerings. With the right strategies in place, your content will remain evergreen and continue to create new contact points far after the initial posting.
  • It drives far greater innovation through videos, infographics, and informative articles. There are no limits to the creativity you’re allowed with B2B content marketing.
  • Social media comments and discussion sections on LinkedIn blogs are great forums for creating interaction and one-on-one interaction with business customers. By engaging prospects in this manner you can create real emotional connections that last through to the buying decision.
  • It has been the most powerful and effective marketing activity in the past few years, all online marketing experts are unanimous in their agreement that it will be highly lucrative future if done well.

Why Create a Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Marketing

Think of B2B content marketing as the fuel which powers all of your marketing efforts. From email marketing campaigns to print, and radio advertisements to trade show pamphlets, every aspect of your marketing mix requires strong content.

In a world where business decision-makers are increasingly informed and specialized, positioning yourself as a thought-leader can truly influence a prospects’ decision on what to buy, and when.

Okay, so now you know why you should use B2B content marketing, the question arises: what objective are you hoping to achieve with it?

Sure, increasing sales or revenue may be the ultimate goal for your company, but it’s on the way to fulfilling that objective many sub-objectives have to be fulfilled as well. For example you have to:

  • Find and attract more prospects
  • Establish a surefire lead generation process
  • Establish a stronger sales funnel
  • Keep customers loyal to your brand
  • Make your customers your brand advocates
  • Stay interactive with existing and potential prospects
  • Quickly solve customer concerns
  • Increase current sales figures

In short, it is imperative that you set out a clear path for achieving profitability through your B2B content marketing effort. To help you build that strategy, here are some key aspects on which you can focus your planning.

B2B Content Marketing Ideas

Your BCB content marketing can be as expansive as you need it to be. You need to find out where you’re getting the most traction from and tweak your focus accordingly. For starters, your content marketing can be focused on:

  • Emails and Newsletters: The audience for B2B content is usually one that needs information. More than engagement, they want facts and want their questions answered and concerns addressed. Therefore, targeted emails with the perfect subject and relevant content can work wonders.
  • Optimized Website: You need to have a reliable online presence to be taken seriously. Make sure your website is optimized, which means its design is up to the mark, content drives action, and the architecture itself is seamless.
  • Blogs and Articles: You need to put out regular content to stay relevant. High-quality content that ranks on search engines for your targeted keywords will help you gain credibility. You get more eyes on your site, which will in turn lead to more leads and better conversions down the line.

Social Media: An incredibly high number of executives bank on social media for their first look at any product. Why? Well, because everyone is using these networks, so it’s easier for them to do a quick check. Presence and activity on your social media accounts is imperative for the success of your B2B marketing strategy.

How to Create Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

creating a b2b content marketing strategy1. Define & Segment Your Target Audience

Before you can start marketing, you need have a clear idea of who you’re marketing to. This means you need to be able to identify your target audience. After all, even companies with unlimited resources have to focus their marketing on specific market segments in order to get the most out of their promotional efforts.

Detailed market research and analysis is needed to ascertain which market segments will be most responsive to your content.

2. Get Into Their Shoes

Effective sales strategies require a clear understanding of customers pain points and purchasing desires. In other words, you can’t provide value to your client unless you know what problems they’re facing within their organization.

Email out surveys to existing business customers and put up online polls to gather opinions from industry professionals. Allied with other forms of market research, these strategies should help you recognize the foremost issues facing organizations within your target niche.

Use these insights to drive your marketing efforts moving forward.

3. Set Achievable Conversion Targets that Can Lead to Sales

Now that you know exactly what your target audience wants, you can set about developing practical conversion objectives.

Instead of a blatant buying proposition, content marketing involves a step-by-step purchasing process that’s known as the buyer’s journey. Through targeted, insightful content, you can first gain credibility and trust amongst prospective business customers. Then you can use this content to drive no-strings attached email subscriptions. Finally, once customers are familiar with your brand and offerings, these nurtured leads will help you reach your practical conversion goals.

Compared to the B2C lifecycle, the B2B buying process can take months or even years. So it’s important to set your conversion goals in accordance with this longer timeline.

4. Be a Prominent & Active Part of Relevant Communities

Online communities are the best place to bring yourself to industry-wide attention. Identify and join relevant communities within your targeted niche and actively take part in these groups by sharing reliable and practical knowledge. Once members become aware of your position as a thought leader within your area of expertise, they’ll pay far more attention to what you have to say.

Think of LinkedIn as your friend. Facebook groups or forums can also offer much value.

Often, these initial followers go on to become your best B2B clients.

5. Exploit all Forms of Content

With the ever-increasing popularity of visual content like videos and infographics, you can’t afford to leave this content niche unaddressed. How-to videos always garner strong interest amongst business professionals, so if you have the time and resources you should produce and share tutorials on YouTube and Facebook.

Embedding this content into the articles you have published will further increase reader interest. Once videos start to go live, you’ll see a related rush of traffic flooding to your business website for sure.

Infographics are more popular to represent facts and stats, so utilize them accordingly.

6. Quality Vs Quantity

It’s an undeniable fact that publishing content on a regular basis is of vital importance in order to create a consistently interested online following. Quality should NEVER be compromised for the sake of quantity. It is neither suitable nor fruitful in B2B content marketing. For those businesses that have limited resources to dedicate towards fresh content, it’s important to focus on publishing a few high-quality articles on a regular basis.

Remember that your target audience is also a business entity and can easily realize the quality of your publications. So if you present these audiences with low-quality content, it is highly likely that you will lose them as prospects. Instead, let them wait for some time instead and you will surely not lose them.

That was the summary of the effective content marketing strategies that can help you get results. But understandably, even the most in-depth guide may not answer all your questions.

  • How to improve your B2B content marketing strategy?
  • How to create a B2B content marketing strategy?
  • How can I make sure my content quality doesn’t go off the rails?
  • Where will I find the resources to create insightful content on regular basis?
  • Where will I find the time to come up with interesting new themes, and topics on a regular basis?
  • How will I stay updated with the latest B2B content marketing trends?
  • Who will generate the content?
  • How many B2B content marketing writers will I have to hire?

Then there’s a simple answer to all your unresolved queries.

Contact the professionals at Content Development Pros and find a one-stop solution to every B2B marketing concern.

Why choose Content Development Pros as your B2B Content Marketing Partner?

Dedicated Teams with Perfect Collaboration

B2B content marketing is an intensive function even a small specialized team would struggle to execute completely.

We employ the experienced professionals in every department to provide you with expertise you need in:

By combining these diverse skillsets we can offer tailored B2B content marketing strategies that suit every client.

On-Time Project Execution & Completion

Our teams work individually and collaboratively to ensure high-quality results, within the promised timeframes.

Exclusive Client Dashboard

Our Client Dashboard employs cutting edge technologies to ensure smooth, efficient, and productive reporting of your project at every stage of the process.

Oh, and did we mention? Our affordable pricing packages are extremely affordable!

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