There is no doubt content marketing is still extremely important marketing tactic for B2B businesses. It can deliver over a long period, builds strong connections and is cost effective.

When executed correctly, content marketing will generate inbound enquiries for your business, boost your credibility in your industry, and build your brand as a thought leader.

While many marketing tactics are a flash-in-the-pan, once the budget is spent it is gone forever, the great strength of content marketing is most of your content won’t simply disappear. Your content can stay live month-after-month and even year-after-year. This means your content can drive inbound leads and revenue to your business long after it was first published.

What is B2B content marketing?

So, if the benefits of content marketing are its long shelf-life, cost effectiveness and brand building potential. What exactly is content marketing?

The best way to think of content marketing is that it is all about creating the fuel that allows your marketing to burn brightly. Content marketing is about creating content that attracts, engages and retains consumers – that can then be pushed out through your different marketing channels.

Good content can come in many forms, but it should always speak to your audience. Examples of different types of content includes:

• Articles
• Long & short form videos
• Whitepapers
• Photographs
• Graphics
• Webinars

If your audience finds this content valuable, when it comes time to purchase, they are more likely to come to your business. In this way we can think of content marketing as one of the key elements of inbound marketing.

How to create a B2B content marketing strategy

Understand your audience

Content should always be relevant to your audience. It needs to speak to their needs and answer their problems.

As a result, to create good content you need to know your potential clients inside-out. Depending on your business, you might already have a very good understanding of your clients, or you might need to carry out market research to effectively understand your clients pain points.

At this stage it is best to be humble with what you think you know. Be open to challenging your assumptions and look at the data to really figure out what it is going on. It is at this point that you can really create a competitive advantage.

Start with a plan

Once you have carried out your marketing research, the next step should always be a well thought out strategy and plan.

You should be clear about your business objectives, your target market and why people should choose you rather than your competition before considering which methods you will use to communicate with clients and prospects.

Developing a clear month by month marketing plan will ensure that your business achieves its content marketing aims in an organised way, which can be measured for results and return on investment.

Create your content

Once you have your strategy and plan - now is the time to put it into action. Don’t be scared to start focussed on your target niche. As you build your content out you can steadily expand your targeting to reach more areas.

When it comes to the debate on quality vs quantity, it is always better to focus on quality. With the advent of AI, it is possible to churn out immense amounts of content with little impact.

AI is a fantastic tool with which to improve the quality of your content – but shouldn’t be relied on to produce content by itself. The human element is still essential to creating effective and engaging content.

Refresh existing content

An important element of a content strategy is not just about creating new content. It is also about refreshing existing content.

Review what is working well and what could do with a refresh.

When you identify content that is underperforming, low-quality or simply off-brand - taking the time to improve and re-publishing it can often have a bigger impact that simply creating new content from scratch.

Publish your content

Now your content is created it is time to publish it across your marketing channels.

We are strong believers that good content should work hard, especially for SME businesses. While you might have created your content with one channel in mind, adapt and edit it so it can be pushed out across as many of your marketing channels as possible – this ensures your marketing budget is used as efficiently as possible.

Measure performance

In your content marketing strategy and plan you should have identified a set of KPIs and metrics with which to measure success. Once you have created and refreshed your content, tracks its performance and where necessary make further optimisations.

Content creation is not a simple process that only needs to be set live once, it is a process of continual testing and optimising.

If you are thinking about creating a B2B content marketing strategy or refreshing your exiting content marketing and would like to discuss your options - get in touch and book a complimentary consultation with one of our marketing experts. We will be able to chat through possible approaches to your content marketing and advise you on next best steps.

Book Your Complimentary Marketing Consultation

Let's discuss your needs together and start your journey to better marketing.