What is one thing to include in a B2B content marketing strategy?
To help you build a B2B content marketing strategy, we asked marketing experts and business leaders this question for their best suggestions. From having an offline presence to understanding realistic buyer personas, there are several things to include in a B2B content marketing strategy that will set you up for success.
Here are 12 marketing strategies for your B2B content:
- Have an Offline Presence
- Remember Your Audience’s Level of Intent
- Host a Competitor Blog Post
- Provide Thought Leadership
- Spotlight Customer Reviews
- Understand Your Audience
- Personalize Your Email Campaigns
- Try Bottom-of-the-funnel Content
- Promote Using Podcasts
- Give Simple Answers to Common Questions
- Remember the Three T’s
- Understand Realistic Buyer Personas
Have an Offline Presence
One thing to include in a B2B content marketing strategy is an offline strategy. This could involve things like sending handwritten thank you notes, or building personal relationships with customers. Personal relationships are key in the B2B world—it’s often more about trust and relationships than it is about products. So make sure you focus on developing strong relationships with your customers!
Rick Elmore, Handwritten Thank You Notes
Remember Your Audience’s Level of Intent
Your content marketing will likely be designed around putting out as much useful information as possible for your audience. This will vary widely by topics and formats—infographics, reports and email courses—so you can capture the interest of a greater number of people. These thematic and format differences are often used to structure a content or editorial calendar, so you might rotate between different content types every week so people don’t get bored.
One thing to also bear in mind when planning your content is buyer intent. It can be very easy to focus solely on low-intent readers who are looking for a wide set of keywords—and it’s great to get their interest—but they may be unlikely to buy from you. By adding in equal amounts of high and low purchasing intent you can get the best of both worlds: improving your organic position and making it easy for people to buy from you.
Scott Hitchins, Interact Software
Host a Competitor Blog Post
One thing that is working exponentially well in B2B marketing—like SaaS—is creating an unbiased “best XYZ competitor” type of blog post. These blog posts list alternatives, including the brand that is hosting this content, and include features, pricing, pros/cons and overall rating for each business. They usually have a decent search volume, practically zero keyword difficulty and are so much easier to rank compared to “XYZ alternative” landing pages.
Matej Kukucka, Marketing Player
Provide Thought Leadership
One thing to include in a B2B content marketing strategy is thought leadership. By providing valuable insights and thought-provoking ideas, you can help set your company apart from the competition and establish yourself as a leading authority in your field. Publishing thought leadership content could also help you attract new leads and customers, as well as create opportunities for further engagement with your existing audience.
However, being an expert in your field will require continuous learning and keeping up with current trends. If you can show that you’re always learning and expanding your knowledge, it will go a long way in establishing your credibility. You can share your latest findings and discoveries through blog posts, articles, white papers, eBooks, infographics and more.
Omer Usanmaz, Qooper Mentoring & Learning Software
Spotlight Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are incredibly powerful content-marketing assets that we don’t see used very often. But they’re incredibly powerful!
First of all, they’re user generated content (UGC), which means you don’t need to create the content. If I’m honest, you’ll still need to ask your customers for it, but that’s a lot more scalable than coming up with content on your own. It gets better; because they’re UGC, they come with tons of trust. You’re not telling the world you know your stuff—someone else is. And the best part is they’ll likely share it to their own network if you give them exposure on social media.
Finally, customer reviews are very bottom-funnel content, with a degree of precision on the product, features and overall experience that even the best marketers have a hard time coming up with. If you haven’t been leveraging your customer reviews in your content marketing strategy, start now. It’s as simple as sharing a really cool review every week!
Axel Lavergne, Reviewflowz
Understand Your Audience
One thing to include in a B2B content marketing strategy is a clear understanding of your audience. Who are they and what do they need? Once you know that, you can begin crafting your content marketing strategy accordingly. You could start by looking at the needs and wants of your target audience, then identify potential topics for blog posts and case studies. Once you have an idea of who you’re writing for, it’s important to be able to track results. This can be done through Google Analytics or another tool that tracks website traffic and search engine rankings.
Masha Mahdavi, SEM Dynamics
Personalize Your Email Campaigns
While B2B content marketing is certainly important to building brand awareness and sales—not to mention the great ROI—the strategies aren’t as straightforward as some may think. In fact, when it comes to B2B content marketing and emails, it’s all about the details!
Many people make the mistake of sending out campaigns and newsletters with thousands of recipients. If you’re sending mass email campaigns, there isn’t any room for personalization, which will lead to minimal responses and interest. Remember that people want to feel valued and important, not just like another email address. So, what’s the solution? It’s simple—put more effort and personalization into your emails. By including more details in your outreach, you’ll start to see an increase in responses and results.
Everyone wants to partner with someone that cares, so make sure they feel that way the second they read your first email.
Simon Bacher, Simya Solutions
Try Bottom-of-the-funnel Content
Bottom of the funnel content, like “best solutions for X” or “X alternatives” can be helpful for your business. While you may feel reluctant to discuss competitive solutions in your content strategy, these types of articles and videos drive a lot of conversions. Your readers trust you and your expertise. And if you’re able to provide an unbiased opinion and clearly state what’s good or bad about a particular solution, they’ll act upon your suggestions. Plus your content will rank in Google.
Aleksandra Korczynska, GetResponse
Promote Using Podcasts
In the B2B marketplace it’s becoming more challenging to differentiate your content, webinars, ebooks, blog posts and lunch and learn sessions. They take a lot of upfront investment to create, but they expand your outreach through not only your network but through others. But it can mean that you can’t guarantee the outcome based on the investment—you are in the dark about whether it will work or gain traction or hit the audience you are trying to reach.
Invest 30 minutes into talking about what you are promoting or knowledgeable about, which gains you thousands of hours of listening time from a target audience that wants to learn more. Also, through the podcast medium you can determine the network size you can reach and what the DA of the backlink will be before you invest the 30 minutes.
Stewart Townsend, Podcast Hawk
Give Simple Answers to Common Questions
Knowing your audience is key in B2B content strategy. Talk to your potential and existing clients, pay close attention to questions they ask and look for patterns. Are there many concerns about implementing the solution you offer? Or maybe, do your clients know how to measure effects? Prepare content that answers the most common questions in a simple way, but be careful. Don’t give too obvious advice. Dig deeper, give real life examples and be specific. If you want to teach how to calculate ROI, prepare a formula or an online calculator. Give the real value in your content, and answer the most important questions. Your audience will love it.
Marta Piotrowiak, TimeCamp
Remember the Three T’s
You could create the perfect piece of content that resonates with every member of your target audience, but without airtight distribution in your B2B content marketing strategy, no one will see it. When putting together a distribution plan, always remember the three T’s of Target, Transmission and Timing.
Target refers to your target audience—who are they? Think about not only the sectors which they work in, but also their job title and other key psychographic and demographic data.
Transmission is how you get your content out. Do you know what platforms your audience uses and how they use them? Do you have a network of channel partners, employee advocates and partner companies who can expand your reach? Are you using inbound or outbound marketing, or a mix of both? All these questions should be asked and answered!
Finally, Timing. When is the best time to pull the trigger and distribute your content? Often, previous analytics can point you in the right direction.
Dan Simpson, The Remote Marketer
Understand Realistic Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers better, so you can create content that appeals to them. Creating buyer personas is an important first step in any content marketing strategy. It will help you focus your content on the right topics and ensure that your content is relevant to your target audience.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few key components of a buyer persona in a B2B marketing strategy:
- Demographics: Age, gender, location, job title and company size.
- Goals and objectives: What does the buyer want to achieve?
- Pain points: What challenges is the buyer facing?
- Solutions: What kind of products or services does the buyer need?
- Content preferences: How does the buyer like to consume content?
By taking the time to create a buyer persona for your business, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are focused, targeted and effective.
Dan Taylor, Dan Taylor
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