Make Your B2B Prospects Love Your Blogs With Content Marketing strategies

“Content marketing rakes in conversion rates six times higher than other methods”

– The Content Marketing Institute

There was a time when content marketing strategies were damn simple. As long as you posted content, you were good to go & it never mattered if the content sucked. Coz, no one cared. Your content was working, you were ranking for keywords, and you were doing okay! Blogging was just a part of all this. And time has changed everything. The blogs that used to work ain’t working anymore. If you were lucky, you might have not got hit with algorithmic penalty for all those incoming links. Today without proper content marketing strategies, it’s impossible for marketers to plan their marketing campaigns. Content marketing strategies are still evolving & most successful marketers are now aware that the core of content marketing is not about space but about attention. Internet has made space almost limitless. Web pages can now be crafted with minimal cost. Videos & podcast messages can go as long as needed and brands can communicate directly with their audience. Unconstrained space has acted as a catalyst for the war for attention among marketers, even in B2B. B2B content marketing strategists are getting better at content marketing. But progress is still needed. This is because B2B blogs are notoriously difficult and many get washed out within weeks of their launch. The articles are written in a boring way & most of the time they simply don’t work. B2B blogging has always been a challenge for content marketers as ideas or inspiration can be difficult to come by. The sad part is that, sometimes even a well-crafted B2B blog or website with great content will remain futile by not having any visitors. This is all because blogging for the sake of blogging is not a good content marketing strategy at all. It’s like walking without knowing the destination. What content marketing strategists have to understand is that blogging is another piece of marketing and like all kinds of marketing, you want blogging to accomplish:

1. Let clients know that their problems & desires are understood.
2. Let clients know you are capable of satiating their expectations through your content.

Role of Blogging in Content Marketing

Your content marketing strategies should be formulated in such a way that your blogs let you strip away fear/ discomfort/ lack of trust clients’ face ahead of time. This is important primarily because traditionally the project workflow is that the client pays & the values are delivered. Here the clients are taking a risk & they have every right to be afraid that you won’t deliver value after they pay. This is where content marketing can be used in the form of Blogging to deliver value before anyone pays a penny. If you are able to deliver advice that helps them in their business journey, you have just proven that you can deliver value. Makes sense right! Besides all this, there are multiple other reasons to use blogs as your content hub. Owned media: The content of your blog is yours. You are not dependent on the change of rules of third-party platforms, such as the changes to Twitter, Instagram & Instagram. A Blog page or blog site can also act as go-to crisis management channel to get your message across 24/7. Blogs are another form of social media: Through the options of comments, social sharing & guest posting, blogs can act as the base for building a targeted community. Blogs support SEO: Blogs are search-friendly because of their structure. This focus can be enhanced by each article on a specific keyword phrase & by linking with internal & external content. Blogs drive sales (yeah, it’s true): To support sales, content marketers should write blog posts on how to use products & provide prospects & customers with the needed product information. You can link to your specific product pages for support. This can help sales in a big way. Blogs amalgamate a streamlined CMS: At its core, blogs are an easy to use, low cost content management system. For remarkable content, marketers need to keep a few things in mind. Here are a few content marketing strategies that you can apply to give your brand an edge this year.  

Always remember your buyer persona

Corporate soldiers who run inbound campaigns should be familiar with the buyer persona of their organizations or the segments of their audience related in both demographic & psychographic terms. Having a clear understanding of your customer enables you to create content that will appeal to them. Good content marketing strategists know that not all posts will appeal to every reader, as some won’t be interested no matter how you generalize it. Every piece of content that is made should have a mission considering a particular buyer persona & try to make its way to the mind of the audience. Bonus: 5 SECRETS TO AWESOME B2B BUYER PERSONA

Keep buyer journey in mind

Customer begins in an “awareness stage” & acknowledges a potential problem, after which they move to a “consideration” phase where they do research & finally reach at the “decision page” that’s focused on determining what will solve their needs. Blog content that’s conscious of stage of the buyer in the journey can ensure to find the information that is relevant at that time. Filling up your blog with just one stage while neglecting another will create scenarios where prospects won’t have any trouble finding website but will still be unclear on why they should consider you for a solution.

Never forget to use calls to action

A true content marketing strategist knows that the prospect’s interaction with your site should never end having finished reading a blog. If you have put in effort to get them there then you would want to keep them there. Every article post should include various Call-to-Action statements thereby enabling prospects to continue their journey. These Calls to Action not only apply to blogs but other downloadable content offers that can help out with lead acquisition. Consider your blogs as gentle jabs & downloadable offers as knockout haymakers.

Implement marketing automation & personalization

To many, marketing automation is just about email newsletters or triggered actions that happen in the background. This understanding is not wrong but there’s more to it when it comes to working within an inbound content marketing strategy. Designing an automation workflow that enables to reinforce the prospects interests before guiding them to the next stage of the journey is a great way to ensure that your eventual intention gets clicked. Bonus: 9 SUPERB MARKETING AUTOMATION FEATURES TO FOCUS ON Personalization is the key in B2B content marketing as relevance is always the guiding belief. It’s essential that the information being presented is something they care about & your interests will be aligned. This can be executed through email drips, but today there are tools that can change content within a page based on the viewer’s past browsing history. Bonus: PERSONALIZED MARKETING – THE KEY TO B2B 2018

Final words

Successful content marketing strategies are built upon the idea of nurturing prospects. Do not just merely recreate stuff that already exists on the internet. Try to go beyond what’s expected & surprise your customers! Also read on: SALES AND MARKETING ALIGNMENT – TIPS TO SAFEGUARD