1. Producing high-quality content
Content can effectively promote a brand or business, but it must be high quality to meet the expectations of B2B buyers.
This means creating content that is different from what others are producing and that is of real value to readers.
Investigating your most significant rivals’ content and observing how it plays out in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) will give you a good insight into the norm your content must at least match and ideally surpass. Google uses various measurements to think about commitment on content facilitated on these pages, for example, bounce rate, time on page, and depth scrolled.
If you are finding it difficult to rank highly in a competitive market, then focussing on maximising metrics is not enough. Your content needs to be eye-catching and unique, as without a strong opinion or point of difference, it is unlikely that you will interest your target audience.
It’s not enough to create generic content that works for everyone. To make sure your content is successful, find a unique angle and develop it fully. Make sure your content is ten times better than anything else in the search engines.
2. Prioritising content expertise
You will need staff with journalistic, design, creative, and technical skills to produce quality content. You can either reassign staff who have these skills or hire new talent.
If you can’t create enough content to make an impact, you could hire an external agency to manage the process. More and more companies are doing this.
You will not only get a better outcome from hiring a professional, but you will also gain from their skills and current knowledge of what works best in content marketing.
3. Understanding different buyer personas as part of your strategy
Buyers are a complex group of individuals with diverse preferences. To connect with them, you need to create different buyer personas and content types that reflect this diversity.
The best way to understand your customers is to ask them directly. However, 58% of B2B marketers never do this. Instead, they try to infer what customers want by analyzing data or trends. However, this is not always accurate. Your audience may be made up of people who consume content in different ways. Some may prefer video, some may prefer short articles, and some may prefer to listen to podcasts. It is important to offer all of these options so that everyone can engage with your content.
4. Producing content in suitable formats
There should be a variety of formats available to accommodate the diverse landscape of B2B buyers.
When you create a flagship piece of content, be sure to use it in multiple ways to get the most exposure possible. This could include creating an infographic, blog, or podcast from the original content.
If you want to engage with your target audience then you should deliver content that is valuable and full of insights and solutions.
5. Aligning content with the buyer journey
Your content must always serve the needs of your target customers, no matter what stage of the buyer’s journey they are in. Making sure the right content is always available can be a big challenge for marketers.
B2B buyers are reading a lot of content- an average of 5 pieces or more- before even contacting a supplier. In 2019, most of the content that B2B marketers created was focused on the beginning of the purchasing journey (the “top of the funnel”). These days the spread is more even.
You can only create compelling content that will persuade buyers at every stage of their journey if it has the right narrative and is in a format that they prefer. For instance, PR and articles are great for raising awareness; videos and round-up pieces help buyers during the consideration phase; and case studies and demonstrations—either live or on-demand—assist when it is time to make a decision.
Don’t forget about your current customers while you’re trying to attract new ones. Taking care of their ongoing needs can improve retention and make them more likely to support and recommend your brand.
6. Repurposing and resharing your content
For example, a strategy, which started with a single webinar, may be used for downloadable assets, YouTube videos, blog posts, tweets, and result in thousands of social posts from our employees and others.
I’m saying this again for emphasis: each webinar repurposed and reshared may result in 500 or more micro pieces of content.
These become a library resources to use now, which can yield many benefits such as increased traffic and downloads.
7. Syndicating your content to other websites (Including LinkedIn)
Content from blog posts on PostBeyond is automatically republished on LinkedIn to reach a different but still relevant audience.
It is important to have an audience for your website, and not everyone is aware of your site. However, they may be active on other sites.
LinkedIn is a great platform for blogging as it provides opportunities for users to showcase their expertise to a wider audience.
You can also try to get your articles published by partners or other publications. This all helps build an audience for your content and brand.
8. Creating buy-in among stakeholders
Although it is possible for a well-crafted piece of content to become a sudden success, this is usually not the case. Most of the time, you need to build up a collection of content before you gain popularity. This process can take some time, so it’s important to manage people’s expectations accordingly and make them understand the potential benefits of content marketing in the long run.
In other words, content marketing can be a very effective way to promote your business. However, you need to make sure that you’re using the right techniques, and that you’re reaching the right people.
It is recommended that you set a goal for each individual piece of content you produce, such as increasing organic traffic, generating leads or building trust. Doing this will allow you to track these goals using analytics, which will in turn give you a clear idea of the effectiveness of your content. This, in turn, will help you justify the investment and approach to your stakeholders, as they will see the benefits as your content marketing begins to take off.
9. Getting your employees active
There is a time for advertising, but it is not as effective as it used to be. With the rise of ad blockers and people trusting personal connections more than brand messages, advertising is not as effective as it used to be.
If you try to publish to your brand channels without using paid advertisements, you will not be able to reach as many people as you would if you did use paid advertisements. Facebook reach for brand pages is now very low. LinkedIn has a similar newsfeed algorithm which limits reach. Twitter also has a smaller reach than people expect.
If you had a group of employees who were willing to share your company’s content, it would be more personal and trustworthy than advertising, and could potentially reach a similar audience.
Now that we have talked about the basics of content set up, tools, and distribution, lets discuss measurement.
10. Measuring your content in your marketing automation and CRM
CRM(Customer Relationship Management) software is great because it allows you to score your content and prospects based on actions.
When prospects download content, open emails, and visit your website, they are scored.
CRMs allow you to create different scoring profiles based on what the person is trying to achieve with the content asset. For example, if they are looking at a vendor scorecard, they are still early on in their evaluation process and it would be a good time to provide helpful information.
If someone only reads blog posts and signs up for newsletters, they might not be ready to speak with you yet. So you would score that differently.
You can follow-up with prospects who reach a certain score and have a certain profile grade that matches your ideal customer profile.
Additionally, if you have configured your marketing automation correctly, you can use other integrations to track the progress of your content campaigns.
Every form on your website can be attached to your CRM, so you can track every time someone downloads an asset, like a Buyer’s Guide. If someone becomes a prospect or customer, you can attach that download to their profile to see how much influence it had in the sales process.
If a prospect visits your website and reads a case study, for example, you can track that specific page view inside your CRM and see if any pages or blog posts are generating more value in terms of associated pipeline value.
11. Choosing the right channels
Choosing which channels to use to distribute your content can be difficult. You want to make sure you’re using channels that will reach your target audience, but you also don’t want to spread yourself too thin. Finding the right balance is key.
There are lots of marketing channels and platforms available. Focus on the ones that best connect you with your buyers.
If you want your content to be seen by your target audience, you need to identify the most appropriate channels to reach them. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time and effort.
Many B2B buyers still turn to Google during the awareness phase, but there are limits to what can be achieved through organic reach alone. The smartest content marketers use paid digital advertising and other techniques to bolster their organic traffic. Traditional and digital PR, as well as developing partnerships with social media influencers, will also provide significant support to your content marketing efforts.
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