Content marketing. You can barely open a social media app or visit a website without encountering it. And while B2C companies employ content marketing extensively (and successfully) to generate awareness, drive engagement, and provide value to their customers, B2B brands can also leverage content marketing to help their businesses grow and to provide value to their customers.
Since B2B content marketers are trying to reach the decision-makers at other businesses, their tone, style, and approach should be aligned with this specific audience. Their content should reflect this difference as well. The B2B sales cycle is inherently longer than B2C, so tailoring content to the various phases of the buyer journey is key when marketing to other businesses.
B2B content marketing services provide a third-party approach to managing the substantial volume of work - namely content creation (writing, keyword research, photo-editing, SEO, and more writing) - that goes into content marketing. Often their services include social media marketing, blogging, email marketing, lead generation, and sometimes even photography and videography.
Below, we’ll walk you through why content marketing should be part of your B2B marketing strategy and the questions you should ask before considering B2B content marketing services.
Why Content Marketing for B2B?
Content marketing is an important component of B2B marketing strategy because it helps establish authority, not only with search engines but also with your target audience. Generating helpful, informative content that is tailored to your ideal customer helps position your brand as a thought leader in the industry, and builds trust with existing and potential customers who take value from your content.
It’s important to note that this cannot and should not be content for content’s sake, but well-researched blog posts, articles, podcasts, and case studies that demonstrate how well you understand your ideal customer and the struggles or challenges they might be facing in their businesses. Quality, sharable content also helps ensure that your efforts will reach the right people within the business – the decision-makers.
Often, prospects in the B2B buyer journey will discover content before they even realize they have a problem your company might be able to solve. If they know and trust your brand because of its useful and relevant content, when they do recognize their need for a solution, they’re more likely to turn to you first. This is how content marketing can fuel customer acquisition.
Content marketing is also good for SEO. And, when done with SEO best practices in mind including keyword research and on- and off-page SEO tactics, it is an excellent way to generate leads and website traffic. While SEO is a long game, a consistent content strategy ensures that the search engines understand what your website is about, helping your content rank higher for relevant searches.
You might be thinking, all that content has to be expensive. After all, we’re talking about some combination of regularly produced blog articles, social media posts, email newsletters, podcasts, and even webinars??!! But in fact, savvy content marketing services can efficiently repurpose content across multiple platforms, allowing you to actually get more for your marketing dollars.
B2B Content Marketing Services: Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Partner
So, you’re sold on content marketing services for your B2B brand. Now what?
Now it’s time to research different services and ask them key questions before you move forward. Keep in mind, the best company might be right next door or halfway across the country, so don’t limit yourself geographically. The key is to find a partner that is familiar with your industry, is prompt and responsive in communicating, and has no problem answering these questions:
- How well do you know or how will you get to know my product/industry?
- Do you have samples of work for similar businesses?
- What types of content will you produce and how frequently?
- How does the sign-off/approval process work?
- Are blog posts based on keyword research? Do you use SEO best practices?
- How do you measure success?
Content marketing for B2B brands can be a powerful way to build authority, gain trust and connect with existing and potential customers online. Ensuring that the content you create (or is created on your behalf) is in alignment with your brand’s voice, values and positioning is essential to the success of your efforts. Savvy content marketers understand the importance of leveraging SEO, addressing the target audience’s needs, and delivering content that is useful, informative, and relevant.
Choosing the B2B content marketing service that is right for your unique business requires asking the right questions and doing some preliminary research on how different agencies or individuals approach content creation for B2B. Simply generating new blog articles and posting consistently to social media isn’t enough. The best B2B content marketing services take the time to get to know your brand, your audience, and your communication style, and deliver quantifiable results in the form of key performance indicators, (KPIs).
At Brand Theory, we guide B2B companies through a proven framework that aligns inbound and content marketing strategies with website design and KPIs to help fuel sustainable growth. It all begins with taking a deep dive into your brand, its unique value proposition, ideal customer profiles, and goals. Find out how our outsourced growth team can level up your content marketing efforts and get a free growth game plan by booking a no-pressure introduction to Brand Theory today.
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