How to Do Effective B2B Content Marketing

B2B Content marketing might be the most effective way to reach new customers and build a brand. 

It can establish your brand as a trusted source of advice and information to people in business.

To get results, a carefully planned and executed B2B content strategy is a must. That means you’ll need everything from a clear, data-driven content plan, to a defined target audience and the latest SEO practices. 

This article will guide you through each step in building an effective B2B Content strategy,  let you in on a few secrets from some of the best in the industry, and show you some of the tools that make your B2B content stand out and get results.

What is B2B Content Marketing?

B2B content provides engaging and practical information to help professionals solve problems or make business decisions. By providing this help, you improve your business’s credibility with other professionals.  

Other businesses are more likely to engage with you if they perceive you as an authority and your content demonstrates that you have the expertise they can trust. As a result, they’ll be more comfortable working with you. 

B2B content marketing examples include this blog post that you’re reading! Other examples include:

• Video tutorials by Shopify on selling eBooks.
• Research reports by Buffer.
• Articles on new marketing trends by Hubspot. 

A good content marketing strategy in B2B is important because content marketing in B2B is more complex than in B2C. The B2B sales cycle is longer and more rationally driven. So creating interesting content that reaches the right audience is a challenge.

The 4 Steps for Effective B2B Content Marketing

Step 1: Developing a B2B Content Strategy

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It’s vital to have a clear set of achievable and measurable goals, and a coherent pathway to reach them. 

Clear goals: Define your goals and put a number on it. 

Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or anything else, envision the actual numbers you want to achieve. Do you want to grow your revenue by 20 percent? …50? …100? Great! How many new leads do you need in order to achieve that? And how much traffic do you need to attract to reach that many leads? 

Clear goals make it easier to manage and evaluate your campaign. 

Identifying your key audience: Define who your content will target. 

Are they C-suite executives? Marketing directors? or HR professionals, for example? Define your target audience and research them to tailor your content around them. 

Leverage your Unique Selling Point (USP): Emphasize what makes your business different. Why should someone buy from you instead of your competitors? Focus on what sets you apart and what you bring to the table. 

The best way to ensure your content marketing strategy has these qualities is to perform market research and competitor analysis. These two activities help you identify opportunities for content creation and note your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. You can use this information to differentiate your content. 

There are a variety of ways to perform market research and competitor analysis, including: 

• Feedback Surveys or Interviews
• Social Media Analysis
• Content audits 
• Keyword research 

Step 2: Creating Compelling B2B Content

B2B content must be engaging and informative to achieve your goals. Here are a few tips for building compelling B2B content:

Create tailored content: Understand your target audience as much as possible to create content specifically tailored for them. Your B2B content should address your target audience’s pain points and questions. 

Employ storytelling: Creating a narrative makes content more engaging and relatable. Narratives achieve this by creating an emotional connection between your readers and your brand. For example, real-world case studies or customer journey stories can be far more compelling than simply talking about product benefits.

Provide valuable information: B2B audiences value information that helps them solve problems and improve their decision-making. You can provide this information by offering valuable industry information. 

Use different types of content: Experiment with different types of B2B content to cater to a diverse audience. You can try the following types of B2B content: 

• Blogs 
• Whitepapers 
• Case studies 
• Infographics 
• Videos 
• Webinars 
• Podcasts 
• Ebooks 

Optimize your content for search engines: Use the following strategies to make your content easily discoverable on search engines: 

Perform keyword research: Identify the most relevant keywords for your target audience, then incorporate these keywords into your content to improve search engine visibility. 

Optimize readability: For blogs or articles, use headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to improve your content’s readability. 

Internal and external links: Encourage website visitors to explore more of your site by including relevant internal links. And employ authoritative external links to authoritative sources to improve your website’s credibility.

Optimize meta tags and descriptions: Ensure your content’s meta tags and meta descriptions are optimal to entice visitors.

Step 3: B2B Content Distribution and Promotion

After creating high-quality B2B content, you must use the right channels to reach your target audience. The following tips will help you do exactly that: 

Identify the right distribution channels: The correct distribution channel(s) are aligned with your target audience’s preferences. For instance, the right channel could be your professional website or a social media platform like LinkedIn. 

Implement SEO: Employ SEO techniques to improve your content’s visibility in search engines. Some SEO techniques you could use include optimizing your meta description and tags.

Social Media Promotion: Share your content across social media platforms, especially LinkedIn, to improve your content’s reach. You can also use tagging, hashtags, and paid advertising to further boost your content. 

Email Marketing: Distribute your content directly into your target audience’s inboxes with personalized messages. The best way to perform email marketing is to segment your email list according to qualities like interests. 

Content Collaboration: Find other businesses or industry publications to cross-promote your content. That way, you’ll both reach a wider audience. 

Paid Advertising: Create sponsored content, like display ads, to reach larger audiences.

Step 4:  Measuring B2B Content Marketing Success

Measure your B2B content marketing’s success via metrics and analytics to optimize your strategy. The most important metrics for B2B content marketing include the following: 

• Website Traffic 
• Bounce rate 
• Lead generation rate 
• Conversion rate 
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

You’ll also want to calculate your campaigns’ return on investment (ROI). You’ll do that by comparing the costs of your campaigns with revenue generation. 

You can also calculate your campaign’s effectiveness by analyzing how well you’ve achieved your intended goals. For example, you can use social media coverage to analyze how effectively you’ve improved brand awareness. 

Thankfully, measuring B2B content marketing success is made easier with tools and platforms. For example, you can use Google Analytics to learn about website traffic and user behavior on your site. 

Similarly, social media analytic tools help you measure engagement and outreach on social media platforms. And marketing automation software helps track lead generation and conversion. 

Mandala AI’s Cosmos tool lets you monitor and benchmark your content against your competitors, as well as gather a wide range of industry-specific content with important analytics to see exactly what’s getting attention in your space.

You could also employ additional tools like customer feedback surveys and interviews to learn how customers feel about your content. The goal is to use evidence to establish what works and what doesn’t. 

B2B Content Marketing Examples and Case Studies

These 3 B2B content marketing examples demonstrate what effective B2B content marketing looks like. 

1. Shopify

Shopify is one of the world’s leading e-commerce platforms. They’ve achieved that status partly through their marketing. Shopify invested heavily in its B2B content marketing. They produce virtually every type of content, including blog posts, podcasts, and even free courses. 

For example, Shopify provides a free business name generator because there are ‘81,000’ monthly searches for ‘a business name generator’ in the U.S. Many people searching for business name generators likely end up on Shopify’s website. 

Shopify demonstrates the advantage of having a wide array of useful resources. By providing such diverse content, they’ve attracted the attention of a massive audience. That, in turn, helped them become one of the world’s leading e-commerce platforms. 

2. HubSpot

HubSpot publishes one of the world’s best marketing blogs. They generally divide their content into a sales and marketing track. They do this because they’re separate but closely related topics. HubSpot also knows that B2B audiences value in-depth content, so they provide the most relevant content for each discipline. 

As for the quality of their content, HubSpot provides everything from detailed guides to free resources. Their content includes detailed guides, original research, and thought-leadership pieces. Through that, they’ve established themselves as an authority and are an excellent example of B2B content marketing.

HubSpot demonstrates the value of being a thought leader. They’ve established themselves as one of the internet’s leading authorities on marketing. Many professionals trust their brand for that reason. And that’s why they seek HubSpot for consulting.

B2B Content Marketing Trends and Tips 

Since B2B content marketing has a dynamic landscape, you’ll always need to keep up with new trends. The latest developments include the following:

• Increased use of data analytics 
• The rise of AI and personalized experiences 
• Greater emphasis on video content 
• Interactive content like quizzes 

We can also expect that the future of B2B content marketing will include interactive experiences like virtual reality. We’ll also likely see the continued rise of influencers. 

The best way to adapt to these changes is with a proactive approach. Prioritize creating high-quality content that you can optimize for search engines. Also, integrate analytics for data-driven decision-making and nurture customer relationships with personalized experiences. 

Ready to Step Up Your B2B Content Marketing?

B2B content marketing is a great way to build brand awareness. Effective B2B content marketing is all about providing informative content to readers. And the best way to provide high-quality content is with a clear and effective marketing strategy. 

Mandala AI can help with all that. Our platform provides real-time analytics to help you make data-driven decisions.

Learn more about Mandala AI‘s innovative platform and how it can help you build a more effective B2B content strategy.