Step-by-step guide: how to create a B2B content marketing strategy
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 4:11 am
Strategy
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 90% of organizations use content in their marketing efforts. If you don’t already have a content strategy for your B2B company, it’s important to start developing one.
A content marketing strategy is the set of steps you take to research, create, publish, and promote valuable information to an audience. Neil Patel defines it as a blueprint or roadmap that allows you to get from point A to point B, and when you don't have one, you're more likely to lose sight of your business goals.
Furthermore, B2B content marketing , as an inbound marketing strategy (or attraction marketing ), is key to educating and informing audiences at different stages of search. In fact, according to Google data, 89% of B2B buyers gather information about potential purchases via the Internet.
This, combined with other favorable statistics such as that vp business development email lists content marketing generates 3 times more clients than traditional marketing and costs 62% less, according to a publication by Ahrefs, highlights the importance of creating a quality content strategy that attracts potential clients and converts them.
Yet only 43% of marketers have a documented content strategy, according to CMI’s 2021 Content Management & Strategy Survey .
Planning and documenting these guidelines is key, as research shows that they are often indicators of content marketing success.
Steps to develop your B2B company's content marketing
Steps to create a content strategy
While most businesses understand the value of content, not all of them implement successful content marketing strategies . If you want your brand to attract the right audience to improve conversions, stand out from the competition, and position yourself as a leader in your industry, it’s important to take these steps.
1. Set content marketing goals
The first thing to ask yourself is why you plan to create content. In this regard, it is essential to align the results you hope to achieve from content marketing with the goals of your overall marketing plan .
In turn, the results expected to be obtained by the different members of the marketing team and other departments such as sales, if applicable, must be aligned.
Because of this need for alignment, it is advisable to carry out a dynamic of sharing objectives. To do this, you can do an exercise with your team, in which each participant individually writes down their content marketing objectives and then shares them with the other team members. The objectives of each participant can be captured in a template like the one presented below:
Content Marketing Goals Template
Once these are set out, the team can discuss the objectives and choose those that everyone considers most relevant.
This definition of objectives can also help determine key aspects of the content marketing strategy such as the type of content to be produced, the formats to be used, the frequency of publication, among other aspects.
2. Identify your audience
To achieve the expected results with a content strategy, the company's target audience must be identified.
There are two key steps to identifying your audience. The first is to create a B2B buyer persona and to do so, you need to ask yourself questions like:
Who are your potential customers?
What are you interested in?
What do you value about the company?
How often do they buy?
The second step is to precisely define who your audience is. That is, which companies your business targets, which people in high-responsibility jobs (positions) you want to attract, and which markets. You must also define whether there are multiple audiences you want to captivate (from different industries, for example), or just one.
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 90% of organizations use content in their marketing efforts. If you don’t already have a content strategy for your B2B company, it’s important to start developing one.
A content marketing strategy is the set of steps you take to research, create, publish, and promote valuable information to an audience. Neil Patel defines it as a blueprint or roadmap that allows you to get from point A to point B, and when you don't have one, you're more likely to lose sight of your business goals.
Furthermore, B2B content marketing , as an inbound marketing strategy (or attraction marketing ), is key to educating and informing audiences at different stages of search. In fact, according to Google data, 89% of B2B buyers gather information about potential purchases via the Internet.
This, combined with other favorable statistics such as that vp business development email lists content marketing generates 3 times more clients than traditional marketing and costs 62% less, according to a publication by Ahrefs, highlights the importance of creating a quality content strategy that attracts potential clients and converts them.
Yet only 43% of marketers have a documented content strategy, according to CMI’s 2021 Content Management & Strategy Survey .
Planning and documenting these guidelines is key, as research shows that they are often indicators of content marketing success.
Steps to develop your B2B company's content marketing
Steps to create a content strategy
While most businesses understand the value of content, not all of them implement successful content marketing strategies . If you want your brand to attract the right audience to improve conversions, stand out from the competition, and position yourself as a leader in your industry, it’s important to take these steps.
1. Set content marketing goals
The first thing to ask yourself is why you plan to create content. In this regard, it is essential to align the results you hope to achieve from content marketing with the goals of your overall marketing plan .
In turn, the results expected to be obtained by the different members of the marketing team and other departments such as sales, if applicable, must be aligned.
Because of this need for alignment, it is advisable to carry out a dynamic of sharing objectives. To do this, you can do an exercise with your team, in which each participant individually writes down their content marketing objectives and then shares them with the other team members. The objectives of each participant can be captured in a template like the one presented below:
Content Marketing Goals Template
Once these are set out, the team can discuss the objectives and choose those that everyone considers most relevant.
This definition of objectives can also help determine key aspects of the content marketing strategy such as the type of content to be produced, the formats to be used, the frequency of publication, among other aspects.
2. Identify your audience
To achieve the expected results with a content strategy, the company's target audience must be identified.
There are two key steps to identifying your audience. The first is to create a B2B buyer persona and to do so, you need to ask yourself questions like:
Who are your potential customers?
What are you interested in?
What do you value about the company?
How often do they buy?
The second step is to precisely define who your audience is. That is, which companies your business targets, which people in high-responsibility jobs (positions) you want to attract, and which markets. You must also define whether there are multiple audiences you want to captivate (from different industries, for example), or just one.