It can be hard to get content marketing just right. At its core, every content marketing strategy requires defining goals and key performance indicators, known as KPIs. However, a content marketing strategy can only be successful if it targets the right audience.
There are a lot of factors to consider when determining your target audience. The first question you should ask yourself is whether you are looking to sell your products and services to consumers or directly to businesses. When marketing to other businesses, known as B2B, you’ll need to focus on driving leads and sales among other industry professionals, business owners and large organizations. This makes it more critical than ever to ensure your marketing efforts are targeted toward the right audience while being informative and engaging.
Content marketing is B2B’s secret weapon, with the ability to bring in new audiences while engaging and nurturing existing ones. Yet, the B2B space is constantly evolving, making it very competitive. You’ll want to stay on top of current trends and best practices for B2B content marketing to stand out in a sea of digital noise.
Content Marketing Best Practices in B2B
The following content marketing best practices will bring your content marketing from good to great.
1. Research Your Target Audience
Just like no two businesses are the same, no two customers are the same. To effectively target your audience, your team will need to better understand who these customers are. Your content must address your target audience’s specific needs and pain points. Knowing your customers inside and out is crucial to presenting content that resonates and inspires people to convert.
Not sure exactly how to figure out your target audience? Personas are an excellent tool for understanding your ideal client. Use the following guidelines to create a more in-depth overview of these consumers:
Conduct Market Research
Market-specific research can help you understand if there is a market for your product and what that is. You can use data platforms such as D&B Hoovers or ZoomInfo to understand the market potential and ideal customers. Also be sure to leverage industry publications to understand what is a priority for prospects.
Dive Into Your Sales and Marketing Data:
It’s essential to determine what has been successful and what hasn’t been when creating personas.
Consider the following questions:
- What kind of customer is most likely to buy your products and services?
- What challenges do these customers try to solve with your product or service?
- When prospects opted to go for a competitor instead, did they give any reasoning?
Conduct Client Interviews:
To create an effective persona, you need to understand why your customers decided to purchase from your company. It’s also valuable to gain insights into their challenges and what resources they read.
Consider the following:
- How does your customer like to consume their content?
- Do they like social media posts, or do they tend to visit your website and read your blog?
- What challenges are they currently facing, and how can your product or service address this?
- Where do they get industry-specific information?
Gather Sales Specific Feedback:
The sales team will have more insight into how prospects use materials and their pain points.
Consider the following:
- If you could describe your dream customer in three adjectives, what would you say?
- Is there any feedback the sales team has received during a sales call or presentation?
The answers to these questions can help to point you in the right direction of narrowing down who your target customers are.
2. Create a Content Marketing Strategy
A strong content strategy will help make this marketing initiative more successful for your team. Ninety-four percent of the top performers in content marketing use KPIs and goals to measure the effectiveness of their content. Additionally, about 80% of successful companies are using a content marketing calendar, while only 50% of less successful organizations have one in place. After all, how can you track and measure your performance if you don’t have a baseline strategy?
Any content marketing strategy should include, but is not limited to:
Establish Goals and KPIs
At the end of the day, what do you want to achieve from your marketing efforts? Do you want conversions or something more intangible, like brand awareness? Each piece of content should have a goal attached to it. These goals may range depending on the asset type. For example, your team may use engagement rate as a metric for curated newsletters, while your B2B blog content strategy may focus on website visits.
Identify Content Formats
Your team will likely need a range of formats to ensure that you reach your target customers across various points of contact. Among the top-performing assets for B2B marketers are virtual courses/ webinars, short blog articles and research reports. Consider how your audience likes to consume information and ensure these formats are part of your editorial process.
Identify Distribution Channels
As you develop personas, you should get a better understanding of where your customers like to get insight into the latest trends. Consider investigating the following channels:
Associations: Many professional associations have opportunities to partner on specific pieces of content or advertisements. Consider investigating industry associations for opportunities.
Industry Publications: Professionals rely on publications for the latest news and insights. Your team may be able to coordinate bylines under a product manager or launch a content syndication campaign.
Blog Posts: Your company’s blog is a great way to showcase industry insights and establish your brand as a thought leader.
Social Media: Social channels are an excellent way to engage with prospects and customers while showcasing new pieces of content.
If you have an internal campaign management or media planning team, it may also be worthwhile to alert them to new assets they may want to promote or coordinate on assets they may need.
Establish a Content Team
You don’t always have to hire an in-house content team to reach your goals. Other options include hiring a freelancer, outsourcing your content to an agency or licensing content from an established publication.
Currently, about 1 out of every 2 marketing teams are outsourcing at least some of their content marketing efforts. However, 65% of companies noted one of their biggest challenges in outsourcing their content development is finding partners with the right expertise. Leveraging industry-specific publications guarantees that the writers behind the pieces have the required topical knowledge.
Leverage Content From Thought Leaders
Thought leader content marketing is a fantastic method to showcase cutting-edge opinions and expertise. Plus, with so much competition in each industry, it’s important to establish yourself as an authority figure within your niche.
3. Experiment With Content Types
If you are starting your content strategy from scratch, it’s always great to experiment with multiple content types. Even if you have a set plan, experimentation keeps content fresh and allows your team to gather more data on what is successful.
Not only does this allow you to see what content formats resonate with your audience, it’s a fun way to try out how to present your marketing materials differently.
The content types you can experiment with include:
Blogs — these can be short and sweet to make them easily digestible,
Articles — long-form articles are a fantastic method to present informational, thought-leadership content,
Infographics — quick graphics that tell a story,
E-books — these can include a detailed case study of your products and services,
Photos and video — a more visual way to tell your story.
Curated Content and News Articles — a method to harness the power of world-class journalism while reaching your marketing goals.
4. Amplify Your Brand Experience With Live Events
Even though we live in a digital world, there’s something special about interacting with your customers in person. In fact, 52% of marketers expect their budgets for in-person events will increase over the next year. Having branded events for special occasions is a great way to connect with your target audience in person and push engagement.
5. Gather Data and Conduct Competitive Research
Before you start creating your content marketing strategy, doing your research it’s always a good idea. First, you’ll want to see what your direct competitors are doing in terms of creating, promoting and publishing content. Look into how they present their information and how their audience reacts and interacts with it. Then see how you can imitate these strategies to work for your brand and marketing goals.
If you already have an existing website, you’ll also want to research where you can add, update or publish new content. Sometimes, all it takes for pages to move up in the search rankings is simply updating a page with more topical information and new keywords. Small changes like this can help strengthen your website.
6. Amplify Your Content
Fresh content has a long shelf life; therefore, you cannot write a piece, promote it once and then be done with it. Instead, you need to have a long-term strategy to amplify your content.
Don’t be afraid to have a robust promotion strategy that lasts the next few months. A few content promotion ideas include:
Cross-platform social media promotion:
All social media platforms are different, meaning they target different audiences in various ways. But you should always promote content across at least two social media platforms, with regular posts over multiple weeks. It also is important to note that there is a difference between social media marketing and content marketing. However, these two strategies work together to create more engagement across channels, while providing value to consumers.
Paid search online advertising:
Paid search is a fantastic content marketing method as it almost guarantees clicks on your content. By spending a little money upfront, you can place your content at the top of Google search pages and quickly get more eyes on your content.
Create a place in your newsletter or website for older content:
This is an easy way to ensure older content still gets involved within your content rotation. You can promote this content as a “most popular” section to provide context to readers.
7. License Content
It can be an overwhelming task to create every piece of content in-house. This is where licensed content from The New York Times Licensing Group can help to expand your content marketing opportunities. When you license content, you can build a more robust editorial calendar with a fresh perspective from renowned publications.
Final Thoughts
When you combine research and consistency with informative content, you will certainly have a content marketing strategy that can amplify your brand. The New York Times Licensing Group uses expert storytelling to inspire your audience while taking the hard work of content creation off your plate.
