B2B Content Marketing for Small Businesses
Back in the 2010s, B2B content marketing was in its infancy. There wasn’t a lot of educational content on the web. Buyers could only access the information they needed by talking to company representatives. Or, they had to fill out dozens of form fields for a PDF. Only to be hounded by salespeople shortly after.
Today, it’s totally different.
The role of B2B content today
Buyers generally don’t want to be sold to. Instead, they’d prefer to do their own research and only talk to sales when they’re ready to buy.
This is where content comes in.
Content is your expertise at scale; a digital version of your sales team educating buyers on their time. But it only works if you get a few things right.
The B2B content marketing process
How you create and promote your content is critical to the success of your content investment. Compared to other marketing investments, it can be a relatively long time before you see returns from content. That’s why it’s important to make sure your resources are focused on creating content that will resonate with buyers. Here is the B2B content marketing process, simplified:
1. Research your target audience
First, you must understand what makes your buyers tick. What are the topics they actually care about? What channels can you reach them on? How do they consume information? Who holds influence over them, both inside and outside their organization? Answering these questions is key to the direction of your B2B content strategy.
2. Create high-value content
Next, you have to create content easy for buyers to consume. Sometimes, topics can perform well in one format but not others. Other times, topics resonate across different formats and channels. There are many different content formats to choose from:
Blog posts
LinkedIn posts
Twitter threads
Facebook posts
YouTube videos
Webinars
Podcasts
PDFs
Emails
3. Distribute your content
Content distribution is when you format your source content to fit your marketing channels, map out a calendar, publish content to those channels, and engage with your audience.
This is where many B2B companies fall short. Publishing a blog post and hoping it will drive organic traffic is an inefficient way to get it in front of buyers. If you’ve created good content, don’t you want buyers to see it?
4. Optimize your content
If you’ve invested in content in the past, it might be time to update or refresh your content. Use Google Analytics to identify blog content that previously performed well, but has recently seen a dropoff. These pages are ripe for updating. Google and other search engines are quicker to index and rank refreshed existing content than new content. This way your blog content can remain fresh, and trickle down to shorter-form content like social posts and emails.
Benefits of B2B content marketing
Content marketing is an essential aspect of any B2B marketing strategy, particularly for startup founders and small business owners. When done right, content can attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, leads and sales through channels like search, social, and email.
Buyers today have access to a massive amount of information. If they consume content from you, it helps your brand establish credibility, authority and trust. It can be a differentiator and help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.
How to create a B2B content marketing plan
A strong content marketing plan for small business accounts for an investment in each phase of the B2B content marketing process, outlined above. You’ll need to map out the kind of research you need, audit your current content to identify what needs to be created, build a distribution plan to promote your content, and identify what content assets could be refreshed and recycled.
Developing a B2B content marketing plan should be custom-fit to the business and its target market. Contact me directly to request a free content review today.
Industries that can benefit from B2B content marketing
Within B2B, there are a number of different industries. Content marketing can look different in each because of how the content is packaged and on what channel its distributed. Here are a few examples.
B2B SaaS companies
B2B SaaS companies can benefit from content marketing by creating educational resources that demonstrate the value of their software to potential clients. This can include blog posts, case studies, and webinars. By providing valuable information that helps clients understand the capabilities and benefits of their product, B2B SaaS companies can build trust and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.
Professional aervices firms
Professional services organizations can use content marketing to showcase the specific services they offer and how they can help clients solve problems. By creating and sharing relevant, informative content about the services they provide, professional services organizations can attract potential clients and demonstrate their value proposition.
Marketing agencies
Agencies can use content marketing to educate users about the challenges the agency services intend to solve, from technical “how-to” content to strategic framework overviews. Agencies can also point to their own content marketing as a proof point for their own services. “We practice what we preach and it works.”
What to look for in B2B content marketing services
When evaluating an agency or freelancer who offers B2B content marketing services, keep a few things in mind, like their experience level, portfolio of work, creation process, communication style, and pricing. Here’s some more detail on each:
Relevant experience
Look for a provider that has experience working with businesses in your industry or a similar one. This will ensure that they understand your target audience and have the knowledge and expertise to create effective content.
Portfolio of past performance
Review the provider's portfolio to get a sense of the types of content they have created and the results they have achieved for their clients. This is a good gauge of the kind of quality you can expect from a content marketing agency or freelance marketing consultant.
Content creation process
Ask about their content creation process, including how they gather ideas, conduct research, and measure the success of their content. This will give you a window into how long it will take to produce content, and when to expect results.
Effective communication
Communication is key when working with any service provider. Make sure the provider is responsive, communicative, and easy to work with. This will help you understand the most effective way to communicate with the content marketing agency or freelancer.
Pricing and packaging
Consider the agency or freelancer’s pricing and whether it is within your budget. Keep in mind the cheapest option may not always be the best choice, as the quality of the content is important.
Use research to differentiate your B2B content marketing
One way to truly differentiate your marketing content is to conduct and publish original research. You can do this by interviewing or surveying a sample of your target market, analyzing the results, then packaging the insights into a downloadable PDF.
This is where it gets interesting.
Next, cite statistics and findings from your research in your content, and distribute it as far and wide as you can. Original research can be a magnet for backlinks if you use it to pitch industry publications, and you can present the results in webinars and podcasts.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. See the illustration below for more ways original research can plug into your content strategy.
B2B social media marketing vs content marketing
It’s important to note the distinction between social media marketing vs content marketing in B2B. Social media is just one part of the overall B2B content marketing mix. Content can be used on channels like social media, search, live events, and email. It can be used by sales people to engage with prospects or by digital PR specialists looking to secure guest blog placements in industry publications. Content can come in different formats, including written, video, and audio.
Learn more about B2B content marketing for small businesses
Still have more questions you need answered? Reach out to me directly and let’s chat. After a decade working with B2B and professional services firms, I can help simplify content marketing complexities for non-marketers in small businesses. Contact me today.
