B2B content marketing is creating content (blog posts, ebooks, case studies) to engage and persuade everyone involved in buying something for the business. This means the people who will be using your product or service, but also decision-makers and potential blockers, such as the CEO or the legal team.
B2B content marketing is a bit like selling toys to kids. Your priority is to get your kids excited, using gorgeous ads to show them all the fun they can have and the different ways they can use the toys.
But the child doesn't have money, so you also need to convince their parents to open the wallet. Parents are less concerned with fun and more concerned with boring things like **, safety, and durability. Advertising alone won't work: you also need guarantees and safety manuals.
In order to make a sale, you need to convince in two ways – but after too long, the child will forget about you and buy something else.
Many of the core rules of content marketing still apply, but in B2B, there are some additional challenges that your content needs to address. (We'll explain how to do this in detail in the next section.) ）
1.Multiple people are involved in each purchase.
This is the core difference between regular content marketing and B2B content marketing. In regular content marketing, you just need to convince one person: get them excited enough and they'll open their wallet to buy.
Selling to businesses is different. Most purchases require the opinion and approval of multiple people:
The people who use your product aren't always the ones who buy it. Maybe a graphic designer will use your product, but their CMO is on a budget.
Different departments and decision-makers are involved in procurement. If your product or service will be used by the design team, the content team, and the **team, you will need everyone to agree on the purchase.
You may need to work with procurement, legal, and compliance teams. Depending on what you're selling, you may need to convince a bunch of different "blockers" that your risk is low, your value is high, or you comply with any relevant regulations. (Fun!.)）
Everyone involved cares about different things, and everyone has the potential to stop the sale from going ahead. Your content needs to engage and convince everyone.
2.The sheer size of the deal means greater scrutiny.
One of the benefits of selling products to big businesses: you can charge a lot of money. But it also has the negative effect of increased scrutiny. You need to convince potential customers that your product works;You have a track record of solving problems for similar companies;Even if you're more valuable than building something like that in-house.
3.Long sales cycle.
Expensive purchases and the involvement of a large number of different people can all lead to the same problem: the sales process takes months or even years to finally end.
This adds an extra layer of complexity. You need to stay ahead of the curve and keep everyone involved in the purchase excited and engaged for months on end. You need to ensure good messaging between all involved, including when people leave the company or take on new roles.
4. The product is complex.
Many businesses rely on free trials to convince potential customers: they can view the app for free and easily upgrade if they find it valuable.
But many B2B products are too complicated for this strategy (imagine trying a workspace management platform for free, which is designed to integrate with dozens of applications). In these cases, your content needs to close the gaps, showcase all the different ways your product or service can be used, and bring value to customers.
5.The target market is small.
Some B2B products are extremely niche, and the total number of people who can buy them may be only a few thousand, or even a few hundred. These buyers may also be difficult to reach through traditional content channels (how many post-IPO SaaS CFOs are there in the world, how many routine Google "SaaS metrics"?).You may need to get creative with your distribution.
I interviewed experienced B2B content marketers to find out how they can solve these problems with content. I've interviewed:
Eliana Cameira, Content Marketing Manager at Persefoni, a carbon accounting platform.
Mark Rogers, Director of Content Marketing at Freshpaint, a healthcare marketing compliance tool.
Joe Micheloswki, financial analytics platform MosaicDirector of Tech Content.
1.Identify the different people involved.
Start by making a list of all the different people involved in the buying process and the roles they play. Are they end-users, people who need to be excited about features and functionality?Or are they blockers, and if your product feels too expensive or risky, they could ruin sales?
For Mark and Freshpaint, it's possible to involve six people per sale, with very different motivations:
2.Create content across the funnel.
The purpose of content marketing is to make sales easier. In B2B content marketing, this means creating content for everyone involved in the sales process, addressing their problems, or addressing their concerns.
This is where the idea of a marketing funnel can come into play.
Content at the top of the funnel
Top-of-funnel (tofu) content is designed to grab the attention of people who might want to buy your product: usually the end user. Tofu content can include:
Solve their problems, for example, to help healthcare marketers understand which networks*** compromise HIPAA compliance and which don't.
Explain useful concepts, such as helping startup finance teams brush up on obscure financial metrics such as committed ARRs or burn multiples.
Share perspectives on their industry, for example, to help sustainability executives understand why it's not a good idea to not comply with the U.S. Exchange Commission's climate disclosure rules.
The middle part of the funnel content
Mid-funnel (MOFU) content helps your company stay ahead of these people, even if they're not ready to buy, and introduce your product in a discreet, helpful way. Mofu content may involve:
Host events and webinars, such as those from Mosiac,**Different tools in the modern fintech stack.
Share inspiring use cases, such as explaining how to embed YouTube **into yours in a HIPPA-compliant way with Freshpaint.
What's at the bottom of the funnel
Bottom-of-funnel (bofu) content is designed to convince decision-makers and appease potential blockers. It provides written answers to the biggest questions that can ruin sales (is that valuable?).Does it work?Does this company have a proven track record?), in the form of:
Publish a case study,For example, Mosaic explains how they helped a customer save 12mm USD.
Write detailed FAQs like Freshpaint Explore how its products areDetails of integration with GA4.
Create a competitor comparison page, such as persefoni, to show how they compare to similar platforms.
If the funnel stage is confusing (which is for me), the key point is simple: create content to motivate or persuade everyone involved in the sales process.
3.Distribute through search, social, selling.
To get your content in front of the right people at the right time, use the three S's: search, social, and sell.
Search optimization
Search optimization is essential for B2B content marketing for one simple reason: a search-optimized article can drive more and more traffic every month.
mosaic.Many of Tech's clients discover the company through its financial metrics and glossary. The glossary ranks for more than 20,000 keywords and generates around 43,000 organic pageviews per month.
Fundamental metrics, such as annual contract value, help keep the company on the radar of thousands of junior and aspiring finance professionals;High-level metrics, such as the destruction of multiple or residual performance obligations, often attract the attention of the SaaS CFO itself.
"Glossaries are a powerful driver of the pipeline for us. You just can't think of that. It's like, hey, I sold $30,000 worth of software products by telling the VP of Finance that they absolutely already knew about the definition of a metric. But it does work. ”
Joe Michelosfsky,mosaic.Director of Tech Content.Ahrefs makes it easy to brainstorm and find relevant keywords in your industry. Just goKeyword explorerAnd use one of the AI presets to magically create a list of seed keywords related to your industry.
Here, I asked about the "technical and technical terms" related to financial indicators. In a matter of seconds, we have two dozen seed keywords. By clicking on "Search", we can see how many searches are for these keywords:
Social**
Social** is great for reaching out to characters that are hard to find through search alone. Persefoni uses LinkedIn to connect with target buyers and share their thought leadership and expert perspectives.
"For our buyers, LinkedIn is the main social platform. Some of Persephone's industry experts have a network of more than 20,000 employees. We let them share our content through their network and trigger a multiplier effect. ”
Sales team
If the goal of B2B content marketing is to make selling easier, don't overlook the most obvious distribution channel: sharing content with your sales team. Most of the content created by Freshpaint's mark is given to the sales team to share directly with prospects or used as follow-up materials.
"I spent a lot of time talking to the sales team to find out what was missing from their library. If I help them get more business done, then I'm doing my job. ”
4.Use gated content to turn visitors into prospects.
It can take months (or even years) for a new visitor to be ready and willing to buy. To stay ahead of the curve, B2B companies use gated content to turn anonymous visitors into contactable leads: provide access to books,**or events in exchange for an email address.
Eliana and the Persefoni team created the Persefoni Academy, a series of free educational courses on carbon accounting and decarbonization. mosaic.TECH's Joe publishes a library of 17 e-books, ranging from SaaS metrics cheat sheets to financial planning blueprints.
Joe sees eBooks as part of a larger content strategy: taking the pain points of the characters in the eBooks and then repurposing them into search-targeted blog posts, with each article offering the eBook in the form of gated content:
5.Nurture leads.
With your email address, you can stay in touch with potential customers: send out regular newsletters with your latest content;Email courses are offered that are designed to teach useful concepts;Or just share regular product updates.
There are also ways to stay ahead of the curve without relying on email. Persefoni, Freshpaint, and Mosaictech all use retargeting: show ads to visitors after they've left**. Eliana of Persefoni is also a big fan of content repurposing: get articles, content**, or webinars, and share snippets from them on all the other channels your visitors might use:
"What surprised me the most was the number of touchpoints needed to impact a successful sales opportunity. This – spoiler alert – is a lot more than I thought. It requires more than just one piece of content** or one webinar registration: it's multiple touchpoints across multiple channels, which really reinforces the importance of having a robust overall distribution strategy. ”— Eliana Carmela,Persefuni Content Marketing Manager.
6.Measure performance.
Finally: track your performance and do more of what works (and less of what doesn't). Among the companies we interviewed, content marketing KPIs typically fall into a few core categories:
Traffic(More traffic usually means more leads).
Number of leads(the number of leads generated in a given time).
Lead quality(If the sales team thinks a sale is possible, the prospect becomes "sales qualified").
Weekly touchpoints(Frequency of interaction with prospects).
Request a demo(More demos means more customers).
B2B content marketing sounds complicated, but the core difference is simple: there are multiple people who can make (or break) a sale. Your content marketing needs to attract and convince multiple people, each with different motivations and interests, and keep them interested in the long run.
It's not always easy, but the rewards are worth it: many B2B transactions can reach hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars.