20 Best B2B Content Marketing Ideas & Formats That Work
A Databox survey shows that marketers publish fresh content multiple times every week.
B2B content marketing is the subtle art of making other businesses see the value of partnering with your business for certain solutions with the help of content. It differs from B2C as the approach needs to deliver value, be more technical, and be solution-driven.
Let’s take a look at 10 excellent B2B content marketing ideas and the 10 ways to present your B2B content to your desired target audience.
Table of Content
- 10 B2B Content Marketing Ideas
- 1. Have Your Own Resources Page
- 2. Select The Right Horizontal Keyphrases
- 3. Target Your Webinars
- 4. Invite Guests to Create Content for You
- 5. Leverage Reverse Psychology and the Power of Negatives
- 6. Give Options to Your Target Audience
- 7. Solve Real Problems
- 8. Extend Your Survey and Develop Industry Insights
- 9. Create a Community
- 10. Focus More on What’s Selling
- 10 Great Ways to Present Content for B2B Marketing
- Key Takeaways
- Get Started With Effective B2B Content Marketing
- FAQs
10 B2B Content Marketing Ideas
B2B marketing isn’t tough if you know where and how to begin. You can leverage the 10 excellent B2B content marketing ideas discussed below to get started.
1. Have Your Own Resources Page
Thoroughly informative content is at the core of every B2B content marketing strategy. If your business has created content for the B2B industry for a long time, your website is a huge source of information.
It would be a pity for this information to remain unorganized and hard to find.
The first content marketing idea thus focuses on creating a ‘resources page’ to house all your B2B marketing content. This page would function as the equivalent of an online directory which would contribute to a positive user experience.
2. Select The Right Horizontal Keyphrases
Successful content marketing helps your website rank at or near the top.
Content marketing can be called successful only if it helps your website rank on the first page, depending on factors like daily visitor traffic.
One way to do that is to ensure you use all the horizontal key phrases relevant to your industry and the blog-specific content you create.
Additionally, you might want to look into different verticals that allow room for your horizontal keyphrases to fit in – to improve the outreach of your content.
3. Target Your Webinars
Webinars have become extremely popular today for professionals to connect with their audience and build new business relationships. They also help experts collaborate on a virtual platform to discuss innovations and revolutionary ideas.
Niche-specific webinars can help your business target more relevant professionals. For example, a webinar about cloud technology may attract a random audience with very few convertible leads. However, a webinar about the benefits of load balancing through cloud technology may attract business leaders looking to optimize their digital channels for traffic handling.
Put simply, you must be specific in your webinar content to attract convertible leads.
4. Invite Guests to Create Content for You
This may sound counterproductive, but reaching out to industry experts and well-known figures to create content for your brand is a brilliant B2B content marketing idea.
That is because it shows that your brand:
- Has associations with well-known figures in the industry.
- Generates content that holds authority because experts have worked on it.
Inviting reputable guests to write sends your potential clients the message that your brand knows the industry inside and out. It helps bring more potential clients on board.
You can build a healthy relationship with these industry experts that will enrich your brand in the years to come.
5. Leverage Reverse Psychology and the Power of Negatives
The human mind is trained to focus on problems and single them out. You can use this tendency to highlight the “losses” your target audience would experience without your product.
Focusing on the benefits and real-world solutions that your products provide helps you showcase to the audience what they are missing out on if they do not buy from you.
6. Give Options to Your Target Audience
Owing to the presence of your competitors, your target audience isn’t just considering your solution. You can redirect your target audience’s focus by creating content that is far more specific and tailored to your target audience’s needs.
You can establish a firm grip on the industry by pitching your solution against others in the industry and highlighting its benefits.
The content you create for this purpose must be supported with data, numerical results, case studies, client testimonials, etc., as these inclusions make your solution look more authentic.
7. Solve Real Problems
The best way to solve problems for your clients is to understand the same. You can design surveys and calls for this purpose. These surveys can combine offline and online distribution methods, such as leaflets, cold emails, etc., for effective results.
You can then create content highlighting how your product or solution can solve these problems for businesses. Ensure that you use the right keywords to attract warmer leads actively seeking these solutions.
Better yet, publish the survey results to establish the authority of the content.
8. Extend Your Survey and Develop Industry Insights
Businesses love to read content that has lots of insight in it. Your business can develop insightful content by processing existing data (like the information collected through surveys as discussed above).
The results from the surveys and questionnaires that your business collected can be fashioned into industry insight and published in the form of a blog.
Such content tells your leads that your business knows what it is doing and is serious about providing solutions that address real-world problems.
9. Create a Community
You can try creating an online content community if your business belongs to a specific niche (like data analytics solutions). This community can invite outsider contributors to start a conversation thread on relevant topics.
This creates an opportunity for your business to publish highly targeted, relevant content and have other experts or users of such solutions carry the conversation forward.
This community has the potential to become a huge database of relevant content that other businesses can tap into anytime – whether for troubleshooting or to keep track of the latest updates in the industry.
10. Focus More on What’s Selling
Every business has that one solution or product that sells more than the others. If your business has one or more of such services or products, focus on creating more content for these niches.
One way to begin creating this content is to focus on your most profitable products.
You can publish case studies or request the client to leave feedback that you can showcase. Additionally, you can also set up meetings with your sales teams to figure out the same.
Now, after learning about the various ways to create content, let us focus on how to distribute them.
10 Great Ways to Present Content for B2B Marketing
There are multiple forms and structures to create content. You should present your B2B content in the best suited format so that it is impactful and works well with your strategies and target audience.
For example, comparative blogs are better presented in tabulated formats instead of running paragraphs for better understanding.
Listed below are the most popular forms to present B2B content marketing ideas.
1. Blog Posts
If you are going to announce new launches, company news, etc., or information related to the same, blog posts are the best options. You can also use blogs to publish advisory content and establish your brand’s authority in the niche.
The most effective way is to designate a few company representatives as publishers for most of your blogs.
2. Case Studies and Examples
Case studies are considered hard evidence for the solution after being tested in the real world. Their impact on buyer intention is humungous. Therefore, if your business can request statistics from old clients, gather the information, and compile it into a case study.
Consider mailing case studies to your potential leads as branded content as well for added impact.
3. E-Books
E-books are a great way to compile your subjective and technical information into a single piece of content and publish it on your portals.
They are a concentrated form of information that aims to deliver deep knowledge and insight to the readers.
They can work in favor of your website’s SEO if published online. Additionally, making E-Books downloadable can help your business capture lead details by asking for their email.
4. Whitepapers
Whitepapers are just like eBooks, with the only difference being the length. They are more concise and aim at delivering the crux of a topic with as much statistics, insight and detail as possible from a PDF with only a couple of pages.
Whitepapers are easily consumable by your target audience because they aren’t lengthy to read, they summarize all the necessary details, and they can be downloaded for handy access.
You can provide your bestselling service or product details to the target businesses through whitepapers.
5. Presentations and Slides
As a business, you must frequently attend conferences and present your product or service to the audience through presentations.
One excellent B2B content marketing strategy is to make these presentations available on your website for viewing.
You can also convert your webinars or virtual conferences into handy presentations summarizing the crux for easy understanding. It helps more businesses find your solution and connect with you.
6. Tutorials
Does your product have tools that can do more than what is evident? You can present this B2B content marketing idea of handy tips and tricks through video tutorials, guiding your clients on maximizing the benefits of using your solutions.
The SEO for this content needs to be spot-on so that the clients looking for a quick fix can find your tutorial content easily within a few search results.
7. Podcasts
Does your business belong to an industry that has listeners? If yes, then podcasts can become your best friends for presenting highly informative content for B2B audiences.
You can leverage podcasts to establish a more humanized experience for your B2B audience. You can talk about industry updates, how your solutions fit in, and much more.
For the best results from podcast content, you will need to market them on channels like social media.
8. Product Details
What is the first thing that highly interested buyers do? They look up your website and navigate it to find the product they are interested in.
They are basically looking for more information. For B2B marketing, the best content strategy is to make this information readily available to influence business decisions.
You can either publish a handy blog on product details on the products page, or you can include downloadable whitepapers and case studies.
9. Frequently Asked Questions
One of the best ways to deliver high-quality and informative content without having to go deep into the other aspects of a subject is by using FAQs.
Through this format of content delivery, your potential clients can quickly read up about the content that they are looking for without getting stuck reading the entire blog.
Frequently asked questions also work to help your SEO strategies by providing one more avenue to place your specific, highly targeted keywords.
10. Microsites
Microsites are micro-level websites of sorts that contain detailed information about a specific aspect of a product. For example, for a data analytics business, a microsite displays the details for a specific tool, software, or service within the brand’s full data analytics solutions.
Key Takeaways
Marketing to a business needs a unique approach. To that end, content is an excellent tool that gives you versatility and flexibility to showcase your business and products.
- In addition to blogs, articles, and newsletters, you get the option to advertise your expertise using case studies, white papers, eBooks and more
- You can highlight your products in better detail using microsites, tutorials and presentations
- Creating online communities, engaging your audience in creative contributions, and even analyzing data to develop insights can help inform your B2B marketing campaigns
B2B marketing may be complicated, but with the right approach, your products will get noticed.
Get Started With Effective B2B Content Marketing
The B2B marketing approach thus differs to quite an extent when compared to B2C marketing.
However, with the right content marketing ideas and ways to present those ideas, it is possible to create a high-quality network of informative and relevant content for your B2B audience.
You can thus refer to the sections above for B2B content marketing ideas that will help you boost your business and bring about a healthy collaboration with other companies.
FAQs
B2B content marketing is a strategy that focuses on creating, publishing & distributing content relevant to a target audience of businesses. This content helps build relationships with key decision-makers & demonstrates the value of a company’s product or service.
B2B content marketing helps build brand awareness, engage prospects, & generate leads. By creating valuable content, you can demonstrate expertise in a particular area & establish yourself as a thought leader. This helps to build trust & credibility.
To get started with content marketing, identify your target audience & develop a strategy to reach them. Research keywords & create content based on those relevant to your target audience. Develop content that is engaging, informative & helpful.