B2B does not have to be boring always. Most often, content marketing is assumed to be boring, dull, and uninteresting when compared to B2C. For many B2B brands, content marketing is the backbone of the customer acquisition strategy. When a solid strategy is in right place, it can be remarkable growth. In this guide, we will tell you everything you should know about B2B content marketing and how it can be used for business growth.
What is B2B Content Marketing?
These standards remain the same whether you are using a B2B content marketing plan for your B2B or B2C company. The things that differ are the decision process and promotion channels that can be successful in conversions and customer acquisition.
If we turn to Google Trends to see the growth in popularity of content marketing as a growth channel, there is continued demand and interest in content marketing because it works and gives positive results.
As customers, we are becoming immune to advertising. At least 35% of internet users know about adblocker. We have complex purchase journeys where we want to connect and engage with a business before making a purchase or an inquiry.
And this is where content marketing comes in.
When we look at B2B, we are generally talking high-average order values and enduring commitments. These are not disposable consumables. Those customers want that increased confidence that is working with the right supplier or service provider.
Content marketing helps companies to attract, engage their customers, both before, during, and after they purchase or engage in a service. It is a great opportunity to place your brand as thought leaders as experts at the top of the field and to become an important voice in your industry.
Comparison of B2B Content Marketing and B2C Content Marketing
The major differences between B2B content marketing and B2C content marketing are based on the promotion channels and purchase journey, as well as the intention of the customer.
Often, B2C marketing is working with simple and fast buying journeys; the path between a customer finding a business and making a purchase.
B2B content marketing is probably to involve a complicated and lengthy purchase funnel that could take weeks, a few months, or more, of nurturing potential through.
However, the underlying philosophy of content marketing remains the same regardless of the customers: to use great content to engage potential clients and to use this to enjoy an increase in ROI.
How to build a B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Successful B2B content marketing involves the formation and promotion of useful, best content that is created by professionals. Perhaps even more than the B2C space, success with B2B means not just generating great content but understanding your customer, the content that they want to consume, and how they want to consume it.
And we are going to teach you everything you must know to create a solid strategy and improve your business to the next level. For doing this, we have divided the B2B content marketing plan from the start to end and will cover:
- Conducting research and creating a strategy
- How to categorize and understand you are the customer personas
- Understanding the sales funnel
- Setting objectives for your content marketing practices
- Content formats that work from B2B businesses
- Promotion tactics that can be used to improve your content
Many things are included in a content marketing strategy for a positive result, but as a B2B brand in 2020, the question is whether you can ignore this tactic or not.
Putting Together a B2B Content Marketing Strategy
B2B content marketing success comes with creating a solid content marketing strategy.
To put together a successful insight into what you want to attain, and how you are going to do it, you must understand the four important elements that should be considered:
- Brand positioning
- Business case
- Owned media value proposition
- Strategic plan
For most of the B2B leaders, content marketing is an important initiative when marketing a complicated product or solution. But developing a content marketing plan that delivers results is not an easy task. Spending a bit of time up-front to create an improved B2B content marketing strategy will ensure you are focused on getting the best results. Here are four elements of a better B2B content marketing strategy.
Prioritizing B2B measurable goals
The first important step in building a B2B content marketing strategy is committing measurable marketing objectives and selecting their significance against your business goals. B2B marketing plans generally include both quantitative and qualitative goals. Planning against these quantifiable strategic objectives lets you report on marketing results instead of tactical activities.
As content marketing is resource-intensive, you must prioritize your resource allocation to attain better results. For instance, if you are attracting and choosing lots of active prospects then your priority should be:
- Qualifying sales readiness
- Nurturing their engagement with subject matter expertise
- Attracting and attaining new prospects
If you have the opposite priority of attracting more and more leads, then your investment priorities will get reversed. Either way, it is important to prioritize your marketing goals. Otherwise, your campaign will be trying to attain too many things at once without focusing on your goals.
Communicating your business to your audiences
The next step in building a content marketing plan is to focus on utilizing a customer-focused articulation of your business. This will help to identify which topics, content categories, and approaches are relevant to your audience. Every great brand and company have deep subject matter expertise. While these areas of expertise are significant in handling and operating a business, not all of them are relevant to what your consumer wants to know.
Summarizing your target market
The third important step involved in creating a B2B content marketing strategy is to describe your target audience segments. Personas, sales profiles, and best customer models are tools that you should use to outline your customer segments to enhance the significance and efficacy of your content marketing plan. The key to creating the right segments is to recognize customer needs and pains, filter them through your business, group their requirements and pains by audiences or roles, and then use that data to profile your top client segments.
It is vital to profile these segments by creating a list of customer needs and pains using your client’s own “How do I “queries. Avoid the urge to roll-up pains and needs or redefine them on your conditions. For getting the best content marketing results, you must avoid the “curse of knowledge.” You might be an expert, but your audience is not. Ensure to focus on your customer’s pains and needs, instead of just offering expert knowledge.
Developing content associated with what your audience wants to know
You must create content for every stage of the sales process. Here is a quick guide on how to map the right topics for every stage. First, shape your pipeline by understanding the various stages of what a customer goes through when he or she decides to do business with you. Then, identify “what your customer wants to know.”
Get best results with quick planning and execution
Part of the answer to attain better content marketing results is faster content planning and improved execution. Experts suggest using these strategic elements as a useful framework to plan content writing and marketing prioritized against audiences and client objectives.