Content Marketing in B2B

Content marketing is especially important for the B2B sector. That is because businesses are more educated and rational in how they make their strategic business decisions. B2B marketing really has to take its audience into account, and study their customer personas and the segments of their highest ROI customers in great detail to come up with a plan that is effective for reaching, impressing and converting them. Your B2B customers are not typical customers, they can be your allies and long-term working associates that you might come to know very well and have lucrative relationships that last for years. 

Document your Plan

Just having a written plan of your content strategy and B2B multi-channel approach to digital marketing is very important. You will want to do a combination of Email marketing, content Curation, content creation and social selling, combined with other techniques and highlighting channels that are known to be effective in the B2B sector and specific to your industry.

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Email Marketing
• Blog
• Channels with high SEO value: Pinterest, Quora, 
• Channels with unique Reach value: Slideshare, Industry influencers, Guest blogging on online magazines, Reddit, LinkedIn Pulse, Wordpress advocate blogs, Vlogs on Youtube
• In person trade shows & events
• Niche platforms, e.g. Houzz for home renovation industry.
• Balance, investigate and correct your weaknesses in your inbound & outbound strategies
• Have a pro-active "Go everywhere and give value to everyone you meet" approach to channels. Exploit any potential channel of worth. 
• New Media: any new channel or trend that could become important

1. Instagram
2. Video content
3. Micro Videos
4. Vlogs
5. Video testimonials
6. Video product demos
7. Slideshare (B2B rising star)

Start with a Vision – Get Everyone Involved

We are all online, therefore, your entire company has to be ONBOARD as to how you do this. Anyone in your company can contribute some of their time to social selling, curating content that is valuable to your audience on their networks and contribute their own creativity and become your best brand advocates from inside your own company.

Some of your best brand advocates, will then mature and go on to become even influencers in your field. Imagine the benefits of having an “in-house” influencer in your niche field who is a knowledge authority with the social authority to back it up? That is why you will want to tap your entire company in the social media game. Because social selling is not some new thing that companies are doing, it’s just the new normal.

Story-Telling

Learn to demonstrate your unique selling proposition, in ways that are entertaining and have compelling elements of storytelling. The best content is persuasive visually, emotionally and intellectually. The most endearing companies are authentic, progressive, altruistic and passionate positive about what they do. Can you create that infectious & high-pitch enthusiasm of what marketing is supposed to portray?

Great content requires high-level branding and storytelling. Good branding requires reinventing yourself digitally every 3-5 years. Again, this is not fantasy, it’s just the new normal. Rebanding is not your website, logo and motto. It's an entire new vision and evaluation of all that you do, and above all, it's compelling video as we are in a mobile era. Mobile marketing requires video content that stands out. Nothing less is good enough!

Create a Content Calendar

Use a program like Trello to plan ahead, and have a detailed content editorial calendar that takes into account every channel, even obscure that could become relevant. Leave no stone unturned, you are weak in SEO? Okay, so plug that hole. You don’t have a connection with young people? Okay, so create a Snapchat, Tumblr, Instagram and Gen Z presence.

Target Campaigns for Segments

Marketing requires continual fresh campaigns, promotions, boosted ideas that target particular demographic segment of your customer and prospect base. You need campaigns for:

• Getting new customers
• Getting new brand advocates
• Turning new customers into greater customers
• Keeping customers loyal to your brand
• Turning great customers into brand advocates
• Boosting the knowledge authority of your brand relative to your industry and niche market
• Boosting your social authority of your brand
• Outdoing what your competitors already do well
• Doing something new that will surprise those who know you and or create buzz

 Your strategy has to be well researched, with a spirit of urgency, competitive, cutting-edge and innovative. Nothing less will do!

Take Content Marketing Seriously

Have a dedicated team in your marketing department for this or set aside ea day of the week where you exclusively focus on this as a marketing team. This means, writers, editors, graphic illustrators, asset managers and social media nerds working together. Get Slack and great a team and use software the is efficient for you in this process. Having old school meetings might just be a waste of time. Consider researching how the best companies do this. Imitate how the best do their content marketing.

I’m not even going to write about why content marketing is important, if you don’t get it now, you never will.

B2B Skills

Read content, curate content and create content. This is a never ending cycle. As you keep doing this, you will get better on how you:

• Portray your brand authentically
• Reach people on a human level
• Use action words
• Leverage visual content
• Re-post content over time, boosting the right posts to the right audience
• Respond to inbound communication
• Do customer service on social media
• Communicate and serve your sales department
• Give your sales department leads
• Design content that creates ‘aha’ moments

Content Marketing to Prospects

• What do you offer for free to new users?
• What real values does your website have for a prospective buyer?
• Do you offer demos or webinars?
• Do you actively employ pursue social selling strategies?
• Do you have talented marketing people?
• Do you amplify your internal experts as corporate assets in your content marketing strategy?

Methodology of Content Marketing

• Look for the right story and new angles within topics relative to your brand and products
• Consistently edit, review and revise your strategy
• Listen to cue from social media
• Be an early adopter of trends within your industry and digital marketing
• Always upgrade your knowledge proof: Testimonials, case studies, and product videos.
• Relentlessly define and redefine the personas of your audience – have content that directly caters to them, not to some imaginary general audience.

Go for Broke

In B2B you have to demonstrate your impeccable research and show persuasive branding, evidence and authenticity of your company to make big sales that can change the destiny of your company. This is why you have to go big:

• Invest in high quality advertizing videos that you can reuse on multiple channels
• Do have yearly white papers and data studies
• Create unique Infographics that are easy to assimilate on your USP
• Be pro-active on social media, don’t just have the channels, use them to the full.
• Create contests, promotions and buzz via Email marketing
• Inspire and give rewards to user generated content that highlights your brand
• Have a blog that is helpful to your audience, and not just a sales gimmick
• Curate content that is useful to others and isn’t self-promotional
• Develop human relationships in your industry that builds links and information sharing and lays the groundwork for future opportunities.