For any marketing strategy to be effective, the critical part is to know what audience you are communicating with.
After all, however brilliant a campaign or action may be, it will only generate positive results if it makes an impact on who you want to convince to become a customer of your company.
That way, you also need to keep that in mind when we talk about B2B Content Marketing.
Therefore, to create content that is attractive to the user, it is no use trying to replicate the same strategies used in B2C actions. Understanding the differences between these approaches is fundamental to creating more effective campaigns.
To help you get off on the right foot, we have prepared a complete guide with the most important topics to be addressed so you can produce content to impact what really matters: the importance of this strategy, the most common mistakes and successful examples. Check it out!
What is B2B Content Marketing?
The first step, of course, is to understand what this concept means. The ultimate goal of B2B Content Marketing is to produce relevant content to convince other companies to buy a product or service. The actions, therefore, are not aimed at the consumer, but rather at decision-makers in other companies.
Therefore, the approach also needs to differentiate itself from what is commonly used in B2C Content Marketing, for example. In any business strategy, your planning is shaped according to the profile of your target and, in this case, the communication needs to be completely different.
As a consumer, you are much more susceptible to being impacted by campaigns and actions with a more emotional approach, which will not work when trying to convince other companies to buy what you have to offer. Your target needs more information and concrete data that will engage them.
B2B Content Marketing seeks, through the production of relevant content, to strengthen the brand’s digital presence in the market, facilitate lead generation, and show the prospect what your company can do to help you. While the consumer looks for offers and entertainment, a business wants efficiency and knowledge on its part.
Your entire strategy, therefore, needs to be focused on the company you want to convince. It’s one thing for you to make decisions about what to buy at a supermarket—it’s another to hire a service for the company you work for. That way, the communication of the content produced also needs to be different.
What’s the importance?
According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 89% of marketing professionals who work in B2B models already use the production of relevant content in their communication strategies.
In a competitive market, it is necessary to find competitive differentials to stand out from the others, and to produce content for consumers. Instead of just promoting your brand, products, or services, you will focus on creating materials that can help the reader solve a problem and improve their performance.
The possibility of making better use of your company’s resources should also be taken into consideration. The 2018 Content Management & Strategy Survey shows that one of the critical benefits of this strategy is to be able to impact the right user at the most favorable time to close a transaction, for example.
Another crucial data to justify the relevance of adopting B2B Content Marketing in your company’s planning is the confidence that decision-makers have in this type of material. According to information from DemandGen, 47% of these consumers have more confidence in this type of content at the time of research and to close purchases.
When you make relevant materials available to the market about the sector, your company becomes seen, valued and, in some cases, even known among consumers. This work of brand awareness is fundamental for your brand to be seen as an authority within its area of operation.
Moreover, another challenge that can be overcome with B2B Content Marketing is lead generation work. As studies show, adopting this strategy will ensure that more qualified users reach you with the delivery of relevant content, facilitating the work of your Sales team.
How do you create a B2B Content Marketing strategy?
But in practice, what do you need to do to create an efficient B2B Content Marketing strategy? We’ve listed the main factors that can make your communication campaigns have an even more significant impact on your audience. Check out our suggestions and get even more inspired!
Know your target
The first step is to get to know your target: what the audience you want to impact needs to know? What are the pains, goals, and difficulties in your work routine? The ideal situation is to be able to present in your content the solutions and benefits that your company offers and how this can help to solve the reader’s problems.
Remember that B2B communication should be a little different, leaving the emotions aside and focusing on the presentation of data and factors that prove the efficiency of the solutions your company offers. On the other hand, the decision-maker is probably a data-driven professional, that is, he needs data and information.
Be ready for a long journey
Unlike the consumer in the B2C model, your target in B2B Content Marketing is a professional representing a company. Therefore, it is essential to understand that the purchase customer journey is much longer since there are numerous steps to be performed internally before a sale is completed.
After all, nobody buys a product for the company that works without further research and analysis. Therefore, it is essential to be prepared to help the user in each stage of this purchase journey and have the patience to eventually close a transaction, since nothing is decided from one hour to another.
Publish off-domain content
Difficulty at the beginning of B2B Content Marketing work is to generate traffic to your pages. Thus, publishing off-domain content is an efficient way to create engagement and strengthen the brand awareness of your brand. Little by little, more users will understand, know and be interested in the content you offer.
Even though sponsored links and SEO are excellent for attracting readers to your pages, the beginning can be tricky and many readers who work with the B2B model are used to using Medium or even LinkedIn to check out new publications. In the beginning, it can be beneficial to strengthen your brand and create an efficient strategy.
Don’t forget about newsletters
Your audience is most likely someone with a work routine with various tasks and obligations. So he won’t always be able to access blogs or social networks to check out new content. So you should take advantage of an even more direct and more important feature: newsletters.
According to the profile of your target, newsletter content can even be a little more relaxed. The important thing is to take advantage of closer contact with the user to present their content and potentially become an essential source of information for the recipient.
Visual content uses
As much as the main focus of Content Marketing is writing, it is necessary to know how to use other resources to enhance the efficiency of your actions. Therefore, try to use images, videos, graphics and even screenshots. Anything useful to illustrate your text will be incredibly enriching for the user experience while reading.
Invest in interactive content
Besides visual content, another way to make your publications more enjoyable is by investing in interactive content. In other words, they are resources that will require the participation of the reader, increasing their engagement and interest. Customizable graphics, interactive calculators, in short, everything that encourages more significant user interaction.
With the use of these resources, you increase even more the efficiency of your actions and communication strategies. To get an idea of the impact of interactive content, they can generate up to 4 or 5 times more views than passive content, and increase the conversion rate up to twice as much.
The good news is that there are several solutions on the market that make this work more comfortable to perform. One of them is Ion Interactive, which offers templates with a responsive layout for creating thoughtful and useful quizzes, assessments, interactive infographics, configurators, eBooks, and calculators to capture leads.
What are the main mistakes when creating a B2B Content Marketing strategy?
Besides knowing what you need to do to succeed with your B2B Content Marketing strategy, it is also essential to know what actions you should avoid. That’s why we’ve listed the most common mistakes among marketing professionals when creating their content production strategies for other companies. Check them out and prevent them!
Promote your brand
When we talk about Content Marketing – whether B2B or B2C – the first thing you should avoid at any cost is promoting your brand. It is no use just saying that your company has the necessary expertise to do a good job, you must prove through these contents the knowledge that can be useful for the customer.
Quantity instead of depth
As much as the amount and regularity of publications are essential to the success of a Content Marketing strategy, it is important not to produce in any way. After all, the internet is full of content and the B2B audience is even more demanding with the quality and depth of what you are offering.
Make assumptions
Decision-makers in companies don’t care what you think, they need numbers, statistics and information to prove everything you’re saying. So don’t make assumptions and present data that can be used to convince you to know more about your company and maybe become a customer.
Produce and wait
As good as the content produced by your team is, it won’t stand out on the internet on its own. Therefore, use the necessary resources to promote it. Whether through SEO and better positioning in search engines or investing in paid ads. The important thing is to use the tools to make the content reach its target.
Not having a dedicated professional to produce
According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 32% of companies do not have a professional dedicated exclusively to content production work. The same study reveals that among the companies that achieve better returns, this same number is reduced to 13%.
What are the best examples of B2B Content Marketing?
For you to see how some companies can efficiently exploit B2B Content Marketing, we have included some successful examples that can be adapted to your business and public.
Deloitte Insights
What could be better than becoming a reference in research and studies when the subject is consultancy? Deloitte, however, does this with excellence, approaching the most diverse questions about different industries, becoming a source of consultation for the most varied audiences, generating enormous traffic in its pages.
CB Insights
As we said before, newsletters are very efficient for communication with the public and CB Insights does it very well. With a more relaxed connection, everything you need to know can be read without even clicking on a link. Thus, you do not need to force the user to have any interaction and, at the same time, strengthen the brand awareness of your brand.
Differentiating yourself from the audience, you need to communicate with will ensure greater efficiency in your marketing actions with content produced according to the interests and demands of the reader that you want to impact. Your team’s productivity will increase and financial resources will be better used.
Now that you know how to create an efficient B2B Content Marketing strategy, how about understanding a little more about the content you can use to captivate the attention of the user who visits your page? Then access another of our contents and check out our Step By Step Guide of Interactive Marketing!
