How to Create a Successful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Creating a successful B2B content marketing strategy is easier said than done; many marketers have different views on what works and what doesn’t. Eighty-six percent of digital marketers are using content as a way to educate and inform their audience, according to MarketingProfs.

If you aren’t seeing results from your content marketing efforts, then there could be one thing standing in your way of it being a success: relying on your memory instead of writing it down.

When you are writing countless pieces of content and dispersing them to several different websites, keep a detailed content schedule and follow these tips for a thriving marketing strategy.

Related Article: B2B Marketing: Focus on the Big Picture

Create Measurable Goals

Being able to measure you content marketing results is extremely important for a successful campaign, yet many content marketers fail to create goals. You need to know the results of your campaign in order to find out which content is getting results and which ones aren’t. Do you know what your goal is?

According to the 2014 Marketing Score Report by the Content Marketing Institute, 86 percent of marketers want to generate leads, while 85 percent want to convert leads into sales. Whatever your goal is, make sure it is one that can easily be measured to find out its level of effectiveness.

Write for the Customer

All too often, companies write more for the search engines instead of the customers, trying to cram as many keywords and SEO techniques into each page. This is a big no-no. Not only will the customer not be as interested in reading it, but Google penalizes websites for keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO tricks.Your content should have a natural flow that doesn’t seem forced and will inform and educate them on your industry, company, products or topics of interest.

Also, not every person reading your content is going to be familiar with your industry or the topic, so write in a way that all readers can easily comprehend. Refrain from using too big of words that your colleagues probably know but your audience won’t.

Create Content Your Customer Wants to Know

Don’t write content just for the sake of writing it; create useful material that will give your reader information they can use in their daily lives or find interesting.

Was there a new study conducted they might find interesting?

Are there any questions customers are constantly asking you that may make a great article?

If you are still stumped as to what a great compelling topic would be, check out social media. Group discussions in LinkedIn are an excellent way to see what some hot topics are in your industry. Following industry-related hashtags on Twitter is a valuable resource to learn what content is being shared the most. Once you know what’s trending, create content around that topic. Whatever topics you decide to go with, if your audience won’t read it, then it’s not worth writing about.

Invite Your Audience to Sign up for Unique Content

Blogging and website design will help your marketing efforts, but to increase the interest level of your audience, offer a special piece of content that is only available on certain days. For example, create a whitepaper or e-book and email it to everyone who signs up for it on your website. By doing this, your audience will anticipate this unique piece of content every week, and, if they like what they have been reading, will go to your website every week to obtain that valuable information.

Be Consistent

Sporatically publishing an article will not yield high consumer engagement results. You need to consistently be writing and publishing content. If you are writing a blog once every 2 or 3 weeks, you could be losing a great deal of visitors due to the lack of consistency. Another drawback to being inconsistent is the fact that it could hurt your rankings in Google, especially since they look for websites that have fresh content.

A great way to make sure you are continuously creating content, use an editorial calendar and keep track of how many times a week you want to publish a blog, guest post or social media posts. In addition, you can use this to map out what topic you want to write about for each day. Create a calendar a month in advance in order to know exactly what you are going to write about and where the articles are going to be published. Trust me; this will make your job much easier and more productive.

The tried and true adage still holds true: content is king. This will not be changing in the near future. With a measurable goal, trending topics, unique content and consistency, you will not only be boosting your readership and lead generation, but you will also be drastically improving your rankings, making it easier for customers to find you.