B2B Content Marketing Guidelines to Follow

First off, what exactly is content? Content is not just limited to the words on your website (although page content is very important in terms of SEO and user-experience). Content can really be anything and comes in all kinds of forms; traditional white papers, blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, reports, Tweets, Facebook posts and updates, webinars and more. The definition of what constitutes content is really only limited to what someone can produce and publish.

Content marketing is one of the three components of inbound marketing (along with SEO and social media) and is one of the best ways a company can establish themselves as an industry leader and expert, while simultaneously connecting with their target audience. The goal of inbound marketing is to get potential customers to come to you through a variety of touch points, with your company website serving as the main hub and ultimate destination. Content marketing helps those targeted users find their way to your site.

Most marketers can tell you that B2C and B2B marketing are two different animals. One of the biggest differences lies in the content. A lot of B2C content is promotionally based and works to endorse a product or service, convincing a consumer to buy. Great B2B content can’t be “salesy” if you want it to be effective. B2B content, in whatever form it may be, has to work to educate and inform the consumer. You want your B2B content to become a resource for your target audience, something that they hold onto and refer back to.

Just because your B2B content shouldn’t be thinly veiled sales pitches, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use it to promote your business. It is content marketing, after all. Someone who takes the time to read your content is most likely a highly targeted consumer. They are looking for your content for help and information about your industry. You can use your content to position your company as the solution they were looking for.

Here is a sample B2B content marketing strategy that you can adapt to fit your own goals:

Step 1: Internal linking

Let’s say your company sells finance management software. You decide to write a “how to” guide for businesses that explains how to better structure their payroll department and employee payroll process. Even though you don’t mention your product by name, a section of the whitepaper suggests that by upgrading their finance management software, companies could streamline the payroll process. You list various reasons why and include data or real world examples to back up your claim. One of the times your mention “finance management software,” you turn the phrase into anchor text and link back to a product page of your site. A business owner who bothered to download your guide is actively looking for a way to better manage their payroll process and your product solves their problem.

By incorporating links into your content, you are inviting your audience to move that much closer to your main site.

Step 2: Promotion

Another great component of a B2B SEO content marketing strategy is to operate a company blog. Not only do blog posts rank on their own in the search engines, they are also a great way to establish your company as an industry expert. Over time, a good blog will develop a strong community of loyal readers. You can leverage your company blog to help promote your other B2B content by writing a promotional post that outlines your guide and invites your readers to download their own copy. Promotional blog posts are a good way to get your content in front of an audience that is already receptive to your message.

You can also incorporate your guide into your weekly company newsletter, positioning it in front of even more targeted readers. You can also encourage your social networking connections to download the content by posting the link on your social profiles. To extend the social life of your B2B content, incorporate share buttons so that readers can easily republish your guide on their social network. Once your content leaves your hands, you want it to have as long a shelf life as possible.

Great content attracts attention, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help promote it to get the ball rolling at the beginning. 

Step 3: Partnerships

If you have established relationships with other industry bloggers, you can reach out to them and ask that they write a review of your guide. This 3rdparty endorsement lends a lot of credibility to your content, since it’s a difficult to review a piece of promotional fluff as anything but. You can also ask other partners to drop a link to your guide in their e-mails, promote it on their social networks, add a small banner ad or link on their blog and so forth. Leverage the partnerships you have and give your B2B content some legs and a better chance to succeed. The more people you can put your content in front of, the better chance you have of increasing your conversion rate, while simultaneously building your brand.

Step 4: Advertising and more

If you have a little extra money in your PPC budget, consider purchasing PPC ads or banner ads on popular industry blogs and other sites. Smaller sites many not drive thousands of visitors to your landing page, but they can still produce quality traffic. You can create a landing page for your B2B content that incorporates good call-to-actions to encourage visitors to download your content. You can set up your landing page so that they just need to fill out a form with their name and e-mail address in order to download your guide. This is a good way to build a list of qualified names for your e-mail marketing campaigns. Since they have already downloaded your content, they are a much more targeted consumer.

Make the most out of your B2B content marketing strategy. The aforementioned steps are just a basic outline that you can adapt and tweak to fit your own needs and limitations. By publishing great content, you earn the trust of the search engines and consumers alike.