Gone are the days, when marketing meant buying and selling of goods! Now, the tides have changed and many B2B marketers are adopting new ways to promote their goods. One among them is content marketing. Is it old wine in new bottle? Well, yes. But before jumpstarting further, let’s understand what exactly content marketing is?
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The main purpose of content marketing is to attract and retain the customers by consistently creating valuable and quality content with the sole purpose of changing consumer behaviour. It is not a onetime process, rather it is an ongoing process.
How does it benefit your business?
1. It doesn’t push the B2B buyers but influences them in a positive way
Basically, content marketing is an art of writing effective content to lure your customers and future prospects without an intention of selling. It is a non-interruptive way of marketing. Instead of pushing the B2B buyers to buy a particular product or a service, you are delivering information to them that makes them aware about your service. The core idea behind delivering the consistent and valuable information is to influence them positively to buy your products/services. Is it effective? Well, there is no second thought about it, yes and yes! Even the large brands like P&G, Microsoft, Cisco are using this ploy to reap the benefits.
2. The B2B marketers don’t ignore it
One of the main benefits of content marketing is- the B2B buyers don’t ignore it because it is relevant and valuable to them. And it is the main different behind brick and mortar marketing and informational marketing. Good write up always make people think, read, and behave differently.
3. It bridges the gap between you and your consumer
Another benefit of content marketing is helps you to interact with the B2B buyer directly. Starting from blogs to SEO to PR to sharing of valuable information through social networking sites, it helps to interact with the customers directly.
Quick Facts
As per Roper Public Affairs report, around 80% of the business owners get influenced through informative articles versus advertisement and seventy percent of the marketers confirm that content marketing enhances their loyalty towards sponsoring company, while 60% say that company’s content improve their decision making. So, Australian Writings, suggests you to use this strategy for your benefit.
4 Improves ROI of the business
Most often than not, your product or service is competing with other products in buyer’s organization. This informative and detailed content can be used as a tool to convince senior executive to make your service as a priority. It is a way beyond improving your ROI!
You can generate awareness to your stakeholders by adopting one of these approaches:
For stakeholders- paint a larger picture and make them understand how your product or service will impact their returns
Contrast and suggest- You can compare and contrast the existing business system with the new ones
Case Study- Case study is an effective way of telling what exactly the customers are looking for. By providing detailed awareness about how your product will fix the problem, you can attract them.
5 Help them to evaluate the offerings
Buyers quickly scan the websites and determine whether you are a solution provider or not. As they have a long list of vendors, they have so many reasons to eliminate you and focus on other vendors. But if you are messages are precise and relevant, it will definitely convince B2B buyers to buy your product/service. In order to get your value proposition write a short description that truly resonates with the needs of buyer. How to do it:
- Create a brief value proposition about main product page followed by problem that it addresses
- Link each criterion with product or service and how it matches with buyer’s criteria
- Provide an indepth understanding about how your product/service matches each criterion and how it helps to generate leads.
In a nutshell, content marketing is an effective strategy to showcase your business to the prospective customers.
