Did you know that 90% of B2B clients consider it essential that companies offer relevant content throughout the buying process – not just during the purchase or acquisition stage?

For small B2B business owners and founders, it’s vital to put a comprehensive B2B content marketing plan in place in order to tailor your B2B marketing strategy to the various stages of your prospect lifecycle.

If a company fails to implement a B2B content marketing strategy correctly, it could leave leads and money behind.

Do you need help figuring out where to begin with your B2B content marketing? Wondering what are the different types, why B2B content marketing is important and what is an effective B2B content marketing strategy?

In this article, we’ll explore the specifics of B2B content marketing and share tried-and-tested content strategies that have paid off. We’ll be sharing insights from 7+ years at 100 Pound Social of creating B2B marketing content for 1,000+ small business owners worldwide.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

What Exactly Is B2B Content Marketing?

B2B content marketing is a process of using content to advertise your B2B business or service to a targeted business audience. It involves creating quality content that is appealing to and addresses the main pain points of B2B buyers.

• Blog posts
• eBooks
• Newsletters
• Websites
• Case studies
• Articles
• Press releases
• White papers
• Video scripts
• Infographics

Your content helps educate potential clients and help them solve their problems.

It can also help build trust and respect for your company.

People are more likely to purchase from a B2B company after consuming their content – but B2B content marketing requires careful distribution of content to get it into the hands of your targeted group of clients.

It works in conjunction with your social media content strategy, which includes sharing pictures and links, to draw in the right audience. Organic search, email, and paid ads are all common distribution channels in B2B content marketing strategy.

B2B Content Marketing Ideas

Look at any successful B2B business, and you’ll notice how content marketing is a vital element of their overall strategy for marketing. However, that doesn’t mean you should produce irrelevant content. Instead, you should focus on creating high-quality content relevant to your clients and the goals of your B2B business.

Additionally, your content must be designed to meet specific B2B buyer personas and placed at the appropriate stage in the process.

Creating B2B content can be challenging.

To provide you with some ideas for inspiration, here are our top B2B content marketing examples:

Engage Your Viewers With Videos

Video content is a great method of engaging your audience with visuals. Most often, they are small snippets of easy-to-read information. Although squeezing as much information as possible into a 60-second script may be tempting, your B2B audience will likely need help absorbing all that information being fired at them.

The videos should be one minute long, and you should only cover what’s important.

For example, Slack is among the top messaging platforms used by B2B companies and illustrates the concept of less is more perfectly within their Learning Slack course on YouTube.

Target Your Efforts on LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides a powerful tool for B2B companies, with millions of senior decision-makers using it daily. In contrast to other social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter), which can become crowded with irrelevant content, LinkedIn was explicitly made for professionals, especially for B2B businesses.

Using LinkedIn is the best decision for any B2B company.

Not only do the businesses advertise with text ads to get noticed by people and boost their engagement, but they can also use client information to develop more effective content that boosts conversions and growth.

Testimonials

Testimonials are client statements explaining how your company has dealt with a significant issue for them. They serve as social evidence to help the reader in making a decision.

Testimonials can be provided and written in either text or video formats. Video testimonials are a great way to give authenticity to the potential client narrative. Text-based testimonials can be combined to include a photo of the person who wrote each testimonial.

Host In-Depth Discussions in a Webinar

Since the Covid 19 outbreak, the popularity of webinars has increased. These long-form videos offer B2B companies an excellent opportunity to bring people together virtually for panel discussions, workshops, product demonstrations, and more.

Webinars may be recorded or live. The second feature gives greater opportunities for interaction with the audience.

For example, Semrush had a webinar series where viewers could suggest their websites to receive an in-person audit by SEO experts.

When you invite your clients to participate in your webinars, whether it’s an explanation of your offerings or simply live polls, you can make people feel valued and appreciated.

This increases engagement and can help you increase your clients’ loyalty and, ultimately, the conversion rate.

Stay Consistent With a Newsletter

Newsletters are a crucial component of email marketing campaigns that allow businesses to communicate regularly with their clients.

If done correctly, these messages can help you share useful content to drive visitors to your website and increase conversions.

Why is Content Marketing Important for B2B Businesses?

50% of marketers plan to expand their content marketing investment in 2024.

In another study, 43% of B2B marketers worldwide said they’d boost the B2B content marketing budgets in 2024. It is advised to allocate 25-30% of your marketing budget to content marketing.

Content marketing has been and always will be a much-needed addition to any B2B’s success, as shown by many of the benefits listed below.

Instil Trust and Thought Leadership

Your B2B clients are always looking for the best services. They frequently seek out reliable recommendations when considering purchases. B2B content marketing can be a powerful tool to show your expertise and leadership in the business.

In sharing credible and helpful information, you will gain authority while standing out from the competition.

Producing Leads and Driving Conversions

Online content can influence people’s buying choices. The best content can be an effective lead magnet since it draws clients’ attention and leads to higher conversion rates.

For instance, consider websites. A well-optimised website can help increase your online presence by attracting targeted audiences that can be transformed into clients, through restricted content. You can also gather information on visitors to your website to help you identify and connect with your potential clients.

Regularly publishing relevant and informative content ensures that your services and business remain at the forefront of the minds of your clients.

B2B Content Marketing Strategy

How can you leave an impact on a diverse audience of highly educated, discerning clients? Below, we will discuss the B2B content marketing strategy:

Identify Your Target Audience

The success of your B2B content marketing plan depends on knowing the people you want to reach.

This is why B2B content marketers must spend a lot of time creating and updating client personas.

You should know the major decision-makers’ needs, challenges, and desires.

In addition, you need to know what clients think about when making choices. A B2B content marketing strategy maker examines why they might or may not purchase their service.

• Check out forums
• Contact a sales representative
• Learn about trade association websites
• Investigate niche events/conferences
• Create a client persona for every distinct category.

You can further divide your potential clients into subgroups.

Learn About How B2B Sales Funnel Works

Clients experience a variety of stages when they make a purchase decision. The stages are called buyer’s journey, sales cycle, or sales funnel.

As clients progress along their marketing process through the funnel, their preferences and requirements shift. They can also move or exit at any point.

It is important to ensure that you align your content with where each prospective client might be in that content advertising funnel.

These are the critical phases of the B2B sales funnel.

• Awareness: Inform potential clients about your business
• Interest: Highlight how you will solve their problems
• Decision: Inspire potential clients to convert by delivering specific content
• Action: Help clients navigate the process of onboarding

Establish Your Marketing Goals

Mainly, businesses are concerned about three things:

• Client loyalty
• Retention
• Cross-selling

Your goals should be based on any of these three aspects.

Many entrepreneurs set goals with SMART targets.

Specific — Choose the goals you’ll attain

Measurable — Determine the metrics that will benefit you in measuring your improvement

Achievable — Consider your skills, timeframe resources, and tools

Relevant – Your new goal should be aligned with your business’s overall goals

Time-Based — Define deadlines for each target

Do Not Overdo the Text

B2B clients are looking for research-based content. Information is retained longer when visuals are used, so text and images together perform best.

• Charts and graphs
• Illustrations
• Photographs of real-life
• Infographics

Visual content helps to build awareness of your brand. Video marketing is incredibly effective.

Research and Create Original Content

Unique content is essential because it establishes you as a thought leader.

However, it should provide your readers with valuable information. Before starting, consider your overall B2B content marketing plan, budget, time, and limits.

Check out many sources to get the information you need:

• Industry association information
• Government reports
• Marketing statistics
• Sales data
• Interviews

Try embedding a link to a survey on your site. Include the link in your newsletters, related articles, and blog posts. Post a link on your social media accounts.

Create the content to reflect your findings. Ensure that the information is not direct marketing-related.

Use Various Platforms to Advertise Your Content

Make use of the various content advertising platforms.

You could attract LinkedIn users by posting an informational blog.

Direct users to your website and offer trials and discounts.

X (Twitter) is an excellent platform for quick, interactive content. Try videos with a duration of 15 seconds or less, as well as assessments and quizzes.

In addition to acquiring leads, you’ll also learn the most about your clients.

Monitor Your Performance Goals

Finding out content performance and content marketing ROI is the biggest issue for B2B business owners.

However, content marketing analysis is the most effective marketing instrument for evaluating digital marketing results.

The lack of traffic could indicate problems with your website’s technical aspect, a Google algorithm penalty, and broken hyperlinks.

A tool such as Google Analytics can benefit you by improving the structure of your website, adding calls to action, putting links in text and much more.

• Be aware of exactly where your readers are coming from
• Discover which content is most popular and receives the most views
• Build connections with your clients

Study Your Target Audience

B2B content marketing aims to make relevant content for your intended audience and address their issues. Therefore, learning what makes your target audience tick is critical.

What are their requirements and issues?

What is the best way to use your content to help with these issues? How can you provide solutions to their problems?

Semrush’s State of Content Marketing 2023 report found that audience research is the most critical factor in content market success. 47% of respondents attribute their success to researching their target audience.

Source: Semrush

Remember that you might have numerous clients, but not everyone will have the same exact needs. For instance, software can be used for different purposes by various groups of users.

While one may use it to design original social media images and others use it to create appealing newsletters.

Naturally, the two types of users would have similar but different requirements.

Create various client personas compatible with common characteristics. This will help you create the different types of content needed to target the specific issues of all groups.

Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Analysing your competitors gives you an idea of what’s successful and what isn’t.

What are they creating, and what are they lacking?

Look at their top-performing content and then compare it to your own. If you see something working for your competitors but you could improve it, take a shot.

In addition, check out the weaker parts of their portfolio to determine how you could build on them for your own company.

Strategic content marketing demands an analysis of your competitors.

Check if your content is performing better in search engine optimisation. How often do your rivals publish content? And what subjects do they cover?

Also consider what else they’re doing. For example, do they offer an online newsletter? If not, then you could get ahead by starting to publish one.

Use an analyzer tool to gain a deeper understanding of your competitors’ content strategy.

For instance, Ahrefs Site Explorer allows you to explore a competitor’s backlink profile to help you identify the kinds of content receiving links from trustworthy websites.

Source: Ahrefs

Create a USP

As a B2B business owner, stand out in your field by creating a USP (unique selling feature).

The USP presents a particular advantage to prospective and current clients. Therefore, it must reflect something your clients value.

Working with a B2B agency could help produce something truly distinctive and memorable content.

Their experience and customised strategies will boost your brand’s visibility.

Create Content for All Stages of the Marketing Funnel

As the B2B buying process is longer than B2C, you will need content that engages clients at all stages of the funnel. Different people will have different needs and concerns based on their place in the funnel.

Top of the funnel (Awareness): The top of the funnel (Awareness) is when people begin to find out more about your company and its products and services.

Blog articles, guest blog posts, podcasts, and infographics are just a few instances of this content.

Middle of the funnel (Consideration): In this stage, people are beginning to consider the product/service you offer as an option.

Webinars, ebooks, page features, live video and product comparisons are just a few instances of MoFu content.

Bottom of the funnel (Decision): The bottom of the funnel (Decision) is where people finalise a solution and then convert into clients.

Case studies of client pitches, pitch decks, proposals, and website pricing pages are just a few instances of BoFu content.

Investigate Content Dissemination and Publicity

The effectiveness of a B2B content marketing strategy can only be as efficient as the distribution strategy it uses. The key is not just to create excellent content. It’s all about making it available to the right audience via the appropriate channels.

Social media is among the most well-known distribution channels.

Many successful B2B marketers go above organic social media use and use paid-for boosts to advertise their content. The Semrush study reported that 49% of successful content marketers utilised paid-for social media to promote their content.

Source: Semrush

Paid channels, as a whole, are viral among people who have the highest success as content marketers. Furthermore, email marketing is a popular way to promote content.

Experimentation is the Key to Everything

At 100 Pound Social, we’ve realised that one ideal B2B marketing plan doesn’t exist.

Perseverance, hard work, testing A/B, and experiments are the tools to help you excel in the B2B market.

The B2B content marketing market is always changing; you must keep up-to-date with recent trends and innovations.

Create an experiment-based mindset within your team.

B2B Content Marketing Examples

Are you looking for more inspiration? Check out these two B2B content marketing examples:

1. Slack

The Slack Resources Library includes ebooks, guides, and reports.

Users can sort according to their industry and work role.

Slack also offers an event page that lets users join live events. You can also view webinars on demand.

The site has blog posts and a benefits centre, too.

2. Canva

Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. It can be used to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

You can learn how to design with the Canva Design School.

The site provides a vast range of case studies to show you what you can achieve with the tool.

Professional testimonial graphics like this used to be unaffordable to businesses without an in-house designer – but with free platforms like Cana, you can now create attention-grabbing visual testimonials in just a few moments.

Many B2B business owners are not aware of these easy-to-use free tools, so by using them, you can really help your company stand out.

In a Nutshell

At first, making a B2B content marketing plan feels like a daunting job. But, as you go through the steps, you’ll discover it’s doable and incredibly worthwhile. You’ll need one to be noticed and succeed.

Remember that there’s intense competition in your market, and the sooner you develop your solid B2B content marketing strategy, the more profitable it will become!

Next Steps

At 100 Pound Social, we offer done-for-you social media management. From just £100 per month, get a dedicated UK-based Content Creator and tick creating social media posts off your to-do list.

Find out how our social media plans work or join a 15-minute demo to see how it works.