Contrary to popular belief, creating content is difficult – and creating engaging and purpose-driven content is even harder.

To do so, you must have an in-depth and engrained knowledge of your brand, its tone of voice, look, and feel, and then somehow successfully present all of that in a single message that appeals to your target audience, in their language, on their active channels. 

Even so, once all that has been achieved, who’s to say your target consumer even saw it, let alone engaged with it, particularly since recent data suggests that “an average ‘good’ engagement rate on LinkedIn is around 2%”.

Despite all this, here are 9 reasons why your B2B business needs a content marketing strategy.

9 Reasons Why Your B2B Business Needs A Content Marketing Strategy.

1. Boosts Brand Awareness:

Content marketing increases visibility and helps your business stand out in the marketplace.

2. Establishes Industry Authority:

Sharing valuable insights positions your business as a thought leader, building trust and credibility.

3. Generates Quality Leads:

Relevant content attracts potential customers who are genuinely interested in your products or services.

4. Nurtures Relationships with Prospects:

Consistent content keeps your business top-of-mind, helping to build and maintain relationships over time.

5. Improves SEO and Online Visibility:

 Regular content creation improves search engine rankings, driving organic traffic to your website.

6. Supports Long-term Business Growth:

A well-executed strategy helps your business grow by providing sustainable and scalable customer engagement.

7. Educates Your Audience:

Content helps explain complex products or services, enabling your audience to make informed decisions.

8. Enhances Customer Retention:

Providing useful content keeps existing clients engaged, increasing loyalty and repeat business.

9. Drives Cost-Effective Marketing:

Content marketing is often more affordable than traditional marketing, offering long-term benefits with a lower budget.

How To Create The Right Content For Your B2B Business

In order to ensure what you are putting out reflects your brand, you must first know what your brand is. In large companies this is often reflected as a ‘brand guideline’ consisting of the brand’s core visual assets, such as logos, taglines, colour schemes, and fonts, as well as less tangible branded elements which includes the likes of tone of voice, design styles, and the brand’s service offering. 

Although not a necessity, creating this type of document is something we do suggest to our clients, as we find it holds the brand accountable to a certain standard, and avoids mixed messaging in the content output stage.

We follow a rigid framework when it comes to creating content. We are very clear on what our brand is, but more importantly, what it isn’t.

Once you have a clear understanding of your brand, you can then accurately answer the following questions:

• Why are we creating content?
• How do we want our brand to be perceived?
• Where are our target audience most active?
• How do our target audience engage with content?
• What does that content look like in the context of our brand?

Being able to answer the questions above provides a great foundation for your business to begin executing your content marketing strategy. 

Now is as good a time as any to raise that there is no one size fits all content marketing strategy. It’s essential to constantly ask yourself the above questions and check in with other brand stakeholders to ensure you are in fact providing value.

To hold ourselves accountable, we often follow the 3 E’s principle, which in short suggests that your content should aim to achieve one or more of the following.

Educate – your audience about your brand, your offering, and its key points of difference.

Elevate – your brand as a way of social proof, or justification.

Entertain – your audience in a way that provides value to them and keeps them wanting to engage with more of your content.

Creating Engaging Organic Content For The Right Channel

You’re more than likely familiar with some of the most common forms of content seen on digital channels. These often include:

• Blogs
• Social media posts
• Videos
• Emails
• Other forms of media aimed at building relationships and trust with current and potential customers.

A common mistake businesses make is that they think they need to be creating all of the above, and blasting across multiple channels without any strategic thought. That’s a highly ineffective and unsustainable approach to content marketing.

From your answers to the questions above, you should already have insight into the type of content your target audience consumes. This means that you can apply energy to the channels and content types that are most likely to achieve the goals of your brand. Let’s apply this concept to an example.

You are a garden maintenance business that only operates in a localised area, and your biggest constraint currently is generating organic leads. Your target consumers are home owners who are time poor and as such aren’t able to maintain their own garden. Being time poor yourself, in this scenario, you need to be decisive where you put your time and budget, meaning you need to be digitally active where your clients are. Meta, more specifically Facebook, may be an ideal channel to promote your services.

As the type of service you offer is commonly known, there isn’t much education needed in order to inform your audience, so your digital point of difference may come down to social proof and your ability to present your service aesthetically.

As such, you decide to create two pieces of content weekly, one is a short video that showcases a timelapse of a garden getting a cleanup, and the other is a before and after image alongside a quote from the homeowner you have completed the service for.

Adding a website contact link to both of these, along with your phone number, provides optional calls to action for the viewer, and ultimately achieves what your content strategically needs to.

In this example, the business owner:

• Showcases the brand’s service offering
• Highlights social proof
• Captures leads

Takeaway

The key takeaway here is simple – you don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be where your audience is and create content relevant to them.

Incorporating content marketing into your overall brand and marketing strategy is an excellent and effective way to grow your brand and your business. 

To learn more about Kings Digital and the role we play in building brands, visit: https://www.kingsdigital.com.au/expertise/digital-strategy