According to the Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
So how is this different than traditional marketing?
Content marketing focuses on a pull rather than push mindset and is a two way conversation with customers. This is important because this subtle shift in methodology and approach lends itself to a more cost effective lead generation strategy that is used by 92% of B2B marketers.
More leads, lower costs, and everyone else is doing it? If you’re ready to start content marketing the good news is that this isn’t rocket science and there are plenty of examples to pull inspiration from.
B2B Content Marketing can take many forms including:
- Blogs
- White Papers
- Videos
- Webinars
- Ebooks
- Podcasts
- Social Media
- Infographics
So you’re ready to create valuable content for consumers and already have a few different forms in mind to try out, but when you sit down to write your first blog post you end up staring at a blank page. What gives? Wasn’t this supposed to be easy? The beauty of content marketing is the ability to not have to reinvent the wheel.
If you are struggling to fill out your content marketing plan here are a few places to turn to in order to help find the information you may need.
Use sales materials or product brochures. Your product manuals are chock of great information. Usually these materials are more product focused but with a content marketing pivot they can be a great starting point or idea generator.
Talk to seasoned employees. Employees who have been around the block know where to find information or who to ask to get the ball rolling. They can help you find helpful information and are a great sounding board to bounce ideas off of to hone ideas to create valuable content to consumers.
Identify commonly asked questions. Sit down with your sales or customer service reps. What questions do they get asked most often? What misconceptions do they have to clear up? These are great content opportunities with immediate use cases.
See what the competition is doing. Remember when we said 92% of B2B Marketers use content marketing? See how your competition is using content to connect with customers to fill our your content strategy.
Have a question about how to get in front of customers? Get in touch with our team today to see if Wahl Marketing can help you with your B2B marketing needs.