Importance of B2B tech content marketing strategy with 8 tactics

As a B2B tech company, do you have a content marketing tactic? If not, are you considering investing in one? Well, you should.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 77% of B2B businesses already have a content marketing strategy.

Nine out of ten B2B marketers agree that their organization’s content planning is focused on producing creative and crafted content.

You may ask, why has content marketing gained such prominence?

It's simple. Today’s clients want to gain adequate and valuable knowledge about a brand and its offerings before investing in it.

And to educate your target audience and get them excited about your offerings, you need to create engaging content.

Writing a few blogs per month, creating a couple of videos, or posting curated content on social media will not yield any results.

If you want to generate qualified leads for your B2B tech company, you need a solid content marketing strategy.

In this post, I am going to share 8 actionable and proven tactics to create a successful content marketing strategy for your B2B business.

Let’s get rolling.

What is B2B Content Marketing Strategy?

B2B content marketing refers to the process of creating and distributing professional, high-quality content to inform, educate, and develop brand affinity in your audience.

The fundamental aim of a B2B content marketing strategy is to help your potential clients and customers address their business challenges and grow.

In doing so, you gently guide them to your brand and solution.

When you provide value through content marketing, you are able to connect with different kinds of leads at different stages of the sales funnel.

B2B content marketing strategy is different from that of B2C because here you are targeting other businesses. The challenges and solutions of businesses are different from those of consumers.

When creating a content marketing strategy to impress your B2B tech target audience, focus on providing authoritative content.

As a B2B marketer, think of providing actionable information that gives expert solutions to prevailing challenges in the industry. It's the secret to creating a successful B2B tech content marketing strategy.

Top 8 Tactics to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

With the understanding of what B2B content marketing strategy is all about, let’s explore a few tactics that can help you create an effective strategy.

1. Understand Your B2B Target Audience

At the heart of a good B2B content marketing strategy is a good understanding of your target audience. Your efforts as a great content marketer, begin here.

The basic purpose of content marketing is to speak to a group or groups of audiences and convert them into customers. But without knowing whom you are addressing, you can never create a successful content marketing strategy.

This is how to go about it.

• Gather and analyze customer data to understand behavior patterns, characteristics, and preferences of your audience
• Group your audience into smaller and specific segments
• Analyze the challenges or pain points each segment is facing and how your business can offer a solution

Once you have mapped all this information, you are ready to better align your content marketing strategy to meet your B2B clients’ requirements.

2. Set Smart Goals

As I mentioned earlier, random content creation will have no impact on your sales.

Right at the onset, you should clearly define objectives and goals for your content marketing strategy.

Setting smart and specific content marketing goals is incredibly important to generate leads and drive sales

Your content marketing strategy goals could be:

• Creating brand awareness
• Improving loyalty
• Establishing your authority
• Increasing website traffic
• Attracting partnerships and collaborations
• Generating leads

Your goals will determine the content formats you’ll use in your content marketing strategy. Creating thought leadership articles, for instance, establishes your authority.

3. Diversify Your Content

B2B content marketing is all about engaging your target audience and bringing them value. And to scale that efforts AI tools can be of great help. There are many popular tools like Jasper and smartwriter but they are expensive. Instead one can use Jasper alternatives that you can use to build your pipeline.

According to Demand Gen’s Content Preferences Survey Report, these are some of the most valued content formats for B2B clients.

It is evident that B2B customers research specific content formats and sources before making a B2B deal. Thus, these content formats are a must-have in your B2B tech content marketing strategy.

• Research and Surveys
• White papers
• Ebooks
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Case studies
• Press releases
• Blogs and guest posts
• Videos
• Testimonials and reviews
• Newsletters

I would suggest getting started with some of the easier formats like blog posts, guest posts, press releases, and newsletters. And with a free video editor, videos are also easy to create.

As you gain experience, you can consider the rest of the formats.

Plan to create different types of content for every stage of your sales funnel.

If you’re using a powerful sales funnel builder like ClickFunnels or any of the great ClickFunnels alternatives, use it to understand the buyer’s journey. Then optimize your content marketing efforts to nurture leads at all stages.

4. Generate Stellar Content Ideas

If choosing the right content format is a challenge, generating stellar content ideas is a whole new ball game.

How do you know what topics will be liked and shared by your audience?

Well, that's where your buyer personas come to your aid.

When you know their preferences and the challenges they are seeking solutions for, you focus on those topics.

Some other avenues to generate attention-grabbing topics are:

• Keyword research
• Industry trends
• Customer surveys and feedback
• Blogs by industry experts
• Discussion forums and social media groups
• Tech events (online and in-person)

Along with focusing on what your audience wants to read, create branded content too. This way you can get your leads to incline towards your brand as a suitable solution.

Video content is most popular form of content right now and you can create different types of videos such as good shoppable videos, explainer videos and product video, etc.

5. Create a Content Distribution Plan

It is vital to include a content distribution plan in your content marketing plan. Here are some important channels you should consider.

Your Website

As a B2B business, your website is the most important channel for content distribution.

That's because your website is the first place potential customers visit to know more about your business and solutions.

Optimize all the pages including the landing pages, ‘About Us’ page, pricing, and FAQs page.

Dedicate pages where you can publish case studies and resources. Share client testimonials to impress potential buyers. Since your website is the most important channel for content distribution, it's important to keep an eye on its performance by using website monitoring tools.

Email

B2B marketers agree that email newsletters are one of the best means of content distribution.

Using a good email marketing tool, you can send out newsletters to your subscribers periodically. Use it to inform them of your latest blog posts, ebooks, white papers, and other content you create.

Social Media

LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to build a professional network and generate highly-qualified B2B leads for your business. Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are also good platforms for content distribution.

You need to actively respond to your followers and react to messages in effective ways on Instagram and other social media platforms to get good results.

Podcasts, webinars, videos, infographics, and blog posts are some of the top content formats to share with your audience on social media.

Paid Advertising

Yes, your content marketing strategy should include paid ads too.

By creating compelling and click-worthy paid ads, you can drive qualified traffic to your website. In order to optimize your paid advertising efforts, consider hiring a B2B PPC agency to boost your ROI with their specialized expertise.

6. Prioritize Content Collaboration

In a highly competitive world, it is vital that you join hands with top contributors, experts, and thought leaders in your industry to craft a successful content marketing strategy.

When you allow guest posts on your blog, you are enriching it with new perspectives and unique experiences. You are also boosting visibility as these collaborators will bring traffic to your website.

Apart from guest posts, you can create collaborative content through panel discussions, joint research projects, social media takeover, podcast guest swaps, and much more.

This live panel discussion held by Hays is a good example of content collaboration.

7. Determine Metrics and Monitor

A B2B content marketing strategy is meant for the long run. You must keep modifying and expanding your content marketing strategy to cater to your audiences’ changing demands.

To ensure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, focus on the right metrics.

These metrics will be determined by the goals you set for your content marketing strategy.

Today we have good content marketing tools to regulate and monitor different metrics to comprehensively measure the performance of every campaign. By regularly monitoring these metrics, your team can determine what is working for you and what’s not.

You can redesign the underperforming plans to reduce costs and improve the ROI of your entire marketing strategy.

8. Study Your Competitors

Well, this may sound like a cliche but studying your competitor’s efforts is one of the most important tactics to create a strong B2B tech content marketing strategy.

A well-rounded competitor’s research will involve analyzing:

• What makes them successful
• The kind of content they are offering their audience
• Their collaborations
• The gaps in their strategy

Use the insights from this analysis to create content that showcases your USP. Give your audience enough reasons to choose you over other players in your niche.

With the help of credible content, convince your potential clients that your solutions are the best for them.

Get Ready to Create a Strong B2B Tech Content Marketing Strategy

When the question of ‘what is marketing for a B2B business’ is asked, the answer is simple. It's all about building relationships and influencing your audience’s decisions.

To achieve these goals, it's imperative that you have a strong content marketing strategy.

These content marketing tips that I have shared above have helped me drive sales for my B2B clients and I know they will work for you too.

Go ahead and incorporate these tactics into your content marketing strategy to boost your lead generation and improve your conversion rate.