If you’re a B2B technology company, you know that content is important. But do you know why having a documented content marketing strategy is just as important?
A written content marketing strategy can provide a number of key benefits for your company. These include helping you market, sell, create thought leadership, generate demand, and differentiate from your competition. In this blog post, we’ll discuss why every b2b technology company needs a content strategy.
What is a content marketing strategy?
A content marketing strategy is a well-structured, documented plan for how you will create, publish, and manage the content that fuels your brand marketing, demand generation campaigns, sales process, or account-based marketing strategies (among other things). A sound content strategy helps you focus your content production on your audience’s needs, ensure that all of your content is high-quality, and avoid duplicate or outdated content.
In the simplest sense, there are four key components of a content marketing strategy: audience, objectives, messaging, and tactics.
- Audience: Who is your target audience? What are their needs? What kind of content will they find valuable?
- Objectives: What are your business goals? How can content help you achieve them? And what are your audience’s ‘jobs to do’? How can your content help them complete them?
- Messaging: What themes or topics will you cover? What are the core messages (talking or writing points, so to speak) that should be clearly and consistently conveyed in your content? What is your brand voice? What tone should you use in your content?
- Tactics: How will you create, publish, and manage your content? What distribution channels will you use? How will you attract audience and keep them engaged?
In practice, the strategic planning process and specific components of your strategy may be more nuanced — but if you’re new to content marketing strategy (or new to content overall), the simple take above should give you a good place to start.
How does content marketing strategy benefit B2B tech companies?
Having a content marketing strategy can help you in a number of ways. Let’s look at just a few.
First, it can obviously help you market your business better. A strategy will provide you with a focused framework for using compelling content to engage, attract, influence, and ultimately convert ideal customers into informed buyers. By creating high-quality, informative content, you can establish yourself and your company as experts in your field. This will make it more likely that prospects will turn to you when they have a need, and that they will recommend you to their colleagues.
A good content marketing strategy also defines the ways in which the content library you create can directly support your sales team in their efforts to close more business. The best way to use content to support sales efforts is to create targeted assets for each stage of the sales funnel. For example, at the top of the funnel, you might create content that helps prospects learn about key issues in their industry or for their profession, better understand their own needs, and learn how the category of solutions you provide can help them solve these issues and address these needs.
As prospects move down the funnel, you can create content that helps them compare your solutions to alternatives, and make a more informed buying decision.
If you’re using an account-based marketing (ABM) program to target key accounts, content can play a major role. The first step is to create a list of targeted accounts. Once you have your list, you can use account-based intelligence tools to research the specific needs of each account. With this information in hand, you can create truly targeted content that speaks directly to the needs of each specific account and the requirements of the individuals that make up that account’s buying committee. This content can be used in a number of ways, including:
- In emails and other outreach to decision-makers at targeted accounts
- As gated content that prospects must fill out a form to access
- On landing pages designed for specific targeted accounts
How can a B2B technology company differentiate with better content?
Differentiation is critical for any business, but it’s especially important for B2B technology companies. There are so many options available in the marketplace, and it can be difficult for buyers to understand the differences between products and services. That’s where content comes in. By creating targeted content that highlights the unique features and benefits of your products or services, you can help prospects understand why you’re the best choice for their needs.
At the same time, a robust full-funnel content marketing strategy governs the ways in which your organization uses thought leadership to influence the way your buyers think about key issues facing their own industry, sector, or profession. And allows you to establish a unique, differentiated perspective on these issues.
What are some content challenges for B2B technology companies?
There are a few challenges that B2B technology companies face when it comes to content, all of which factor into content strategy decision-making.
First, business technology buyers tend to be skeptical, and they can be turned off by marketing speak, unsupported claims, and technobabble. That’s why it’s important to create content that is honest, transparent, and helpful.
Second, business technology buyers are often very busy, and they may not have time to read long-form content. That’s why it’s important to create a mix of content types, including short blog posts, infographics, and videos. This doesn’t mean there’s no role for long-form. When it’s truly useful, it can play a prominent role in establishing brand relevance at the top of the funnel and validating purchase decisions lower in the funnel. But a smart strategy will establish clear roles for various asset types to ensure that your content is actually consumed by your intended audience.
And third, B2B technology companies often have a lot of complex products or services, and it can be difficult to explain them in simple terms. That’s why it’s important to work with true subject matter experts when creating content, and often to use clear and concise language.
Considerations like these should inform your organization’s overarching content marketing strategy, as they will influence key decisions about content formats, asset types, brand voice, writing style, and even workflow.
How do you develop a content strategy?
The first step is to understand your audience. Who are they? What are their needs? What kinds of content will they find valuable? Once you have a good understanding of your audience, you can start developing a content strategy that meets their needs.
The second step is to determine what kinds of content you will create. Will you write blog posts? Create infographics? Shoot videos? The type of content you create will be determined by your audience’s needs and preferences.
The third step is to create a content calendar — or more broadly, a tactical plan. This will help you plan and organize your content so that it is released in a consistent, timely manner. be sure to document relevant and realistic workflows that specify who is responsible for what steps of the process, how your writers will partner with your subject matter experts (or whether your SMEs will be doing the writing themselves), how you’ll work with outside agencies, freelancers or media partners, and how any given content asset will move from idea and outlining to approval, publication, and promotion.
The fourth step is to determine how you will promote your content. You can’t just create great content and expect people to find it. You need to promote it through social media, email marketing, paid advertising, and other channels.
As you go, be sure to involve all stakeholders in the process, and get buy-in from everyone on the team. Content is very much a team sport. More involvement, greater buy-in, and stronger alignment across teams and functions always result in smarter, smoother, more successful implementation over time.
We can help
If you’re ready to develop a content marketing strategy for your b2b technology company, we can help. Contact us today to learn more about our content marketing services. We’ll work with you to create a custom content strategy that meets your unique needs and helps you achieve your most important business goals.
