Content marketing for b2b has been a hot topic lately. While it’s easy to get caught up in the hype, it’s important to remember that content marketing is a long-term strategy. With a little creativity and planning, you can create content that will improve your sales conversations and increase engagement. In this blog post, I’ll share some tips for creating content that will help you improve sales conversations. Check out the rest of the article to learn more!
Create content that educates and inspires
Creating educational content that helps your audience solve a problem is one of the most effective ways to generate leads and increase conversions. By providing information that empowers your audience to make a better decision, you can help them to trust you more and make more purchases. For example, if you’re in the food industry, create a guide that helps people make healthier choices with the help of nutritional information. Or, if you’re in the B2B space, create a guide that helps buyers make smarter purchasing decisions. The possibilities are endless. The goal of your content should be to help solve your audience’s problems, not to advertise your products or services.
Start with what you know
The biggest mistake a B2B content marketer can make is to start a content creation campaign without any idea of what to write about. One of the reasons why B2B content marketing is so challenging is because it’s so easy to start writing about one topic without having a clear focus for the content. To avoid this pitfall, you need to start with your current content marketing strategy and focus on creating content that adds value to your existing content on the topic.
Create a list of questions
Before you create content, take a moment to answer some important questions that will help you plan your content. Who are your ideal customers? What are they trying to accomplish? What questions do they have before they purchase your product or service? If you know your customer well, you can anticipate what they might be interested in learning about and write a content piece that will answer that question.
Brainstorm ideas
The first step to writing any type of content is to brainstorm some ideas. Brainstorming is a simple process in which you list all of the ideas that you have in your mind about a topic. When you do brainstorms, you can write them down on a piece of paper or use a brainstorming tool. For B2B content marketing, you can use the content ideas you gathered when you completed your buyer personas and your buyer journey map.
Write your content
Before you publish, write an outline of your content and a keyword for it. Keep your content simple and straightforward, but add in enough details that it gives the visitor all the information they need. The goal of great content is to educate your audience and help them make a decision to work with you. To help you craft your content, consider the buyer’s journey. Your buyer’s journey is the journey a buyer takes in the purchasing process, from first awareness to making a purchase. Your content can help them move through each step of the journey and provide them with answers to their questions.
Understand your customer’s challenges and pain points
Your goal is to establish a relationship with your customers. If they’re not happy with the products or services theyre using right now, they will most likely not be in a position to buy from you in the near future. Before you can build a relationship with them, you need to first understand why theyre unhappy with their current provider. It’s important that your content marketing efforts are aligned with your customers’ challenges. Otherwise, you’ll be writing about what you think your audience wants instead of what they really want. A great way to do this is to find an unhappy customer and interview them.
Customer support is hard to get
Having a good support team is critical to your company’s success. If they are not helpful or knowledgeable, your customers will find a better option. And when you have a good product or service, you want to make sure your customers are satisfied and stick with you.
The experience is inefficient and costly
For many businesses, the experience of generating leads and nurturing them to a sale is inefficient and costly. They don’t have a system for generating and qualifying leads, and they’re paying for leads that never end up converting anyway. There’s a need for better ways to find customers and increase the quality of their leads and then convert them into customers more efficiently. Content can be used to help guide their sales process to improve the quality of leads and increase conversions.
You don’t have the right tools to support your customers
Whether you’re working with a SaaS tool or a CRM, it’s likely that it doesn’t include all of the features you need to support your customers. If you don’t have the right tools, you can’t solve your customers’ biggest problems, and you won’t build lasting relationships.
Tell stories that connect
Stories are a way to express ideas, feelings and emotions in a way that can be easily remembered. People are more likely to remember a story and how it made them feel, rather than dry statistics or explanations. Connecting is a key part of building a relationship with your audience, so use your content to tell them a story that they can relate to. Make your content relatable by using examples from your own experience. When people can easily relate to your content, it will help them remember you and your brand better.
Share a funny story about a relative
Even if you’re not a family business, the funny story your mom shares about your uncle will still have the same effect on your audience as if you were. Stories are memorable and endearing, especially if they’re relatable and genuine. Your audience will be more likely to relate to your brand after sharing a story about your cousin’s experience with your product.
Tell the story of your first kiss
Everyone has a story about how they lost their virginity. If you want to stand out, tell the story of your first kiss—and make it a hot one! You can even add a little bit of your own personality to make it more personal.
Talk about a time you helped someone
Have you ever had a fantastic experience working with a customer? A great salesperson will always tell you about their interactions with their customers, and how those interactions made them a better salesperson. When you describe your interactions in a way that’s authentic and specific, your audience will feel as if they are part of your story, and be more likely to trust you.
Tell a story about your pet
The right content can help you grow your brand and make connections in the marketplace. But, it can also help you cultivate an emotional connection with your audience and develop trust in your brand. That’s why one of the most powerful marketing tactics is to use storytelling. Stories are easy to remember, and they can help you create a connection with your audience on an emotional level. That connection means they’re more likely to trust your brand and eventually buy from you.
Create content that educates and inspires
When you create content, always aim to build the awareness of your brand and your business. Don’t just publish just to publish. Your content needs to add value to the human experience. It should build awareness about your brand. It should inform and educate your customers about your products or services. It should help them make better purchasing decisions. You need to create content that can help your customers solve their problems. It should inform them about new products and services you offer. This type of content helps build trust and relationship with your customers.
Educate your audience about your products or services
Whether it’s to sell a product or provide a service, you need to make your audience understand what it is you’re offering. Your content should give your audience a thorough overview of what your products or services do, and why they’re a great choice. If you’re trying to sell software, for example, describe the different ways it can be used and the benefits it can provide to your customers. If you’re trying to sell a service, describe the process your team goes through to solve a customer’s problem, and the results your solutions can provide. Your content should make your audience feel educated and help them understand why they should choose you.
Share how you use your products to solve real-life problems
Before you begin a marketing campaign, you want to make sure you have a solid plan for your content. This means figuring out what problems your business solves. Your content should explain how your products actually work in the real world and demonstrate how they can help solve your potential customer’s problems. For instance, if you sell a product that helps dentists clean and disinfect their patients’ teeth, your content should talk about how your product works and why it’s important to use it to reduce the risk of infection.
Share stories about how you’ve helped your clients
Stories are an incredibly effective way to engage your audience, whether you’re writing content for your website or social media. They’re especially compelling if you can personalize them by sharing your experiences working with your customers. Try to incorporate your voice into your storytelling to make your content more relatable.
Share best practices that other businesses can use
The best way to establish yourself as a thought leader is by sharing helpful content. This becomes especially valuable when that content becomes a guide for others in your industry. If someone is looking to improve their customer service, refer them to a guide you wrote on what steps they should take to ensure high-quality interactions with clients. Tell them how you did it and how they can do it as well.
Understand your customer’s challenges and pain points
Every organization has different challenges and pain points. To solve them, you need to understand the organization’s priorities and objectives. For example, if your organization is a B2B company that sells machinery, you need to understand what drives your customers to make a purchase. For example, they might be looking for a machine that can cut wood faster, or increase its lifespan. You need to know what makes a customer buy from you, and why they’re not buying from your competitors.
Increased production costs
With the rise of the digital world, there has been a decrease in the amount of manpower required to create content and distribute it across the different distribution channels. In the past, organizations had to hire a staff for content writing and editing, people who understand the business domain and know how to create content that will drive conversions. But, now, you can hire a freelancer or use a software to do the job for you. This has reduced the costs for generating and distributing content. This is great news for B2B marketers as it enables them to increase the number of content published without increasing the budget. However, this also means that B2B marketers have to work harder to create content that will help them achieve their sales goals.
Lack of visibility
There was a time when B2B marketers could create content that would rank organically in the search engines. While that still works, it’s not as effective as it once was. The reason for that is the rise of content marketing. Organic content is not shared as much as content that marketers or their team created. And if you don’t create content that your customers want to share, you won’t get visibility. So, to grow your visibility, you need to create better content.
Increased risk of errors
A lot of businesses still consider content marketing as a low-risk activity, especially for B2B companies. However, it is important to understand that content marketing has a higher chance of making mistakes – including factual errors, spelling mistakes, and grammar mistakes. This is because generating content is a lot easier than maintaining it. It is also easy to miss a message when you have content published over time.
Data gaps
To make a lasting impact, you need to understand and answer the right questions to address your customer’s biggest challenges. The right questions will help you deliver the right content that will help them solve their biggest business problems. This will increase your brand’s credibility and help you gain deeper levels of trust with your customers and partners.
Tell stories that connect
Stories are an incredibly powerful way to engage with your audience—and that includes potential customers. People are inherently drawn to stories that evoke emotions. When we listen to a story, the part of the brain that processes emotion actually becomes more active, making us more likely to remember it. And when we remember something, we’re more likely to want to do it. As a result, when you tell a story, whether you’re writing content or speaking, you’re able to motivate your audience to want to take action and become customers.
What is your story?
Humans like making connections between things. Stories are a fun way to do this. Tell the story of your product or service and how it helps your customers. Even better, include the story of how you came to discover your product or service. This helps your audience feel connected to your brand and your mission.
Do you have a family story that you like to tell?
One of the best ways to connect with your audience is through storytelling. People are more likely to connect emotionally with a story than with facts and statistics. For example, take your organization’s origin story. If you were in a similar position as your audience was years ago, what challenges did you face and how did you solve them? Maybe you overcame obstacles by working with vendors who had been around longer than you had. Or maybe the solution was developed by someone who had worked with your company before but had left. Whatever the situation, your organization is an example of a business that has experienced challenges and grown and thrived.
Share a story about raising your kids
Just like in the case of the example before, this content will add more of a personal touch to your content. Sharing your story of raising your children is a great way to demonstrate that you are an actual person and not just a business. This also helps to build trust between you and your customer. If you show that you care about your customers, they are more likely to trust you with their business. This is especially important when you are promoting solutions or products. By demonstrating that you care about your customers, you are showing that they will get a great value out of your product or service.
Tell the story of how you learned a new skill or how you solved a problem
If you want to help your audience learn how to do something you’ve already done, it’s important that you tell a story about how you learned to do it. It’s much easier for your audience to remember what you did than it is to find a bunch of written instructions. If you’re showing people a video, talk about how you got the idea, what challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
Create content that educates and inspires
The world of B2B is full of complex technologies and processes that make it hard for our customers to get things done. Your customers want to know how to do things right, faster and more effectively. But they’re not going to learn how to do that from a bunch of boring PowerPoints. They need content that helps them learn about the latest technology and how it can make their lives easier. Take a different approach when it comes to content and create content that will make your customers feel smarter and more capable. That’s how you’ll help them achieve their goals—and create better sales opportunities for your business.
Write about a problem you’ve solved
When you solve a problem for a customer, you create an emotional connection. You show that you care about them and are committed to helping them solve their problem. This is incredibly valuable content that helps to drive more sales. When you write about a problem you’ve personally solved and provide helpful solutions, you show your customers that you are an expert in your field. People are more likely to buy from someone they know and trust. Creating content that shows you care and demonstrates your expertise helps you build a relationship with potential customers and customers you already have.
Educate your audience about the problem
Focus on solving the problem the customer is facing. This can be a specific pain point, frustration, or challenge they’re facing. By helping your audience solve this problem, you’ll build trust and make them more likely to buy from you. Your content will help them understand why your product or service is the best option for solving their problem.
Share how you overcame the problem to help others
When you create content that shares your personal experience with a particular problem you’ve faced, you build trust with your audience. People want to know that you understand what they’re going through and that you’re willing to help. This approach can be incredibly powerful for your brand when you create content that helps solve a problem for your audience.
In conclusion, if you’re looking to up your content marketing game and improve your sales conversations, this guide is for you. By following the tips and tricks outlined above, you’ll be well on your way to content marketing success. So what are you waiting for? Get started today!
