No matter what industry it’s in or what target audience it’s after, a brand can reap a long list of rewards from content marketing. How’s that, some may ask? Perhaps first and foremost, the tactic is among the most effective ways to boost a brand’s search engine rankings organically — and as a result, to bring more visitors to the brand’s website.
But that’s not all. Just a handful of the other broad, business-boosting benefits content marketing can consistently deliver for brands include:
- Heightened brand awareness
- Increased brand authority
- Added trust among prospects
- Excellent ROI
- And ultimately, more conversions
10 ways to amplify your B2B brand’s content marketing
For B2B brands in particular, content marketing can be an especially powerful key to success. After all, according to research, 80% of decision-makers in the business world say they would rather get information about a potential vendor via content than via an advertisement. Further, more than half of B2B buyers say that reading a vendor’s content makes them more likely to make a purchase from that vendor. And when it comes to achieving some of their top goals, B2B marketers largely agree that content marketing checks a lot of boxes, with 84% saying it boosts brand awareness, 76% saying it helps generate leads, 63% saying it helps nurture leads, and 58% saying it helps increase sales and revenues.
So just what can your B2B brand do to step up the effectiveness of its content marketing efforts? Consider these 10 tips on ways to ramp up your content marketing results:
1. Know your target audience
In B2B content marketing, having a comprehensive knowledge of your audience allows you to tailor your brand’s content strategy to address their specific needs, challenges and preferences. And by delving deep into the intricacies of your audience’s industries, roles, pain points and decision-making processes, you can craft content that resonates on a personal level. That can help your brand establish more credibility and trust, and ultimately help you foster long-term relationships and drive conversions.
To achieve a greater audience understanding, brands can employ a range of tactics such as conducting thorough market research, directly engaging through customer surveys and feedback, leveraging data analytics tools for quantitative insights, monitoring social media channels for real-time insights, conducting one-on-one interviews with key customers, creating detailed buyer personas, actively participating in online communities, and attending industry events for firsthand insights.
2. … and your competition
A thorough analysis of competitors can enable your B2B brand to identify content gaps, differentiate your brand and refine your messaging to stand out in the market. By knowing what your competitors are offering and how they are positioning themselves, you can craft content that not only addresses industry trends but also positions your brand as a unique and valuable solution for your consumers. Additionally, staying informed about competitor content strategies enables you to adapt and innovate, helping ensure that the content you produce remains relevant and compelling.
3. Consider a content audit
By providing a holistic view of your existing content assets, their performance and their alignment with your business goals, conducting a comprehensive content audit can help you optimize and elevate your B2B brand’s content marketing strategy. Through a content audit, businesses can identify high-performing pieces, uncover gaps in their content offerings and assess the relevance of their messaging to the target audience. This strategic analysis can not only help in streamlining content to align with the buyer’s journey, but also help ensure consistency in brand messaging and tone. Additionally, a content audit aids in repurposing or updating outdated content, maximizing the value of existing assets.
4. Create content for every phase of the funnel
Crafting content tailored to each stage of the marketing funnel is key to delivering relevant information to each potential buyer, providing a cohesive and nurturing customer journey, and driving successful conversions. By creating awareness-focused content for the top of the funnel, businesses can capture the attention of their target audience and establish brand credibility. Moving to the middle of the funnel, consideration-stage content should provide in-depth information, addressing specific pain points and positioning the brand as a trusted solution. Finally, bottom-of-the-funnel content should guide prospects toward a decision, emphasizing your B2B brand’s unique value proposition and showcasing case studies or testimonials to build trust.
5. Keep keywords in mind
Incorporating strategic keywords in your B2B brand’s content is pivotal to enhancing its online visibility, attracting the right audience and optimizing your content for search engines. By identifying and incorporating industry-relevant keywords in its content marketing efforts, a B2B brand can help ensure that its content resonates with the specific needs and interests of its target audience. This not only helps improve search engine rankings but also helps position the brand as an authority within its niche.
6. Leverage link building
Link building plays a crucial role in B2B content marketing by enhancing your brand’s online authority, credibility and search engine visibility. High-quality, relevant backlinks contribute to improved search rankings and validate your brand’s expertise in the industry. By establishing connections with reputable sites, your B2B brand can amplify the reach of its content, driving more organic traffic and reaching a wider audience. Additionally, strategic link building fosters collaboration within the industry, helping you create a network of valuable relationships that can lead to partnerships, referrals and increased brand recognition.
7. Offer industry-specific insights
By offering in-depth knowledge and analysis tailored to the unique challenges and trends of your industry (or your target audiences’ industries), your B2B brand can position itself as an authoritative source of information. This helps attract and engage the target audience and also helps your brand demonstrate a deep understanding of their pain points and aspirations. Delivering industry-specific insights can also showcase your brand’s expertise, helping foster trust and loyalty among potential customers who seek valuable, relevant content. Further, by staying abreast of industry developments, your B2B brand can anticipate the needs of its audience, staying ahead of the curve and maintaining a competitive edge in the market.
8. Go beyond the blog
Research has shown that, when B2B marketers are asked which of their content marketing assets have proven most effective, the top three answers include case studies/customer stories, videos and thought leadership e-books/whitepapers (with short articles/posts coming in a close fourth place). When engaging in content marketing for your B2B brand, diversifying your content assets can help you cater to the varied preferences and informational needs of your target audience throughout the buyer’s journey. Case studies provide tangible proof of your B2B brand’s success, helping you build trust and illustrate real-world applications. Whitepapers and product guides serve as authoritative resources, offering in-depth insights into industry challenges and solutions and positioning your brand as a valuable knowledge hub. Engaging formats such as video tutorials and webinars provide dynamic, visually appealing ways to convey complex information and demonstrate product functionalities. Podcasts offer a convenient, on-the-go medium for busy professionals to consume industry insights and thought leadership. And virtual events facilitate networking opportunities and also help showcase your brand’s commitment to fostering a community and staying at the forefront of industry trends.
9. Choose the right channels
Whatever assets you produce in your content marketing efforts, don’t stop at simply posting them on your B2B brand’s website. To gain more exposure for them and your brand, distribute these valuable assets on your brand’s social media channels, too — and don’t hesitate to share the same assets across multiple social platforms, either.
Sharing your brand’s content marketing assets across its social media channels can amplify their reach and engagement among members of your target audience, plus raise awareness of your brand among new prospects.
Further, each social media platform has a unique audience and dynamic, making it crucial to tailor your content to fit the context of each channel. LinkedIn, often considered the cornerstone for B2B, is ideal for sharing thought leadership pieces, whitepapers and industry insights. Twitter’s succinct nature makes it suitable for posting quick updates, sharing thoughts on industry trends and promoting events. Visual platforms like Instagram can showcase behind-the-scenes content, infographics and visually appealing snippets. Facebook, with its diverse audience, accommodates various content types, from blog posts to videos.
Strategic dissemination across these channels can help your B2B brand maximize its visibility, cater to diverse preferences, and position itself as a versatile and authoritative presence in the B2B landscape. For more insights on which assets to share on which social platforms, check out our blog article titled “All Social Platforms Are Not Created Equal — Which Ones Are Right for Your Business?”
10. Let data drive your decisions
By analyzing key metrics related to your content such as engagement, conversion rates and audience behavior, your B2B brand can gain invaluable insights into the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. When you let data guide your decisions, you can identify (and replicate) high-performing content, better understand audience preferences and adapt your approach to align with evolving market trends. This iterative process helps ensure that your content remains relevant, resonates with your target audience and delivers measurable business outcomes.
Added content marketing insights
Looking for more insights on making your B2B brand’s content marketing more effective? Check out our “Introduction to Content Marketing” blog article. And to gain a better understanding of what types of content to use when in your brand’s content marketing efforts, check out the Brandon blog article “Choosing the Right Type of Content for Each Stage of the Marketing Funnel.”
Need assistance creating quality content? Brandon is here to help
Could your B2B brand use the help of a team of content marketing professionals to tell a brand story that catches consumers’ attention and builds more leads, trust and loyalty for your business? At Brandon, our team of certified brand strategists and data-driven professionals can create a range of content types to boost your content-marketing efforts — from blog articles, e-books and whitepapers to videos, podcasts, infographics, quizzes, webinars and more — and we’re experts in B2B marketing, too.
Further, Brandon’s fully integrated marketing firm can cover the entire spectrum of your brand’s marketing needs, including content creation, SEO, social media, email marketing, e-commerce, digital marketing, media, creative, analytics, public relations, brand strategy, web design and more. To get started with help ranging from a content-marketing consultation to a comprehensive strategy tailored to boost the performance of all of your marketing campaigns, contact us today.