Despite what contrarians may have you believe, B2B content marketing is alive and well. The landscape might’ve changed, but it very much still exists.
(So does SEO.)
What has changed is how we need to approach our content marketing strategies, along with how content works alongside our wider digital marketing and traditional marketing strategies.
When you provide your audience with relevant content, they learn to listen to – and trust – you. This means that when they have a problem you can solve through your paid product/service, they’re more likely to come to you because they know you know what you’re talking about – you already proved it with your high-quality content.
A Forbes study found that content marketing helped:
- 84% of businesses raise brand awareness
- 76% generate demand and leads
- 63% nurture leads
- 58% generate sales and revenue
The same study found that 45% of B2B content marketers expect their budget to increase this year.
Almost half of B2B businesses wouldn’t be investing more in content if it were a dying art form. (It is a changing art form, but that’s a topic for another day.)
So let’s explore in more detail why content marketing is important for B2B organisations:
Get high ROI
When done right, content marketing has a high ROI. It doesn’t require much upfront cost, just someone – or someones – who can write, edit, and create graphics.
Once you’ve published your content, it can keep bringing you leads until something in your industry changes or there’s a new search engine update. (Then you can always update your content to get it ranking/resonating again.)
It’s a considerably cheaper marketing channel than in-person events or paid advertising.
To truly get the most from your content, it helps to hire an experienced content marketer. That way, you avoid the steep learning curve that ensures your content is fully optimised.
Content creation can also be time-intensive, which is something to consider if you’re short on time or dislike writing/editing/research.
Is it better to outsource your B2B content writing? The answer will be different for every business owner and marketer.
But it can mean that you get more time and energy to spend on other things, while safe in the knowledge that you’ll get high-quality content that resonates with your audience.
Increase brand awareness
If no one knows you exist, how can they buy from you?
Social media and SEO are still important ways to attract potential clients into your orbit.
All social media platforms have a character count, though, so if you want to do a deep dive into a topic, your own website is a far better place to host your long-form content.
Once someone is in your orbit, you can nurture them towards a B2B sale with email marketing and blog posts.
But first, you have to attract them with valuable content that shows you understand your industry, your audience, and their problem(s).
Build know, like, and trust
I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase a gazillion times. It’s turned into a cliche, but it’s still imperative for B2B marketing.
If people don’t know who you are, they can’t buy from you.
If they don’t like you, they won’t buy from you.
And if they don’t trust you, they definitely won’t buy from you.
If they fall off at any of these three points, you lose the sale.
Your B2B content marketing strategy helps build all three of these pillars so that people want to spend their money with you, not your competitor.
Each type of content will help you strengthen these pillars, creating a holistic image of what your business does, its values, the types of people who work there, and the types of people you want to work with.
Subconsciously (and maybe sometimes consciously), your audience will judge you based on every piece of content you publish.
It’s far better to publish less content that more accurately reflects your brand than flood the internet with content that’s a poor representation of who you are.
When put together, your content tells a story. It’s up to you what kind of story that is.
Having a content marketing strategy helps because it puts you in control of what that story is and how people read it.
Educate your audience
One of my favourite types of content is educational content. This can be a podcast, video, or blog post.
Educational content teaches your B2B buyer everything they need to know about their problem – and your business – before they purchase.
It’s your 24/7 sales and support person, nurturing each potential customer through your marketing funnel.
You can teach people things like:
- Changes in rules and regulations
- Market trends
- Effective strategies
Then things about you, such as:
- How to work with you
- Ways to use your product/service
- What your tool looks like from the inside
- Customer success stories
One of the most important things to remember about educational content is that just because it’s designed to teach, that doesn’t mean it has to be boring.
In fact, as a B2B company, being fun/interesting (while still professional) is a massive differentiator when so many B2B brands are afraid to go against the grain and inject personality into their brand.
Rank in search engines
Have you ever searched for a business on Google and found it doesn’t come up when you type in its name?
Did it confuse you?
Or make you less likely to trust it?
That’s part of why content marketing – and B2B SEO – are important. You want your customers to trust you.
It’s more important than ever to appear in SERPs and look like a real company in a sea of scams.
There’s so much fakery going on right now, trying to get data from job seekers and money from customers, that if you can consistently rank for your company name and industry terms, it gives your brand legitimacy.
Not to mention the increased exposure that comes from ranking for industry-related keywords.
Attract repeat business
When you have a solid content creation strategy that accurately reflects your B2B brand and appeals to your target audience, you’ll get better engagement on that content and it’ll be easier for you to get more sales.
Customers will want to stay in your orbit and may even upgrade.
And, since they love you so much, they’ll rave about you to their network. When you get that kind of engagement, you know your content marketing efforts are paying off.
Conclusion
Every modern marketing strategy needs to include content marketing. It helps attract, educate, and convert a potential client.
It starts with deciding what your content marketing goals are, asking yourself what people need to know before they purchase, then fleshing those ideas out into the relevant content types.
If you’d like to work with an experienced B2B content marketer to get your content strategy off the ground (or back on track) get in touch.