There is no denying the fact that B2B marketing is different and tougher than its B2C counterpart. Content plays a pivotal role in both but the type changes with industry. We’ll show you 11 steps to create the most effective B2B content marketing strategy.
This is a little tricky. Do you know who exactly your target audience is? Do you know what they like or dislike? Do you know how they would react to your content in the definite way? We can sense hearing many ‘Nos and ‘Sort ofs. But that’s not the right plan to go ahead with your content marketing. Understand them before making any plan.
Be it for your client or for yourself, you must have a roadmap in your hand from content strategizing to execution; from distribution to remarketing. According to Uberflip, only 35% of businesses have a documented content marketing strategy.
Having a blueprint helps you many ways. You can create a calender; get ready with your distribution, marketing and remarketing plan; and set a goal for each content, so you can measure the results easily.
Trust us. You don’t need to create content everyday. Instead focus on the quality of your content. The work hour and effort you’re putting in it, must be greater in terms of ROI. Moreover, everyone is doing the same thing. You need to be different and better than the lot. Work it on.
What do you want to achieve through content? Is it lead generation, more website traffic, branding or sales? You need to analyze each one of them closely along with their pros and cons before choosing the right goal for you.
The goal you choose should help you deciding the call to action for each content. This, in turn, would help your audience take the right action.
Now that you know your goal and what you want to achieve through your content, it would be easier for you to create content. But as we mentioned before, everybody is producing content. If you want to stand out, you have to be unique.
Your audience needs information, entertainment and at the same time value for their time while going through your content. It’s a huge demand but not undoable. Always offer variety in your content, be it your website or social media pages.
Try different formats for one content to ave time. For example, your blog post can be converted into a slideshow, a podcast or an infographics. You may also turn it into a video or interesting quotes out of the excerpts.
Let’s talk about Google and its preferences. Yes, Google and other search engines still value content, backed by right keywords that don’t hamper the natural cadence of the user experience. It might sound complicated. But it’s not. Use Google Keyword Planner to research on your keywords. For example, if you’re a lifestyle blogger, search on the tool to find out the right keywords for you.
You can search on broad categories as well as specific topics to find out the research volume for those keywords in a month.
You’re done with content creation. What’s next? Gear up to spread the word. Social media plays a vital role in content distribution. Select the right channels for your content. It largely depends on your audience’s taste and online behavior. For B2B industry, LinkedIn seems to work better than even Facebook and Twitter.
If your target group does not spend too much time on LinkedIn, change the strategy and go for some other network. Remember, your audience is the deciding factor for content distribution.
The greatest of all content might go unnoticed if not marketed properly. You too need to market it. Distributing it on different channel would give a slight push. But if you want to reach a height, you need to spend some money. 55% of all B2B marketers have already understood it and so decided to increase their content marketing budget.
We recommend not to focus on the board target audience. Instead, market your content within your niche. This will enhance your engagement, because you’re sending it to people who would appreciate and value it.
Your content must have been shared by different people on different channels. Try to find them out. There are Google Alerts where you can set web alerts for your business name. Apart from that keep checking your social media notifications. In case of any, don’t forget to answer the queries or confusions or appreciation. This will again strengthen your community. These people, in future, would also be your brand advocates. After all, it’s all about making and maintaining relationships.
Last but not the least, do you keep track of your content’s performance? Some of you might check the data for new content. But your old content too has potential to add to your marketing. Explore different ways to remarket them and at the same time keep tracking and measuring the results, both in short term and long term.
According to Uberflip data, 70% of content marketers are concentrating in more content creation but when it comes to tracking RoI, only 21% of them are doing it right. Maybe this is one of the reasons that most of the companies fail in content marketing. Hope you won’t make any of the fatal mistakes in your content promotion. All the best! If you’re a B2B owner then we can help you wth content marketing endeavours. Get in touch with us. *** Images: Uberflip