Content marketing guidelines for business-to-business (B2B)

 

What is B2B content marketing?

 

B2B content marketing refers to the practice of creating and distributing valuable content to attract the attention of other businesses.

It is also one of the best marketing strategies you can use to increase brand awareness, traffic, leads, and sales for business-to-business companies.

The main goal when it comes to B2B content marketing is to build trust, make other businesses familiar with your brand name, educate people, and ultimately drive profitable customer actions within the B2B space.

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Why is content marketing important for B2B businesses?

Content marketing is extremely important for B2B businesses because it has a great ROI (return on investment).

Look at the infographic below; you will find data to back up what I’m saying, according to this expert content marketing. 

Source

Here are 5 key reasons why content marketing is super important for B2B businesses.

1) It allows you to build trust and credibility.

Consistent development of valuable and relevant content will boost your trustworthiness and credibility in this industry.

This credibility is significant if you want to gain the trust of possible clients or customers, who will see your business as knowledgeable and trustworthy. 

2) It can help you capture and generate high-quality leads.

When you create valuable and informative content, it will serve as a magnet to attract potential leads.

Whether through super-great and informative blog posts, detailed whitepapers, or engaging webinars, you can capture the interest of your prospects and nurture these leads through the sales funnel, eventually converting them into customers.

3) It allows you to be flexible and keep ahead of trends.

Nowadays, technology is constantly changing and evolving, so content marketing allows you to be flexible and adjust your content strategies to keep up with these changes and reflect them in your marketing activity. 

4) It can help you build strong connections with your target audience.

When it comes to B2B content marketing, it is not only about creating and publishing content; it is instead about creating content that provides value to attract and engage your target audience.

In this case, you will be able to build a positive reputation in this field for your business.

If someone needs to make a B2B purchase, they will think of your business first.

When you create content that provides value to your target audience, you can:

• Earn search engine rankings that drive valuable traffic to your site. Gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
• Establish your brand as an industry authority in this field.
• Build trust with prospects and customers.
• Educate people about your company and solutions.
• Generate social media shares that boost brand awareness.
• Earn backlinks that drive traffic and benefit your search engine optimization.

5) It helps you to keep doing what matters.

We all know time is precious when it comes to business. This is why you should focus only on what will be beneficial for your target audience.

Creating content that is easy to read and understand is crucial for the sake of your business because people don’t have the same level as you.

Put yourself in the shoes of the people you are targeting before you create your content. Make sure your content is precise, informative, and to the point. That will help you get people’s attention and convert them into customers.

Don’t create content about what will not provide any value to your target audience; save yourself time and money to focus on what only matters.

 

Content marketing guidelines

 

 

How do you do B2B content marketing effectively?

Business-to-business content marketing involves several key steps:

1) Understand what your target audience needs.

You should conduct audience research to know your target audience thoroughly. According to the SEMrush content marketing 2023 report, audience research is the number one factor that leads to success when it comes to content marketing.

When you understand your target audience’s pain points, challenges, and what they need, you will be able to create content they like that will solve their issues and answer their questions.

2) Set clear goals:

Make sure you set goals for your content marketing plan that you can reach.

Whether it’s lead generation, brand awareness, thought leadership, or customer retention, clear objectives guide your content creation.

3) Analyze your existing content

Creating new content is extremely important in this new digital age if you have something new to say or a new topic to talk about that will provide value to your target audience.

According to Neil Patel, an expert in content marketing, there are already 1 billion blogs on the internet, and there are only 7.8 billion people in the world. That’s around one blog for every 7.8 people.

That’s a lot, right?

This is why it is always better to improve and modify your existing content instead of creating new ones.

The reason behind this is that updating existing content is generally quicker and easier than creating new ones, and content with poor quality can harm your brand’s reputation and have a big impact on your search engine ranking.

4) Leverage SEO and create valuable content.

Keyword research is extremely important to help you leverage your SEO. When conducting keyword research, look for those with low difficulty, high search volume, and a high cost per click. 

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While you are creating high-quality and valuable content that educates, informs, or solves problems for your target audience, make sure you incorporate relevant keywords naturally to optimize it for search engines, which will help improve visibility and bring organic traffic.

5) Consistency is key.

You might not get the results you are looking for in just one month or one year, but if you stay consistent, I promise you that half of the results you are looking for have already been achieved.

You need to maintain a consistent publishing schedule to keep your audience engaged.

When you publish valuable content, it will help you build credibility and trust, and people will keep your brand in mind in case they need your service in the future to work with you. 

 

What is the difference between B2B content marketing and B2C?

 

Different target audiences:

With a B2B company, your target audience is more focused and specific. In B2B, your target audience might be businesses, organizations, or professionals as customers.

Your content should be more focused on fulfilling the needs and difficulties faced by a certain industry, pointing out business-related issues, and showing your service as the best solution to the issues they are facing and how you will be able to assist the company in making more sales and revenue.

With a B2C company, your target audience is generally pretty broad. In this case, anyone can be your customer.

Your content should be more emotionally driven, aiming to capture attention, evoke emotions, and fulfill personal needs or desires.

Different Channels and Distribution:

B2B companies like channels like LinkedIn because they provide better returns on investment than the other platforms for B2B.

B2B businesses prefer to promote their content via email marketing, webinars, conferences, searches, and also their websites instead of using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Their content is strategically distributed to target and reach professionals who might become customers within a particular industry or sector.

On the other hand, B2C companies focus on broad-reaching platforms that might attract and encourage a lot of people to buy their products or services because almost anyone can be a customer for them.

For instance, someone who’s selling shoes might use TikTok to find his customers.

B2C content gets shared 9.7x more than B2B content, according to Brian Dean.

source

The main difference is right here:

B2C content marketing focuses on selecting broad, high-volume terms and delivering content to a general audience.

They use social media a lot to target their customers, and it is super important for them. Sometimes their content can even be emotional and fun.

While B2B content marketing focuses more on targeting high-CPC, low-volume terms that can drive the right people to their business and become loyal customers,

Their audience is more focused on specific decision-makers within companies, social media is important for them also but not that much, they focus only on certain networks, like LinkedIn, that provide better ROI, etc.

Their content styles are practical and tactical, and their primary content distribution channel is email marketing.

 

Here are some of the best B2B content marketing strategies you can use:

 

1) Podcasts

In the coming years, people are going to create more podcasts than blogs.

The reason is that there are already more blogs than people in the whole world, so creating podcasts will help build brand awareness and trust in your industry.

Podcasts are long-form audio recordings distributed on platforms like Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc. 

Creating podcasts is beneficial because it helps busy professionals consume content while they are driving or doing something else.

For instance, I listen to podcasts from Monday to Friday while I’m on my way to work.

Before that, I used to read physical books, but now I consume more podcasts than physical books.

2) Webinars:

A webinar is one of the best lead generation strategies because it allows you to collect email and attendees’ contact details.

3)Blog posts:

A blog is super great to help you rank higher on search engines and drive organic traffic to your website. It would help if you created both a podcast and a blog

By writing great blog posts that inform and assist readers, you can establish your company as an expert in its field and foster trust.

To start writing a great blog, you need to perform keyword research to find the most researched questions and queries in your niche. 

4) Publish case studies.

Case studies are great for showing people how you have helped others with the issues they have been facing and how you have found a solution to help them.

When you publish customers’ success with your business and solution, you will find other people who have almost the same issue, and they will try to do business with you.

Case studies can attract a lot of customers and drive sales for your business. Case studies are the best type of B2B content that you can create. 

5) Send out weekly newsletters.

Email newsletters are one of the best content marketing tools B2B businesses use to build brand awareness and generate leads.

They still provide a better return on investment than the other ones. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 31% of B2B businesses use email newsletters as a way to nurture leads. 

Weekly newsletters keep your brand at the forefront of your audience’s minds.

When you regularly communicate with your audience, that will maintain engagement between you and them and reinforce your presence within their professional sphere. 

Also, when you consistently deliver high-quality content in your newsletters, that will help you establish your brand as a reliable and trustworthy source of information.

Over time, this credibility can influence people to do business with you and strengthen your brand authority.

 

Invest in B2B video content

According to the Semrush content marketing report, marketers and business owners say video is the best-performing content format because it helps us absorb large amounts of information in a relatively short amount of time and simplifies complex information by making it easier for B2B audiences to understand.

B2B companies can use video content in many ways to engage customers, educate them, build trust, improve SEO, boost conversions, personalize content, and reach out to people who will most likely become customers to increase their revenue.

How to distribute your content effectively?

When creating high-quality content and effectively distributing it, it will involve engagement and interaction with your audience.

If you create content and you need to know where your audience is, let me tell you something: you are wasting your time and money, my friend. An effective content distribution strategy helps ensure your target audience discovers your content.

Here are some key strategies you can use to ensure efficient content distribution:

 

Identify your target platforms:

First and foremost, you need to understand where your target audience is and where they spend most of their time.

For B2C, TikTok might be the best channel because most people spend at least an hour every day on this platform.

B2B platforms like LinkedIn are always the best ones to distribute content and attract other businesses.

For instance, if you are running ads for your business and want to know which platform might be the best choice to help you, I would recommend you use Facebook and Google because most businesses are on Facebook and use Google to look for new updates and information.

Invest in paid promotion:

Targeted, paid advertising to reach specific demographics.

You may reach a wider audience of influential decision-makers through sponsored content on websites in your industry and professional networks like LinkedIn.

Create a website

Remember, digital marketing can’t work without an informative, engaging website.

Having a website is paramount for your online success, as it establishes a credible online presence, enhances visibility, and increases customer engagement. Most buyers visit a website before making a purchase.

This is why having a user-friendly website is super important for your business. It is one of the most straightforward ways you can influence people to buy your product or service.

There are a lot of platforms you can use to build your website. For example, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, etc.

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Optimize for search engines:

Ensure your content is optimized for search engines (SEO). This includes using relevant keywords, creating compelling meta descriptions, and having a clear URL structure. This improves organic visibility.

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Create shareable content.

Craft content that is shareable and resonates with your audience.

For example, if you want to increase the number of people who visit your site and see your content, you can ask your friends, customers, and co-workers to share it with their audience.

It is more significant when one of your visitors shares your content than when the company’s brand does. The reason is that people will find it useful if somebody else can share it, and that will increase engagement.

 

In conclusion,

Effective B2B content marketing is not that easy; it requires dedication and creative strategies. 

But the biggest determinant of effective marketing is your audience. 

You need to target your buyer persona properly; otherwise, your promotions and advertisements will most likely fail because marketing to businesses is different from marketing to individual consumers. 

If you carefully employ all the strategies mentioned above, you are on your way to success.

Which one of these strategies are you going to try first for your B2B marketing?