Content marketing used to be a tactic which was strictly reserved for B2C marketers, but that hasn’t been the case for a while. Even if your customer base includes other businesses, you should make sure to provide them with high-quality content. First of all, it establishes you as a source of authority in your industry and changes your audience’s perception of your business. Second, all that informative content is very likely to draw in more B2B buyers, since 74 percent of them conduct a search online before making a purchase offline.
This is important, because your audience expects you to be there for them through great content, otherwise they will go to your competitors. In order to prevent that from happening and to care for your audience, here are 10 content marketing methods you need to start relying on today if you are a B2B marketer.
1. Build Trust
While you should definitely focus your effort on winning your audience’s attention, you should also aim for earning their trust and loyalty. Now, there are many different ways to earn customer trust and loyalty, but when it comes to earning it with your content, you should make sure that it’s valuable and risk appropriate (meaning you shouldn’t ask for something without providing value first), consistent (both in terms of quality and frequency of posting/distribution), personal, and cumulative, so that it builds on your previous efforts.
2. Keep up with SEO and Search Engine Algorithm Changes
Being there for your audience is as much about being visible as it is about providing value. Make sure to stay on top of all the latest industry trends and changes in order to prepare for what’s in store. For instance, AI and voice search have emerged as of late, so it would be good to become familiar with them. And of course, when it comes to SEO, there are plenty of authority blogs and resources which can provide with the all info and data that you need.
3. Offer Content Which Is Product-Agnostic
Being overly salesy nowadays will most likely turn most customers away. Sure, you have a product to sell, but instead of tooting your own horn, win your audience over by providing product-agnostic content. We are talking about stuff like white papers, webinars, and eBooks, for instance, in which you will explain complex technical terms and concepts in depth. Shoot for being a thought leader first and a salesman second.
4. Don’t Forget about Email
While we are on the subject of eBooks and whitepapers, email is just about the perfect medium to spread them, not to mention that email marketing sports the highest ROI rate of 4400 percent. But, given the number of emails your average business user receives on a daily basis, relying on email alone might be difficult, which is why you may want to use it together with SMS messaging.
5. Offer Different Types of Content
The kind of content that you need to offer to your B2B audience depends on a lot of different factors, such as your industry, current state of the market, as well as your audience’s preferences, just to name a few. Text-based content is still as popular as ever, but other types of content, such as video, infographic, and even podcasts, have been growing steadily in the past few years. It is up to you do experiment and determine which one of these your audience prefers. Don’t assume anything in advance.
6. Spend More on Content Creation
There is more content out there than ever, and people are more than ready to consume it. If possible, you should increase your content marketing budget, especially because some types of content, such as video or webinars, are more expensive to produce. You can save some money by repurposing some of your older content. For instance, you could turn your old articles into podcasts or eBooks.
7. Create Marketing Personas
Today’s customers are not just choosing who they will do business with based on quality of the product or service alone, but also on the quality of experience, which should be highly personalized. By creating marketing personas, you will be able to reach your exact target audience and save money in the process, because you won’t waste money on trying to be all things to all people. You will only be appealing to those audiences which are interested in your company and what you have to offer.
8. Talk to Your Audience
Only 42 percent of B2B content marketers are having actual conversations with their customers. Not only does talking to your audience tie into the whole experience personalization we have talked about earlier, but it’s also the perfect opportunity for you to listen to your audience’s feedback in order to use that information to provide a better user experience in the future, as well as to improve your product.
9. Be Present on Social Media
Since we are talking about B2B content marketing, being on social media will most likely involve being on LinkedIn, but again, it all depends on the type of business you run, which means you may want to be on other platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Sharing business content will enable you to expand your audience and boost your authority.
10. Have a Blog
While you should definitely use multiple platforms and channels to share your content, simply because your audience is using them, blogging is still the most efficient way of providing potential customers with fresh content. Not only are audiences more likely to trust blogs, but blogs are also the best way to boost your SEO and improve your ranking, which means even greater exposure and brand awareness.
Content marketing is the best way to care for your B2B audience. Not only are you coming off as less pushy, but you are also building trust, authority, and boosting you SEO in the process. What more could you ask for?
Ellie Chapman is a blogger and a writer for brillassignment.co.uk whose field of expertise includes business and education. She shares her expertise with the goal of helping both entrepreneurs and students improve their writing skills.
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