B2B Content Marketing

What is B2B Content Marketing?

Especially in the B2B sector, content marketing holds a significant position. B2B content marketing refers to the creation and promotion of content specifically designed to reach certain B2B target audiences. The goal is mainly to increase the company's visibility and use the created content to generate qualified leads.

B2B Content Marketing and the Customer Journey

While companies in the B2C sector typically interact with a large number of customers, the B2B sector is characterized by a selective clientele and long-term customer relationships. Organic B2B content marketing is shaped by not only defining an understanding of the target audience's needs and desires but also delivering appropriately tailored (SEO) content along the touchpoints of the Customer Journey.

In B2B content marketing, the consideration of the Customer Journey is sometimes neglected. However, only marketers who understand at which points of the Customer Journey the right content needs to be placed for the target audience to be found by B2B prospects can effectively reach and win over B2B customers for the long term. Particularly, organic visibility in the form of search engine optimization is a crucial factor here. Target audiences looking for B2B services often start by using search engines like Google in the first step. This means companies that perform well with unique B2B SEO content are also reachable by the potential audience.

5 Important Steps in the B2B Content Marketing Process

As a result, B2B content marketing builds on developing a long-term content marketing strategy in close coordination with the touchpoints of the Customer Journey. Fundamental steps are undertaken, from defining B2B goals to conceiving an SEO strategy and proceeding to the publication and continuous review of the content.

Defining B2B Goals

As the basis for B2B content creation, the first step is to define what goals are to be achieved with the content marketing strategy. B2B content is always directed at a specific target group and ideally provides a benefit. Only those who define goals can measure the success of their strategy later.

Among the overarching goals is often lead generation, to acquire new customers. At the same time, B2B content marketing also reflects a company's general language and communication strength, allowing content to be used to position itself as a company and strengthen its brand. Furthermore, a possible goal can be to improve bonding with existing customers and share expertise.

Target Audience Analysis

In the second step, a professional target audience analysis is conducted. This is crucial to implement customer communication correctly. Core questions at this point include:

• What problems (and questions) does my target audience have? 

• How does my service contribute to solving these problems? 

• What characteristics do the individuals within my target audience have? 

• How does my target audience search for solutions?

A well-founded target audience analysis is necessary to develop specific buyer personas in the next step. Buyer personas are abstract profiles of potential business customers fitting the target audience's schema. The more extensive the offered service is, the more complex the target group is. Often several decision-makers such as buyers or executive managers participate in acquiring extensive services, so many different needs must be simultaneously met. And in the B2B sector, the rule is:

Only those who know their audience in detail can deliver ideally tailored content and choose the right content formats!

Developing an SEO Strategy

Content marketing is understood as a sub-discipline of a holistic SEO strategy. Besides technical aspects like loading time, sitemap, or robots.txt, B2B SEO content marketing must be tailored to the special needs of the target group.

In B2B SEO, it's about getting to know customer wishes through intensive competitor analysis, keyword research, and topic research in detail. This sector has many specificities that must be worked out with an SEO strategy concept and require a rethink. Purchase processes in B2B, for example, take significantly more time, so customer contact must be maintained through trustworthiness and expertise. In the B2B field, the choice often falls on long-tail keywords, i.e., long specific search terms, as they frequently reflect the target audience's complex interests. Low search volumes should not deter here, as long as the search term covers a specific interest.

Another aspect is choosing the right content formats. Whether classic whitepapers or dynamic video content on YouTube - the possibilities in B2B SEO are almost unlimited here. While classic text content like guides is often found in B2B, innovative content ideas offer a lot of potential to stand out from the digital competition.

Creating an Editorial Plan

After strategic planning in detail, implementation follows in practice. From an agency perspective, the recommendation is clear: Successful B2B content marketing focuses on quality rather than quantity. Half-heartedly created blog articles and guides are very rarely crowned with success.

Even if preliminary analyses have revealed a broad spectrum of questions, search terms, and potential formats, companies should initially focus on the most demanded content. To plan publication, it is recommended to create a structured editorial plan.

The editorial plan records which topics will be published at what time. Simultaneously, the planning defines which content formats will be used and on what basis, e.g., results from a previous keyword research, the content will be created. Generally, a well-founded editorial plan is compiled several months in advance. Possible trending topics should also be considered and appropriately ranked over time.

Publication and Marketing

The success of a content marketing strategy not only depends on what content is published but also on how visible published content is to the addressed target group. Based on this, it can be beneficial to specifically promote content after publication.

Continuous Evaluation

Based on specific SEO KPIs, the performance of published content is evaluated. The evaluations can determine which content needs optimization. Poor rankings are usually an indication that the created content in its current form is not relevant enough compared to the competition. Here, search terms need to be re-checked, and content may need to be expanded or changed.

But be careful! An organic content marketing strategy requires time. While initial tendencies appear after a few weeks, well-founded results are sometimes only visible after several months.

Content Formats in the B2B Sector

There is a multitude of content formats available for conveying content in B2B. A large number of companies choose classic formats that are frequently used in B2B:

• Blog Articles 

• Whitepapers 

• Guides 

• Case Studies 

• E-Books

• Webinars

These mainly focus on conveying expertise. To fully exploit the potential of B2B content marketing, the B2B target group should be fed with the right content along the touchpoints of the Customer Journey.

B2B SEO – Stand Out with Unique Content!

Blog articles, whitepapers, and guides are true classics in B2B SEO. To stand out and further improve access to the B2B target audience, the marketing strategy should be fundamentally expanded.

Especially social networks like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook prove to be effective in the age of new digital marketing. It's reason enough for even traditional companies to think outside the box and explore the potential of B2B social media marketing.

Exploiting the Potential of B2B Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the first touchpoints between companies and B2B target audiences. While it was once argued that specific B2B groups weren't present on social networks, this argument mostly no longer holds. At the latest, in specialized B2B networks like LinkedIn or Xing, all B2B areas converge digitally, from interns to executives.

The opportunities of B2B social media marketing are diverse. To strengthen expertise through organic marketing, it can be worthwhile to prepare traditional content from their website, such as whitepapers, blog articles, webinars, or case studies for publication on social (B2B) networks. Naturally, social media also offers ideal conditions to put their brand in the spotlight. However, purely organic strategies sometimes struggle in B2B social media marketing - a combination of organic and paid advertising measures has proven particularly effective in practice.

YouTube B2B - Advantages of a YouTube Channel for Companies

As one of the largest search engines in the world, YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms. At first glance, B2B marketing and YouTube seem far apart. But YouTube is also undergoing change and is now a relevant touchpoint for B2B. Older user groups beyond teenage years are active on the platform and are of interest to B2B.

So, how can YouTube meaningfully complement their B2B content marketing? YouTube can be used for various purposes, such as generating organic leads. Goals and synergy effects achievable with YouTube marketing, particularly YouTube SEO, are varied: from acquiring new customers to increasing brand awareness to boosting traffic:

• One B2B video format is, for example, explainer videos. These can be used alongside already existing content to illustrate complex B2B products or services and present them to the target audience.

• Customer interviews are the social media equivalent of the classic case study: Here, there is the opportunity to solidify a positive image of their products or services in the context of actual usage. Satisfied customers simultaneously strengthen trust in their brand.

internetwarriors – Your B2B Marketing Agency in Berlin

As a 360° B2B marketing agency headquartered in the heart of the capital, we offer you both competent consulting and operational support in all areas of B2B content marketing.
We view B2B content marketing as a component of a comprehensive online marketing strategy. We accompany you through all disciplines of online marketing and work closely with you to develop an effective marketing concept to achieve your goals. Contact us now!