First things first, B2B doesn’t have to be dreary! Contrary to the fact, B2B content marketing is always misunderstood as a boring and dull concept compared to B2C content marketing. Nevertheless, B2B content marketing is a proven methodology of using content to broaden your company’s audience, enhance and grow brand affinity, and eventually drive leads and sales.

Content marketing is vital for generating leads and raising brand awareness. Unfortunately, most marketers get content marketing wrong. Content marketing is not about selling your product; it is about developing and delivering content that adds value and engages customers through the most appropriate channels. However, in order to make the most out of your content, you must have a solid Content Marketing strategy in place.

What exactly is B2B Content Marketing?

B2C content marketing is a strategy in which businesses utilize content such as blogs, eBooks, case studies, market research, videos, and podcasts to attract, engage, and convert website visitors.

It is the most cost-effective marketing technique that can help a company’s long-term goals, whether it be brand exposure, lead generation, revenue, or growth. A content marketing strategy is essentially a plan of action, outlining how various content assets will be conceptualized, generated, released, and marketed to achieve a specific goal.

Did you know?

According to a report by Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, 89% of B2B marketers utilize content marketing to drive leads.

This is why an increasing number of businesses employ expert B2B content marketing services to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to content marketing. The goal of B2B marketing is to familiarize other businesses or potential clients with your brand and the value your product or service will bring to them or the problems/pain points that it will address.

Your Ultimate Guide to B2B Content Marketing and Brand Building

A good B2B content marketing strategy involves the creation and promotion of useful and top-quality content. Success in the B2B space requires developing best-of-breed content consistently. It should revolve around what your audience wants to consume, and how they want to consume it.

In this guide, we’ll discuss about ways to develop a sound content marketing strategy.

• Conducting research and developing a strategy
• Recognizing and understanding customer personas
• Recognizing your sales funnel
• Creating objectives for your content marketing activities
• Content styles that have been proven to work for B2B companies
• Utilize promotion strategies to increase the reach of your content

1. Conducting research and developing a strategy

Many successful B2B businesses opt for B2B content marketing services to develop a strategy and understand their targeted audience. To put together an effective insight into what you want to achieve and how you plan to do it, you must understand the four important factors:

• Positioning of your brand
• Value proposition of owned media
• Business case
• Strategic plan

A trusted B2B content marketing services provider can assist you in providing a direction, justifying the expenditure, and having a defined plan that can be executed as well as monitored periodically.

2. Recognizing and understanding customer personas

A reader persona is a segmentation of the reader. If your website covers a wide range of topics, you would require a list of personas to target.

Keep your target audience in mind while developing content. What can you say to them that they don’t already know? What problem are you capable of resolving? What information do they need to make an informed decision?

You can construct a plan around each of your customer personas if you have a clear understanding of who they are.

3. Recognizing your sales funnel

To be successful with B2B content marketing, you must first understand how the content you develop fits into the various stages of your sales funnel.

B2B businesses often have a slow-moving sales funnel. This is due to the time it takes to grow a lead into a customer.

Spend time working with your sales team or B2B content marketing services provider to understand your funnel so that you can utilize this information to effectively plan out a content strategy to target leads at each level of the funnel.

4. Creating objectives for your content marketing activities

Always create content keeping a goal in mind. That includes knowing why you are developing each piece of content. Setting goals can efficiently help you measure progress. You can define the purpose of content in a variety of ways such as:

• To rank high in search engines and generate organic traffic
• To obtain relevant and high-quality backlinks
• To drive leads inside your sales funnel.
• To increase social interaction
• To create awareness

 Further, the objectives you specify for your content may include:

• The number of leads generated
• Natural traffic
• Social reach and participation
• Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) rankings attained
• Number of high-quality links obtained
• Influence on brand exposure

5. Content styles that have been proven to work for B2B companies

Too much text can be somewhat overwhelming. If someone reading your post is greeted with line after line of uninterrupted text, they may lose interest in your content in no time.

What is the solution? Multi-layered content is the answer. This includes blogs, research studies and articles, whitepapers, eBooks, videos, webinars, podcasts, case studies, templates, checklists, and newsletters.

6. Utilizing promotion strategies to increase the reach of your content.

Creating content though is a crucial task, but if no one knows about it, the outcome will be disappointing. This is why it counts to have a  sound content promotion strategy. Depending on your customer personas and their online habits, you can leverage various platforms or mediums available to promote or distribute your content for maximum impact.

Conclusion

B2B content marketing offers a plethora of advantages that can lead to success in the long run and it is at the forefront of marketing for many businesses. Take time to learn how to effectively design a B2B content marketing plan for potential and existing customers. Getting the help of a trusted digital marketing company or agency that specializes in B2B content marketing services can help you develop an effective B2B content marketing strategy to help you stand out.  

Futurism Technologies is a next-gen digital transformation partner that provides integrated digital marketing solutions including SEO services, PPC, Social Media, ORM, eCommerce marketing, B2B content marketing services, and more for businesses across the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, and the UK.

We have been assisting B2B companies in various domains including healthcare, manufacturing, banking, etc. to identify their audience, drive their brand value and generate more traffic and revenue through our tested B2B content marketing services.

We know it takes time to build trust, but we can help. Reach out to our digital marketing expert at +1 (732) 377-3717 or drop us a note here.