In this article, I am going to share with you the 5 B2B content marketing habits I needed to develop to be able to create awesome quality content for businesses and become a great b2b content marketer.
Content marketing has many strategies that can be applied to your business to achieve your marketing and business objective.
And even thou all the content marketing strategies are different, they have something similar and that is, you have to always provide value to your target audience, which can be difficult because everybody sees value differently.
For example, a hungry person will not see water as a great offer, but a thirsty person will grab the water with everything he has.
And that’s where personalization comes into play as if you want to provide value with your b2b content marketing to your buyers, you must split the hungry and thirsty people and deliver food and water separately.
But how you are actually known who is thirsty and hungry, if they don’t say it? That is why I am going to share with you the 5 b2b content marketing habits I had to develop to provide the best value I could to my target audience.
So, without further due, let’s build some habits together!
1. Plan Your Strategy with Internal Teams
The on our list of b2b content marketing habits I really recommend you should develop is to actually cooperate with your internal teams and plan your b2b content marketing strategies with them.
It took me a while to realize that 1 person knows as much as he can know, and two heads are more than one, isn’t it?
Therefore, started planning your b2b content marketing with your internal teams like sales and CEOs is an essential habit to build consistently great quality and highly targeted content for your target audience.
BTW, if you want to learn how to plan content marketing for small businesses, watch my video!
The reason why sales, is because they are your front liners, they heart all the objections, questions, and other things that make it as really great material for your content marketing. Because building your content marketing around sales information it will help you with:
- Shortening sales cycle
- Improve Targeting
- Build credibility and thought leadership
- And develop relationships with your users
And your prospects will feel like you understand their problems and you have the solutions for them, which will build trust between your prospects and your brand.
The same applies to plan content marketing with C-levels, as they have been through a lot and most probably nobody knows better their business than them.
They have so much value to share with you, that this will help to build great content marketing and it will provide so much value. The only drawback is that it is quite difficult to find the time with them.
But it will save a ton of time during your planning as you don’t have to do everything alone and as I said, you will provide so much value to your target audience.
2. Humanize Your Content
The next on our list of b2b content marketing habits you need to build is to humanize your content for your b2b target audience and for people who are interested in your content.
What I mean humanize your content is that your content should feel conversational between the producer of the content and the user. It needs to feel like they are having an educational and entertaining discussion with you.
Your content is all about storytelling and how well you can get your users to actually listen to your story and build emotions and connections with them.
Yes, you need to provide value within your b2b content marketing, but also you must entertain them and connect with them, as people are still making decisions based on emotions and storytelling is a great way how to emotionally connect with your target audience.
For example, sharing your brand story about how you help customers A and B with your product or service can really resonate with your target audience.
That is why it is so important to collect customer case study, as accordingly Neil Patel, he was able to increase closing ration by 70% just in his emails.
(Source)
So, you better create content that feels like a one-to-one conversation between you and your audience. With stories and a rich backstory for you and your brand with full of value and fun.
This kind of content is fun to consume and people start building trust and liking your brand.
3. Collect and Use Data for Your Content
The third on our list of b2b content marketing habits you need to build is to collect and use data for your content.
This is similar to our first habit and that is; you should plan your content with your internal teams like sales and C-levels.
But here you collect data from your users and analyze them and based on that you will plan, update, upgrade, and modify your b2b content marketing along the way.
Remember, your content is all about your users and therefore your production should be highly focus based on their behaviors and how they engage with your website, content, and your brand.
But if you are starting the best way is to get your data and analyze them from Google Search Console, Google Analytics and with the latest Google tool, The Google Console Insights, which is in the Closed Beta version and I don’t have access yet, but I am super excited to see what Google prepared for use.
Also, it is great to take some courses for these two tools like as example Google Analytics Academy, that helps you to understand and maximize your analytics data, data studio to streamline data into insights, and Google Tag Manager. I definitely recommend checking out these tools and the academy.
Also don’t’ forget to check out my B2B SEO Tools recommendation to enhance your marketing analytics and SEO of your website.
4. Focus on Your Target
The next, fourth on our list of b2b content marketing habits is to focus on your target and goals for content marketing.
Like Peter Drucker said, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
Therefore, you must have a target, the goals that help you to focus and create an effective content marketing
And once you have your targets then you need to stick to it, to see what works and what does not, and once you have enough data and information, update those targets.
And of course, your plan needs to be lean enough to ensure you are flexible.
What I meant by flexible is that if a new trend and opportunity comes or a threat, you can respond fast to it. Trust me, you want to be there when trends hit the market because that’s when the real gains are
So, to put it together, like any strategy even your content marketing strategy needs to have targets you want to achieve.
I recommend starting tracking the basics such as conversion rate, organic traffic, or referrals, and conversions whether on your email list or your lead generation.
5. Make Attracting Content
The fifth habit is to make your content attracting and neat looking to the eyes of your target audience.
If you want to be successful you need to dress for success. At least that’s what they said, but what I can say is that attracting content brings better results than the poorly looking.
Trust me, people will judge your website, video, pictures, and any other content on how it looks like. And If your content does not look nice then they will associate it with your brand.
Remember, your content marketing is your actual salesperson, and first impression matter, so you need to spend some time to make it look nice and neat, otherwise, nobody wants to deal with it.
It takes about 50 milliseconds (ms) (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they’ll stay or leave, and according to British researchers analyzed that first impression are 94% design-related, whether it is a website, video, blog or person.
So, take some time to actually dress up your content marketing, it will pay off.
Also, don’t forget to check out my b2b content creation tools to improve your content marketing game!
Conclusion
Marketing is about the impact and persuade your target audience to like your brand, your products or services and create trust and relationships with your audience.
Therefore, you must structure your b2b content marketing around people’s senses emotions, and logical thinking to influence them. But I am not talking about manipulating, but rather explain your products or services in the way people get interested.
As I saw so many great products or services suffering just because they could not explain it in the way that people would listen.
That is why I am sharing these 5 b2b content marketing habits to help you to build your content around those things that matter to people.
Like don’t explain features, but explain benefits first, and once they are interested then explain the features that get them the benefits.
Because whenever your target audience is searching for a product or service, they have pain in their mind they want to solve it, and addressing the pain by benefits is more powerful than with features as they might not understand it.
Related Resources:
- B2B Digital Marketing Guide for Beginners
- Easy to Learn B2B Content Marketing Guide
- 6 Content Marketing Mistakes Marketers Makes When Starting with Small Business. (You Need to Fix Now!)
- 8 Best B2B SEO Tools in 2021: Boost Your Digital Marketing Results
- 158+ B2B Content Marketing Statistics to Drive More Leads
- Best 12 B2B Marketing Blogs to Up Your Skills
Also, check out our Content Marketing hub page to find all our Content Marketing resources.
Disclaimer
Some pictures are coming from Freepik and some of my links are affiliate links, which means if you purchase something, I might get some small commission as a reward for reference. Of course, I am actively using all these services and products and I only affiliate products or service I have full trust in their quality!
