Content marketing to customers is one thing. You have to be entertaining, personal, and focus on a large target audience, namely everyday dads, moms, or teens who just want a reliable product or service.
But what about B2B content marketing – or content marketing not focused on consumers, but on other businesses? Should it be stuffy, serious, and full of technical terms that only other businesses will understand?
Businesses are staffed with regular people too, and they like a good story, video, or well-thought-out essay as any stylish shoe shopper or churlish video game fan. When done well, B2B content marketing can be as fun and creative as its B2C counterpart, even though it’s not generally thought of that way.
So heads up, B2B brands and marketers with B2B clients: Follow these four B2B content marketing tactics for more effective (and even exciting!) results.
Keep it Simple and Clean.
Like B2C content marketing, you want to get your B2B message out in as clear a way as possible. No need for technical talk and fancy jargon, although most industries have their own common technical terms, which make sense to use. But overall, good writing—and good content marketing—is easy to read and simple to understand. Naturally, you want to keep quality high as well, so make sure the design is tight, the research is solid, and the grammar and punctuation and other English-y classy stuff is all perfect.
Don’t Be Afraid to Recycle.
Just as your used yogurt cup becomes repurposed to build the next SpaceX rocket (maybe?), your highly-trafficked list or essay or ebook could be remade into, or make a good basis, for a similarly well-trafficked video or infographic. You should be using video more often anyway. And a great way to start down that road is to look at what you already have and figure out how you can do something else with it, whether that’s a YouTube video, ebook, Slideshare presentation or something else completely different. Like a Pokemon, content can evolve into other forms of content, and become even stronger and more shareable.
Don’t Be Afraid to Use LinkedIn
LinkedIn has its very specific uses and, fortunately, one of them is for B2B marketers to share content with other businesses. It makes sense: it’s where most businesses and B2B marketers hang out, network, and post their own content—up to 94 percent, according to LinkedIn. Join a Group, post a Page, take advantage of blogs and targeted advertising. Since so many companies are already “linked in”, chances are you’ll get the attention of businesses you’re targeting. Speaking of which…
Focus on a Niche, and Don’t Be Dull.
Like B2C content marketing, you want to target a specific audience with engaging, personal, informative, and entertaining content to attract the specific, focused businesses you want to attract. A good way to accomplish that is to not be dull. That sounds a little mysterious, but if you know how to inject a little personality in even the driest subject matter then you shouldn’t have to worry. And if you can offer solutions to common industry problems, or instill some insight into current trends couched within pithy, entertaining content then your value will be obvious and businesses will embrace you. And finally, don’t be afraid of being a little controversial. As an industry expert, you should have a strong pulse on your industry and some opinions to go along with it. We are, and it’s continually paid off with consistent organic traffic, thought leadership, and a few leads here and there.