Content Marketing for B2B — Part1

With more eyes on screens, marketers are looking to content marketing to stay connected with customers especially in difficult situations. The inconsistency of the situation is the main reason why good content is your most valuable marketing asset right now. Even though customers may not be buying from you right now, it’s time to build relationships between brands and customers and they could look to brands for information and entertainment. .

Impact on content experiences after COVID-19
When Bill Gates published an article in 1996 entitled Content is King, he made a very accurate prediction of the state of content consumption today. The vast opportunities he envisioned for companies have not grown significantly into today’s marketing monster.

Recent surveys have found that 69% of B2B marketers plan to increase digital advertising budgets by 2021 and if they do, brands will need to approach their content creation approach. quality and strategy to stand out from the crowded digital landscape. In the first half of 2020 there were many surprises in store for the world and the marketing world has seen its fair share of cuts in advertising and lower budgets due to declining revenues. Restrictions on attending physical events also had a significant impact on B2B content consumption, forcing marketers to find innovative ways to fill their marketing funnel.

Uncertainty is the order of the day and this applies to B2B practices as well. Many CMOs have been too familiar with budget cuts during the COVID-19 revolution but the general trend is to shift focus from building customers to retaining customers. .

An overview of modern B2B content marketing
Traditional marketing methods for B2B marketing have proven to be less effective than inbound marketing due to the nature of the message. Breaking in your audience is a key feature of outbound marketing while inbound marketing aims to address a challenge or pain point that the customer faces when they are look for the solution. Having your audience go online looking for a solution is a great opportunity to improve brand awareness and drive change.

Some of the goals of B2B content marketing are to let your audience know about your brand, improve their brand knowledge, and allow the user to reap the benefits of using the product or your service. Over time, the goal shifts to driving and leading your business and customer to become a qualified leader.

What sets B2B content apart from B2C is that the reader needs to have some sort of need. If the reader is unable to apply what they have learned, B2B content has not achieved the goal. There are exceptions to this rule but the main goal is to be seen as a resource for other professionals in your target industry.

Incremental Value Addition Is Vital

In the modern environment, it has become increasingly important to communicate sensibly with your customers, focus on educating them, and build trust and credibility. This will affect sales and revenue and help build loyalty to your future. The quality of the value your content assets add to a prospect needs to increase over time in order to become a paying customer. Similarly, an existing customer will gradually look for a different kind of added value.

Today’s day-to-day consumer challenges have changed dramatically and your content needs to tell you how your brand is going to help them in these new situations. Your ability to change is going to shape the impact that your content can have on your bottom line. While it is important to set reasonable targets for 2020 it is also time to increase content to offset any potential losses from existing customers.

Customize the content of your customer journey

Mapping what you do on the buyer’s journey is crucial to its ability to help turn a prospect into a buyer. Once you’ve created a detailed buyer persona, segment your customers based on how far they’re on their way to becoming a customer buyer. Traditionally, a content marketing campaign has a broad top funnel and this is where your messaging experience begins. Just from awareness to purchase, the experience has to be enjoyable which leaves them wanting more.

The main stages that a typical buyer goes through are:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration
• Resolution
• Valuation
• Turn

A B2B shopping trip usually involves more than one person. Even if it starts with one person, as they progress through the journey the individual grows into a committee and the purchasing decision must be consensual. A B2B tour also does not have to be linear depending on the organizational structure of your shopper.

Baby Steps — Awareness and Content of Interest
First, the buyer has not heard of your business so your content should be designed to build the curiosity. They don’t tend to go into your list of newsletter subscribers or email lists — they don’t know about you because of the quality content you’ve created. Creating great content is the first step before you start adding value to your customer.

If your business appears in a prominent Google cookie or is among the first few search results in any search engine for your target keyword, you already have an advantage over the competition. This is where your content marketing strategy can help a lot. From the moment the customer clicks on your website link, they should be seen regularly to build a reputation for providing helpful content.

Making the most of your SEO, branding, and blog content thinking leadership is only part of this process. Without a unified approach to your digital marketing strategies, an inevitable disruption to the buyer’s journey will lead to a fragmented view of your company’s services.

Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) and measuring return on investment is crucial at this stage to focus your effort on content that gives you more clicks and lower kick rates. The goal is to measure your gains and losses so that you can adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Halfway there — Consideration, intent, and assessment content
Once you’ve captured their interest, every time someone sees your brand they associate it with a trusted opinion and will consider your content as a useful source of information and sometimes even a source of entertainment. Social media content has become an effective tool for B2B marketing.

The idea is to be less sales and more informed on social media platforms while strengthening your brand awareness. If the number of visitors to your website increases and some even sign up for your newsletters, you are on the right track.

Newsletters are a great way to keep the conversation going with an interested customer. Use this to your advantage and adjust your content strategy to suit the needs of the buyer at this stage of the journey. Your SEO strategy also needs to be updated at this stage.

This is when long tail keywords play a key role. At first, your customer was just curious about your product, now they have accumulated some knowledge and want a solution that is more specific to their needs.

Use analytics to track how many website visitors fill out your lead generation forms and download your white papers, reports, and e-books. Use email marketing to sell your resource idea to potential customers. Deck 7 has used these techniques effectively in the B2B travel industry even though it has been one of the toughest industries in 2020.

These resources will help you to build a relationship with the buyer you and gain trust in your business. The purpose of your buyer becomes clearer at this stage and they assess the ability of your business and its ability to meet their needs.

The Last Leap — Conversion Content
This is the point at which the marketing team passes the baton to the sales team. The favorite part of every content marketer is when they can create a customer out of a passive viewer of their content. You have created a smooth journey for your customers and they trust you enough to start an active conversation with your business at this stage.

Your qualified marketing leads have been created and it’s decision time for the buyer. It seems that your buyers have a list of your competitors, with you included, and it is trying to decide which solution works best.