How to set up a B2B content marketing strategy?

You are a b2b company and you want to optimise your communication strategy? Improve your online presence with b2b content marketing. How does it work? What are the results of this type of approach? SmartKeyword tells you everything.

Contents:

• • What are the objectives of content marketing?
  • What is a b2b content strategy?
  • Why is content marketing important in b2b?
  • How to build a b2b marketing content strategy?

What are the objectives of content marketing?

But first of all, what exactly is content marketing? In principle, it consists of producing and distributing qualitative content on its communication channels, and more generally on a website. It is a sustainable strategy that pursues 4 main objectives that we will present to you right away.

Generate new leads

The basis of any communication strategy is to attract new prospects, and content marketing is no exception to the rule. By creating and promoting high quality content, you will reach a wider audience in the long term.

But how does it work? It's simple, your partners, customers and internet users who simply like your content will share it on social networks, create external links and backlinks from your pages to their sites, pick up your infographics and articles...

In this way, you will not only gain visibility directly, but also indirectly by improving your SEO and your positioning on search engines. A virtuous circle that, once started, never stops.

Establish your expertise and build a relationship of trust with your prospects

Creating quality content also allows you to build a real relationship of trust with your customers. This is an essential element of a b2b strategy, as companies are constantly being approached by new partners.

With quality content, your current and future customers will recognise you as an expert in your field. For b2b business, this is the most important thing.

Simply creating value

Finally, even if it is only a means to reach prospects, creating value is a bonus in itself for your business. Indeed, you have to get away from the outdated vision of marketing with slogans. Today, people, customers want added value and free offers. If they like the work, they are willing to pay for exclusive content or to use your services. A 100% positive give and take.

What is a b2b content strategy?

Now that you know what a content marketing strategy is for, we explain how it can be adapted to the b2b business.

The main characteristic of a content strategy aimed at businesses is its utilitarian side. Your particular audience is looking for solutions to their logistical, delivery and organisational problems... and your role is to respond to them.

The other characteristic of this development strategy is that it relies on a multitude of formats (for the expert profile). Webinars, ebooks, white papers, infographics, articles, tutorial videos on YouTube or other platforms, all types of contentare welcome as long as they are the most appropriate for the purpose.

Finally, b2b business is often based on more complex sales cycles than B2C business, which generally consists of the simple sale of a product or service. In business to business, the main aim is to create a long-term relationship and to invest more deeply in the client's project (redesign, training, updating, etc.).

Why is content marketing important in b2b?

The impact of a good b2b content marketing strategy is positive for any company looking to grow. It is a highly effective marketing tool that has proven to be successful for many companies.

This is certainly one of the strategies that best corresponds to the business oriented towards companies. Indeed, if you want to :

• • • create awareness and branding based on your authority in your sector;
    • optimise your buying journey at all important stages;
    • Gain visibility on social networks and search engines;
    • producing and sharing value;
    • reach a larger audience, convert more prospects, retain more customers;

There is currently no more effective method than b2b content marketing.

How to build a b2b marketing content strategy?

Now that you know the basics of content marketing you will be introduced to the various steps involved in setting up your own strategy.

Who do you create content for?

The first thing you need to do to establish your content marketing strategy is to define your personas. The persona is the typical customer, in this case the business profile you want to address.

To find this persona, several methods are available:

• • • Study the profile of the clients you already have.
    • Study the profile of the prospects you want to attract.
    • Study the profile of companies in your sector, in general.

These analyses will allow you to collect data with which you can then determine the profile of your ideal customer.

But why is it so important to define a good buyer persona ?

This is essential, because it will allow you to focus all your efforts on only 1 or 2 particular types of businesses. As a result, you don't waste time, energy, resources (and budget) creating content that may reach a larger audience, but will be low quality.

Furthermore, with a well-identified buyer persona, you will optimise your entire buying journey to maximise the conversion of the companies that match it.

Why do you create content?

Also ask yourself the question "why"?

In content marketingyou need a purpose. You don't just create content to be present on Google or other platforms. You need to clearly identify your goals for your strategy to be effective. If you have several objectives to pursue, prioritise them.

In general, the objectives of a b2b content marketing strategy are to

• • • Develop your organic traffic and improve your SEO.
    • Position yourself as an expert in your sector.
    • Improve your conversion rate.
    • Optimise your lead nurturing (helping your customers in the buying process).

With a clear definition of your objectives, your strategy will be more effective from the start, and most importantly, you will have key performance indicators (KPIs). With these indicators, you will be able to evaluate the results of your strategy and adapt it afterwards.

What problems do you solve?

As explained above, in b2b marketing marketing, more than anywhere else, you need to provide solutions to your prospects. To do this, it is essential to know what problems they are facing in order to provide the ideal solution.

Indeed, most companies tend to highlight their qualities and services. For example, an intergenerational family expertise, a revolutionary product, innovative techniques, a human-based customer relationship...

The mention of these benefits is essential for building loyalty, but it should never take precedence over the main thing: solving your audience's problems.

During the first contact, your prospects don't care about your values. What they want is an answer to their question, a solution to their problem, nothing else.

This psychological aspect must be taken into consideration at all stages of the creation of your content marketing strategy.

So, when you create informational content, you should always answer a question. When you have a conversion page written, all the steps should be clearly laid out to answer any questions a prospect may have at that point in the sales journey. The same goes for loyalty and after-sales service.

What are the keywords you want to be found on?

At SmartKeyword, we mainly focus on our b2b content marketing service content marketing service on the creation of written content. In order to create this type of content, you must first define keywords. But how to find the most effective ones?

Keywords and research intentions

A good keywordA good keyword is, of course, a keyword that people type into the Google search bar. It is also a keyword that corresponds to your sector of activity and, as we said earlier, that answers a problem.

It should therefore be a "how to" question as a priority:

• • • How to be better organised at the office?
    • How to get on the first page of search engines?
    • …

But to make sure you make the right choice, you should also check that the query in question has a sufficient volume of searches per month, without being too competitive.

To do this, there are various research and analysis tools that we use at SmartKeyword.

To sum up, a good keyword is :

• • • A keyword related to your field of activity.
    • A question your prospects are asking.
    • A query with a good search volume (value to be defined in your strategy).
    • A query on which it is possible, with a well optimised content, to be positioned in first place on Google.

Use niche topics in your content strategy

Another, more complex approach is to position yourself on positioning on queries that are not very popular with by Internet users, but still relevant. This technique is called the long tail strategy.

It consists of identifying all the queries with a very low search volume in your sector. Then you discard those that do not meet the criteria you have established, and start creating content for the most interesting ones (balance between search volume and relevance).

For the editorial line, each keyword must be converted into an article or other type of optimised content.

This technique, in addition to significantly improving your SEO, offers a definite advantage for b2b business: that of establishing your expertise.

Indeed, if a company, for each of its niche queries, realises that you are in first place on Google with a suitable answer, you will inevitably inspire confidence.

Choose the right types of content

Once the previous work has been done, it is now time to move on to the actual creation of your content. For traditional content marketing, we recommend writing blog articles.

But for content marketing b2bcontent marketing, there are others to consider. Infographics are one of the most popular content types for companies. They are much clearer and the design aspect is a definite bonus.

It can also be interesting to opt for the e-book. We advise you to choose this solution for themes where you can really make the difference with the competition.

For even more technical content, the white paper is also an option. In any case, this is the option used by many b2b companies.

The advantage of the e-book and white paper, compared to the blog article, is their original and complete aspect. You can integrate content much more easily. It is also a way of converting more effectively, because the Internet user makes the effort to download and read it. Finally, it has a stronger symbolic value in the common mind.

Webinars, podcasts, videos, social media posts... There are many other types of content available to you.

The key to success is to surround yourself with a team of writers who are experts in content marketing b2b content marketing experts like SmartKeyword.

   Article written by Louis Chevant