As online B2B marketers, we work in a very competitive space. Every serious business keeps investing more and more into their digital presence. A lot of those resources are going directly into content marketing.
The reasoning is simple. It’s a proven inbound lead generation strategy. By consistently driving in organic traffic, you’re raising the chances of getting new leads by widening the pool of prospects.
Not only is content marketing a powerful SEO and sales generating tool, but it also stimulates audience engagement. You provide information that’s searched for. So, other specialists in the field (and companies looking for a marketing agency) are more likely to form a relationship with your brand.
However, you can’t just make any content, sit back and expect success. You must diligently do your research and produce high quality material that’s of interest to your target group. Let’s dive deeper.
Quick tip: if you want B2B industry pros to handle your content strategy for you, get in touch with us right now!
Why Is Content Marketing Important
Content marketing is important because it’s a bridge between you and your audience. You transition from being “just another business”, to a brand that caters to the informational needs and wants of potential customers.
By bringing people closer to your brand, you’ll also increase conversions down the road, and improve your ROI. However, not all content is going to connect with the people you’re trying to reach.
To generate leads in today’s age, you’ll have to stand out. And to stand out, you have to provide consistent and engaging high quality content. The more you can make your audience feel involved in what they’re reading, the more it’ll influence their decision-making.
After all, why pick a SaaS, or marketing services, from a company that just doesn’t speak to you? If the message doesn’t resonate with your own brand’s identity and culture, it’ll matter less how highly rated they might be efficiency wise.
This is also another reason for which your company image must come across as a homogenous “product”. You need brand consistency every time you’re interacting with a potential customer, no matter the channel. Content marketing is no different.
If you recommend one practice one week, and a completely different one the next week (without proper documentation, explanation or arguments), what will that say about your credibility? The “trick”, if you will, is to build a sense of trust in your audience.
You must create the generally agreed idea that you’re an expert, worthy of your reputation. And if you’re someone who’s voice bears weight, then your products or services also become desirable.
That’s what you do through content marketing.
The Top 12 Benefits of Content Marketing
1. You Build Brand Trust
You always want to create a positive experience for your target group. The more you show that you can be trusted as a business, the more your services or products will be requested. What’s more, content marketing works as inbound lead generation, meaning that your audience will keep coming back for more themselves.
2. You Increase Brand Visibility
Content marketing is intrinsically linked with SEO. So, the better your content is optimized, and the better the keywords you target (high search volume, low difficulty) per page, the higher you’ll show up for those queries on Google Search. You’ll also rank higher on other search engines too.
3. You Create Social Media Traction
Having followers is one thing, However, getting your posts liked, re-tweeted or engaged with in other ways is a different thing. This is also one way in which you can use content marketing to your advantage. Random posts or general updates can only get you so far when you want to draw in B2B leads.
But, quality content will serve your audience’s search and learning intents. It’s a way of getting traction on social media and being followed out of an actual interest.
4. You Improve the Prospect’s Interest
Creating a positive experience related to your brand is a surefire way of keeping prospects around. It compels them to come back time and again, and here’s the best thing: they do it out of their own free will! No PPC or constant messaging required.
If the information you’re putting forward is good enough, they’ll even act as a WOM (word-of-mouth) marketing channel themselves.
5. You Create Inherent Value
First of all, you educate your prospects. That’s great in itself, as you’ll “speak the same language” if they transition into a lead. Furthermore, a common practice is the use of “lead magnets”. Think of a downloadable e-book or guide for best practices in that industry, accessible from that content’s URL.
In exchange, you get an email address for future newsletter marketing (for example). Since your audience gets something in exchange for basically nothing, that’s free value for them right there.
6. You Generate Better Leads
Content marketing is an essential step in your lead generation funnel. The information has to be useful, and it’s also free by default! By providing valuable knowledge, prospects are inclined to click on your CTA (call-to-action).
You can place the CTA within the content, at the bottom, in the hero image, on the side, etc. However, from an SEO standpoint, some placements are less recommended.
After clicking the CTA, they’re taken to your sales-focused landing page. It’s a more intuitive way to guide your prospects to where you want them to end up anyway. However, they also actively gain useful information along the way too. Everyone wins!
7. You Increase Conversions
Any well-made website will have service pages praising the quality of that service. But, through content marketing, you directly show your audience you know what you’re talking about. When they see you’re a valid source for industry-centric information, it’s more likely for them to convert.
Similarly, try to see what your competition is doing, and build on top of that. Keep everything original too! No one’s going to buy from your business if they don’t see a spark of genius particular to you.
8. You Optimize for SEO
With every new piece of content, you’re targeting new keywords. In time (at least 6 months for considerable results), your pages will rank higher and higher for those keywords, if optimized correctly. So, you’ll build your domain’s authority for Google’s crawlers/spiders as a complete whole for your niche.
9. You Establish Yourself in the Industry
Every company wants to stand out, and content marketing is a solid strategy to achieve that goal. The better the quality, the more gravitas you’ll have when writing/speaking on the matter. Besides, being seen as an expert will also improve your sales pipeline by itself, no extra effort needed in that regard!
Do you want even more closed B2B sales in a shorter timespan? Schedule a call and let us assist you.
10. You Build Brand Awareness
Content marketing is also a great way to get in front of more people. When a business is looking for a SaaS solution, but they’re not sure what they’re looking for, guess what? They’ll search on Google! So, if you’re in that industry, it’s in your interest to write about the best options.
This is one way to be found by new prospects. Of course, you must provide quality, consistent, and engaging information.
11. You Reduce Marketing Spending
Never associate the cost of content marketing with PPC ads. They’re not even close. You’ll spend thousands and tens of thousands of dollars on online ads.
Sure, a very long and in-depth article can also go for thousands of dollars, but you won’t always be needing that (it depends on your niche and your keywords, of course).
You could choose to go the in-house route, hire a freelancer, or go with an agency. We recommend the latter, since we’ve been doing business like this for 5+ years already for our clients.
When you choose a reputable agency like X27 Marketing, you know that you’re getting content that’s SEO friendly, user friendly, and informative.
12. You Create Brand Loyalty
You have to go past brand awareness. Sure, people know about your brand, but they must like your brand too. Content marketing cultivates positive feelings about your business, and makes your audience WANT to associate themselves with you.
When they reach that point, they’ll even be advocates of your business without being asked to do so. And, we all know how important recommendations are in the B2B world.
What is Content Scoring?
Content scoring is evaluating how your content is performing, and determining its true potential. You look at metrics such as unique views, time on page and conversion rates.
This will help you assess what type of content you should be putting forward to convert as much as possible. You can also use content scoring as a predicting mechanism for the amount of engagement the content will generate.
The better you understand your audience’s needs, the more laser-focused content you can write for them. If users aren’t engaging well with a piece of content, content scoring lets you analyze why that is, and if you should continue pursuing such topics.
How a Business Should Score Its Content
Not all content is made equal and for the same purposes. Track your metrics in a way that fits your goals.
For example, structure your content marketing like this:
- Create a scoring criteria — what is most important for you? What does the content need to achieve? Views, clicks on some URLs, conversions, etc?
- Settle on a target — pick your best performing content piece as the goal. Evaluate the others accordingly. Do however also take into consideration the keyword’s strength (searches vs difficulty)!
- Monitor performance — how is your content performing? You can check a variety of metrics through Google Search Console and Analytics, both of which are free and can be integrated with your website.
- Discover patterns — you’ll likely see some pieces doing better than others. Analyze them and see what you’re doing differently there. Try and replicate the success in other pieces.
A lot of this is done manually, but this guarantees attention to detail and adherence to your content scoring system.
How to Create Proper Content
Content marketing will be the king of your inbound lead generation strategies only if you cater to your audience. Additionally, you must optimize for SEO, no two ways or half measures about it.
The trick is knowing how to combine both of these aspects: the technical side, and the human side.
Exclusively technical content will not rank. Google’s algorithms are at a point where they can also analyze how natural the language sounds, and if the content is actually written for another human to read.
Exclusively creative content will not rank. You can write articles that are extremely engaging & informative to read, but no one will find them. That’s because you must also pay attention to keyword density & optimal placement, structure in accordance to top ranking pages in SERP, pillar-supporting topic classifications, creating schema markup, etc.
Content marketing that combines both of these aspects though is going to rank.
So, how do you do that? It’s very simple actually. Just drop us a message whenever, and we’ll be in touch to discuss all of your marketing needs, content included.
We’ve already generated over $100,000,000 in B2B sales for our clients, and can’t wait to raise your business’s ROI too.
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