B2B buyers do an intense amount of online research before conversations with sales reps ever take place. 95% of buyers choose companies that provide valuable content. However, if you don’t offer high-quality content that provides value to B2B readers, you’ll miss out on being part of the research phase. You may never get the opportunity to pitch your product or service if you’re not in the mix during the research phase.
Thus, B2B marketing requires a robust content strategy that is inbound in nature. But that doesn’t mean you have to shell out an exorbitant amount to communicate with your audience. If you do not have teams of content specialists and a budget to match, here are 7 simple steps to still accomplish B2B content marketing at scale:
1. Perform a B2B Content Audit
Catalogue the website content and resources- blog posts, downloadable guides, e-books, whitepapers, case studies etc. you have in your arsenal and analyze its performance. Determine what’s working and what’s
not. By mapping your current content inventory against your sales funnel, you can look for gaps in the existing content and aim to create more to support the sale effort at each stage. This allows you to have more visibility to prioritize your B2B budget accordingly.
2. Conduct a Competitive Audit
The next step is to analyze your competitors and look for opportunities they’re missing. You’ll want to do a content audit for your primary competitors. You can do this in-house or hire a professional B2B marketing consultant. Collecting B2B content marketing intelligence on your competitors can help identify the top performing campaigns, the key marketing channels used, and the mediums that are engaging with the target audience.
3. Create a Content Calendar
This is the stage where you identify topics, frequency, and commit to posting dates. While you want to post frequently, it’s more important to publish high-quality content. When someone comes across your content, you want them to get real value out of it. It’s also important when developing your content calendar to think about how you will distribute it. You’ll want to choose the right platform for your message, whether it’s a blog post, guest post, landing page, social media post, or email.
4. Create the Content
Once you’ve got a calendar in place, it’s time to start writing the content. Most B2B companies find it difficult to meet the quality and volume of content needed. A B2B marketing services company can help you maintain the standard and frequency of your content. Another option is to consider content curation. Bringing together content from various industry sources and combining them can provide a valuable service for your B2B prospects.
5. Promotion and Marketing
If you write it, they will read it, right? Well, not so fast. The amount of content being published online is astounding. 78 million blog posts are added to WordPress every 60 seconds. In this case, you will need a robust content marketing plan to target people with your content. Especially in your early efforts with content marketing, you may find your content isn’t showing up very high in organic results. Consider spending some money on paid search and targeted social media to improve your reach.
6. Measure and Repurpose
By using metrics and KPIs to measure conversions, you can determine which content enhances your lead generation, turns leads into sales-qualified leads, and ultimately leads to sales. When you see something working, figure out what works and do more of it. If not, evaluate why and whether you need to fix it or ditch it. Also, don’t be afraid to take content that already performs well and expand or update it. More than half of B2B marketers report that updating high-performing older content has proven to be the most efficient tactic.
Trying to execute a strategic B2B content marketing strategy on a budget is a tall order. Especially when you’re trying to compete against well-armed competitors. For a cost-effective alternative, you can either get started with these six measures or hire a B2B marketing agency to handle your content.
