Content Strategy Archives

B2B Content Marketing – A Strategic Checklist For B2B’s Success

It’s been 20 years since Bill Gates uttered the famous words “Content is King,” articulating a new way of managing consumer consumption.

Fast-forward to today and content is still the king. Well, why wouldn’t it be? Digital communication and marketing have swarmed all over businesses’ marketing strategies. The term Content, which has held the throne for the past 20 years, has perhaps further solidified its position and relevance in the market.

Consequently, B2B content marketing is no longer optional; it has become essential for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or B2B enterprises. Content marketing establishes the foundational framework, from initial marketing efforts to ultimately guiding customers through the closing stages of the sales funnel.

According to Forbes, 74% of companies claim their content marketing has amplified their lead generation. In fact, its presence is undeniably going to grow in the future.

Content marketing offers a wide array of use cases and unique trends. Reading this article will prove invaluable for crafting impactful B2B content marketing strategies.

What is B2B Content Marketing?

Content marketing, at its crux, is the subtle art of selling a business’s products and services to other companies using various digital marketing channels, including email marketing, social media, blogs, videos, whitepapers, and ebooks.

Content marketing believes in guiding prospects through various buying funnel stages before finalizing a deal. Rather than focusing solely on immediate sales, it prioritizes continuous engagement and nurturing meaningful relationships with prospects, ultimately driving them to take desired actions over time.

How B2B Businesses Can Utilize Content Marketing

Businesses are no longer following the rat race of advertisements and organic growth strategies to predict their digital transition. Instead, they are taking the initiative by employing robust B2B content marketing types to position their B2B digital marketing growth.

Some of the best content marketing trends that anyone should capitalize on are:

Blogs

Businesses can leverage blogs’ evergreen presence. Blogs create better engagement rates and give enterprises better ways to develop and recharge connections with their potential and established clients. While it works great for building trust and credibility in its niche, its presence also helps businesses regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Companies can embed lead-generation sections and forms at the end of blogs to further polish their content marketing performance.

Email Newsletter

For B2B businesses, creating an email newsletter cannot be emphasized enough. By introducing an email newsletter, companies can accelerate their conversion funnel strategy. This marketing term doesn’t focus mainly on selling but works to foster customer loyalty and build better customer relationships. Solid newsletters allow businesses to communicate with personalized content that increases engagement with their audience and proves helpful for remarketing purposes.

White Papers

White papers are the best sources for showing a company’s credibility and knowledge of its niche. Businesses in SaaS and other technical industries utilize white papers to influence decision-makers and cement their presence as strong leaders. They help readers find and learn information that is usually nowhere to be seen and ease the decision-making stage of their journey by providing valuable resources.

Reviews and Testimonials

This content generally takes center stage on any reputable website’s homepage. User-generated content is highly appreciated, captures clients’ attention effectively, and influences their decisions. Indeed, the power of past client experiences shared on a company’s pages surpasses any branded content and claims. Companies should encourage placing positive reviews and video testimonials on their pages as this content can prove valuable and helpful by miles.

E-Books / Case Studies

Another form of gated content is where businesses can offer free, valuable content in exchange for clients’ contact information, and voila! Here comes their email marketing game to play its part. Gated content is nothing but content that prospects can only access when they share their contact information and details. Usually, e-books, case studies, and whitepapers are lead magnets and serve as efficient B2B content marketing trends.

Video Marketing

Video is another source of defining B2B businesses’ complex use cases into visual depictions that bring life and personality to their companies. Videos can act as sales letters for SaaS businesses and explain their products and services complicated terms and workings regarding engaging and visual aesthetics. Videos give their customers a virtual experience before they consider purchasing online.

How Your Business Can Develop a Stunning B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Now, we know how businesses can utilize different content marketing services and why companies must leverage various marketing channels to extract sufficient results.

Like any other marketing type, a company’s content marketing also demands a fail-proof strategy that effectively communicates brand values and ideas and ultimately earns measurable and profitable results. Here are some actionable steps to create a remarkable content marketing strategy.

Building Buyer Persona

The first step is to define the target audience and build a buyer persona on which all content marketing campaigns and strategies will make their presence. Their audience research should not be limited to understanding demographics or fundamental interests. When it comes to B2B clients, their target audience is CEOs or CFOs. Their higher positions demand higher standards and a tailored marketing approach that differs from general Business-to-Consumer B2C content marketing strategies.

Create a Clear Plan

Next, develop a solid content marketing plan that will be designed and created by considering the target audience’s preferences and interests. Businesses need to come up with clear, measurable goals they expect from their content marketing and how it will effectively achieve their mission.

Gather Valuable Insights

After building buyer personas and content plans, businesses need to examine their existing content and see if it aligns with their goals or if they can improve it. They should listen to conversations on social media platforms and visit the platforms where their target audience usually goes. They should also have intellectual and honest discussions with customer service teams and sales to discover the questions, queries, or services their audience is looking for.

Choose Content Distribution Channels

Here comes the critical part: identifying the proper distribution channels. B2B distribution channels might differ from B2C ones, and that’s the main thing for businesses to understand first. There are many ways to distribute content, but finding the right channels to build an absolute content marketing strategy collectively is another thing. SaaS or B2B businesses should focus more on utilizing blogs, whitepapers, email marketing, video marketing, paid advertising and less on social media platforms.

Create High-Quality Content

The ultimate and never-ending stage is to create transformational content regularly that consistently solidifies their content marketing strategy. Focus on quality instead of quantity as businesses can tap into the intellectual minds of their target clients with thought leadership content and research-backed content. Find new ways and tricks to convert prospects into leads or customers with interactive and engaging content.

If done right, content marketing can produce unprecedented success in a business’s digital presence. By following these tips and understanding the importance of content marketing in their business spectrum, any company can swiftly kickstart its content marketing strategy.

Go Forth and Conquer With Market Pro

B2B content marketing agencies are positioning B2B companies’ growth with tailored and strategic practices designed to forge transformational impact. Content marketing’s vast use cases and types separate their presence from other digital marketing strategies. Its presence is considered a backbone of business digital existence, and its influential measures certainly add to its effectiveness.

Market Pro can empower your business to craft superior content strategies by focusing on what truly matters and driving practical growth by capturing valuable leads and customers.

The Power of Content Strategy: Factors That Make Content Go Viral

Do you want to create content that captures the attention of your target audience and goes viral? Then you’re in the right place. Creating viral content is a coveted achievement. It can significantly boost brand visibility, engagement, and conversion rates. However, achieving virality is not a stroke of luck; it’s the result of a well-thought-out content strategy. In this article, we will delve deep into the intricacies of content strategy and the factors that contribute to making content go viral.

Foundation of Viral Content: A Strategic Approach

The compass that governs your content creation activities is content strategy. It’s about more than just churning out articles, videos, or infographics; it’s a meticulous plan that aligns your content with your business objectives and audience needs. In a world where over 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing, having a robust content strategy is non-negotiable.

Understanding Viral Content

Before diving into the factors that drive content to go viral, let’s clarify what we mean by “viral content.” Viral content is not just about getting many shares or likes; it’s about creating content that spreads rapidly and extensively across various online platforms, often beyond your immediate audience. Viral content generates buzz, sparks discussions, and compels consumers to share it with their social networks.

Now, let’s dissect the essential elements of a successful content strategy that can lead to viral content.

1. Audience-Centric Approach

To create viral content, brands must intimately understand their target audience. Brands should create detailed buyer personas that include demographics, pain points, interests, and online behavior. By doing so, they can adapt their content services to connect deeply with your audience’s needs and preferences. A business can only be successful if it knows the audience and the kind of content they want to see. And making audience-centric content is the most vital part because, at the end of the day, they are the ones making your content go viral.

2. Compelling and Unique Content

The digital realm is inundated with content, and the sheer volume of content to consume can be overwhelming for the masses. To make your content shine, it should be unique. It should offer unique insights, innovative solutions, and fascinating entertainment that make it stand out from the crowd.

A study highlighted that articles featuring images every 75-100 words garnered an astonishing two-fold increase in social shares compared to those with fewer visuals. This emphasizes the power of visuals in drawing and retaining the customer’s attention. So, businesses striving to stand out in the digital noise must remember that engaging content development and strategically placed images can be their winning formula. It’s all about offering your audience something they can’t easily find elsewhere, and visuals play a key role in achieving that distinction.

3. Emotional Resonance

In the world of content, going viral is like hitting the jackpot, and emotions are your winning ticket. Laughter, awe, anger, or empathy—these emotional triggers are what make people click that share button. It’s the one thing that propels your content to the outer regions of the web. According to research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, information that evokes the emotions “awe”, “surprise”, or “anger” is 28% more likely to become viral. So, when crafting the message, businesses shouldn’t just think about facts and figures; they should think about feelings.

Moreover, businesses should harness the power of storytelling to weave emotions seamlessly into their content strategy. They should share relatable anecdotes, paint vivid pictures, and create characters that their audience can connect with. It is important to ensure these emotions are not just random but relevant to their brand and message. When content strikes an emotional chord that aligns with the brand’s identity, it becomes memorable and shareable. Emotions are the primary catalyst behind viral content.

4. Shareability and Accessibility

Content shareability is one of the pivotal factors in making your content go viral. People only share content they find meaningful and something that connects with them. Or something they think would connect with their friends and family as well. In this modern age, the attention span of people has decreased significantly. Moreover, mindless scrolling through different social media apps has become an addiction. People spend hours and hours on apps like TikTok and Instagram watching reels because short-form content has taken the digital world by storm.

According to a study, TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide. Meanwhile, Instagram has 2 billion monthly users. That’s why it’s important to make engaging and meaningful content that is easy for users to share by integrating social sharing buttons, embedding tweetable quotes, and creating visually appealing graphics. Additionally, it is also critical to ensure that your content is available across multiple devices and applications.

5. Timing and Relevance

Timing is everything in the quest for content to go viral. Brands must stay vigilant, monitoring current events, trends, and pertinent holidays that can improve their content’s reach. So, they should always be up-to-date with what’s happening and align their message with the trends. It’s like catching a wave at just the right time – the impact can be tremendous, and your content can ride the wave of popularity to reach a broader audience. Timing, in essence, can make all the difference in content virality.

6. Influencer Collaboration

Leveraging influencers in your niche can catapult your content’s reach. Working with influencers who share your company’s values and vision might provide access to their loyal and enthusiastic fanbase. Influencers have built credibility and rapport with their followers, and when they vouch for your content, it carries weight. So, businesses shouldn’t underestimate the impact of influencer partnerships – they can amplify the brand’s message and help them connect with a broader and more engaged audience.

7. Authenticity and Transparency

In an era of skepticism, authenticity and openness are valued more than ever. Brands should be honest and upfront in their SEO content writing and not shy away from addressing potential concerns or criticisms. People appreciate openness, and they can spot a scam immediately. When you’re upfront about your brand’s values and actions, you not only foster trust but also create a devoted following that has faith in your purpose and mission.

8. Engagement and Interaction

To increase user engagement, companies can integrate interactive features like asking questions, running polls, or arranging competitions. This tactic motivates users to participate actively with the content and possibly circulate it among their social networks.

9. Data-Driven Iteration

It is important for brands to continuously assess the performance of their content by monitoring metrics such as shares, comments, and click-through rates. Moreover, they must use data-driven insights to improve their content strategy and their chances of creating viral content.

10. Consistency and Long-Term Commitment

Viral content doesn’t always happen overnight. It often requires a consistent and long-term commitment to producing a quality content strategy. Keep refining your strategy, learning from your successes and failures, and adapting to changes in your industry.

Revolutionizing Your Content Strategy

In conclusion, creating content that goes viral isn’t a mysterious process restricted to the lucky few. It’s a strategic endeavor that involves a deep understanding of your audience, the creation of exceptional content, emotional resonance, accessibility, timing, collaboration, authenticity, engagement, data-driven iteration, and a long-term commitment to excellence. That’s where Market Pro can help you. We create a content strategy for our clients that guides this process, ensuring that your efforts are purposeful and aligned with your business goals. We can elevate your brand’s online prominence by integrating these crucial components into your content strategy. Our proficient marketing team will produce content that not only connects with your intended audience but also has the capability to become contagious, providing your brand with the attention it requires to prosper in the virtual sphere.