Content marketing has been around for a number of years, and as technology advances, so does the content that companies put out online. You might have read hundreds or even thousands of B2C articles in the past, but have you ever heard of B2B content and the benefits that it provides?
Today, we will be talking about the different types of content that you should put out as a B2B company and how it can help your business flourish.
Defining B2B Content Marketing
Business to Business or B2B content marketing is a strategy that companies and businesses alike use to appeal to other businesses. It helps B2B company owners spread brand awareness and interest to their target market. However, not all types of content will work, which is why it’s important to understand what your audience is looking for when it comes to content.
6 Ways to Strengthen Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy [Part 1]
What Makes B2B Content Different From B2C Content?
Just as we’ve mentioned, B2C content appeals to the general consumers, while B2B content targets other businesses. As a B2B marketer, you have to fully understand what these other businesses and business owners need to be able to convey your message across.
B2B content doesn’t mean that your content has to be boring – in fact, it should be the other way around. It should be fun, engaging, useful, of high-quality, and unique so that it captures your audience’s attention.It should also remind customers of the products or services that you are offering.
6 Ways to Strengthen Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy [Part 2]
What to Remember When Choosing the Right Content Strategy for B2B
B2B content strategies are not one-size-fits-all. Some of these strategies might work for one B2B company, but that doesn’t mean that it will also work for you. You’ need to take into account:
- Who your target market is and how you’d want to communicate with them?
- The types of platform/s or technology that you’d use.
- What topics and content you and your team are willing to curate?
- How often do you want to post your content?
- The steps that you are willing to take to promote your content.
- How would you track, measure and optimize your content?
- Checking out your direct competition and what they are doing.
- What are your goals? Short-term and/or long-term
Five Top B2B Content Marketing Strategies
Now that we have defined what B2B content marketing is, it’s time to discuss the different content strategies that will help your B2B company flourish.
1. Newsletters
Newsletters are not only meant for B2C companies. Over 86% of business professionals prefer using emails over any other type of channel, especially when it comes to business-related transactions.
Because of this, the overall CTR of B2B newsletter campaigns is 47% higher compared to B2C’s CTR when it comes to email newsletters and campaigns.
Email campaigns and newsletters should be carefully curated based on your business and the company’s overall tone. You’d have to take your customers’ behavior into account and see what they are usually responding to.
Key Advantages
- When done right, it can attract other clients and businesses
- Help inform your audience about your upcoming launches, promos, and even your upcoming events
- Helps build rapport with your customers
- Gives off a more personal touch compared to other marketing approaches
How to Make it Work
- Know your audience’s behavior
- Think of creative and unique headlines
- Avoid hard-selling
- Keep it short but relevant
- Add high-quality email content
- Measure, track, and optimize your newsletters
2. Curate News, Tell Stories
What’s great about owning a B2B company is that you and your clients are mostly on the same page. You both care about what’s happening in the industry because it will serve both of your businesses and help them thrive and advance.
If you want to capture your audience’s attention, then try curating stories and news about what’s going on in the industry. Update your news page online so your target market will recognize your brand and make it a go-to for updates, news, and stories.
Key Advantages
- Helps increase brand awareness
- Informative
- It can help start a discussion between you and your target market
- You will never run out of content to put out
How to Make it Work
- Don’t make it too technical. Use simple words that are easy to understand so your target market and readers can easily relate
- Consider using active rather than passive voice
- Go straight to the point but make it informative
- Do your research so you’d know what your customers would want to read
3. Video Marketing
Capturing your reader’s attention gets harder and harder as your competitors find new ways to innovate their content. Take a look at what they are creating, but do not copy what they are doing. Instead, take inspiration from it, turn it around, and give it a much more personal flair.
Video marketing has been all the rage these past few years, and it is not showing signs of slowing down anytime soon. It is one of the most popular types of content marketing for both B2B and B2C companies.
However, you should not abandon writing blogs and stories completely, as these will help your website with SEO and search engine rankings. Consider adding a little flair to your website or social media pages by incorporating some video content in there.
Key Advantages
- Helps with improving customer engagement
- Contrary to popular belief, video marketing can also help with SEO
- Videos are faster and easier for your customers to understand
- It can help you enhance your audience retention rate
- It helps with boosting conversion rates
- Videos are easier to share, especially on social media and other B2B service platforms
How to Make it Work
- Keep the video short but informative and creative. Longer videos can easily annoy or bore
- our customers, so make sure to keep it as concise as you can.
- If you do not have an idea for content just yet, then consider turning your written articles and blogs into short videos.
- Use keywords and tags to make the video SEO-friendly.
- Keep your videos engaging by incorporating high-quality images and clips. Keep the thumbnail attractive by using a relevant image with minimal texts.
- Optimize your videos for easier mobile viewing.
- Transcribe your videos so your customers have the choice to read about the topic first.
- Maximize your video content by populating your website and social media platforms with it.
- Boost your video on Facebook and Instagram to attract your targeted audience.
4. Add a Knowledge Center on Your Website
One of the unique ways that you can attract B2B companies to your website is by adding a “Knowledge Center”.
You can reach out to like-minded B2B business owners and ask them to share some of the effective B2B tips and tricks that they have tried and tested in the past. You can compile all of these resources and put them all on a single page so your readers can visit the page if they are looking for new tips to try.
Key Advantages
- You will encourage your customers to engage with you, as well as with other members of the community.
- You will be able to learn from other people in the same industry.
- This will help build trust between you and your customers.
- Your brand will be an established go-to resource center.
How to Make it Work
- Reach out to the people in the industry that you admire and have worked with in the past.
- Add sources and citations to your claims to make it trustworthy and believable.
- Add a comment section or create a forum so your readers can ask questions and engage with you.
- Make it a point to respond to your audience in a timely and professional manner.
5. Visual Content
Visuals and images are just as important and effective as videos. You should always remember to incorporate images into your blogs and articles as this encourages your readers to share the content. You should, of course, make it relevant and useful to your readers to add value to the article.
Additionally, you should consider sharing unique images on your social media pages. Make your pages and your business seem a lot more “human” by posting relevant images that can capture your target market’s attention.
Key Advantages
- It easily grabs your reader’s attention.
- Photos and images are faster and easier to process.
- Visual content encourages sharing, especially on social media.
- It can attract new customers.
- Visual content can help improve social media engagement.
How to Make it Work
- Keep your visuals related to your business and your customers’ interests.
- Avoid adding too much text to your visual content. Social media platforms and search engines can flag you for this.
- Work with a professional graphic artist to create compelling visual content.
- Play with colors, designs, and themes.
- Compress your images before uploading them, but make sure not to sacrifice the quality.
- Repurpose your articles and blogs into infographics.
- Use the right tools to produce high-quality visual content.
Conclusion
Do not hesitate to try and incorporate these content market strategies to your B2B business. Just always remember that some of it might work, while some may not. If you find a strategy that works for you and your audience, then stick to that and just keep on improving as you go on.