B2B Content marketing – how to do it the most effective way ?

Per the reports of Contentmarketinginstitute.com,

“88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy, yet only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy.”

Before we actually jump into B2B content marketing, let’s first take out some time to understand ‘content marketing’. Content marketing existed for long – even before we realized or defined it particularly. When you use content, in whatever form it might be, to sell/upsell/cross-sell your product/services to target group, it may be termed as content marketing.

For instance, a cosmetic brand releases online magazine providing personal care tips. In that case, they’re not really promoting the cosmetic brand per se, however, the brand gets an indirect promotion if the magazine itself becomes popular. This, however, is B2C as you’re selling it directly to customers.

Now when the same is replicated in a situation where one business is trying to promote its product to another business, it’s B2B.

Content writers find it a lot easier to market products B2C compared to B2B. However, B2B content marketing too has immense potential to reach out to the target audience and influence them. There are, however, few things that should be kept in mind before executing a B2B content marketing strategy – these are simple tweaks, which can really make a difference in your campaign.

Understand the problem, solve it:

Your target audience would belong to one industry or the other – and definitely, there would be some issues/problems that they might be struggling within that particular industry. Identify the problems. Identify their problems even if they themselves don’t. At times people often ignore trivial issues which often impede productivity of the business. An example could be “lack of coordination between sales and marketing department” – identify these issues and solve them. You need not pitch for your products at this stage but talk about a sustainable solution that people find effective. Gradually, this would help you get reckoned – this would help you generate thought leadership and pave the way for smooth promotion of your brand.

Identify the stages:

Every buying cycle goes through four main stages

• Identification/curiosity
• Research
• Evaluation
• Decision

Your product promotion directly depends on the stage your prospective buyer is. Your sales pitch, messaging should exactly resonate with the user’s buying cycle. The way you pitch in at stage #1 i.e. curiosity would be way different from the way your pitch in at the evaluation stage. One of the drawbacks of content marketers is that they would throw all information that they have together – you would need to shell out only one information at a time and pitch in with that particular information which is relevant to them.

Too many influencers:

One of the challenges of #B2Bcontentmarketing is that there are many influencers and, at times many decision makers. More often than not, you would be addressing a host of board members who would jointly decide whether to go for/ opt out of your proposition.

This is in contract to B2Ccontentmarketing that has shorter buying cycle as it addresses to only one/two decision makers. In the case of B2Bcontentmarketing, you need to craft your strategies right and your messaging should be appropriate. You can’t go overboard with your promotion – at the same time, you should be prepared for almost all queries related to your product. Your competitor analysis should be crisp. Chances are, people would compare your business with that of other competitors – and you really have an awesome chance to sell your business if you have some better USP than others

Don’t miss out on data:

William Edwards Deming mentioned “we trust in god all others must bring data” – this absolutely holds true in B2B context. When you’re interacting with end users, like in B2C, you at times strike an emotional chord by making users feel connected to your brand. However, in B2B, data speaks more than emotions. Your post credentials, stats are more compelling to users as they want to be absolutely sure of their choices. Only with reasonable data, the corporate influencers would be able to convince themselves and put their point across to the decision makers.

While there might be more marketing touchpoints which would help you sharpen the saw for B2Bcontentmarketing; these are few takeaways that can come handy every time you draft a content marketing plan. Feel free to share with us your ideas as well and we would be happy to cover it along with a mention.