How to create the best content marketing strategy for B2B business

Creating the right content strategy for your B2B business can be quite challenging, especially in the beginning because there are so many options to choose from. We know from experience how overwhelming this process can be, and unless you have an in-house specialist ready to guide you through the labyrinth of content marketing, you may need to consider external assistance.

With this thought in mind, we prepared a short step-by-step guide to give you a preview of the actions you will have to take when creating a content strategy for your B2B business.

1. Start with setting up your SMART goals

The first step in defining your B2B Marketing Strategy is to decide what your SMART goals will be.

For example:

you want to increase the monthly search traffic to your website
- Specific - it states exactly what you intend to do
by 10% (from 1,000/month to 1,100/month)
- Measurable - it gives you a starting mark to measure your progress
- Attainable - it is reasonable to say you can increase monthly traffic by 10%
- Relevant - it is in line with your business objective
in the next 2 months (from August 1st to September 1st)
- Timely - it states when the goal should be completed

Setting SMART goals to your content marketing can help you better understand the purpose of the content strategy and move your company in the right decision. Without defining, planning and tracking specific goals to achieve, you may just end up publishing content just for the sake of it.

2. Research your target audience and create buyer personas

Before starting to create any type of content, you should first know who you are creating that content for. The most efficient way to identify your target audience is to create a buyer persona which is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer.

For example, “Anna” can be your buyer persona:

Background information: Chief Technology Officer that has been working at the same company for the past 5 years, starting from an associate position, not married
Demographics information: female, age 35-45, living in an urban area
Identifiers information: calm demeanor, prefers to be contacted by email

With specific information about your target buyer persona, you can start creating a story about a normal day in their lives. Try to put yourself in their shoes to better understand their needs but also consider their desires and fears as these two aspects can help you reach them easier.

3. Identify the problem that your content will solve for your buyer persona

Start your research and identify at least 2-3 long-tail keywords that your target audience is searching the most. This will give you an idea of what they are mostly struggling with and by combining them, you can get the topic of your piece of content.

For example, your buyer persona might be looking for “cybersecurity threats for the financial sector in 2019”, “how to generate value from artificial Intelligence”, “application of artificial intelligence in the financial sector” and you can define your topic as: “How to create a cybersecurity awareness culture in 2019”.

4. Identify which type of content your buyer persona likes best

Statistics show that 43% of B2B companies are convinced that blogging is their most important type of content. But your target audience might be more interested in infographics, webinars, charts or videos. The best way to understand what type of content will work best for your business is to experiment with different forms of content and then use analytics to measure and track your performance. By carefully monitoring and reporting on the numbers, you'll be able to understand what type of content is engaging your buyer persona and what isn't. Keep experimenting until you find the success formula for your business.

5. Publish and manage your content

At this stage, you already have your content ready to be shared with your target audience. A good planning tool is crucial to help you be more efficient with your time management. Creating a social media editorial calendar might be a good idea to make sure you are on the right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content library on your website. Statistics show that B2B companies generally use LinkedIn (94%) and Twitter (87%) to share content with their target audience. Nonetheless, you should choose the social media channel that works best for your business and your own buyer personas.

Are you ready to create your own content strategy?

Any business can encounter challenges when working on its content strategy but it’s worth the effort, as you have the opportunity to get a cutting-edge insight into your customers’ journey and learn how to tailor your business to respond to their specific needs. If you are struggling with creating the right content strategy for your business or you just want to ask some questions, get in touch with us and our dedicated marketing experts will be happy to help or join the ABM Interactive Bootcamp.