Why Content Marketing is important for B2B
Why is content marketing important for B2B business? Ask yourself this: how many times have you hired a new vendor without knowing anything about them? If a potential hire gave you interesting and useful information about what they do, would that nudge you into hiring them over someone who didn’t communicate with you at all?
Content is information. The information you present about yourself, and the way you present it, is sometimes the only key anyone has to knowing you exist at all. B2B content marketing is about presenting high-quality content to your target audience and establishing your existence, leading to brand awareness.
With the rise of AI-influenced content creation (ChatGPT anyone), your B2B content marketing strategy needs to capture the attention of your B2B buyers like a viral social media clip. Target audiences are looking for the types of content that grab them in seconds - effective content formats have to be relevant, original, and hit a pain point fast. B2B buyers may take their time to make purchasing decisions, but your initial presence has to get brand awareness hitting like lightning before you can think about lead conversions.
Unlike a TikToker, you can’t just post up any old piece of content and hope organic traffic will magically result in qualified leads and new customers for your sales team. There is science and process behind a successful B2B content marketing strategy, and posting not good content but great content that leads to conversions.
- Start at the top of your sales funnel. Create buyer personas so you know who the decision-makers are who are consuming your content at all points of the buyer’s journey. B2B buyers may be more likely to hang out on Linkedin than, say Instagram for example. Digital marketing efforts should be based on data with proven ROI.
- Create a content calendar with a publishing plan. Make use of informational topic clusters (multiple pieces of content grouped by a shared topic and related subtopics) that build a trust-value relationship and establish your brand as subject matter experts.
- Offer assets like educational content in whitepapers, case studies and email newsletters, which can be downloaded and referred to repeatedly.
- Host interactive opportunities like live webinars, then make that single piece of content work for you in multiple ways. Make use of backlinks like this one, to guide your reader to additional resources!
- Don’t ignore your metrics - gauge search engine results, audit your KPIs to see where to place new content, and boost the areas where existing content has been successful.
- Get your marketing team and your sales team aligned on your B2B content marketing strategy so everyone is on the same page and communicating the same message to potential customers.
- Remember that B2B companies consist of human beings, who are looking for value and insights into the things that matter to them. While your content marketing efforts should be focused on lead generation, true high-quality content in a marketing campaign will always have real value on its own.
