Content marketing is said to be a B2B marketer’s secret weapon. There are several reasons to leverage B2B content for your marketing strategy. It enables you to generate leads, increase brand awareness, and engage with industry thought leaders.
The primary reason for going with B2B content marketing is high Returns on Investments (ROI). That’s precisely why most B2B marketers consider a solid content strategy to be the reason behind a brand’s success. However, it does not end with the ROI. B2B content marketing has several other benefits too, such as:
Generates More Leads
In today’s digital world, even a brick-and-mortar purchase starts online. Any customer looking to buy a product or service begins with a Google search before deciding. The same is true for the B2B market.
You can create content for your blog and website to get on the radar of the decision-makers who start with an online search for the products or services they need.
Suppose you are an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution provider serving other business clients who want to leverage AI in different industries. When the decision-maker searches for “AI in manufacturing” on Google, your blog post with the same title shows up. The person reads the blog and finds out that you can provide AI solutions and contacts you.
You now have a potential lead you can convert to sales. Similarly, content marketing can help you generate several such leads through your website, social media platforms, videos, podcasts, etc. However, just creating content won’t help. You need to focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO helps you rank higher on search engine results. If you do well and increase your SEO, content marketing can get you high ROI at a reduced cost. Hence, Tiffany Kent says that content marketing is an effective cost-cutting strategy to increase your ROI in a Money Talks series video on Atlanta Small Business Network.
Local SEO is also gaining a lot of importance. It helps you target a local audience with relevant keywords. If you don’t have the right skills and resources to create an impactful content marketing and SEO strategy, you can hire experts. For instance, you can hire an SEO firm in Atlanta if you run a small business there.
Builds Brand Awareness
Remember the traditional ways to build brand awareness. Adopting highway programs, billboards, aerial advertising, bus advertising, celebrity advertisements, etc., are some ways you would have made your brand awareness traditionally. While these tactics are still relevant, they will cost you a fortune.
B2B content marketing allows you to create a similar impact to all such campaigns but at a fraction of a cost. All you need is a website and a blog to share your brand’s information.
You can share information about your vision, mission, products, services, events, etc. The best thing is that it enables you to scale your content and brand awareness globally.
Cultivates Thought Leadership
Almost every content marketing strategy will require you to update content consistently. Updating the content will need you or your team to research. It will keep you aware of all the recent and popular ongoings in your industry. Hence, through constant research and updates, content marketing will foster a culture of thought leadership.
Enhances Engagement With Your Brand
You can create interactive content to engage customers with your brand. For example, you can have a quiz competition or gamify your website to build interaction. Moreover, you can also use a registration form for playing the game or participating quiz. This method will allow you to collect user information.
Improving engagement will further help with customer retention. You can engage your customers in long-term business relationships by sending personalized and relevant content. An easily relatable example is that of Amazon. Amazon uses a product recommendation system to send relevant products to existing users based on their purchase history, demographics, preferences, etc.
Sending relevant recommendations with informative content enables Amazon to build customer relations and increase order value. You, too, can use the data gathered from various sources to create engaging content and retain your existing customers. It will also help you save money as the costs of attracting a new customer is way higher than keeping one.
Final Thoughts
In 1996, Bill Gates said that “Content is the King.” The statement stands valid until now after two decades. In fact, it has become even more relevant in today’s digital world. The pandemic has further accelerated digitalization and the need for businesses to adopt content marketing. You can create a content marketing strategy and work on it to enjoy all the benefits listed above.