Marketing Tips, Insights, and Trends
Strengthening Your Brand with B2B Content Marketing
Author: Kaitlyn Partington Category: B2B, Digital & Social Media, Marketing Date: January 28, 2021
It’s natural to want to think of B2B marketing as the less exciting version of its to B2C counterpart. Marketing to stuffy business execs can’t possibly be as fulfilling as marketing to the general public – can it? Actually, it can. So, fear not, B2B business owners: Not only can B2B content marketing be fun to create – think webinars, videos, newsletters – it’s also a great way to sharpen and bolster your brand.
B2B Content Marketing: The Big Picture
Content marketing is the creation and sharing of online materials, such as videos, blogs, and social media posts, with the intention of drumming up interest in your products or services. The idea is to develop valuable, relevant and consistent content that paints a clear picture of:
- What your brand is all about; and
- All that your company has to offer.
When done correctly, your B2B content marketing will aid in acquainting members of your target audience with your business (generating new leads) while also driving them to act (convincing them that they should buy from you, and not your competitor).
But not all the benefits of content marketing for B2B are that straightforward. Many are less obvious, although certainly just as impactful. Behind the scenes, consistently creating new, relevant content has the power to:
- Improve your search engine rankings. This one is huge, and it has two major components to it. First, search engine bots thrive on new, relevant, indexed content. When you regularly update the marketing content on your site, those bots recognize your site as credible and place it atop the search results for your related keywords; and when Google recognizes your business as credible, so too does your audience. The second piece here is that potential customers can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist. But improving your search engine rankings means interested prospects are more likely to discover your site.
- Drive more traffic to your website. Your website is your greatest marketing tool. The more opportunities you have to direct your consumers to your online home via your B2B content marketing, the more chances they have to get to know your brand and understand why they should trust you with their business.
- Establish your brand as a thought leader. By challenging yourself to consistently create new, exciting content, you force yourself to stay on top of trends and new, emerging information in your industry. That knowledge, when shared with your audience, lets them know that you know your stuff.
Types of Content Marketing in B2B
As we touched on above, there are lots of different ways for B2B businesses to create compelling content that stands out from the crowd. Some of the most common examples of B2B content marketing are:
- Blogs
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Social media posts
- Newsletters
- Articles
- E-Books
B2B Content Marketing Strategies
If you’re looking for B2B content marketing best practices, you’ve come to the right place. In the B2B sphere, achieving marketing success requires not only producing great content, but also understanding your audience as a whole, as well as the types of content that they want to see, and how they want to see it. Below, we have highlighted three strategies to consider when creating a B2B content marketing plan.
- Familiarize yourself with your audience. First and foremost, who are they? What are their pain points, and what do they stand to gain by working with you?
- Set realistic goals. Do your prospective clients want to read 1,000-word blog posts every single day? Probably not, so don’t make that your objective. Instead, take a look at what your competitors are doing well, consider the attention spans of your audience (they’re busy people!), and plan your content accordingly. Then, write down what you hope to achieve with each piece of content individually, as well as with your B2B content marketing plan as a whole, and consider how you’re going to get there.
- Amplify your content. Social media is great for the “how.” Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram all allow you to share your content with your existing followers while also giving you the opportunity to pay to reach an extended audience as well.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to define your B2B content marketing strategy – and you get to do that based on your own research into what your audience wants and needs. You get to control what you show the world, and how the world perceives your brand.
Ready to start creating your own content, or need help putting a plan in place? Contact Paradigm Marketing & Design today, and our marketing team will be happy to help.