B2B Content Marketing: The Ultimate Guide
B2B content marketing is a highly successful way for B2B companies to create and nurture leads into clients. In using content marketing, B2B companies benefit from a long-term and cost effective approach to acquiring leads that will yield benefits long after it’s initially created. In fact, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads. Read on to learn about content marketing and how you can use it in your business.
What is content marketing?
Lexico, which is powered by Oxford, defines content marketing as:
“A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”
Broadly, content marketing includes any type of content that your business creates related to your services or products that isn’t directly related to sales. Most often these pieces of content are created by marketing, but they can also include thought leadership created by members of your team and videos or articles created by clients.
Content marketing at its best guides potential customers through the buyer’s journey while answering their key questions and addressing pain points at each stage. Good content marketing focuses solely on the customer and their needs, not on what the company is trying to sell.
Why should B2B companies use content marketing?
The buying cycle for most B2B companies is a lengthy process, and more and more B2B buyers are researching online before they even engage with companies. Studies show that 47% of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson. This means that developing a sound approach to content can put you in front of potential customers well much earlier in their buying process and begin establishing your relationship sooner.
Creating content to help potential customers in their research positions you as an expert, and it allows you to help them understand their problem as it relates to your business. By leveraging a content marketing strategy specific to B2B businesses, you can become the go-to source for information from buyers.
Types of B2B Content Marketing
In today’s digital world, customers consume content in many different formats, which makes it easy for your business to begin a content marketing approach. The key is to choose only a few of these options and create high quality content consistently to develop an audience and showcase your expertise.
Blogs
Search is still king, and most B2B buyers expect to read at least a few articles when they’re researching their problem and potential solutions. In fact, 88% of B2B audiences consume business-related content online at least once a week. Blogs are a great method to drive traffic to your website, and with 54% of marketers saying that growing traffic to the company website is a top inbound marketing priority in the next 12 months, this is a perfect method to achieve that goal.
To effectively use blogs as a marketing method, create articles that provide detailed information that answers questions your customers frequently ask. Start by creating a list of questions you’re asked by your clients and add in any questions you know they need to ask either before or after those questions on your list. Once you have a starting list of questions, it’s time to see how frequently people are searching for those questions. Pull up Google’s Keyword Planner or Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest to search those phrases. If you’re just starting out, start by targeting keywords with the highest searches and low competition. Once you have a more established domain authority, move on to more competitive keywords.
Not every blog post has to be focused on ranking on search. Make sure you also create content specific to your clients most frequent questions even if it doesn’t have a high amount of searches. Next time a potential client asks you about that topic, you’ll be able to direct them to your blog post, which will automatically give you more credibility. It’s essential that you share valuable information on your blog to encourage readers to read the entire post and engage with other content.
If you’ve ever wondered why everyone wants you to share your email, it’s because email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing tools, no matter your industry. The Content Marketing Institute found that 40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success. Given this information, it isn’t surprising that according to a Hubspot survey, 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions. With more than half of potential customers claiming that emails affect their buying decisions, it’s important to have an effective email strategy in place.
One strategy used by many B2B companies is to use email marketing to guide potential customers through their sales funnel. The most common way to grow an email list is to offer something for free that your customers will find really valuable and provide it in exchange for their email. This might be a how-to guide, a webinar, a checklist, or anything else your customers would find valuable. Once they subscribe, it’s best practice to have an automated welcome sequence to introduce them to your company and answer common questions related to the “free” gift they downloaded. Depending on your buying cycle, you might ask for the sale at the end of the welcome sequence or move them to another email list to continue sharing valuable content with them.
Setting up an effective email workflow requires careful planning, but the hardest part is creating valuable content that your customers will want to read. Don’t share newsletters with company updates or only email about your services. Provide content with information that they can use immediately in their business, and you’ll find you have a more engaged audience.
Video
From TikTok to YouTube, it seems like everyone is focused on video content these days. Easy to consumer and often very engaging, videos can be surprisingly effective. B2B marketers list videos as one of the top three most valuable content marketing types to move prospects through the sales funnel.
For B2B businesses to leverage video content, it’s important to focus on videos that align with your brand and values. If your company is typically very conservative and professional, then a quirky, fun video won’t align with your brand. Brainstorm ideas for types of content that align with your company and will also speak to your audience.
Video content to consider as a B2B business includes:
Explainer videos. These are exactly what they sound like: videos that explain something to an audience. Explainer videos are the perfect way to show a story of the current challenge your customers face and how you solve it.
Whiteboard series. If you think of an explainer video as the high level challenge you’re solving, then a whiteboard series allows you to dive into the details. Use a series to showcase your expertise and solve challenges your clients may need to resolve before they work with you.
Webinars. Webinars are another great way to educate your audience over video. You can host live webinars or pre-record them and post them on your website, share them over email, or promote through advertising.
How-to Video. How-to videos are perfect for educating clients and showing your expertise. You can post these on YouTube or provide them as an opt-in gift in exchange for an email to grow your list.
Client Testimonials. You can talk about how much your clients love you all day, but it’s much better if you let them talk for you. Ask past clients if they’d be willing to record a video about working with you, and share this through other channels.
Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media remains a great way for B2B businesses to create leads, and if you’re not using social media, you can assume your competitors are: 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 78% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for content marketing efforts, followed by Twitter (48%) and Facebook (42%).
In order to achieve the best results from your social media efforts, you need to first determine what platform your ideal clients use the most. If your typical buyers are in their 60s, for example, don’t promote on Instagram where most users are between 25 and 34 years old. Use your buyer personas to determine what platform they’re using the most. If you don’t have this documented already, you can always ask existing clients how they found you and where they would prefer to find information.
When you create your social media content, you must follow the same approach as with the other methods described on this list. While it may be tempting to just post a funny image or beautiful picture, if it doesn’t align with your brand, it’s not going to produce results. For B2B companies especially, you’ll achieve the best results if you share content that your clients will find valuable. Check your post metrics to see how often viewers are saving or sharing your content and if they follow through to see your profile or visit your site. Focusing on “vanity” metrics, such as likes and comments, doesn’t result in clients, though it can help more people see your content.
No matter how you decide to use social media, if you don’t define your goals first and create content towards that, you probably won’t achieve them.
Podcasts
The approach to podcasts with content marketing for B2B companies is very similar to videos. This means you should create podcasts that align with your brand. Podcasts are a relatively new and untapped marketing method for B2B businesses. According to Hubspot, 17% of marketers plan to add podcasting to their marketing efforts in the next 12 months.
With podcasts, you’ll want to share content that your clients can use and that doesn’t require a visual aid. For example, if you want to have a “how to” podcast, don’t explain a technical topic where most people will need to see your screen to know exactly what to do. Podcasts work great for sharing client success stories, addressing common pain points, and conducting interviews with thought leaders.
Before you get started with podcasting, make sure you’re prepared for the amount of time and effort it will take to create consistent content. Determine your release schedule before you even get started, and work backwards from that to understand how much time it will take. You’ll need to establish a structure for each episode so listeners know what to expect, and also plan for how you will promote your podcast. Once that’s worked out, you’ll be on your way to creating a podcast!
E-books
If you have an established presence and lots of valuable information to share, consider creating an e-book. E-books are a great way to grow your email marketing list to nurture leads. In fact, according to ImpactBND, 80 percent of users said they’d provide their email for a white paper or ebook.
E-books can definitely help to establish your authority and share helpful content to your audience. They might even become a new revenue stream for your business! Before you dive into e-books, though, remember that you are writing a book, which means it will take a lot of time and effort. After it’s written you’ll have to promote it as well.
Case Studies
B2B companies should aim to have a few case studies on hand to show past client experiences. Case studies are one of the top three most effective content marketing methods B2B marketers use.
Case studies are easy to produce, and they are perfect to share with potential clients when they’re at the decision phase of the buyer’s journey. At this point, they’re ready to learn more about your offerings and what you can do. Create case studies that showcase the standard wins clients experience when working with you. It’s important to not share an unusually successful (or unsuccessful) project to make sure clients are disappointed if they do work with you.
Resource Guides
Resources guides are helpful for clients because they provide immediate action to take on a specific challenge.
When creating resource guides, focus on small but significant challenge your clients often face before they work with you, and develop a step-by-step guide for how to solve that challenge. It might be a technical resource (i.e. how to use a certain technology for a specific task) or it might be a template or a step-by-step process. Determine something valuable and relatively easy to create, and share that on your website, over email, or social media. You can also use this as a way to grow your email list.
Client-Generated Content
The best content is content you don’t have to create. Client-generated content allows you to showcase your offerings and happy clients at the same time. Using client generated content also allows you to leverage social proof, which is important in establishing trust and authority.
Some clients might share this on their own, but you can always ask if they would be willing to create a short video or participate in an interview that you can share.
Outside Content
We’re using this as the catch-all category for content created about your business and offerings that you didn’t explicitly create. This might be a quote in an article on another site, sitting for an interview on another podcast, or a guest post on a different blog. This may fall under the umbrella of Public Relations, but developing a strategy for mentions in content that you didn’t create will help you to reach new audiences and grow your business. Plus, having backlinks will improve your SEO.
How to create content
This list may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Creating a B2B content marketing strategy means you need to choose only a few of the options above, unless you have an entire team dedicated to executing these tasks. Choose the methods you want to use and commit to a release schedule. An easy way to create content consistently is to reuse it in the different methods. This means you might turn an interview into a blog post or transform a blog post into social media posts.
Conclusion
With this many options for B2B content marketing, there’s no excuse not to get started today. If you aren’t sure how this fits into your overall strategy or where to even begin, schedule a free consultation, and we can help you out!
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