10 Ways To Attract Customers Through B2B Content Marketing

To create a successful B2B content marketing strategy and acquire customers, you need to ensure that your content is useful, succinct and based upon a strong strategy. In this article, we explore ten ways to attract customers through B2B content marketing, as well as how to get started with your B2B content marketing strategy.

What Is B2B Content Marketing?

In short, content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building strong relationships with your target audience by giving them relevant, high-quality content on a regular basis. And this doesn’t fundamentally differ whether you are using a B2B or B2C content marketing strategy.

The Difference Between B2B And B2C Content Marketing

Understanding the difference between B2C and B2B marketing can be tricky, but this should just about sum it up:

B2C content marketing is shaped more around relatively simple and quick purchase journeys (from awareness of your business to a conversion). Whereas, B2B content marketing is more likely to involve a lengthy and complicated purchase funnel that could take weeks, months, or longer, of nurturing a prospect. This is because they usually involve longer-term commitments and higher average order values. For this reason, B2B content marketing needs to evoke confidence that you are the right business to work with.

With the key focus being the first three stages of the funnel, this diagram shows how you can appeal to customers using content marketing at the different stages of the customer journey – and how strategies may differ between B2B and B2C.

How To Attract Customers Through B2B Content Marketing

1. Blog Posts

Blogging enables you to show the personality of your brand while offering expertise, advice and new ideas – which is all a crucial part of the journey to conversion.

As an example, our SilverDisc Knowledge Centre consistently provides current, research-driven, relevant content on different services areas within digital marketing – which is appealing to other businesses that may need our help.

2. White Papers And eBooks

A whitepaper is an informational document used to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service, often featuring a substantial body of research. They are useful to help influence the decision-making processes of current and prospective consumers. Whitepapers are effective because they combine the persuasiveness of an article with the product information of a brochure. This allows a business to educate, without obviously selling.

We have a couple of eBooks that may be of interest to you:

• Navigating The Biggest Challenges For Online Retailers
• Ultimate Content Marketing Guide

3. Webinars

Hosting a webinar is one of the most effective ways of building credibility with your audience, because you have the chance to showcase your product, service or knowledge.

4. Podcasts Or Videos

Podcasting allows you to communicate to a captive audience. With on-the-go lifestyles, the power to have podcasting on demand allows you to tell your story, show your brand voice and values and create informed, knowledge-driven discussions in your field, anywhere and at any time.

Furthermore, multi-layered, engaging video content is a modern and effective form of content not to be overlooked. Consumers like videos because they are easy to digest, entertaining and engaging, and video has the potential to provide a great return on investment (ROI) for many business types. A key advantage of video is that it is very accessible, both to watch and to produce, and it can be shared and viewed by millions in minutes if your content is extremely effective. That’s why YouTube is such a popular platform.

5. Case Studies

Case studies provide buyers with the context to determine whether they're making a good choice. A well-written case study should persuade readers that your product or service can solve a problem in real life that a prospective customer could relate to.

6. Templates And Checklists

Offering templates and checklists as free downloads can be a very effective way of getting genuine leads from your ideal market. As an example, the B2B company HubSpot may provide a project checklist template, as a CRM platform.

Here’s an example: SilverDisc's Ultimate On-Page SEO Checklist

7. Tools

Having readily available tools on your website for potential prospects to use is a great way of using content to promote a conversion. It provides companies with a clear way to understand what isn’t working for them, and hopefully that your business is at hand to fix this problem!

We have two tools here that may be of use to you:

• SilverDisc SEO Spider
• SilverDisc ROI Calculator

8. Newsletters

With so much information out there about every industry, trend and topic that you could think of, providing a newsletter can showcase a lot about what you know as a business, who you are and why you would be a great choice.

If you are looking to cut through the clutter to get relevant, succinct and expert news and advice about the digital marketing world, why not subscribe to the SilverDisc newsletter?

9. Social Media

Much like images and videos, infographics are visually appealing and if they are particularly effective, they can be passed around social media, referenced, and linked to on websites for years.

10. Paid Ads

LinkedIn paid advertising is a great tool for B2B as it is such a business-orientated platform, making it likely that you can experience quite a bit of success from focusing some of your content marketing efforts there.

Facebook ads can also be ideal for B2B content marketing, as more shares means more attention and therefore conversions, as well as the fact that you are engaging with a carefully specified target audience that will care about your B2B content.

Learn more:

• An Introduction to LinkedIn Advertising for B2B Marketers
• Should You Invest In Facebook Ads or Increase Organic Reach?

Where To Start With Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

A solid content marketing strategy helps to give you direction, justify the investment, and provides a clear plan that can be executed and measured. Here are three things to consider when getting started with a successful content marketing strategy:

1. Do You Know What Your Customer Personas Are?

Marketing isn’t effective unless you keep your audience in mind. It is crucial that you take the time to identify your customer personas. Why? Because you need to create a representative example of your ideal audiences.

You should use a wide range of information to build out your personas, such as personal motivations, their preferred communication, their values, and so on.
Then, once you know who your different groups of customers are, you can begin to build a strategy around each of them.

2. Map Out Your Sales Funnel

You need to fully understand your unique sales funnel as a business. This means knowing where the content you create will fit into the different stages of your customer's journey. Don’t take this task lightly, as this is likely to be fairly complex for a B2B strategy.

Your ultimate aim should be to effectively map out a strategy to target leads at every stage.

3. Set Clear Goals

Content should always be created with a purpose. Is your aim to earn links? Are you trying to drive social engagement? Do you want to increase your organic traffic by a certain percentage within six months? Whatever your goals, you need to know them before you can create an effective content marketing strategy.

Creating A Content Marketing Strategy

Whether you are creating B2B or B2C content, the fundamentals of creating your engaging content remain the same. You just need to have a solid strategy behind what you do, with your personas at the centre of it.

At SilverDisc, we have the expertise and tools to help you progress and grow through content marketing – get in touch today!