If you are trying to sell anything to other businesses, it usually takes longer for them to decide to buy something. They like to do a lot of research before making any decision. You can easily sell your items to other businesses by creating different types of content to help other companies. But do you know how to get started and what type of content you should have for B2B marketing? If yes, that is great, but if you have no idea about it, you can hire any B2B content marketing agency or any freelancer to help you with it. If you want to learn more about B2B content marketing, you can dive into this article.
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What is B2B Content Marketing?
B2B content marketing is a digital marketing strategy to build relationships with other businesses. It is all about creating and sharing content like articles, podcasts, emails, infographics, and many other things to let more businesses know about you to attract the attention of other businesses and get more visitors to your website. Its main purpose is to convert businesses into loyal customers.
Types of B2B Content Marketing
Let’s learn about the different types of content you can use for B2B content marketing strategies to boost your marketing.
Blog Posts
Blog posts are like articles that you write and put on your company’s website. These posts are for people who are just trying to find out about your company, or for those people who know a bit already and want to know more about your brand or company.
This is known as the awareness stage for your website visitors. So you should focus more on teaching them something instead of directly focusing on selling your stuff.
But as topics become more complex, in blogs you can start asking people to take action related to purchasing something, like downloading a guide or trying a product. And try to inspire them to take the next step, such as learning more about what you offer.
Infographics
Infographics are like picture books, helping us understand complex things using pictures and simple words. They are very useful when one is learning something new. You can use them when you want to tell people about your business or something important. They are great for sharing on social media or with interested people.
When you are trying to make people aware of something, you should use infographics to share the basic information they want to know. And remember, infographics aren’t just about flowcharts. They can be any type of information shown in the pictures.
Case Studies
When customers try to decide on something, like which product to buy, case studies can help. Case studies are like stories about how a company helped someone with a problem.
Nowadays you can find many of them on any company’s website. Each story usually talks about a different type of customer, so your customer can see if they are similar to any of them.
Podcasts
Podcasts are like digital radio shows that you can listen to on your phone or computer. They come in episodes, like TV shows, and you can find them on apps like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Some people also post them on their website. You might hear one person talking, a group of people conversing, or someone interviewing another person. They are great for learning about a variety of topics in a relaxed, conversational way.
Testimonials
Testimonials are like stories from happy customers who tell how your business helped them deal with a big problem. They show others that your business is trustworthy and can make a difference.
It can help convince someone to choose your business. These can be used any time someone is deciding to buy something from you.
Testimonials for a company can go in two ways, in the form of video and written words. where videos are good because they feature real people talking about their experiences. Written testimonials can also be good if you include a photo of the person. This makes the story seem more real and helps people connect with it better.
Best Practices for B2B Content Marketing Strategy
If you also want to promote your B2B company through content marketing, then these practices are going to boost your business.
There are some good practices you should follow to make it work well, these are as follows.
Know Your Audience
If you’re doing content marketing, your goal should be to create content that your target audience will enjoy. To do this, first of all, you have to know their needs and the problems they face. You will then be able to create content tailored to their needs that will help them.
Always remember that not all of your audiences will be the same. So you need to know what each group needs and create content that speaks to them.
Think of it like creating different characters for your audience. This way, you can create a variety of content that highlights each group’s specific problems.
Set Clear Goals
You have to figure out what you want from this marketing and why you are creating content for your business.
Do you want to promote your business and let more people know about your brand? Or do you want more potential customers to be interested in your brand? After knowing this, you will be able to plan your content better than others.
Once you’ve determined your goals, think about how you’ll know if your content is doing its job. As such, if you’re aiming to get more leads, you’ll want to keep track of how many new leads you’re getting and how many people are signing up for your emails.
Once you understand your content goals, it will be easier for you to figure out what to focus on.
If you’re looking for leads, you might want to create things like guides or reports that people can download in exchange for their contact information. This way, you can see if your content is bringing the results you want.
Create Valuable Content
If you want to make your content more valuable you must analyze what your competitors are doing, it can help you a lot. You will get a good idea of what is working well for them and what is not.
You can take a look at the matter they’re keeping in their content. What is getting a lot of attention, and what is not getting attention? If you see something they’re doing that’s working, think about how you can do it better.
And if they have some content that isn’t as popular, figure out how you can add value to it and use it in your favor.
Diversify Your Content
You will have to keep all the customers engaged with your content whether they are at the awareness stage, consideration stage, or decision stage. You need different types of content to keep your audience engaged along the way.
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Awareness Stage
This is the starting point of your and your audience’s relationship, here they first hear about your brand. To catch their attention and introduce them to your offerings, you can share entertaining content like social media posts, blogs, and cool graphics that tell them who you are and what you do.
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Consideration Stage
It is the stage where your audience used to think about whether they should keep going with you or try any other brand. This is where you provide more detailed info about your product or service. Show them why you are the best choice with things like e-books, webinars, and videos that explain your features and benefits to them.
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Decision Stage
Almost at the end of this journey, your audience is ready to make a decision. They need that final push to choose you. Give them confidence with things like success stories, pitches, and clear pricing info on your website. Make it easy for them to choose you.
Promote Your Content
It is important to ensure that your B2B content reaches the right audience. It is not just about creating good content, but also about getting it out there through the right channels.
Social media is a huge ocean. A lot of B2B marketers use it to spread their content. Some people even pay to get more views on their posts.
Paid channels are also a hit among successful content marketers. And don’t forget about influencers and email marketing, they’re popular ways to draw attention to your content.
Measure Your Results
Once you have put up your content, it’s important to see how well it’s performing. Try different types of ingredients and methods of obtaining them to see what works best. Find out which locations are giving you the most valuable leads and focus on those. Pay attention to how your content is doing so you can change things and improve them if needed.
B2B Content Marketing Examples
If you want the best content marketing strategy for your business then you should check out these examples to easily get more ideas:
Canva
Canva is more than a helpful tool, it has a very smart plan for reaching out to other businesses. They have built relationships with their customers by providing them with many things. Like sharing easy tips in pictures to keep them interested in social media. It also provides a lot of additional help to improve the brand’s design game.
Canva writes useful blogs and offers online classes to help others up their skills, and they’ve got a community called Design Circle that you can join to meet other people who are already into designing. You can also get toolkits and templates from them to improve your branding and design.
Slack
Generally, we have seen businesses use social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to sell to other businesses. But just bombarding them with ads doesn’t work well for any B2B business, B2B buyers want useful things, not just ads. They want real interactions and useful content.
If you’re not sure how to do this, check out what Slack does. They are like a guide to good B2B marketing.
On Instagram, they keep their bio short and focused on what they’re about. They use Instagram Stories and Highlights to showcase their new content.
On Twitter, they share updates and help their customers. They are also smart at using Instagram to attract more attention.
Their Facebook page is simple and stylish. They share good posts, especially about their blogs. They tell people about new features and use their content in different ways on different platforms.
Not many businesses post regularly on YouTube, but Slack does. They put out 2-3 videos every week and they look great. Their thumbnails are attractive and tempt you to click.
On LinkedIn, they keep it simple but effective. They use words like diverse and inclusive to show that they care about their employees. They write fun blogs for Facebook and Twitter, but on LinkedIn, it’s more serious because it’s for businesses. Their ads on LinkedIn are also really interesting, with great-looking videos and photos.
B2B Content Marketing Agency
Geek Master is a B2B content marketing agency that helps businesses like yours, market themselves to other businesses. If you want to reach out to other companies to sell your products or services, we are the ones to do that. We create all types of content like articles, videos, and social media posts that make these businesses look good and attract the attention of their target audience.
You can think of us as your B2B content marketing service provider who is here behind the scenes to help your business shine online.
