B2B Content Marketing Strategy Made Easy: 12 Steps + Bonus Tips

Introduction

Today content marketing has become an essential instrument for b2b companies to communicate with their audience and gain exposure in this extra-competitive environment.

Educational content that provides values unconditionally is what drives b2b content marketing forward. However, if you create and publish content without a structure and plan, you won't gain long-term success.

That's why we have decided to help you produce a comprehensive content marketing strategy aligned with your business goals and buyer persona needs.

So, let's get started.

What Is B2B Content Marketing Strategy

B2B content marketing strategy implies a systematic approach company implements for planning, researching, publishing, and distributing content for their audience in every funnel stage.

A successful B2B content marketing strategy prioritizes a deep understanding of customers' interests and painpoints to provide them with valuable content assets.

That way, brands don't speak about their disadvantages in a sales pitchy way - but show their expertise in practice.

B2B vs. B2C Content Marketing - What Is a Difference?

There are some noteworthy differences between B2B and B2C content marketing. 

• Audience - B2C content is intended for a broader audience, while B2B content focuses on specific businesses and decision-makers.
• Tone - B2C content is more entertaining for building an emotional connection with people, whereas B2B content is more straightforward. 
• Content Types - Some B2C companies opt for boosted social media and SEO blog presence. On the other hand, B2B content marketers, alongside social media and SEO, prioritize webinars, case studies, whitepapers, and e-books. 
• Purchase Journey - The B2C purchase journey is typically easier and quicker, while B2B may require longer to convert.

Despite the abovementioned differences between B2B and B2C content marketing, the main principle stays constant - engage with your personas through great content and fix their problems. 

Why Do You Need Content Development Strategy for B2B Business?

Best Practices for Creating Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

1. Determine Your Goals

Think about your goals and ask yourself why you are pursuing them. Without clarity, your actions may not lead to desired outcomes.

We recommend you use the S.M.A.R.T framework. That way, B2B content marketers can set specific, measurable, accepted, realistic, and time-bound goals to achieve success.

Here are some examples of S.M.A.R.T content marketing goals:

S - Specific: "Increase website traffic from organic search by 20% in the next six months."

M - Measurable: "Track website traffic from an organic search using Google Analytics and set a target of 20% growth over the next six months."

A - Accepted: "Ensure that the target of 20% growth in website traffic from organic search is widely understood and accepted by all parties involved in the content marketing process."

R - Realistic: "Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the current website traffic from organic search and determine the feasibility of achieving a 20% increase in the next six months."

T - Time-bound: "Set a deadline of six months to achieve the target of a 20% increase in website traffic from organic search."

2. Know Your Product

Knowing your product inside and out can help you build a successful b2b content marketing strategy. From here, you can steer your content marketing activities in the right direction.

As you understand how your product solves customer problems, you will understand how to develop strategic direction. 

Also, besides strategic factors, you will understand how you should demonstrate the value of your product in your blogs, comparisons, suggestions, tutorials, etc. 

3. Meet Your Audience

A successful B2B content marketing strategy requires meeting your audience and identifying what kind of content they want to consume. The first step is to build a buyer persona based on your existing customer data, competitor analysis, and the factors that need to consider. 

Also, make sure to explore the data available in Google Analytics. Here, you can see demographic information age, gender, and location, alongside valuable interest data. It will help you create content tailored to your audience and increase engagement.

Once you have identified your audience and their needs, you can start to audit your existing content and determine which content and distribution channels to use. 

4. Conduct Content Audit

A content audit involves the systematic review and analysis of all the content published on a website. Do you wonder how? Just make sure to research your existing content and measure its strengths and weaknesses.

Your goal should be improving the overall user experience and ensuring that the offered content is up-to-date with the latest developments. 

It includes the following processes:

• Inventory: a list of content assets - including web content (blogs, images, infographics) and social media content (posts, videos, images, etc.)
• Analysis: Evaluate each content piece according to specific metrics - traffic numbers, engagement, conversion, bounce rates, time spent on a page, etc.
• Categorization: Divide your materials into different categories such as content type, topic, format, conversion funnel, etc.
• Recommendations: Identify the content that needs to be deleted, reworked, or optimized. 

From here, you can think about the areas for improvement according to the actual data and analysis. 

Additionally, a content audit can help brands:

• Avoid creating duplicate content
• Identify the best topics
• Determine the content length, tone, etc

5. Conduct Competitor Keyword Research Analysis

Keyword research is also not to miss a step in your b2b content marketing strategy for several reasons. 

• Identifying potential target keywords is essential to staying ahead in the game. By analyzing what keywords your competitors are focusing on, you can gain valuable insight and discover new opportunities for your business.
• Monitoring your competitors' keywords keeps a pulse on the latest developments and adjusts your strategy as needed.
• Being one step ahead of the competition is always a plus. You can identify areas where they may be missing the mark and target different or more specific keywords that can give you an edge.

6. Define Your Brand Voice and Tone

Each business needs a distinct brand voice and tone to differentiate itself from the competition. It helps you form a connection between your brand and your audience and guide you to more trust and loyalty. Additionally, having a strong voice and tone gives your content more credibility and authority. 

• It is beneficial for B2B markets, where the target audience is more likely to be professional and critical.
• Also, it helps you keep your content aligned with your content marketing strategy and overall brand personality.

In conclusion, having a well-defined brand voice and tone is fundamental for any successful B2B content marketing strategy. It helps to create a strong brand identity, build trust and loyalty with customers, and ensure that all content is reliable and consistent.

7. Select Your Content Marketing Formats, Types, and Distribution Channels

When it comes to B2B content marketing, there are several different content types and distribution channels available. The most popular content types for B2B marketing include text, graphics and images, audio, video, and animation. 

These content types can be combined to create more engaging and compelling content. For example, a blog post may include text, graphics, and a video.

Distribution-wise, the most important channels are 

• SEO
• Social media - Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram
• Email marketing

8. Develop Content Ideas

Developing content ideas for your B2B content marketing strategy doesn't have to be a difficult task. With the right approach and tools, you can uncover new content ideas that will resonate with your target audience and keep them coming back for more. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you with your content ideation process.

• Create a swipe file: Create a folder or board to store all the ideas, images, approaches, content pieces, and technologies that inspire you. Remember that you should look for references daily to be prepared for production whenever the right time arrives. This swipe file will come whenever you need inspiration for new projects.
• Brainstorm with your team: It is a great way to generate new ideas and discuss their relevance with the team. Also, don't forget to present your references throughout the brainstorming process.

Don't forget to transform your keyword research results into topics.

Use lateral thinking: If you are stuck with your content ideas, try lateral thinking. Look back at old topics that performed well or what your competitors do and think of creative new ways to talk about the same topic. 

Explore secondary relationships and related phrases or keywords.

9. Create and Manage the Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a perfect option for content managers to keep content production streamlined with a content marketing plan. With the help of an editorial calendar, you will avoid last-minute rush and have enough time for brainstorming, researching, publishing, and editing the materials. 

Your calendar should also provide a framework that outlines goals, buyer personas, the buyer's journey, voice and tone, keyword research, content ideas, content types, publishing date, and author's name to keep the procedures smooth.

10. Document and Execute Your Strategy

Creating a successful B2B content marketing strategy begins with documenting the plan. It makes it easier to buy in from executive team members and allows everyone on your team to understand the company's goals and strategies. 

First of all, start with creating a single document that outlines and defines your whole content marketing strategy with goals, personas, tone of voice, content ideas, etc.

It can be in the form of a Word document, Google Sheets, Evernote, or something else altogether. Make sure everyone in your company has access to this document.

Again, part of your documented strategy should include creating an editorial or content calendar. 

This is a timeline of all the content you intend to publish over a given timeframe. An editorial calendar helps you remain consistent with your publishing schedule, strategically plan your content, understand the big picture of your content marketing initiatives, save time by streamlining the writing process, facilitate collaboration among your team, and easily repurpose topics and content in the future.

11. Measure the ROI of B2B Content Marketing Success

Identify Your Goals

Start by defining your goals. Are you trying to increase organic traffic to your website, generate more leads, improve keyword rankings, convert leads into customers, improve brand awareness, or improve audience engagement? 

Once you know what you want to achieve, you can determine which metrics to track to measure your success.

Choose the Right Metrics

For each goal, decide which metrics you need to track. 

For example, if you aim to increase organic traffic to your website, track the number of visits to your site from organic traffic, the number of leads from organic traffic, and keyword rankings. 

But, lead generation-wise, track CTA clickthrough rates, and landing page conversion rates.

Analyze Your Results

Once you decide which metrics to track, you can start gathering data. The tracking frequency should be at least once a quarter, or ideally monthly, to get a better picture of your results. 

Compare the data from current and past months to see how your content marketing is performing and whether it’s helping you achieve your goals.

Adjust Your Strategy

Finally, if you don't see the results, it might be time to tweak your content strategy. Try different tactics and track the results. This way, you can find what works best for your business and improve gradually.

If your blog pages have high bounce rates, try to write simpler and check whether pop-ups or other conversion-oriented details hurt your user experience.

If your blogs are underperforming, optimize them better for SEO factors and check if SEO-wise introduced topics have a high value. 

12. Optimize Content for Each Stage of the Buyer's Journey

Identify the buyer’s journey: The first step to optimizing content for each stage of the buyer’s journey is to identify the three stages

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Conversion

Create content for each stage: Create content for each stage of the buyer's journey.

• For the awareness stage, create content that focuses on the topic introduction and the buyer’s pain points to help readers identify their problems.
• For the Consideration stage, create content that provides solutions to solve their problems.
• For the Conversion stage, create content that shows why your product or service is the best option to solve their problems.

Map the buyer’s journey: Once you have identified the buyer’s journey, you need to map it - understanding what your buyer is searching for and what questions they have at each stage.

Speak to the right people: Once you know who you talk to, determine how to talk to them. Then, create content tailored to their needs that talks to them in a helpful and informative way.

Increase comfort and confidence: Finally, you should produce content that improves the buyer’s comfort and confidence in your business. It will increase the chances that they will buy from you.

Bonus Tip #1: Don't Forget to Repurpose the Content

Recycle existing content into different formats. For example, turn a high-performing blog post into a webinar, or take a series of blog posts on a similar topic and turn them into an e-book. Repurposing content for different channels is an effective way to maximize the reach of your content.

Creating content requires researching, planning, writing, optimizing, publishing, etc. It involves more processes than people see as a product in company channels - it's just the tip of the iceberg.

But, it is worth the time and energy because you can recycle existing content into different formats and diversify your content portfolio. 

There are several reasons why you should repurpose your content, including:

• Maximizing reach: Repurposing helps you reach new audiences in several touchpoints to extend your content life-cycle and maximize the reach.
• Cost-effective: As mentioned above, content creation requires some time. But, repurposing existing content is time-efficient, and you can create new assets without starting from scratch.
• Improving engagement: Repurposing content improves user engagement because you offer audiences different taste content in multiple formats.
• Driving traffic and leads: Repurposed content is another chance to attract more traffic and leads.
• Keeping up with changing trends: Repurposing your content allows you to stay current with changing trends, technology, and the interests of your target audience.

Finally, we can say that repurposing content helps you get the maximum impact out of our materials and maximize the content mileage with the help of extra user engagement.

Bonus Tip #2: Prioritize Long-Form Content

For B2B content marketing, long-form content is a top option to reap the highest ROI possible. 

Long-form content gives readers in-depth look at topics, features, benefits, and your product and service. There are several long-form content options available for b2b companies to look for 

• eBooks
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• Case studies
• Podcasts

Long-form content gives you space to demonstrate your thought leadership and give customers value unconditionally. In return, customers will perceive you as an expert in the field who not only brags about its advantages but also demonstrates it in real life. 

This type of content is also great for nurturing leads as it provides detailed information and allows them to make an informed decisions.

Finally, long-form content allows businesses to further engage with their audience and build relationships. This type of content provides a platform to educate and inform the reader and can be used to demonstrate how the company understands its needs and offers the best solutions.

Bonus Tip #3: Opt for Hub and Spoke Strategy

The hub and spoke strategy is a great way to approach content marketing, as it focuses on creating a central hub of high-value content around which all other content is centered.

Essentially, the hub and spoke strategy involves creating a single core piece of content or “hub” and then creating several “spokes” of content that link back to the hub. This primary content can be anything from an e-book or webinar to a blog post or video. Whatever it is, it should be high quality, engaging, and highly shareable.

Once this core content is established, other content can be created to link back to it, such as blog posts, videos, social media posts, etc. This content should support the central hub by providing additional information and creating a complete narrative.

By creating a core piece of content as the hub and then creating several pieces of content as spokes, businesses can maximize the reach of their content and ensure that it’s reaching the right audience. Additionally, the centralized content makes it easier to track content performance.

The hub and spoke strategy is a great way to approach B2B content marketing. By creating a central piece of content and then creating several pieces of content to support it, businesses can maximize their reach and track the performance of their content more easily.

Creating a successful B2B content marketing strategy requires more than choosing the best channels and topics. It also requires careful planning and execution. 

The Best Content Types for B2B Content Marketing Strategy

The Best B2B Content Distribution Channels

Blogging

Blogging is an effective b2b content distribution instrument that can catalyze your content marketing success. It is simial to an online journal that displays the information in reverse chronological order. 

Through blogging, businesses can pave their way to the status of thought leader and, through organic posting, dominate SERPs in their niche. 

It also helps build brand awareness and establish credibility as a source of information for potential customers. Furthermore, blogging is a great way to reach new audiences, keep the existing ones and improve sales. 

Overall, as it stands, blogging is still an effective instrument for lead-generation efforts.

Social Media

Social media is an effective channel for businesses to expand their brand presence. Depending on the niche, for b2b businesses, one of the most popular platforms is LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

For B2B content distribution, social media can be a powerful tool. Content strategies should include regular social media posts to build brand awareness and capitalize on this growing trend. 

• It allows you to be involved in two-way communications and better position your brand personality in front of your audiences.
• Social media is a convenient space for your b2b business to understand the pain points and trending topics among your target audiences.

Also, b2b businesses should tailor the content types for specific platforms. For example, long posts with text and images alongside carousel-type posts are high performing on Linkedin, while visual platforms like Instagram are better for reels, infographics, etc.

E-Mail Campaigns

E-mail campaigns are a great way to distribute content to B2B customers. Companies can use newsletters to share news updates, product announcements, promotions, events, and more. 

• Increased brand awareness: By sending regular emails to your subscribers, you can keep your customers up to date on any changes in your industry, product offerings, or services. It helps to build brand recognition and trust.
• Better targeting: With email campaigns, you can easily segment your audience and tailor your content to each segment. It allows you to create a more personalized experience for your customers.
• Automation: You can use email marketing tools to automate your email campaigns and create a steady stream of content for your customers. This helps to save time and resources.
• Increased engagement: By creating engaging content for your email subscribers, you can increase customer engagement and keep your customers interested in your offerings.

Overall, email campaigns are an effective way to distribute content to B2B customers. With the right strategies, companies can take advantage of this powerful digital marketing channel and use it to drive success.

5 Tips for B2B Content Writing

1. Prioritize Value

The key to successful B2B content writing lies in prioritizing value. It is vital to focus on providing helpful and relevant information to readers rather than solely relying on stories and jokes.

With this approach, you can help readers solve their problems and engagingly present your value proposition. So, it will give you a competitive edge over others if you achieve this goal.

2. Get Straight to the Point

Getting straight to the point in B2B content writing helps busy business people save time and get the information they need instantly.

When readers can identify the point of a blog post right away, they are more likely to continue reading and engaging with the content. Thus, you should write with maximum clarity and don't hesitate to get to the point.

By quickly conveying the point of a post, B2B content writing can become more effective and efficient in delivering targeted messages to readers.

Additionally, by being explicit and clear about what you are selling and why customers should choose your product, you can establish a strong brand position that will better resonate with your target audience.

3. Write Simply

Writing simply and directly can be an effective tool for creating B2B content that resonates with readers.

Again, your customers might be busy people who don't have time to think twice to understand your sentences. That's why you should write short sentences with easy-to-understand words.

If you struggle with this mission, use the Hemingway app.

4. Make it Easy to Share and Remember

• Optimize your content for search engines and social media. It will make it easier for your target audience to find and share your content.
• Use social media buttons to encourage readers to share your content. Include clear and concise copy that encourages readers to share.
• Create content that is easy to break down into comprehensible information. Bite-sized content is a great way to educate your users on complex topics.

5. Don't Speak Generally - Write for Your Personas ( Audience)

Writing for your personas can be immensely helpful for B2B content writing. Knowing your target audience and creating buyer personas allows you to create content that resonates with your readers and is tailored to their needs.

Knowing the demographic, interests, and behavior of your audience gives you an insight into the topics they are interested in. This helps you create content tailored to their interests and helps to engage and build trust with your readers.

Additionally, by creating a unique voice and injecting your personality and flair into your writing, you help to create an emotional connection with your audience. This helps to make your content stand out and drives more engagement. Ultimately, by creating content that resonates with your audience, you are more likely to convert them into paying customers.

The Best Tools for B2B Content Marketing

The Examples of B2B Content Marketing

HubSpot

An example of B2B marketing for HubSpot is its content division. HubSpot divides its content into two distinct tracks, marketing and sales. This lets them create laser-focused content that is tailored to the needs of their audience.

Their content is of high quality and offers readers original data, research, and insight. Additionally, HubSpot offers various resources and guides that help marketers of all disciplines.

Overall, HubSpot is a great example of how to do successful B2B content marketing.

greatcontent

We focus on our content marketing efforts by providing relevant and engaging content that helps readers solve their pain points in content marketing, copywriting, translation, and localization.

Our main distribution channel is the blog page, where we constantly update the existing content and create a new ones to help our customers stay at the top of emerging trends.

Alongside blogs, we produce content on LinkedIn and present it in a scalable way.

So, if you are interested in content marketing topics, make sure to check our blog and LinkedIn page.

Ahrefs

Ahref excels at using several marketing channels, including blogging, webinars, and YouTube, to demonstrate its topical authority.

This product-led SEO approach leads to more detailed, helpful content that clearly illustrates how the product can be used to solve its customers' problems.

F.A.Q

Conclusion

Overall, a well-planned B2B content marketing strategy can contribute to your brand's success. If you achieve to walk in customers' shoes and align your business goals to content marketing, you can drive steady traffic from the web, improve conversions and build a strong reputation.

After finalizing your b2b content strategy, you should commit to regular posting and when it comes to your B2B content needs, don't settle for anything less than the best.

At greatcontent, we offer a full range of content writing services, from ideation to delivery. With a team of 10,000+ talented creators, we guarantee professional and high-quality copy or translations tailored to your specific requirements.

So, if you're ready to take your content to the next level, don't hesitate to reach out to us.