Targeting Your Content to Your B2B Audience

The content marketing revolution has transformed the world of B2B marketing. The birth of marketing automation platforms in the mid-2000s also launched the digital content marketing industry. Content marketing means telling the story of your company’s product or service objectively and demonstrating thought leadership. You establish a thought leadership position by creating meaningful content that leaves an impression on your target accounts.

Marketing automation systems need content to fuel demand generation. Without content, there’s nothing to link to from the calls to action (CTAs) on your landing pages. Demonstrating thought leadership would be impossible. Your company needs content to demonstrate its knowledge of industry topics. Content has become the cornerstone of a successful marketing program, especially when it comes to developing an effective email marketing strategy that actually converts.

You need to keep the content engine running and keep it fueled throughout your marketing campaigns. A complete strategy is paired with content for every stage of the buyer journey. Content must be engaging, entertaining and based on the stage of the relationship. Throughout the buyer journey, you’ll use marketing technology to help deliver content at the right stage, at the right time and to the right contacts.

In this chapter, you’ll see how to generate a response from your different types of content, giving you a framework to start your own content marketing program. It also describes best practices for measuring the success of your content marketing programs, including optimizing your email contact lists to maximize the impact of your campaigns.

Building a Content Library

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 80% of business decision-makers want their company information in a series of articles, not in advertisements. The buyer journey is a complete life cycle, starting from the moment a prospect first connects with your company. Your potential buyers want to read and digest information at their own pace instead of being spoon-fed by a salesperson. With a library full of content, your prospects can select the content they want to read or the videos they want to watch.

Host your company’s content library on your website, labeled “Resources,” “Resource Library” or “Knowledge Center.” For local businesses looking to grow their online presence, a strategic approach to website design in Île-de-France becomes essential to maximize the impact of their content.

A content library will include gated content behind a form. That way, you capture a contact’s information before they download the content. Content is used to attract inbound activity to your website, discover new contacts and nurture existing ones. You need a lot of different content, because each piece will serve a different purpose in the buyer journey.

Essential Content Types

Your content library should showcase your company’s expertise and thought leadership position in the industry. All the different pieces of content should inform your prospects, educate them on best practices and guide them through the buyer journey:

White papers: This long-form content is created as a PDF and should be served early in the buyer journey. A white paper is an excellent way to demonstrate thought leadership in your area of expertise. Across all industries, producing and distributing white papers to your prospects is considered a best practice for moving prospects through the sales process.

Ebooks: An ebook is an even longer version of a white paper. Ebooks are used to incorporate even more quotes and content from other thought leaders and industry insights. The difference between a white paper and an ebook is both length and design. An ebook is a longer work, averaging at least 20 pages or more.

Infographics: When you have only eight seconds to capture your prospect’s attention, an infographic helps you stay top of mind. These graphics should also be served early in the buyer journey to help raise awareness of your product or service.

Case studies: Letting your customers share their success stories in case studies is good for you (prospects will hear about authentic results from real customers) and good for your customers (their stories promote awareness of their businesses too).

Webinars: Early in the buyer journey, webinars are an excellent tool for generating awareness and engagement in your qualified target accounts. The goal of producing webinars is to create more interest among the contacts in your account.

Blog posts: Your company blog is a key component of your marketing website. Your prospects and influencers will check your blog for the latest topics your company is writing about. New content should be published on your blog at least once a week.

To ensure your content campaigns are effective, it’s crucial to maintain clean, verified email lists, because even the best content can’t convert if it doesn’t reach its target.

Adapting Content to the Buyer Journey

Beginning: Awareness

The beginning of the buyer journey with your company is about awareness for early-stage prospects. At this stage, the prospect becomes educated about the problem and potential solutions. Content relevant to the early stage includes blog posts, ebooks, infographics and white papers.

With ebooks, infographics and white papers, the goal is to educate about the problem your company solves, not about your company. Don’t include detailed information about your product or service in this early-stage content.

Middle: Evaluation

The account has been qualified and the sales team is trying to create an opportunity. At this stage, the contacts in your account become educated about why they should buy from your company. Content relevant to the middle stage includes case studies, video testimonials, webinars and social media engagement.

End: Decision

The sales team is trying to close the opportunity and win a new customer. At this stage, the contacts in your account need to see how your company will continue to support them after the deal is done. Content relevant to the final stages of the buyer journey includes “how-to” content showing how they can easily adopt your company’s product or service.

Storytelling and Why It Matters

As discussed earlier, the whole point of developing and sharing content is to tell a story. The importance of storytelling for modern B2B marketers cannot be overstated. Your prospects don’t want to watch an ad or hear a product pitch. Today’s buyers want to be informed and educated so they can reach a decision independently.

The content your company produces should help tell a story to your buyers, so they can be guided along a path that leads to becoming customers. This narrative approach must be supported by strategic content creation that maintains consistency across all your channels.

Three-Act Narrative Structure

Beginning: The problem is introduced. At this stage, you educate about the challenge your industry or your prospects face.

Middle: Possible solutions are explored. You present different approaches to solving the problem, subtly positioning your expertise.

End: The resolution is presented. Your solution is presented as the logical answer to the problem initially introduced.

Taking a B2B Perspective on Your Content

Imagine walking into a store. The shopkeeper knows your size, the colors you like, your sense of style and your price range. B2B marketers need to think more like the shopkeeper who treats every customer like a VIP with tailor-made clothing; you tailor your message to the contacts in an account.

Know Your Audience

Remember that your audience is extremely important because you’re taking a target account approach. Your content should be specific to the industries and market segments identified in your buyer persona.

Deliver Content in a Meaningful Way

Don’t just send a mass email to thousands of people every time you publish a new infographic or white paper. Your content was designed with your audience in mind. To maximize the effectiveness of your sends, make sure you use our complete email address verification and cleaning solution, which ensures your valuable content actually reaches your target audience.

Producing Content by Vertical

Your content should be specific to the industries and market segments identified in your buyer persona. Verticals refer to the market. A vertical market is the type of industry. Examples of vertical markets include financial services, commercial real estate, fashion, retail stores and gaming.

Why Specialization Matters

Writing content without basing it on an industry is like speaking a foreign language to someone who isn’t fluent. Publish a case study for every vertical you target. When you target that industry, you need to provide proof of how your solution works for their peers.

Basing Content on Personas

For your content, consider the stage of the buyer journey and who is in the account. Your marketing team needs to educate both an individual person or contact and all the contacts in the account who have a stake in the purchasing decision.

Considerations by Seniority Level

Individual contributor: This person is tasked with finding the right solution for their own role. In terms of content, this individual contributor needs to see “how-to” guides. Questions your content should answer for this persona include:

• What can your product do to deliver functionality and ease of use?
• Which integrations does your platform support?
• How easily can you pull reports or show metrics?

Manager or director: The department manager needs to know that your company can actually do what the individual contributor says you can do. A manager wants to see these types of content:

• Positive product reviews on the internet
• Case studies, customer use cases and video testimonials

Executive: The project sponsor, who is a stakeholder in its success. He or she is the ultimate decision-maker, aware of the budget and investment required. The types of content this person wants to see include:

• Financial proof: A brief or spreadsheet showing an estimated ROI
• Competitive analysis: How your company is better than other vendors
• References: Connecting with your customers to confirm you really have a solution

Humanizing Your Content

The entire marketing industry is evolving. Instead of business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, it’s often referred to as human-to-human (H2H). Humans want to buy from one another and build relationships. It’s these relationships and personal connections that build trust.

Demonstrating Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is one of the strongest influences in B2B marketing. A thought leader is someone in your industry who is perceived as a subject-matter expert. Thought leadership is presented through your content. Demonstrating thought leadership in your content is very different from traditional marketing or advertising.

Channels for Demonstrating Thought Leadership

Content: In your ebooks, white papers, case studies and blog posts. Focus on a topic that aligns with your product.

Videos: In all your video content, from high-level product overviews to detailed demos and customer testimonials.

Press releases: In your media communications, quote industry sources that support your go-to-market claims.

Social media: Regularly post content on your area of expertise on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Webinars and in-person events: When you host an event, decide on a central theme and topic. Then find other thought leaders to join your event.

Reaching Prospects Through Technology

Technology, such as marketing automation platforms and CRM systems, has made more precise B2B marketing possible. Most of your content is distributed through digital channels. Most of your gated content that requires a form to download will be hosted in a central hub (your marketing automation platform).

Employing a Content Strategy

According to the Content Marketing Institute, less than 44% of B2B marketers meet daily or weekly to discuss the progress of their content marketing program. To succeed with targeted marketing, you need a strategy for distributing your content.

Think about your strategy with this formula:

Strategy = Content + Context + Channel

Content: The marketing piece you send. It’s a blog post, white paper, case study, handwritten note, infographic, video or whatever medium you’ve selected.

Context: The timing and situation when you send content. Context depends on the stage of the buyer journey.

Channel: All the ways you can distribute content and connect with your accounts. Channels include digital methods (such as email, social media, content downloads from forms and ads) and more traditional channels.

Context Considerations

There’s always context surrounding the account. In a perfect world, your contacts in the account would say, “We want to do business with you!” But that’s just a dream. A specific event will trigger the move to the next stage of the buyer journey.

Types of situations to consider for context:

Qualification: The content you send to a new account that matches your persona for the right company size and industry.

Big news: When one of your target accounts publishes a funding announcement or another press release with a major announcement.

Events: In-person events (such as conferences and trade shows) or online events (such as webinars and virtual summits).

Job change: A LinkedIn alert that a contact in your account has been promoted.

Delivering Content on the Right Channel

A combination of content and activities will be needed to build velocity with accounts. By publishing content across various channels and running several campaigns, you can create energy and awareness among your target contacts.

Cross-Promoting Your Content

You put a ton of work into creating valuable content. One way to extend your reach and get your content in front of the right people is to have a cross-promotion strategy.

Social media: You can use social media to share your latest content, such as a new white paper or blog post.

Blog posts: When you publish a new case study, white paper or ebook, write a blog post featuring an excerpt from that content.

Ask customers to share: When you’ve interviewed a customer for a case study or video testimonial, send the link to the customer you interviewed.

Webinar replays: After a webinar, turn the recording into a video and publish the webinar slides on a landing page.

Measuring Your Content’s Effectiveness

The formula for a successful content strategy is Context + Content + Channel. To determine whether your content is effective, you need to measure the results.

Evaluation Questions

Depending on the content, here are questions to ask to determine whether your content was effective:

• Did the white paper, ebook or case study you sent to a prospect move the account to the next stage?
• If you sent a direct mail campaign, did they receive your mailing and acknowledge it?
• If you launched an ad campaign, did you reach the contacts in your target accounts?

Continuous Optimization

To maximize the effectiveness of your B2B content campaigns, it’s essential to maintain the quality of your mailing lists. Regularly cleaning your email lists ensures your content actually reaches the decision-makers you’re targeting, improves your deliverability rates and optimizes your marketing return on investment.

Content is only effective if it reaches its target. Investing in the quality of your contact lists is just as crucial as investing in creating the content itself.

Optimize Your B2B Content Strategy Today

B2B content marketing is no longer optional; it’s a strategic necessity for establishing your authority and generating qualified leads. But even the best content can’t convert if it doesn’t reach its target or if your contact lists are poor quality.

Your Immediate Action Plan

Step 1: Audit Your Current Content

• Assess relevance by persona and journey stage
• Identify the gaps in your content library
• Analyze the performance of your existing content

Step 2: Optimize Your Distribution Infrastructure

• Clean your lists with our professional email verifier
• Implement an automated cleaning system
• Integrate our complete verification solution

Step 3: Develop Your Content Strategy

• Create persona-driven content for every stage
• Set up a structured editorial calendar
• Continuously measure and optimize your results

Need Help with Your Content Marketing?

As a web development specialist with expertise in digital strategy, I help B2B companies transform their approach to content marketing to generate measurable results.

Contact me to find out how to optimize your B2B content strategy and multiply your conversions with a data-driven, technically optimized approach.