CONTENT MARKETING FOR B2B ORGANIZATIONS

I would like put in my opinion as a digital marketer about b2b marketing specifically b2b content marketing and some tips that I’ve got through research that are a little bit different from b2c content marketing. I can get a lot of the examples that you see in the content marketing world are B2C.

Let’s start with the funnel so the b2b funnel which is very similar to b2c funnel. Usually in a marketing funnel, people become aware of a product, they develop some consideration for whether it’s something they might actually want to buy, then they do some form of comparison against other solutions. Finally they decide to convert or not and then there’s a retention element. Retention element is less true in a lot of b2c fields especially e- commerce one-time purchases but can be improved with loyalty marketing. Whereas in the b2b world I think one problem that we have is that a lot of times we target the wrong part of the funnel. In b2c the same things that create awareness about a product or a brand also help with conversion might help with comparison because a brand affinity helps in consideration and retention. It’s less true in b2b and so I think one of the jobs that we have is to look inside our funnel and then identity which part needs help versus which part works fine. Another thing that is very important here ‘don’t try to target the same audience for the majority of your content’, ‘don’t try to target it at more than let’s say two of these stages’. A a piece of content that you think worked really well for awareness and consideration cannot be used further down the funnel. For people who already know you and are already considering, when it’s really about comparison and conversion or about conversion and retention you have craft your content wisely .Try to choose when you’re creating your content, when you’re designing the strategy for why you’re going produce a particular piece.

So let me give you a quick example here there’s a company called XYZ Constructions. They do something really cool, they help small business to find office space, so they’re a business- to- business service provider. They talk to landlords and small business. They have great funnel but they decide that they need more awareness. They start identifying which part of the funnel is the problem. Lots of people who are already aware and visiting are converting and getting through this part of the funnel, so they need not focus content efforts there. So let’s suppose that awareness is their problem . Awareness to to small business or is it awareness to the landlord again? Perhaps awareness to landlords is the problem, if that’s the case maybe what we want is an interactive tool that’s essentially part survey and comparison you know bench marking metrics so they that a landlord can go in and say oh my space is in so and so location and I have this much square footage of triple a space and the current price is x dollars per square foot triple net and there’s the average you know versus the what the rest of the market look like. If its overcharging or have less square footage than most other competitors then its missing out on these amenities or whatever that could work potentially very well for this stage.

The process you should use when you’re doing the b2b content strata:

1. Target the right section of the funnel make sure it’s well appealing to the right audience and then come up with a piece of content that will move the needle in the right direction.
2. When you’re measuring success in b2b it is pretty different than b2c. A lot of time unfortunately the metric by which you will be judged up on number of leads created. The usual metrics like the number of social shares across different networks, visibility, raw traffic and engagement tends to be less important than quantity of leads generated.
3. Take note of what you’re trying to improve and apply the right metrics. Many b2b transactions in fact the overwhelming majority don’t just have a single buyer as in b2c. If you are selling shoes to a consumer that tends to be the only person who’s in on the consideration maybe your competitors also think about it. So for the vast majority it’s just that one person. It is not the case in b2b not at all of oftentimes the person who ends up buying who you interact with who your salesperson reaches out to as the conversation that person is just one link in the chain of individuals involved from a corporate ecosystem in who makes the buying decision.
4. With remarketing and retargeting that means paid content, for b2b it means spending dollars to promote the content that you’ve created. If not rightly targeted to every person who makes the purchase decision your ad spend can become disastrous.