The acronym B2B business to business is a term used to describe commercial transactions between companies. This practice differs from B2C (business to customer) in that generally in the B2C system. The consumer selects the products or services based on various parameters. Price, popularity, personal choice, while the purchase decisions of B2B consider only the price and any profit. Get In Touch With B2B Marketing Agency in Washington
Simply put, B2B content marketing is the art of developing and delivering curated, relevant and valuable content to attract businesses and wholesale buyers. But B2B content marketing is not an easy task. It always requires a strategic approach as your potential audience has different needs and the reasons why they choose to buy from you or your competitor are different. This consequently requires that the way of conveying your content , be it a product or a service, must adapt and adapt to the reference market.
But despite these differences, content marketing for B2B companies actually has one important thing in common with B2C content marketing: the basics of creating compelling content remain the same.
1. Set content marketing goals for your content
The first question you need to ask yourself is: why do I want to develop a content marketing strategy ? How can content help my business generate leads and increase the customer base? How to attract and share new business perspectives and ideas?
These are some questions that need to be answered before even thinking about starting a content marketing strategy . Typically, a B2B company uses a content plan to:
- make yourself known,
- increase profit,
- reduce management costs and build customer loyalty
But who wouldn’t want to increase profit or reduce costs?
However, we suggest other reasons why companies should invest in content marketing:
Having said that and including the goals you want to achieve, the next question is: how much time should I invest in a content marketing strategy ?
Good question whose answer hides many pitfalls. So let’s start with Identifying and understanding what your prospects want.
2. Identify and understand your audience
When it comes to developing a great content marketing strategy , what matters is to think how your target audience thinks rather than thinking according to their own feelings or experiences. What is clear to you may not be clear to your audience. So start by asking customer service to understand what your potential buyers need . Once this is done, identify the Buyer persona (a detailed description such as gender, age, location, hobbies, activities, etc. of your audience is what is called a buyer persona).
Identifying your customer’s target in the best possible way will allow you to adapt your marketing strategy to the people who want to buy your products / services.
Sell your story before you sell your product
A compelling narrative can work wonders for your brand. This clashes with the concept of tangible value that a content can produce. No company spends money lightly, generally money is spent to generate profit and then your content is transformed into self-promotional articles that covertly but in a hammering way “suggest” to the reader to use your product or use your services, or the content is so didactically simple that it forgets to be engaging.
3. But how important is the user experience?
The cornerstone of any content marketing strategy is based on user loyalty . For example, being the cheapest option available on the market is not enough to ensure that your customers choose you. You have to offer a unique experience that generates customer loyalty.
It is brand loyalty that sells the iPhone over a cheaper smartphone.
Your audience needs to connect with your brand in some way, and your brand needs to differentiate itself from the competition through the use of content marketing . The content you create is not only important because of the message you are promoting but must ensure that the companies you are addressing take a path that makes them go from point A to point B to finally reach a conversion and this is impossible to do if the way users experience your brand isn’t registered as compelling.
4. Develop content on multiple levels
If you want your audience to share your content, this must be, as mentioned, interesting and relevant. Your content needs to be visually appealing , be creative and innovative to create engaging, multi-layered content.
But what does layered content look like?
Generally, the best content is the one that mixes the textual and visual parts in a harmonious way to create an experience that is as engaging as possible.
The text is certainly the part that B2B companies are most familiar with. Often compared to images or videos it is the only one they have used in their previous marketing strategies. But with the web everything has changed. Social media images and videos have taken on a fundamental role. There are an infinite number of statistics that show how effective it can be to add a simple infographic to text-based content. The step to video marketing is short. But as complicated as it can be to produce video, the reality is that if you can integrate any kind of compelling video into your content, it will end up making it much stronger.
