Tips To Ace B2B Content Marketing
As per the 2018 CMI reports, 91% B2B marketers reportedly use content marketing in their marketing strategy and allocate nearly 26% of their marketing budget on it. Despite the high inclination of B2B marketers on content marketing, the fact remains that only 20% of the B2B marketers have been able to use content marketing effectively in their B2B marketing. This raises a serious question: ‘How to ace B2B content marketing to get lucrative results?’ and the answer lies in the tips given below. These are some tips the B2B content marketers can use in their marketing strategy to tighten their grip on content marketing success. So, without wasting any time, let’s have a quick look at the tips to ace B2B content marketing.
Repurpose & Update Existing Posts
Your old content is still important and can play a crucial role in your content marketing. The B2B content marketers can update the old posts with the latest data to make it relevant to the current ecosystem. Look for the content that is still getting some traffic and update it with recent information. Search engines automatically rank newly published content higher which can lead to more traffic to your content.
Apart from that, the posts that performed well among the audience can also be repurposed to engage them further. Blog posts can be repurposed to form videos, infographics etc. Whitepapers, webinars, and interviews can be repurposed to form blogs and video content. This way you can curate engaging content without any extra efforts in researching the data, facts, and information.
Engage With Video Content
With live videos getting bigger than ever, video marketing is gaining prominence among the B2B content marketers. To ace content marketing, B2B marketers need to invest more time and efforts into creating engaging video content that also educates and informs the B2B buyers at the same time. A Cisco research has even predicted that more than 82% of the all the internet traffic would be driven by video content by 2021. A deep understanding of the modern B2B buyer throws light on its inclination towards motion, graphic content more than written content.
The videos could be about product or service description, live coverage of behind the scenes working, video testimonials, videos showing the solution to any problem, simple how-to videos, and live streaming of every event can be a great way to engage the B2B buyers.
Gate Rich Content But Sparingly
B2B content marketing is more about converting the users and gated content is an effective way of getting the information of the users. Gating the content, i.e., asking the users to fill in relevant information like name, email address etc., through a pop-up form to offer access to further content information, is great in getting quality lead information.
While gating content, the B2B content marketers need to understand that the readers should be lured into the content so that they add their information for seeking access. It should be done strategically and more so, sparingly. Offer a hearty portion of ungated content to the readers and once they’ve got drawn to the content, gate the other useful information. Make sure that you ask for just the relevant details like name and email address only. Furthermore, ensure that the content you’re gating is worthy of their personal information.
Highlight Top Points For Skim Readers
B2B buyers are hyperactive beings and a majority of them do not have enough time to read through each and every content piece completely. By highlighting the main points on the blog, you can catch the attention of the skim readers as well who just skim and scan through the website to get a general overview of the content. To ace B2B content marketing, include headings and subheadings in bold form. Use tables, graphs, and bullet lists to show important data.
The hyperlinks in the content, leading the readers to various landing pages should also be highlighted on the page to get more clicks. Moreover, the call to actions on the page should be the first thing to catch the attention of anyone on the first look. Use bold colors, write short but descriptive calls and place them strategically in the F pattern and areas where readers’ eyes are more likely to reach to get more click through your content.
Find Niche Influencers For Promotion
Influencer marketing has gained pace and nearly 49% B2B marketers are planning to implement it in their content marketing strategy. Finding niche influencers is the key to effective promotion in B2B. Influencers are not just famous people but those who have a large following and can move the followers with their idea. Look for people who are leaders in your industry or find those with whom your target b2B buyers are engaging.
Start off by connecting with the influencers on social media platforms. Get some micro-content like a quote, tip, fact etc., from the influencer and quote it in your content or share it as it is on social channels. Next up, ask the influencers to use your product, share it with their followers or give a positive feedback/testimonial about it. Giving out this content to the of the B2B buyers can boost the engagement level content and help you get more traffic.
These were some effective tips to ace B2B content marketing, Incorporate these tips into your content marketing strategy and keep measuring the results to know whether your efforts have yielded fruitful results or not.
Author Bio:
Ankit Gupta
heads and manages the content marketing team at ExportersIndia.Com, a leading B2B portal in India. Owing to his passion for his profession and his interest towards the B2B industry, Ankit keeps a close tab on the latest trends in content marketing for B2B companies. You can read other insightful blogs on B2B and content marketing by Ankit on his LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter handles.