When you are researching for B2B content marketing ideas, you want your business to stay at the top of your prospect’s mind. You can’t go for any random content marketing ideas to check if it works because time is crucial when it comes to B2B marketing. In simpler words, the cost of resources and time are directly proportional.
Related: Content Marketing ROI Stats
Considering its vitality, you need to possess and implement content marketing ideas that are strategic, feasible, result-oriented, and proven. But before that, you must have a good sense of B2B content marketing to use your content in the best possible way to attain an optimum result.
In this article, you will have a core understanding of business-to-business content marketing as well as the ideas that will make your content highly effective.
- What is B2B Content Marketing?
- B2B vs B2C Content Marketing
- B2B Content Marketing Formats
- Best Ideas for B2B Content Marketing
- Target Audience of All Stages of The Sales Funnel
- Go for Storytelling
- Adopt Guest Posting or Collaboration
- Go for Central Content Repository
- Take Advantage of Video Marketing
- Create Comprehensive Content
- Go for Live Videos
- Create Data-Driven Content
- Use Email Marketing
- Go for Paid Ads
- Use Automation Marketing Tools
- Use Podcasting
- Get Rid Of Thin Content
- Distribute Content
- Repurpose Text Content
- Update Web Content
- Find What’s Going Around
- Track Your Performance
- B2B Content Marketing Examples
- Top B2B Content Marketing Channels
- B2B Content Marketing Headline Formulas
What is B2B Content Marketing?
B2B content marketing is the marketing of products or services by a business to other businesses, through a different form of content, which could be text, video, audio, or images.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Here, content is a critical element that plays a strategic role in engaging with prospects and customers. The format of content can be blogs, videos, articles, white papers, buyers’ guides, research reports, or social media posts, having the power to influence the audience.
For effective content, each content that is created is topic-oriented, meaningful, of the audience’s interests, and has the ability to entice the targeted audience.
Now, B2B content marketing should not be confused with B2C content marketing. Here are the differences mentioned that show the stark contrast between the two.
B2B vs B2C Content Marketing
B2B Content Marketing:
Focuses on Small Target Audience
Compared to B2C, the market for B2B is smaller, resulting in a smaller sphere of the target audience. Therefore, the content created is meaningful and extremely straightforward to convince them.
Related: Ridiculously Easy Ways To Improve Content Marketing
More Relationship Oriented
Content for B2B marketing focuses entirely on building personal relationships. The businesses seek opportunities through marketing to present their business practices, ethics, and morals to ensure they are better than their competitors. Also, it helps build the brand and drive long-term business.
Branding through Relationship Value-Driven Content
In B2B business, branding matters for lead generation and often achieved through value-driven content. The marketing of content is done intended toward establishing the business’s position and its product’s value in the market.
Informational and Straightforward
In B2B marketing, content is packed with maximum possible information and is straight to the point. The reason is the buying panel is only interested in the efficiency and expertise of the seller and tends to do more research around the company. Therefore, comprehensive information is provided about its products, its reputation, certifications and more.
Focuses on Lead Generation
For success in B2B, lead generation is the key. Once any business has a buyer and succeeds in delivering the best service, the deal turns out to be a long-term relationship. So, more leads mean more business. This is the reason why marketing here is tailored to generate more leads.
B2C Content Marketing:
Focuses on Large Target Market
In B2C, the direct consumer is the target audience, which makes the market incredibly huge. Therefore, marketing methods and strategy is chosen in a way that could cover a broader audience.
Related: Best Content Writing Tools For Content Writers
More Transactional Oriented
The aim of B2C marketing is to encourage consumers to buy products from the client’s site. The intention is to drive sales in the least possible time, so the focus is on selling quality products rather than building a relationship first. For this, content is tailored to promote deals, offers, etc.
Branding through Emotional and Personal Content
Branding is integral to marketing, and it is done by creating more personalized and emotionally triggered content. Such marketing gives the impression of business being loyal with the customer. Also, confirms their credibility, makes them emotionally connected with the customer and incites the consumers to make purchases.
Promotional and Entertaining
In B2C, the audience seeks deals and entertainment. That is why B2C marketing has more promotional content that helps buyers make aware of the choices.
Focuses on Brand Building
For direct consumers, branded products ensure reliability and quality. Therefore, building a brand becomes a priority along with providing quality products or services.
B2B Content Marketing Formats
As already pointed, in B2B, the content has a huge role in marketing. Not to mention, it helps in building trust and authority, while boasting your expertise, and sharing information. Indeed, the content has to be created intelligently to make it a success.
For this, there are varieties of formats used in content marketing. The benefit of using a variety is, the audience will always get something fresh. Plus, you will get a greater opportunity to reach new prospects and get to know which formats work better for you.
Related: Marketing Agency Directories To Get You The Best Leads
Here is the list of those formats specifically used in B2B with details and how they can help.
Blog Posts
Blog posts are the foundations of B2B content marketing. These are usually short, say around 500-2000 or even more words based on the current topic and do not include a lot of images. Blogs are written in an informal tone to present ideas. It typically covers topics like how-tos, reviews, lists, etc., related to products or services.
Blogs have several potential SEO benefits like it can be used to build an inbound link profile. This is the reason why guest blogging is popular. Blogs are an excellent resource to stimulate top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) audiences.
Related: Top Benefits of Blogging
Long Form Articles
The long-form of articles is another way of catching the attention of potential prospects and customers. These are long-form content that provides unique and valuable knowledge about the product, services, and the company. It includes images and straight forward information in detail.
Related: What is SEO? Complete Guide to Learn SEO
In-depth information and thorough research are required to write a long-form of articles. These are well formatted and framed to be relevant in the long-term future. The content length might exceed from 1000 to as much as 10,000 or more. Such informative content intends to attract quality clients and get indirect SEO benefits.
Related: SEO Tips For Law Firms
Original Research
Original research is the next preferred content format in B2B content marketing. As the name suggests, the content is based on factual and current research, for example, an annual report of a company.
Developing content for original research is time-consuming, as it needs in-depth analysis and findings that make it compelling to reach prospects. However, there are a lot of benefits like it can provide links and shares across many platforms and many SEO advantages.
If the content related to research findings is created thoughtfully, it has the power to attract millions of shares. Also, it can be a great source of getting inbound links.
Case Studies
Case studies are effective ways to describe how a company can be helpful to other companies. In this type of content format, a real, on-the-ground scenario is examined by presenting the challenge that the brand accepted, the solution provided, and how the ultimate results helped the client.
Related: Branding Cycle: Your Complete Guide
Case studies go beyond the articles and original research to explain the capabilities of the brand. These types of content help prospects understand how far the company can go to solve their client’s problem and convince them that the same way they can help the readers too.
Case studies are one of the most effective content marketing formats to influence bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) audiences.
White Papers
White papers are a popular format for winning new business. These are long-form of content, usually come in between 3,000 and 15,000 words. The length of the content is the necessity to provide in-depth knowledge of the specific topic to the reader.
Related: Most Powerful Brand Words
It educates the readers with original research, survey results, and other high-value information. The content could be in the form of a standalone PDF or published as a book. White papers are far more valuable than any other B2B content marketing formats and are worth reading even if it takes hours.
This form of content is usually a gated content offer, which requires the reader to fill up their personal details to access it. This process makes the readers eligible for the next step of the funnel and consequently helps businesses generate leads.
Videos
Videos are one of the very successful content marketing formats. Since the rise of the number of smartphone users, the popularity of video marketing is surging. It has proven to be an effective source of lead generation.
Related: Video Marketing Guide For Small Business Owners
B2B marketers are thoroughly using videos to create short or longer content on different topics like how-to, branding, explainer, product review, event coverage, etc. It is even used for influencer marketing.
Related: What is Influencer Marketing?
Many organizations are also creating live video, or brief video content to introduce people to the business, showcase features of products or services, or give instructions on using a particular product.
Related: Why Video Content Marketing Is So Powerful?
Infographics
Infographics are very effective in B2B content marketing as these have been found as frequently shared content online. B2B marketers widely use this format for quick and assured results.
Related: Penji Review: On-Demand Graphic Design Platform With A 24 Hr Turnaround
Infographics are the way of presenting information like data, testimonials, quotes, fun facts, process guides, or FAQs by using the power of graphic design.
These are informal content in an attractive form. Also, these are easy to share and link, which makes it reachable to the maximum audience. These are also effective in email marketing campaigns.
Related: Best Email Marketing Examples
For a super effective infographic, the graphic elements have to be right as well as the information has to be reliable and should be presented interestingly.
Webinars
A webinar is another excellent format of B2B content marketing for lead generation. It is more like a video or a live presentation by any organisation. It could be live or pre-recorded video shared on the company’s website or social media platforms.
Related: Best Social Media Agencies in India
With this format, sharing an organisation’s expertise becomes easier. Usually, a presentation or a brief Q&A session is conducted to provide clarity of an organisation. Webinars can also be used to exhibit products and services.
Often webinars are set up with prior notice so that the audience can sign up to catch up the event on time. It is another form of gated content that requires the audience to provide personal details to access.
This way organisations can identify the most engaging audience and follow-up with them after webinars.
Related: SEO Hacks To Increase Customer Engagement
Podcasts
Podcasts are comparatively a new format in B2B content marketing, yet found to be as good as the rest of the formats in engaging the audience.
The biggest advantage of podcasts is they can be consumed anywhere and anytime as every information is available in audio form only. The audience doesn’t have to pay attention to visuals to understand the details.
Related: Best Growth Hacking Podcasts To Listen
Marketers are rapidly adopting podcasts format through the audio streaming services and podcast distribution platforms to connect with the audience. They are more into the creation of episodic audio content for demonstrating their product, services, or any other information step by step.
Apart from creating fresh audio content, there is also an option to create a podcast from an existing video by extracting the audio part. A blog post can be turned into a podcast episode too by merely reading it.
Related: How to Create a Blog: Complete Guide
E-Books
E-books can work wonderfully in B2B marketing to pull leads if created in the right way. These are detailed descriptions about the products or the services to help readers of the middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) understand the brand better.
Also, it allows brands to showcase their authority on a subject in a broader spectrum than blog posts or long-form articles.
E-books are not just about sharing brands info, but also getting leads. Being gated content, organisations get reader’s contact information in exchange for their information shared.
Moreover, creating an e-book also ensures a brand’s authenticity.
Related: How To Keep A Good Reputation In The Media
Best Ideas for B2B Content Marketing
By now, you have an understanding of the basics of B2B content marketing. Starting from what is B2B marketing to its different formats, I am sure you have soaked-up everything.
Now, let’s jump to the next level. Here, you will learn how to implement those learnings in practicality to get the most out of it. It means you will learn here about the best ideas for B2B content marketing.
Let us understand this first. Even if you have the tools, you need to know the tactics to make them more useful. This is because each of your audience has different needs for their choice and reasons to buy the type of product or services you provide.
So, the major takeaway is that the type of content promotion you choose has to be potentially different. You must identify the category of audience you want to target and then plan your strategy.
This way, you will be addressing the needs of each of your audience. They will be able to connect with your brand and differentiate it from the rest of your competitors in the market.
Related: SEMrush Review: Best Competitors Analysis Tool
Target Audience of All Stages of The Sales Funnel
Creating brand awareness is the primary goal of content marketing. Therefore, the content must be developed to target all stages of the sales funnel for distributed marketing.
Related: Ecommerce Growth Strategies That Fire Up Sales
The audience at each stage has a different nature and needs. Let us understand them one by one.
- Website Visitors: Audience at this stage try to get an overview of your business. They read blogs, web pages, and other generic information. Majority of website traffic reaches this stage.
- TOFU (Top-of-the-funnel): This is the stage when visitors seem interested in your business and look for solutions. They read guides, how-to-articles, and white-papers. They might be interested in watching short videos.
- MOTU (Middle-of-the-funnel): At this stage, visitors evaluate the available options and can turn out to be a potential customer. They watch longer videos, read e-books, download user guides, and subscribe for even more information.
- BOFU (Bottom-of-the-funnel): The final stage is when prospects have almost made up their mind and can be easily converted with a few follow-ups. The audience is usually interested in demos or assessments, executive summaries, and case studies.
Go for Storytelling
Even if it is about B2B content marketing, compelling storytelling is still needed to connect the audience with your brand. A plot with an emotional touch will impact the audience to remember your brand.
There are two major benefits to storytelling. First, it eliminates the boredom and second, promotion becomes engaging while avoiding overly self-promotion.
Related: Video Marketing Trends to Follow
Marketers use the traditional technique of storytelling where they communicate how their products or services can provide solutions and help the business grow in the least time possible. In the whole process, they avoid excessive self-promotion. A popular format for campaigning is video, while the text is also used at some points.
Related: How to Create Shoppable Videos? Complete Guide
Adopt Guest Posting or Collaboration
No specific number of platforms is enough for marketing when it comes to B2B. The more you have, the better it is. Guest posting allows you to maximize exposure of your content.
Related: Guest Posting Sites List
If you collaborate with other businesses, it will be beneficial for both sides. If they post on your site, you will get traffic and similarly, if you post on their site, again you will get their audience.
Go for Central Content Repository
Distributed content on different platforms might impact the interest of the readers. To provide a consistent and omnichannel content experience, having a central content repository is necessary.
You can use various content formats to make their content accessible across varieties of channels and then create a central content repository to provide a unified access point.
Take Advantage of Video Marketing
Videos are popular means of content marketing. It has the power to connect with customers and present the brand in the most appropriate way. If created thoughtfully, it conveys messages easily and provides quick results. Most importantly, you don’t need to have a big budget.
You can start with short-videos first for the website visitors or TOFU audience. Further, you can go for longer ones with more detailed information.
Create Comprehensive Content
When you are in B2B marketing, the intention is to provide engaging as well informative content. The best content would be the one that incorporates text, images, and videos.
This comprehensive form of content caters all the solutions to the reader. It gives better clarity, keeps their interest intact till the end, and makes it more informative.
Go for Live Videos
As discussed earlier, personal relationships play a vital role in earning leads in b2b. It can be an excellent opportunity for personal selling if you can communicate with your prospects.
Many platforms like LinkedIn offer the opportunity to publish live videos. The only challenge is to make it engaging. If the audience feels it useful, they will consume and share with others. It is an effective means of connecting with the audience and encourage them to visit your site without creating fancy videos.
Create Data-Driven Content
A prevalent phrase “content is king” is true only when it incorporates valuable information. Well informative content is something that works every time, and B2B marketing is no exception.
Related: What is Content Writing? (With Examples)
The data available to you is gold. You just need to use them intelligently as information. Create content that involves an analysis of your data and any other fresh information not shared before. This will significantly add value to your content.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing’s effectiveness is unquestionable as it used to be years ago. It is still one of the most effective B2B marketing techniques available today. Most of the B2B marketers believe that email is their most effective channel for revenue generation.
Related: Best Email Marketing Services in India
The biggest benefit you get with emails is the option of personalization. Prospects and customers deserve a one-on-one conversation. With a personalized email, you can impress your prospects.
Go for Paid Ads
The importance of paid ads is exceptionally high when it is about B2B content marketing. By paid ads, you will be able to share more, gain more attention, and subsequently convert more.
Related: Google Ad Formats – Complete Guide
Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook are great tools for B2B marketing. Both platforms have individual significance but work the same way to promote your content and generate leads.
Use Automation Marketing Tools
To make your marketing effective, it is necessary that you stay consistent with your posts. For this, you have to be extraordinarily disciplined and always stay on your toes. So, manually posting on all social networks it is not easy.
Related: Best Facebook Automation Tools
Opt for automation tools that will significantly minimize your effort. These tools are designed to post your content in social media and send emails, on a pre-specified date and time. It can also reply to emails automatically.
Besides, you can plan your postings for several weeks in advance and streamline all such tasks. These tools will help you to remain in contact with your customers.
Use Podcasting
Podcasts are gaining huge popularity these days. A simple reason behind this is the audience finds it easy to consume. The audio content is self-sufficient to understand the concept, and they don’t need to focus on visuals.
It would be best if you try podcasting, also because it is easy to create and an apt way of repurposing other content. For example, you can repurpose relevant blog topics or videos along with some input from experts within your space.
Get Rid Of Thin Content
Let us first understand what is thin content. It is content that is though SEO-friendly but is not adding any value. Google hates such content, and if found anywhere, it scales down the website’s ranking.
Related: How To Check Website Rankings
Therefore, it is essential that you spot those content and remove them from your site. It is easy to identify the pages. Those pages will have high traffic but a high bounce rate. Also, the average spent time on the page will be very low.
You don’t necessarily have to remove all the pages with thin content. You can consider removing them only if the content is outdated. Otherwise, simply update or rewrite the content and stuff it with the latest information.
Related: Best SEO Keyword Rank Checker Tools
Distribute Content
Content marketing demands constant effort to make the content reachable to wider audience. If the webinars or slide deck remains at your website, only a limited audience will be able to consume it.
Related: Easy Ways To Improve Content Marketing
For a better visibility, content must be distributed to different channels. You can upload your webinar on YouTube where you will get an unlimited audience to promote your brand. Even posting podcasts on YouTube is a common practice these days. Similarly, posting the slide deck on SlideShare can be useful too.
Repurpose Text Content
Blogs are an effective format for B2B content marketing, and they can perform even better if their reach is amplified. You can take existing content, think in a different way of presenting it, and publish on various platforms.
Or else, if you have a series of blog posts on a specific topic, you can convert it into a gated content piece, such as an e-book. This gives a double advantage. They get information, and you get to know their interest, and ways to follow them up.
Related: WordPress SEO: Supreme Guide
If you want, you can also convert the blog posts into infographics and videos then post on other channels.
Update Web Content
From the ranking perspective, modifying the web page content is a practical choice. Older web pages with no changes often fall in ranking and are replaced by other fresh and updated web pages.
Therefore, information on your site must be updated from time to time. Check each page on a regular basis and add something new to add value.
Find What’s Going Around
There is always that one trend in the market your competitors follow generously. Stay updated with the latest trend and determine its feasibility in your business.
At times, few tactics work enormously.
It helps you start building a marketing strategy that’s centred around something your audience can actually relate to.
Track Your Performance
Being honest with your own performance matters a lot when you are determined to reach success. Both success and failures are part of any journey. So, list down everything that worked, and that didn’t. Learn from your mistakes and remember them.
Related: PPC Tips To Improve Campaign Performance
You must keep track of your performance, preferably every month. There are few automated tools available that measure your performance and share your monthly reports. You can analyse the report and create your strategy accordingly.
B2B Content Marketing Examples
B2B content marketing provides unlimited possibilities to promote your brand. Here are a few examples of how intelligently marketers used the existing content formats:
HubSpot
HubSpot needs no introduction. Everyone in marketing knows it as a provider of enterprise-level inbound market, sales, and service software.
The reason why HubSpot is popular is because of its extraordinary content marketing. It puts loads of content on its sites. If you check out its education section, you will be surprised to see the number of topics and the types of content formats it includes.
Apart from blogs, it has e-books, webinars, templates, tools, and what not to help the reader with the best possible ways to help them consume content. Also, there are enormous topics to explore. Each piece includes valuable and data-driven insights to run businesses.
Related: Best Digital Marketing Tools For Small Businesses
HubSpot has created a path to drive organic traffic to its site that ultimately converts into its clients.
Baremetrics
This is a B2B company that provides metrics, dunning, and engagement tools to analyse and track business growth.
There is an interesting part of Baremetrics blogs. They are not at all promotional. Instead, the content is focused on the start-up journey of other businesses, which inspires and educates the readers.
There are also other blogs that are educational in terms that they share tips and ideas. Blogs are worth reading when there is some information to absorb. Such blogs are widely read, liked, and shared.
Baremetrics is a classic example of brand promotion with blogs that don’t look promotional.
Buffer
Buffer is one of the most trusted names among businesses for the management of social media campaigns. It provides social management tools with the ability to publish, analytics, and engagement.
The brand separates itself from the rest in the market by adopting a unique approach in blogging. In the blogs, they discuss their company finances, business decisions, strategies, work culture, social media, and online marketing.
They openly write about what they are up to and what their plans are. It works because readers find the brand transparent and trustworthy. It is not difficult to understand why they have earned thousands of clients globally, including well-known international companies.
Related: Top Facebook Advertising Tools
Simply Business
This is the largest and highly recognised online broker of the business insurance company of the UK.
Related: Salaries Of Digital Marketers in The United Kingdom (UK)
Simply Business has a different strategy. It has shifted its focus from selling insurance to create content that helps businesses.
Each content is a piece of information and a great guide to relevant businesses. Readers can learn about sorting out issues related to email productivity, WordPress, Google Ads, business blogging, and social media.
Related: Top Google Ads Statistics
Simply Business has presented itself as givers, and this is what makes them a leader in content marketing.
Intel
Intel is renowned as a supplier of computer chips. But this is just a piece we know about this brand. Intel is much more than computers.
Therefore, Intel is using a content strategy to advertise its other products. The brand is publishing blogs on its site, covering a variety of topics like medical, blockchain, chatbot, virtual reality, drones, etc.
Related: Augmented Reality Ads: The Definitive Guide
Each product has an individual set of blogs to market its abilities. It talks about how their products can help in different segments of a business. Moreover, the site provides an option to choose a language.
It allowed the brand target global audience while establishing the fact that their products’ ability is beyond speeding up the computer.
Cisco
Cisco is a brand that probably everyone has heard about. The company deals with the production of telecommunications devices and other hardware.
The company is in this list of content marketing because it has chosen a variety of content formats over just blogs. Besides blogs, you will find podcasts, webinars, case studies, and a lot more.
Cisco has adopted maximum possible formats to demonstrate why they are an excellent choice. In each content, there is information about their products, how it works, and how it helped their clients.
Because Cisco deals with telecommunication products, they need to convey their technology. By producing promotional content, they are encouraging clients and prospects to know more about the brand.
Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce platform for setting up and running an ecommerce business.
Related: Best B2B Ecommerce Platforms
But if you look at its content strategy, it will appear to be more than just a place to host a business.
There is an array of content comprising a massive catalogue that guides newbies in the business. In addition, there are in-depth guides, an online forum, sponsored podcasts, and a business encyclopedia full of insights to help the readers.
A list of free tools such as logo makers, slogan generators, pay stub generators, etc. are an added advantage of Shopify’s content strategy to the readers.
Related: Shopify SEO Guide
Another benefit Shopify offers to its audience is a comprehensive section of detailed online courses. These courses are to guide the business owners with even more in-depth ideas of launching their business. These guides are available at a very affordable price.
The strategy has worked wonderfully and lifted its value to the manifold.
Etsy
Etsy is an e-commerce website dealing with handmade or vintage items and craft supplies.
The brand has been very smart with its content strategy. While it offers a collection of blogs on tips and ideas for home décor and gifting, it has a strong presence on Pinterest as well.
Related: Top Pinterest Marketing Stats
Pinterest is highly compatible with Etsy. Pinterest is where Etsy promotes its products by publishing product images. This frequently attracts retail shoppers to their site and help the brand win more sellers.
Similarly, Etsy is using Instagram to promote its products and stores. Using a different image sharing platform is an apt idea for promoting gifting or decorative products.
What we can learn from the content strategy of Etsy is the choice of a marketing platform greatly depends on the type of product you deal with.
Salesforce
Salesforce is the largest cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management service and a complementary suite of enterprise applications.
Even if Salesforce is a top CRM brand, it massively works on its content marketing strategy to keep its demand high and stay ahead in the ever-increasing market competition. It has included a variety of content formats to its site to drive traffic – blogs, podcasts, guides, research and reports, customer stories, and whatnot.
Additionally, Salesforce enhanced its search and paid traffic source. For this, they included entertaining sales and marketing videos, stop-motion SlideShare, and customer success stories. Also, they were the first to introduce stop-motion SlideShare.
Related: Top LinkedIn Marketing Stats
No wonder, the brand site reported overwhelming traffic and conversion within months of upgrading their content strategy.
SAP
SAP is the number one multinational software vendor that makes enterprise software for managing business operations and customer relations.
SAP provides several products targeting dozens of industries. When the prospects are distributed, it is not easy to focus them all at a time. This is why SAP adopted a content strategy that works segment-wise.
Each content covers topics relevant to each industry. Also, the content offered is solution-based that demonstrates the industry-specific benefits of their product.
In addition, SAP didn’t miss any content marketing tactics to promote their brand. Be it email, tweets, blog posts, LinkedIn status updates, virtual and live events, outbound and responder follow-up calls, or account-based marketing; they adopted each one of them.
Related: Best Twitter Analytics Tools
They have even built-up content for the audience in their own SAP Community Network. As a result, they registered a significant rise in revenue generation.
Top B2B Content Marketing Channels
Once you have your content ready, then comes the need for a platform where you will promote them to reach the target audience. The media channels used for content promotions are called distribution channels or content marketing channels.
Choosing the right channel is a part of an appropriate strategy of distribution, which entirely depends on the type of business and products.
Here are the three categories of top B2B content marketing channels:
Paid Content Marketing Channels
Paid content marketing channels are the distribution channels where the promotion of content is paid. Below is the list of top B2B paid content marketing channels.
- Paid Search: In this type of search, usually a service like Google Adwords is used. You create content using keywords relevant to your subject provided by Adwords. Your ad for content appears every time someone searches using your keyword. You have to pay a pre-specified fee only when someone clicks on it.
Related: Best SEO Keyword Research Tools
There are two pricing models followed, cost per click (CPC) and cost per mille (CPM), i.e. thousand impressions..
Related: Difference Between PPC and CPC
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Using SEM, you can lift your website content higher up on search engine result pages (SERPs) for specific keywords. It also incorporates search engine optimisation where website content is adjusted as per the relevant keyword. This channel is highly effective in driving organic traffic. You have to pay for the services.
- Social Media Advertising: Social media channels are a highly used platform. They ensure high quality and quantity of audience and offer precise targeting capabilities. Marketers can segregate the audience based on their geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics.
Some of the popular social media advertising channels are promoted Tweets, Facebook promoted posts, promoted pins, Instagram ads, and LinkedIn sponsored content.
Related: Best Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategies
- Display Advertising: It is a widely used paid marketing method where marketers purchase ad slots on various websites to advertise their content through display ads. This is useful to get the attention of the target audience.
- Native Advertising: Native advertising is also known as Sponsored Content. This is a type of display advertising that acquires the look and feel of the platform where it appears. These ads appear under content recommendations, such as within LinkedIn feeds, besides the user-generated content. This proves to be a highly effective way of increasing brand awareness and driving strategic traffic.
Related: Best Native Ads Networks
- Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is the most commonly used B2B content distribution channel. It basically works as community publishing on different social media channels. Marketers reach influencers of the relevant field to create, broadcast and promote great content on their social media accounts, that promises a viral spread.
Related: What is Influencer Marketing?
Earned and Shared Channels
In earned and shared content marketing channels, you don’t have to pay anything. Instead, your content is shared and promoted free of cost by third-party entities like bloggers, publications, journalists, or customers. This happens because of your brand’s popularity.
Below is the list of top B2B earned and shared channels:
- Organic Searches: Organic search is when a user types in a keyword or phrase relevant to your content and your content appears on the top of the search result. Your brand’s popularity and the strategic use of keywords, linking, and quality content takes your content to the top of the search ranking.
Related: How To Check Google Rankings (Best Methods)
- Guest Blogging: This is a brilliant way of grabbing a broader audience. You can share your expertise with the quality audience and establish yourself as a market leader. You simply have to look for an opportunity to be featured in websites of famous journalists and publications. The content form not necessarily has to be a blog; it can be a thought leadership content, an interview, or PR coverage.
Related: Guest Posting Sites List
- Brand Collaborations: This is another top-rated marketing channel for B2B brands. The benefit of collaboration is that the brands can pool their resources to create content for the same target audience. This also allows them to share each other’s customer base. Under the collaboration, they might work to generate an e-book, research, conference, or webinar.
- Social Media: Social media is the easiest way to reach the target audience. B2B organizations have their official social media pages or groups, which they use to distribute their content. Users further share their posts on the same platform.
Owned Channels
Owned content marketing channels are those providing complete control to the organization.
Below is the list of B2B owned media channels:
- Company’s Website/Blog: The organization’s official website or blog is the place where the company can post content, edit, or remove as per their requirement. Also, they can post company news or amplify company announcements.
Related: How to Create A Website With WordPress
- Email Marketing: Email marketing is probably the most effective way of driving traffic, getting leads, and generating ROI by sending email to those who have subscribed for your emails. Therefore, even if building a significant subscriber base is not easy, it is worthy of putting effort. Through email marketing, you can do a lot, such as you can distribute content, promote offers, and send updates.
Related: Email Marketing Stats To Kickstart Your Campaign
- Email Outreach: People who have shown interest in your product or looking for products you deal with are called the rich audience. By sending cold emails, you can introduce your business to them and the ways you can help them. This is an effective channel to hunt for quality prospects.
- Social Media Profiles: If compared, content promotion through sponsored content or promoted posts, is somewhat different than content promotion through the organization’s social media profiles. It allows you to make changes or pin the content if you wish. Editing and updating the post are other advantages.
- FAQ Forum: B2B marketing emphasizes communication with clients and prospects for building a relationship. By launching forums, a brand can create a platform where they can interact with community members. Plus, answer FAQs, and invite industry experts to initiate discussion on topics of their niche.
Being an open platform, the members can interact with each other and share their opinion.
Related: Best Strategies To Retain Your Customers
B2B Content Marketing FAQs
Here are some of the common B2B marketing FAQs:
1 – Still wasting your time over-processing outreach campaign manually?
To scale the outreach campaign, and save your time, use an automated email outreach tool.
Related: Best Free Tools For Email Marketing
In an outreach campaign, you have to target the bulk of people who have shown interest in your product or are actively looking for a solution that you also provide. Due to the high volume of mail recipients, emailing individually and manually to each one of them becomes increasingly difficult.
The email outreach tools are designed to streamline your outreach process and boost your email productivity at the same time. There are plenty of useful automated features to ease off your emailing effort.
For example, there are options for mail merge, automated follow-ups, email personalization, mail template, email tracking, team collaboration and a lot more.
2 – Having a hard time to engage with your clients fully?
Automate your social media posts. Yes, there are various great social media marketing automation tools available around that can guide you in managing your social profiles.
Social media platforms are highly dependable places to engage with your clients and hunt for leads. But many repetitive daily tasks take away a huge amount of time. By using automated tools, you can cut down the time spent and help yourselves with better results.
Related: Best Facebook Automation Tools For
For example, you can schedule content, automatically qualify your followers, create clear workflows, suggestions for posts, and more. You can also monitor your performance on a specific social network.
3 – Are you investing in hiring professional designers for Facebook ads campaigns?
You can design your own Facebook ads using the intuitive tools available in the social media marketing tool, like Sendinblue. There are so many features to create your ads, just like a pro. You simply have to upload your image, enter unique ad text, a corresponding CTA to the design, and an ad campaign is ready to draw more eyes on social media.
Related: PosterMyWall: Easy Design Tool For Social Media
However, this feature comes with a paid plan, but there are a number of added benefits you get. This makes it a cheaper and convenient option than hiring a professional designer.
4 – Wondering, how to create that first impression on your client?
Focus on your own website. Your company website can be the most powerful tool for creating your first impression through content marketing.
A company website is the first-place prospects reach for a background check. Loads of quality content will give them a complete idea about your brand and the products you provide. You can share your brand story, customer success story, connect with people directly, and hence create that crucial first impression.
5 – Are you clueless about where to find the maximum leads?
While there are various platforms to find leads, LinkedIn tops them all. It is a professional platform having millions of active members, which also include business owners.
On LinkedIn, everyone is there for business communications. They place ads, promote their brand, and also look for solutions. It means there is a huge target audience.
Moreover, LinkedIn’s lead conversion rates are 3x higher than other major ad platforms. Indeed, you must have LinkedIn in your marketing strategy.
6 – How to find relevant sites that accept guest blogs?
Google is the best platform to find such sites. You can enter search queries like the below ones:
[topic/keyword/phrase] + “write for us”
[topic/keyword/phrase] + “guest article”
[topic/keyword/phrase] + “become a contributor”
This will get you the list of sites that are relevant to your business and also accept guest blogs.
B2B Content Marketing Headline Formulas
Why is the headline so important? Headlines are the very first thing that your audience come across. So, if that can attract your audience’s attention, they will indeed be intrigued to see what is in there.
On the contrary, if your headline is not impressive, the audience will not be interested in opening it, no matter how convincing is your content.
Therefore, if you want to create a lasting impression and improve opening rate, create a unique and catchy headline.
Here are a few formulas for creating catchy headlines:
Email Headline Formulas
Formula: Still Wasting Your Time Doing [Issue]?
Example: Still Wasting Your Time Doing Manual Outreach?
Formula: How to [Action/Topic]?
Example: How to Create Shoppable Videos?
Formula: Fix [issue]
Example: Fix a Bad Google Review
Formula: Sale: [Product name] [Discount]
Example: Sale: Reebok Shoes Flat 20% Discount
Formula: [Time/Days left] [Product] [Offer]
Example: Only 2 Days Left! Reebok Shoes Flat 25% off
Formula: We can help you [service]
Example: We can help you create hybrid work place
Formula: The issue with your [Problem]
Example: The issue with your low email opening rate
Formula: Are we still on for [Day/time] conference?
Example: Are we still on for Monday conference?
Formula: [Brand name]: Thank you for [Reason]
Example: HubSpot: Thank you for choosing us
Social Media Sharing Headline Formulas
Related: Hashtags on Facebook – How To Use Them?
Formula: Top [number][Subject] that will make you [Result]
Example: Top 3 Marketing Ideas that will Make You A Market Leader
Formula: [Number] [Subject] Tactics [Negative Phrase]
Example: 3 Marketing Tactics Unsuccessful Businesses Do Not Follow
Formula: [Topic] Successful Brands Swear By
Example: Ecommerce Growth Strategies Successful Brands Swear By
Formula: How [The result]
Example: How we improved our email opening rate by 18%
Formula: [Solution] [Feature]
Example: Access Your business from Anywhere with Cloud Accounting
Formula: [Service] in [Number of steps]
Example: Order Your Customised Printed Tape in 3 Easy Steps
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article helped you in grasping the concept and ideas for B2B content marketing. While you are planning to implement the ideas mentioned above, you must create a perfect balance between every element you choose. Be it content format, marketing channels, or strategy.
Meaningful and quality content is an essential aspect to work upon. Create impressive content that stands out and deliver a full experience to your audience. In the entire course of marketing, the audience has to be a centre point, because it is all about earning their and only their interest.