How to Improve Your B2B Content Marketing

It’s no secret that content is a crucial element of marketing strategy, and many B2B marketers found 2019 to be a successful year for their content marketing efforts. In a recent survey from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), B2B content marketers were asked how they plan to keep that success going in the New Year. The results show that the main priorities for these marketers in 2020 are improving the quality and conversion of their audiences, focusing on the quality and quantity of their content, and improving their content distribution and promotion. Nearly half of the respondents to the survey rated each of these as a top-three priority. Why is content marketing so important for B2B businesses? And how can B2B marketers improve it in the coming year? Let’s take a closer look.

Why Focus on B2B Content Marketing?

Leveraging content to engage with customers and prospects is one of the key tactics that B2B marketers use. When it’s executed in an intelligent manner, it doesn’t blatantly indulge in the promotion of a business, but rather it entices target audiences with helpful, focused content that will hold their interest. Because B2B sales cycles are typically longer and more involved than B2C sales cycles, leads and potential customers tend to do more research about the product or service they are interested in and the businesses that sell them. This need for research is why B2B marketers strive to provide thoughtful, informative, and non-promotional content that will help buyers make informed purchasing choices. The goal, of course, is to establish brands as authorities in the minds of prospects.

Improving Top B2B Content Marketing Priorities

Here are some of the ways that B2B marketers can work to improve content marketing in the coming year, based on the three top priorities mentioned in the CMI research. 

Improving the Quality and Conversion of Audiences

To improve the quality of your audiences and increase conversions, it’s important to focus on creating and sharing personalized content with customers and leads. Personalization, when it’s done right, will help you create more interesting and engaging content, as well as addressing how your product or service will provide solutions for prospects’ problems.

Segmentation of your customers and prospects will help ensure that you are reaching the right audience with the right content. Try categorizing and personalizing your content based on the following to reach audiences where they’re at:

• Segments – This could be based on demographics, location, purchase behavior, job title, industry, or any other attributes you think will be effective for your product or service.
• Personas – Knowing who your ideal customers are and personalizing content based on those personas will go a long way to help you create engaging and targeted content.
• Stages – Another effective way to segment is by the stage of the sales process your customers are in. Knowing where they are in the sales process will tell you what type of content is best for them.

Improving the Quality and Quantity of Content

Providing high quality content is an essential part of B2B marketing. Here are some things to consider as you work on improving the quality of your content:

• Evergreen content – This type of content never expires, making it very valuable. Concentrate on the enduring truths about the industry, products or services, and audience pain points when creating evergreen content.
• Old content – You also need to consider the existing content that’s available to customers and prospects. Is it still relevant? Can it be updated, or should it be retired? Repurposing older content is a great way to freshen it up and make it relevant again.
• Different forms of content – Go beyond blogging. Blogging is an effective way to reach your audience, but you should also diversify content to provide them with a variety of different ways to get information. Consider using infographics, videos, ebooks, social media posts, and webinars or guides, along with regular blog posts.

Improving Content Distribution and Promotion

Marketing content distribution methods fall into one of the following three categories:

• Owned media – This category consists of content and distribution channels that the brand owns. For example, websites, email, and newsletters are owned media.
• Shared media – This category includes social media accounts, both for posting new original content and for responding to conversations that are occurring within the community.
• Paid media – This opportunity allows brands to share the message they want to and control the environment where it appears at a cost.

The key to improving the distribution and promotion of content is determining how to balance it among the above methods. This requires that you consistently test, measure, and revisit your content efforts. You cannot simply post it and forget it. You have to track key metrics to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

Final Thoughts

There you have it – the top three B2B content marketing priorities for the upcoming year and some ways that you can achieve success in those areas. Remember that reaching the right audience, with the right content, relies a lot on the right distribution and promotion. Give the above suggestions a try to see what works for you.