A lot of the content you’ll find online is B2C, or business to consumer, meaning it’s targeted at everyday people—your moms, your style-conscious teens, and your video game fanatics. So you may be wondering what B2B Content Marketing looks like, let alone how to go about B2B content creation.
The other type of content marketing—B2B content marketing—focuses not on consumers, but on other businesses. And B2B content marketing is popular—88 percent of respondents to the 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America Report said that they used B2B content marketing.
The tricky thing is creating B2B content marketing collateral that’s effective. According to the report, only 30 percent of B2B content marketers thought their content creation was effective. That’s a drop of 8 percent from the year before.
If you’re a B2B brand or part of a marketing company that works with B2B clients, these 11 B2B content marketing tips will help you produce effective B2B content like a pro.
11 Tips for Better B2B Content Creation
Don’t Be Boring
Don’t Be BoringPro tip: No one likes to be bored. If your method of getting relevant info out to your clients or other businesses involves manuals and articles that can only be described as dullsville, you need to change your tactics.
People often assume that fun content only works for the B2C market. That’s just not true. Businesses, or at least the people running them, are people too. Be engaging and entertaining with everything you produce and you’ll get more attention.
Have a Strategy
Having a plan for your creating B2B content will help you know what type of content to produce and what your business will gain from it.
It’s not enough to just write up some content. You need a b2b content creation strategy to know where you’re going to post it and how the content will be shared.
Have a Goal
Part of having a strategy should also be having a goal for your content. When another business reads a blog post or watches a video you made, what do you want to have happen?
Possible goals could include increasing your email list by X percent, increasing conversions by X, or getting X more people to visit your brand’s website.
Make Buyer Personas
Buyer personas aren’t just for B2C companies or influencer marketing. They are also an important element in B2B content creation.
Why? Because your brand is likely targeting itself at several different types of buyers. You might have the small business buyer, the big business buyer, and so on. Having a persona for each potential customer, then creating content that speaks right to that customer, is essential.
Offer Lots of Options
You don’t have to limit yourself to producing just one type of content. Blog posts might be the best option for some brands, but are they right for your company? Some of your customers might prefer videos, while others might really want to sink their teeth into an ebook or two.
Get Visual
According to the 2017 State of the Creator Economy study (SOCE), most marketers prefer visual approaches, like photos and video. There are some benefits to focusing on visual content.
For one thing, the brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than textual information. Visually focused content can also improve a person’s understanding of the content. Plus, people are more likely to respond to visual content with likes, comments, and shares.
KISS
“Keep it simple, stupid” is great advice for all content marketers. You might be a B2B company, but that’s no reason to include lots of jargon and technical talk in your content.
Use easy-to-understand language and clear imagery when putting together your content.
Proofread
The higher quality your brand’s content, the longer its shelf life and the higher it will rank in search results. Content that doesn’t have grammatical errors or misspellings is going to be more high quality that hastily produced, unedited content.
Produce a Lot of Content
Sometimes, quality matters more than quantity. In the case of B2B content creation, both quality and quantity matter. Think of it this way: The more quality content you produce, the more likely it is that potential customers will find your content.
Amplify Your Content
Creating B2B content isn’t enough. You also have to get the content out to your audience. Share it on your company’s social media profiles, and get B2B influencers to share and promote it as well. Remember that even interesting, engaging content is only as good as the number of people that read, respond to, and share it.
Use A Content Marketplace
The busy B2B marketer typically has way higher priorities than content creation. The average 500-word blog post takes between one to two hours to write. Imagine what you could accomplish if you could take your B2B content creation off your to-do list? Top Content Marketing platforms and marketplaces exist to do just that. Try signing up for one and shopping around for some quality content focused on your targeted keywords. You’ll likely be surprised at what spending a few hundred dollars on B2B content can do for your brand!
