Content marketing strategies help with establishing trust and credibility and building relationships with your prospects before you have even spoken to them personally.
For many marketers, b2b content marketing has become the essential strategy to drive consistently good quality leads with great ROI.
Therefore, there is no wonder that content marketing makes such noise. Having a lead generation machine that works for you even when you sleep is a dream of every marketer.
But how many organizations actually using content marketing strategy?
That is why content marketing is part of an inbound marketing technique where the main part of inbound marketing is to let leads come to you when they need you the most.
Content marketing is especially effective within digital marketing where you connect technology like search engines, social media, and other sources where people spend most of the time and connect it with your expertise and solutions.
And that’s one of the key elements of effective content marketing strategy and that is your knowledge.
Because prospects searching expertise in which they can trust especially when the stakes are high. For example, if you are a vendor for ERP or CRM system and a large company wants to use it, they want to know the answer to whether you can deliver a complete solution to them.
B2B solutions can be complicated and decision-markers want to be sure, that you are the right one, and that is why b2b content marketing strategies are great for such as purpose.
Also, John Deere is a great example of how you can use content marketing
1. Blog
Business to business blog has become for some companies’ irreplaceable lead generation strategy, including SaaS lead generation. and without it, they would lose over 50% of inbound leads.
It has brought also many other benefits like shortening the sales cycle, increase conversation rate, and brand awareness, and therefore b2b marketers love blogging.
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But yet, not many b2b organizations using this wonderful strategy and they still rely on old-school techniques like email blasting.
- Only 33% of B2B companies use blogs. [Source: InsideView]
- 60% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority. [Source: HubSpot]
- Businesses that blog witness their monthly leads rise by 126% more than those who don’t. [Source: HubSpot]
- Inbound marketing methods, such as business blogging, generate leads that cost an average of 62% less than leads generated via outbound methods (such as cold calling). [Source: HubSpot]
The blog is still one of the top lead generation methods for a business to drive qualified leads with a shorter sales cycle and higher sales
revenue per customer.
Of course, it requires some preparation but eventually, the b2b blog is one of the less expensive b2b marketing tactics.
2. Email
Email marketing has still a lot of benefits to offer to marketers such as distribution content, increasing leads generation, and influencing decision-makers to buy from you.
Of course, a lot of marketers have questioned this method as they think it is slowly dying but nothing is further from true as email marketing has become #1 preferred way for marketers to communicate with their peers in 2019.
Of course, there are new technologies that could potentially hurt this trend such as live chat as it is becoming a favorite way for prospects to connect with brands.
But still, to distribute content and establish credibility and expertise, Email marketing has a lot to offer.
- 73 percent of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email. [Source: Adestra]
- 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention. [Source: Emarsys]
- 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions. [Source: SalesCycle]
- 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content. [Source: Content Marketing Institute]
I believe, that the b2b email marketing strategy has its own place in 2020 and beyond and it will not disappear any time soon. This strategy is also important for when you want to sell leads as it brings high ROI and profit margins.
3. Social Media
Social Media, particularly when leveraged with a b2b Instagram strategy, is becoming more and more popular for business-to-business marketing as it is a great way to connect with prospects and customers.
So, what is the number of people using social media platforms?
- 78% of companies now say they have dedicated social media teams. [Source: SlideShare]
But of course, there are more benefits for b2b marketing to use social media such as increase traffic to their website, stronger lead generation, improving brand awareness, and as I already mentioned better customer service experience.
- 79% of marketers said they saw increased traffic with as little as 6 hours a week invested in social media marketing. [Source; Social Media Examiner]
- Roughly half of companies say social media has improved their marketing optimization, customer experience, and brand health, with nearly a quarter also seeing an increase in revenue. [Source: SlideShare]
Yes, business-to-business social media like LinkedIn have created many opportunities for business to deliver better results, and therefore I have included social media into my list of b2b basic marketing strategies.
- 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content, making it the second most-used B2B social platform, second only to email [Source: Content Marketing Institute]
4. Video
Video Marketing is gaining its popularity due to improving technologies such as internet connection and mobile technologies.
This trend is expected to be growing in the next few years as you can already notice that video platforms are booming among consumers.
For example:
YouTube in 2024 had its biggest growth ever since and Instagram where pictures and videos are the main content as well grow rapidly in the past few years.
- 96% of B2B companies plan to use video in their content marketing over the next year. [ Source: Social Media Today)
- 73% of B2B marketers say that video positively impacts marketing ROI. [Source: Blue Corona]
- 70% of B2B buyers and researchers watch videos on their path to purchase. [Source: Blue Corona]
B2B video marketing has been predicting that it will be the next trend and it will be driving over 51% of traffic and leads to the business, as decision-makers prefer to watch a video rather than read a blog article Learn how to use YouTube backlinks for SEO.
5. Testimonials
Testimonials are the strongest social proof you can offer to your prospects when they are asking you to prove if you are enough qualified to do the job for them.
Yes, testimonials are an essential part of every business and you should be collecting them to prove to your future customers that you are the expert in your industry.
Prospects that are serious to buy from you usually spend their last minutes on testimonials before they contact the sales team.
But if you fail to provide testimonials then usually, they start doubting whether you are enough qualified or not. I mean how can you prove to your prospects that you know what you are doing if you do not have customers.
So, if you have customers, make sure you are collecting the feedback and testimonials.
6. eBook/Whitepaper
The last but not least from my list of basic content marketing strategies are eBooks and whitepapers which you should include within your marketing strategy too.
Before you have been contacted by prospect usually, they do the research beforehand. By IDC prospects complete almost 56% of the buyer journey before they contact the first vendor as they spend time researching and learning about products and services.
Also, statistics said that prospects read around 5-12 pieces of content before they start feeling confident within the industry to be able to contact the vendor.
And that brings me to eBooks and whitepapers and why they are so important within your business to business marketing.
Offering an advanced piece of content to your audience is a great way to show your credibility and expertise within your field and also collect their information such as email addresses, names, and roles.
This helps you to create the first touchpoint with your prospects.
That’s why using a piece of information like eBooks and Whitepapers within your b2b marketing is essential to start collecting information from your prospects and get in touch with them.
Once you do, start offering more helpful content depending on their interest, like creating segmentation and content within the segmentation.
You will see, the incredible benefits of creating ebooks and whitepapers.
Summary of Basic Content Marketing Strategies
Many marketers still struggle to create a comprehensive marketing plan for their companies and that’s why I have written this article for you, as you can use it as a benchmark for you, on what you should be focusing on this year or next year’s plan.
Including these b2b content marketing strategies will improve your overall marketing and helps you reach your KPI’s along with AI content marketing, will improve your overall marketing and helps you reach your KPI’s.
Also, all of these strategies are working perfectly on their own but even better if you create synchronize marketing as with just these 6 content marketing strategies you can create a full buyer journey and deliver a proper customer experience.
I hope that this article will help you with your marketing and let me know if you have any questions or if you have used some and how it works for you.
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