The phrase Content is King is quoted from a famous article penned down by Bill Gates. Success in the online world depends on how effectively one attracts people through content rather than interrupting them. Your content should not hinder the audience or be a buzzing bee that people want to swat away. Your content should be equivalent to the nectar that bees search for in delight. Content marketing remains to be one of the most cost-effective ways to generate B2B leads. Many content marketing agencies may often quote the importance of a channel when advertising. But they rarely talk about the current content marketing trends, which is the importance of customizing your content in each aspect of your buyer’s journey. B2B marketers need to create unique content marketing strategies keeping in mind the target audience and their pain points to stay ahead of the competition.
About 71% of a B2B respondent pool stated they reviewed a blog while deciding on the purchase. By the end of this blog, you will understand how to tailor your content marketing strategy for your B2B organization.
What is B2B Content Marketing?
This is the art of distributing various forms of digital content to expand your business’s audience. It can be in the form of blogs, social media posts or even videos. The use of a content marketing strategy is critical to developing the business’s brand, building bonds, and ultimately driving sales by appealing to the target audience, who, in this case, are other companies.
Did you know that 46% of the B2B companies plan on increasing their content marketing spend within the next 12 months?
Difference between B2B and B2C content marketing
The expertise of a good content marketing agency lies in the ability to create B2B, and B2C content focused on various factors such as target audience, market research, keyword analysis and competitor study. B2B content aims to be more lead-driven or sales-driven. However, B2C is more about exciting your consumers to try the product.
B2B content talks about incentives and expertise as your customers are logical and ROI driven. B2C content is about infotainment as your consumers are driven by emotion. The tone of the content is one of the most significant differences between them.
B2B
A SAAS firm would have content highlighting the technological capability they would bring to their customers. They would highlight their expertise in the domain.
B2C
Here, the best example is Coca-Cola’s social media posts. They create engaging posts where the consumers are encouraged to participate.
Kickstarting your B2B Content Marketing Strategy the right way
Market research
The first and most important step while creating a content strategy is market research. To create an effective content marketing strategy, you need to understand what the competitors are doing and analyse their business methods. It is essential to get your information from experts through discussion forums, SEO tools, news articles, and even interviews. This will help you devise a streamlined plan by exploiting the current content marketing trends while keeping the buyer’s pain point in mind.
Know Your Ideal Audience
The next step is to have a clear understanding of your target audience. Knowing your audience will help you discover their pain points and create a persona accordingly. A buyer’s persona refers to the representation of your ideal customer that fits the demographics, behaviour, and motivations. The more detailed the persona is, the more effective for you to generate leads. 71% of companies who have documented personas have high revenues and leads.
Invest In Customer Segmentation, Even in B2B
For example, you can segment your customers based on the revenue they bring and provide them with the optimal solution based on their potential. Most HR consultancies use this method.
Map Out The Customer Journey
When we break down the customer journey into three simple stages of awareness, consideration, and decision, it is easy to identify where the content needs to be optimized and at what stage. Investing your time in highlighting the buyer’s journey will educate prospective customers, build bonds with them, convert them into customers and establish loyalty.
This also increases the chances of repeat businesses. Identifying who your target is and at which stage they are in is essential to nurture leads and create relationships.
What Kind Of Content Tone And Style Would Make Your Content Unique?
Your content, besides being educational, needs to assure your audience that your product or service will provide them with the solutions they are looking for. You need to engage with the reader with conversational content, keep them interested, help them make informed decisions, and establish yourself as the expert with sound advice, recommendations, and case studies to back up your position. Your expertise will shine through your suggestions and answer complex queries they may have.
What Content Types Or Channels Will You Be Using?
A content marketing agency would advise you on the importance of creating the right content asset at the right channel. Is it blogs, infographics, videos, or case studies? What content type and on what platform you want to leverage will help increase your engagement.
Depending on the industry and the target audience, you need to pick between an Instagram video or a blog on LinkedIn to attain the best results. Keeping track of the latest content marketing trends can also provide you with the best methodology to increase leads.
Optimize your content
Using search engine optimization is a great way to get your content discovered by clients. This is great as it drives targeted traffic to your website. You also need to keep in mind the speed of your website, whether it’s mobile-friendly or whether the content is easy to navigate when content optimization takes place.
Use the SMART approach during goal setting.
You need to understand why you are creating each type of content and at which stage of the buyer’s journey. Outlining your SMART goals at the beginning helps you create content with a purpose.
Specific: Your goal should be clear and straightforward. Outline your goals so that your team is aware of the objective and accomplishes it accordingly.
Measurable: Having key performance indicators (KPI) and benchmarks allow you to measure your success. This will help you reach your goals in the most effective way possible.
Achievable: The goals should be within the ability of your company and team. Setting a viable plan creates a good atmosphere for your team.
Relevant: The goals you set should be relevant to your brand mission. It should ideally align with your marketing objectives to achieve a related outcome.
Time: The goals need to have a timeline that indicates the start of the objectives and the end. Having a specific time is essential to create a sense of urgency and motivation to achieve your goal.
CONCLUSION
Building an effective content marketing strategy can be as straightforward as identifying whether to repurpose your old content, or it may be as detailed as recognising the new trends to be incorporated into it. Quality of content overtakes quantity when developing your strategy. You need to create a fluid plan to evolve as your company grows.
If you would like to understand the basics of content marketing or find more innovative means to build the best content marketing strategy, click here.
