What is B2B content marketing?
B2B content marketing is the creation and distribution of valuable and relevant content to attract and engage businesses. Simple enough, right? However, if you’re a B2B marketer, you probably know that creating quality content is more essential than ever, especially as we shift to online buying behaviors and detract from the traditional buyer journey. So what is content marketing in the B2B world and how can we apply it effectively?
Why is content marketing important for B2B?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, about 70% of customers prefer to learn about a product or service via an article rather than an ad. This makes sense right? Most customers would prefer a softer approach to being sold to instead of a cold call or sales pitch.
Ruth Connor, who runs B2B Marketing’s Content Marketing Strategy Training said: “One of the main things you need to do in B2B content marketing is drive profitable customer action. And if you’re really not driving a behavioral change in your customers, then you’re not really doing content marketing. You’re just doing content.”
In addition, only 5% of customers are in the market in any given month whereas 95% of people aren’t – this means that, for the most part, potential buyers aren’t ready to hear sales messages straight away. As a result, content can be leveraged to do everything from starting a conversation with someone on LinkedIn to building a better relationship with a client or developing trust. With that being said, we recommend using the 3 Rs as your B2B content strategy framework.
Relationships: Content can be used to develop the market, as well as cultivate trust with your existing customers. Alternatively, if you’re looking to build a pool of potential new customers, you can create content to capture their contact information.
Reputation: Content can highlight what your company wants to be known for in terms of product, services and values. By offering expert content, you can stand out from your competitors while providing value to your potential and existing customers. Do you want to be the brand authority in your industry? The answer should be a resounding yes!
Revenue Focused: This refers to the commercial goals you’re trying to achieve with your content marketing efforts. Often misaligned, marketing and sales can work together and supply potential buyers with content at various stages in the buying journey.
What is the best content for B2B strategy?
You might be wondering what type of channels to focus on. Before we address how to decide, we recommend exploring the plethora of channels available by doing competitor research and looking into B2B content marketing trends. After all, while popular channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube have stood the test of time, other platforms such as TikTok are being used by B2B marketers more than ever.
But before you get carried away and decide to launch a podcast or TikTok account without any forethought, the first thing to consider is your ICP – who is your ideal customer profile? Once you solidify that, think about what key themes and pain points your audience is going to be struggling with and start building a list. That will dictate the type of B2B content ideas you’ll want to pursue and which channels suit best for the type of content you’re publishing.
And key tip: Don’t be afraid to use one piece of content across different platforms and types. Repurposing can be your best friend in the B2B world – especially if you need the content during a particular stage of the funnel.
How to build a B2B content strategy?
After reflecting on the three Rs and identifying your ICP painpoints, you can start painting a picture of the customer journey you want your audience to go on.
Ruth said: “You need to devise a plan to take your audiences through the whole journey from awareness all the way through to being a customer. Or it could be that you’re just focusing on a particular part of the customer journey or different stages.”
If you’re looking to leverage content at the top of the funnel for example, you’ll want to create brand awareness. Blog posts, webinars and whitepapers are ideal at this stage; whereas, if you’re at the bottom of the funnel and looking to close a deal, something like a personalized email, case study or customer testimonial might help with converting.
Some other examples include:
Whitepapers/eBooks/ Exclusive Reports: Longer form content such as whitepapers, eBooks, and reports offers promotional and informative content while effectively capturing lead data. This can range from firsthand research on a big business challenge to several interviews with thought leaders in the industry – thus; this type of content is all about creating awareness and should ideally be used during bottom of the funnel activities.
Webinars: Similar to the above, webinars can capture lead data while providing audiences more of a chance to learn about a specific topic or challenge. The benefit of hosting a webinar is that it allows users to tune in live and be engaged as a part of the event via polls, Q&A sessions, etc. For that reason alone, it’s great for middle of the funnel opportunities.
Blogs/Articles: While blogs and articles are not ideal for capturing data, you can create SEO-friendly content rank high on Google and draw a wider audience in. Blogs and articles can be used at various stages of the funnel depending on the content. For example, a competitor comparison blog might be good at the top of the funnel when a buyer is looking at pricing information.
Podcasts: Podcasts are conversational, informative and provide the perfect opportunity for your company to talk about relevant topics in a timely manner. Because podcasts can be used for soundbites and social media to reach a wider audience, it’s generally a useful tool for bottom of the funnel activities.
Case Studies: Case studies are ideal for middle to top of the funnel activities as they showcase real-world success, build credibility, provide social proof, and demonstrate the practical value of a product or service to customers without being overtly salesy.
Online Workshops: Online workshops take a more interactive and hands on approach making it ideal for middle to top funnel activities. They also build a community and provide real-time expertise straight away.
Once the plan is finalized, you can shift the focus onto the logistics of creating content such as budgeting. Making content can be completely free if you want it to be or it might require a budget for resources. This is just one example of the different aspects to consider. Some other good questions to take into account include:
- Do you need an expert on the subject matter? If so, how?
- Do you have research you can repurpose or will you need to develop this from scratch?
- What other departments need to be involved?
- What channels do you want to use? Are any of them paid?
- What is the projected timeline?
- Is this the right time to be pursuing this type of content?
There are plenty of other questions to take into account but these are great ones to start with. Chances are, you’ll probably come up with a handful of other ones when you just go through this checklist alone.
Ruth concluded: “Most marketers are daunted by producing plans or producing strategies. If you boil it down to the most important things you need to cover, you can always fit these things on a page. It’s why I like to distill it down to a strategy on a page or a plan page. So that would be how I’d encourage people to get started with content marketing.”
Ready to build your content strategy now? We’ll leave you with one of our best B2B content marketing examples.
At the 2024 B2B Marketing Elevation Awards, Park & Battery nabbed the Gold award for ‘Best use of content’. The agency teamed up with the Children’s Music Fund to deliver their campaign ‘Music Makes Us Better’. The initiative shined a light on the universal language of music therapy while highlighting how much music can help children suffering from a chronic condition of life-alerting illness. The campaign developed a series of videos, which caught the eyes of donors, therapists, healthcare providers and even insurance companies.
Through effective and powerful B2B content storytelling, the agency campaign was a huge success – with over 2 million free impressions, a 25% increase in donations, and a 700% increase in monthly web traffic. More importantly, it helped improve the quality of life for children which added an emotional component to the campaign on top of the business objective.
In a B2B Marketing podcast episode, key stakeholders from the campaign, Michael Ruby said: “Great content has to create value – there has to be something in the work that is being developed that is going to help someone be more educated, that’s going to help them be better at their job, connect them to a community, or something people want to consume.”
Unsure if your strategy is inline with our advice
We recommend checking out our B2B content marketing strategy course with Ruth here. Or learn more about Propolis – the global community for B2B marketers.
