You’ve heard the phrase, ‘content is king’ in the digital world. This idea remains steadfast in the world of business to this day. Content, whether articles, images, or videos, can boost brand awareness, engage with customers, generate leads, and even convert sales.
But what about harnessing the power of content to attract and win business-to-business (B2B) clients? Well, it works. However, creating content that resonates with them is no longer a walk in the park.
Here’s the problem: 72% of companies regard content as a core business strategy; however, merely 45% believe it helps them build subscribers. The possible reason? Only over 40% have documented tactics, so you should have one, too.
Fret not; this article contains a practical guide to producing and publishing content for B2B clients. Read on to learn how to craft a winning B2B content strategy for your business.
Understanding content strategies for B2B clients
Content strategies are techniques you use to create and publish content targeted at businesses and professionals. They can be articles, images, and videos, such as blog posts, product photos, and promotional clips. The ultimate goal is to expose your brand to B2B businesses with content that breaks through the noise, engages them, and turns them into actual clients.
The content marketing industry has been growing. According to Technavio, its global market size could reach $584.02 billion by 2027 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.37%. As such, this industry shows no sign of stopping or slowing down.
Did you know that content strategy was the most discussed topic on Twitter in 2021? About 55% of digital marketers said improving content quality is the number one strategy for marketing success in 2021. This strategy also significantly helps boost SEO ranking.
Discover: Building and Applying a Content Marketing Strategy
Planning and implementing content strategies apply to the B2B industry. However, they are more challenging since you'll target other businesses and professionals.
The good news is that nearly 75% of B2B companies have content marketing strategies, and about 40% have these strategies documented. Therefore, consider setting your recorded content strategies in place.
Learn from other facts and figures from the Content Marketing Institute:
- 87% of B2B marketers prioritize consumer info needs over promotional messages and organizational sales.
- 78% create pieces of content that are different from their competitors.
- 62% create forms of content aligned with various stages of the buyer's journey.
- 90% have published articles with less than 3,000 words in the last twelve months.
What online channels do B2B marketers use to post their pieces of content? They would usually publish and distribute them on the following digital platforms:
- Business websites (90%)
- Site blogs (68%)
- Email newsletters (69%)
- Social media (77%)
Now, the question is: Why is there a need to plan and implement a content strategy for your B2B business? Consider what most B2B marketers do. They employ content marketing to achieve the following business objectives:
- Create brand recognition (80%)
- Build trust and boost credibility (75%)
- Inform and educate target audiences (70%)
Establishing a robust content strategy can go a long way in achieving B2B growth and success. Learn the steps for the content creation process of your B2B company in the next section.
Discover: What Makes for a Successful B2B Marketing Campaign
How to create and develop a winning B2B content strategy
There’s no denying the power of content in business and marketing. Creating interactive white papers, digital brochures, and immersive content experiences resonates with people and helps you close more deals. They offer several potential benefits when crafted with value and relevance, from brand awareness and customer engagement to lead generation and sales conversion.
However, you’ve got to develop winning content for your B2B inbound and outbound tactics. Of course, doing so is easier said than done. Not sure how to proceed? Let’s cut to the chase—follow our crucial steps below.
1. Set your content marketing goals
Goal-setting is almost always the first step to pursuing a business endeavor. To start your content strategy, ask yourself what you hope to achieve. Are you looking to put your brand in the spotlight, engage with B2B clients, or boost your profits? You might have some marketing goals:
- To increase online visibility. Content creation with relevant keywords can be a part of your on-page search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. Your SEO campaign aims to earn the top spot on the search engine results pages (SERP) for relevant keywords..
- To drive website traffic. As part of your SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, content pieces can help drive traffic to your site. You’ll be surprised how content and ads can direct clients from SERP to your website.
- To enhance brand awareness. Content pieces with backlinks, brand mentions, and calls-to-action (CTAs) can give your business some exposure. However, establish brand consistency by regularly using your company logo and other visual elements associated with your business.
- To ensure client engagement. Relevant and valuable content pieces often resonate with your target audiences. You’ll be amazed at how they can prompt your B2B clients to comment, respond, like, and share them.
- To augment lead generation. An effective content strategy doesn’t only boost your web presence and traffic. But it also serves as a bait in catching prospective B2B clients.
- To boost sales conversion. The end goal of creating content pieces is to win new clients or convert sales.
Mark Pierce, CEO of Cloud Peak Law Group, highlights the importance of SMART goals.
“When setting some for your content strategy, ensure these goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. These five key attributes will guarantee the viability of your business objectives.”
2. Define your target B2B audience
After setting content marketing goals, identify and define your target market. You must understand your B2B clients to align your content strategies with their wants and needs. Here’s what you should consider:
- Niche or industry: As a B2B company, what sectors are you catering to? Your B2B clients might belong to the retail, e-commerce, hospitality, or travel industries.
- Business type: Likewise, you ought to know the types of business of your B2B clients. And you’ve got to be specific. For example, you serve an e-commerce business that produces and supplies beauty products for facial care.
- Business size: Determine the business size of your B2B clients, whether they are small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) or big corporations. That helps you strategize your content marketing.
- Products or services: Understanding their service offerings is imperative. How can you create killer content for your B2B clients if you don’t know what their products or services are?
- Business needs: It’s best to examine your target clients’ pain points, challenges, and needs. That allows you to create content pieces that address their problems.
Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO of Choice Mutual, underscores the value of studying your target market.
“You should perform research and due diligence before implementing your content strategy. That way, you can create content that truly resonates with your target audiences.”
3. Decide content ideas to create
After defining your content goals and target market, it’s time to set your content strategy. What content pieces can you create? Here are some content ideas you might want to create and distribute:
- Blog posts: These can be any articles about B2B you can regularly post on your blog. Some perfect examples are how-to articles, guide posts, and sales trends in the B2B market.
- Guest posts: You can reach out to niche websites for B2B and ask for guest-posting opportunities. When they agree, you’ll have the chance to get your articles published on their sites, plus backlinks!
- Product images: Consider taking photos of your products and posting them on Instagram and other social media channels. Product photography has the power to entice consumers and even B2B clients.
- Promotional videos: Create video clips that indirectly promote your B2B brand and sell your products or services. Publish them on TikTok.
- Infographics: Infographics are visuals with a combination of text, images, graphs, and other elements filled with facts and figures. They allow you to simplify complex ideas like processes, trends, and subjects.
- Case studies: These content pieces show how you have helped B2B clients address their problems and meet their needs. You deal with specific cases by presenting the implemented strategies and the achieved results backed up by facts and figures.
- Whitepapers: These content forms are similar to case studies. However, they are more detailed and comprehensive, allowing clients to see how products or services work and how you have helped them. They present problems, provide solutions, show results, and offer recommendations.
- eBooks: As the name suggests, they are books in digital format. A perfect example of what you can create and publish online is an eBook about content strategies for the B2B market. But of course, they are more comprehensive than your regular online articles.
- Webinars: These are seminars conducted virtually and remotely. From there, you can convert the sessions into digital format and post the video clips on different platforms. You now have content in the form of videos.
- Podcasts: These content pieces allow you to discuss topics that cater to your target audience. For example, you can talk about optimizing order fulfillment, inventory management, and product shipping for your e-commerce B2B clients.
- Email newsletters: These newsletters are in digital format, usually sent to your potential and existing B2B clients via email. The goal is to keep your target market up-to-date with your products or services and industry trends.
Fernando Lopez, Marketing Director at Circuit, believes content remains king in the digital world.
“You can produce and publish various content pieces in different channels. But the key here is to ensure they are relevant and valuable to your target audience. That way, they’ll serve their purpose right, and clients will benefit.”
4. Select digital platforms to publish
Now, you know what content types to create. The next step is to decide what online channels to post. Below are some options:
- Website blog: Start by publishing your pieces of content on your website. You should regularly post content on your own blog.
- Social media: Harness the power of social media channels, whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. For B2B clients, LinkedIn is a perfect platform for posting and sharing content.
- Journalist outreach: You can connect with media outlets or online publications. Use platforms like HARO to pitch to journalists and get quoted as credible sources.
- Industry sites: Employ guest blogging by contacting niche websites and offering blog posts. Make sure they cater to B2B clients.
- Business emails: Emails have remained beneficial in business and marketing. You can create relevant and valuable content and send these emails to your target audience.
Linda Shaffer, Chief People Operations Officer at Checkr, emphasized how businesses now operate digitally.
“We reach out to customers or clients via different channels, whether through websites, social media, or emails. Now, it’s just a matter of maximizing these platforms and minimizing their risks to achieve marketing and business success.”
5. Organize strategies and schedule campaigns
Now, you have all the facets of your content strategy, from marketing goals and target market to content types and digital platforms. It’s time to set up your campaigns by sorting your content strategies and scheduling their implementation.
But of course, you have to work with various key players for content collaboration, from content writers down to publishers. To set a content calendar in place, include the following information:
- Content strategy: Name the specific strategy you plan to use (For instance, guest blogging).
- Content descriptions: Describe how you will execute this strategy (for example, create content and reach out to niche sites for guest posting).
- Marketing goals: Be specific with your objectives (To earn backlinks and boost SEO ranking).
- Client persona: Identify your target market and create a client profile (For example, B2B clients in the e-commerce industry offering beauty products).
- Content creation date: Set a schedule for assigning content to writers and getting them done.
- Publishing date: Have a target date for posting this content, whether one-time or regularly.
With all these in place, you’re now ready to implement your content strategies.
6. Monitor and measure your performance
We’ve come a long way in planning and executing your content strategies. However, the work doesn’t stop there. You must set specific B2B marketing KPIs, measure your performance, and track your progress. The goal is to see if your strategies are working and make changes when necessary.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to set and measure include:
- SEO ranking: Check the positions of your content pieces on SERP for targeted keywords.
- Organic traffic: See if there is an increase in traffic as driven by your published pieces of content.
- Earned backlinks: It’s best to see how many backlinks you have from blogging, guest posting, journalist outreach, and other content strategies.
- Client engagement: Check the number of comments, likes, and shares you’ve earned for your content pieces.
- Generated leads: Ask yourself if published content pieces have allowed you to attract more and more leads.
- Conversion rate: Have you successfully converted these leads into sales? Track how far your content pieces have gone.
7. Optimize your content strategies
Finally, you’ve reached the final step—content optimization. The reason you’re monitoring and measuring your performance is to identify areas for improvement. From there, you can make some adjustments to ensure your content strategies are working.
But how do you go about improving your tactics? Here are a few recommendations:
- Incorporate branding in all content pieces.
- Back your content with credible sources.
- Ensure content pieces are error-free.
- Keep it short, simple, and sweet (KISS).
- Harness the power of storytelling.
- Create interactive content.
- Employ user-generated content.
- Revamp or repurpose older content.
- Optimize content for mobile use.
- Include calls to action (CTAs).
- Build a following on social media.
- Leverage digital tools and technologies.
- Conduct a content marketing audit.
Discover: B2B Lead Generation Strategies That Still Work
Final words: optimizing content strategies and winning B2B clients
Content is powerful. It can put your brand in the spotlight and resonate with your target clients. You’ll be surprised at how that can translate to a boost in lead generation and sales conversion!
But before attaining these business goals, create a winning content strategy. Follow the practical steps above to create and publish powerful content to help meet your objectives. Optimize your content strategies, and you'll ultimately win B2B clients and achieve business success.
