B2B Content Marketing Guide

B2B content marketing is creating content to generate leads, grow sales, increase brand awareness, and expand your audience. Content marketing for B2B uses  any form of content from blogs or articles to videos and seminars.

B2B content marketing and  B2C content marketing have multiple similarities and some key differences. One differentiation is that whileB2C marketing tends to be more entertaining, B2B content is more practical. 

This is because the goal of B2C content is to increase brand awareness and appeal to customer emotion, while B2B content marketing focuses more on educating prospects about their products. 

B2B Content Marketing That Works

A B2B content marketing campaign needs to be effective and various aspects will need to be considered for its success, such as: 

Identify Target Audience

For a B2B content marketing campaign to resonate with your target audience, you first need to understand who your target audience is. This shows you what kind of language to use, what pain points to address, and which images will have the most impact. 

When you’ve collated the data, you can use it to create a buyer persona, which is a general characterization of your typical customers. 

What Problem Are You Trying To Solve

People will usually purchase a product because it helps to solve a problem, a B2B content marketing campaign should demonstrate how your product can solve a problem for your target audience. 

Your buyer persona will be critical in identifying your audience’s pain points and discover what challenges they face in business. This will give you the tools to craft your content so it is educational and answers your prospect’s questions.

How Is Your Content Unique

You need to create something different to help you stand out from your competitors.  Try and answer the questions that your competitor’s content is not answering and use comparisons to show how your solution stands out from the rest. 

• Keywords

Using the right keywords will get your B2B content marketing campaign noticed by your target audience.   Identify keywords that have a high search volume and are relevant to your business Long-tail keywords are also great at targeting the right audience and tend to have lower competition because they are more specific

• Content Types

Some of the most effective content marketing for B2B includes video and other media on social media platforms like TikTik and Instagram because they are easier for users to consume.

Your target audience will consume content via their preferred platform, so you will need to create and distribute your content according to their preference. 

Social Validation

The best platform for social validation is Twitter because it is easy to create a post that has plenty of organic reach. If a tweet gets a lot of traction then you know the content will be valuable to prospects. 

Promotion

There are various channels you can use to promote a B2B content marketing campaign such as your existing social media platforms that already have an organic audience. The promotion of your campaign will help you grow your organic audience. 

KPIs

Define which metrics will be the most insightful for your campaign. Then develop KPIs that you can use as a benchmark to measure your performance. To know if you’re succeeding you will need to define what your key goals are, for example, increase brand awareness, generate more leads, or make more conversions, etc.  

Guide to Starting B2B Content Marketing

One of the biggest challenges in content marketing for B2B is knowing where to start. Here’s a brief guide on what you need to get your campaign up and running.

Set goals

Define what your goals are – what do you hope to achieve with your campaign? 

Remember that your goals should be SMART, meaning they should be:

•  Specific: Make it clear what your goals are. If you want more leads, state how many more you want, and by what deadline. 
• Measurable: Make sure you can track your performance, and define which metrics will tell you if you’re on course. 
• Attainable: By all means be set challenging goals, but make them realistic. Consider using previous B2B content marketing campaigns as a benchmark. 
•  Relevant: Be sure that your goals are relevant to your business. 
•   Timely: Set deadlines for goals to be achieved, but make sure they’re realistic. 

Buyer Personas

Create buyer personas to understand your target audience. A buyer persona is a characterization of your target audience. It should give you relevant details on their background and demographics like income bracket, age, pain points, goals, and challenges. 

Research your target audience to create buyer personas. Look into your existing database of customers and identify their most relevant shared characteristics. Use this data to create a description of who your ideal target audience is. 

Google Analytics is a treasure trove of valuable data. This tool gives you data on important demographics that you can utilise to further your insight into your target audience. You can also interview prospects and customers, or speak to your sales team who will have intel from their interactions. 

Content Audit

Perform a full audit on your content and evaluate where your existing content will fit into your B2B content marketing campaign. Use the results to optimise your content for better results.

This is useful to identify potential gaps in your content. 

Plan Content

When you’ve identified gaps in your existing content, it’s time to start strategising for new content. 

Using the knowledge you have earned from your target audience research and analytics, develop a strategic content plan that is relevant, valuable, and solves your prospect’s pains. 

Search Intent And Keywords

Keyword research is critical for content marketing, it’s what guides your prospects to your website in the first place. Take search intent into consideration, because this will signpost what your prospects are looking to achieve by searching for the target keyword.  This information is available in the search terms they are using. For example, prospects who are using a search term such as ‘SEO for startups’  are quite clearly hoping to learn about establishing SEO strategy for startups and your B2B content marketing campaign should reflect that intent.

Topic Clusters

Topic clusters work by creating a pillar page, which is a long-form article or blog that covers a topic extensively. From the pillar page, you link to smaller ‘cluster’ pages that focus on specific long-tail keywords and link back to the core pillar page.

The result is content marketing for B2B that makes it easier for the search engines to crawl, compelling them to rank your content higher in the search engine results. 

Content Types

Weigh up the pros and cons of content types and identify how they fit in with your B2B content marketing plan. Which types of content do your audience prefer and which are most effective at getting your message across. 

How to Effectively Promote Content Marketing for B2B

Promotion is one of the most effective ways of getting your content marketing campaign noticed. There are different ways to promote your content, including:

Social Media

Social media accounts are very effective at quickly reaching a large audience. The right content for your audience will be shared and will get plenty of coverage. When your followers share your content, it will help you gain exposure, increasing your brand awareness even further.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective way to communicate with your database. It is also a great way to establish a relationship with new prospects.  Create email marketing campaigns that will grow your engagement.  Develop a strategy that is focused on adding value to your database, regularly A/B test your subject lines, ask your contacts what they are looking for and use feedback to continuously create email copy your audience wants to read. 

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is cost-effective and can reach a large audience quickly. Create targeted ads that are designed to support your goals.

How Does Content Generate Leads?

Different types of content generates leads in different ways, one of the most effective types is gated content.

Gated content is not readily accessible to just any user that visits your site. It’s often in the form of an eBook or a guide that’s full of useful information to prospects. If somebody does want access to the content then they will need to give you something in return – which is often signing up to a newsletter.  Once they have signed up, you’ve gained a new contact. 

Measurable Metrics

Marketing and analytics platforms will help you track the behaviour of people who interact with your B2B content marketing campaign. For example, they can give you data on what touchpoints are more likely to result in conversions and how much revenue was generated. These metrics give marketers valuable information to make impactful strategic decisions.

Which metrics are most useful to you will depend upon the nature of your campaign and what your goals are.  For example, some content marketing for B2B will focus mainly on generating revenue directly, while others will have more of a focus on generating leads for the sales team to close.