What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing, at its most simple, is any content you put out to reach consumers. Videos, blogs, podcasts and social media posts all fall under the umbrella of content marketing. However, to create successful content, you need to take into consideration who your target audience is, especially when looking at B2B or B2C.

Learn more in the Resource Center guide: What is Content Marketing?

B2B Content Marketing

Business to Business (B2B) content marketing relies on you creating a target persona. However, you will need to target several personas with the same content. Although the underlying principles of attracting an audience remain the same, B2B personas consist of people looking for products or services that’ll affect the future of their companies.

Additionally, specific channels and formats work better for B2B content. LinkedIn, blog posts, and ebooks are typically used to connect with potential leads. Businesses need to connect with decision makers and leaders, and need to ensure they’re using platforms those leaders visit frequently.

Finally, B2B companies need to take into consideration how their clients make their purchases. B2B consumers tend to be closer to their suppliers, forming long-term business relationships whereas B2C focuses more on selling. Because of this, content must focus on nurturing leads rather than a hard sell.

Audience Building

The ultimate goal for most content marketing is to build an audience around your brand. You want people to care about your brand to the point where they receive updates about what you’re doing. In fact, B2B content marketers list brand awareness and education as two out of three of their most common goals.

Content Marketing Grows Your Followers

Content marketing helps businesses gain followers by getting potential customers to their content. With the use of carefully selected keywords, hashtags, and other strategies on social media, content marketers can get a large number of people to their profiles and websites in a short amount of time. Most people will need to see several posts from a brand before they engage or follow, and well-crafted content gets your posts directly in their feed.

Content Marketing Drives Brand Awareness

45% of content marketers look to increase brand awareness as their primary goal. Brand awareness simply means consumers are aware of your brand, and this is accomplished with content creation and distribution. 

Large brands have more brand awareness because they employ large writing teams or third-party platforms to create content at scale. For example, Draft helps thousands of businesses create quality blog posts and articles fast so they have enough content to prove their authority to their audiences. 

The type of content you produce will depend on your target audience. However, the key is to produce consistent content in an effort to get more people aware of your brand.

Driving Revenue

Marketing efforts are typically centered around increasing revenue. That’s the heart and soul of the industry, and content marketing is a driving force in an effort to see higher profit margins.

Content Marketing Converts

We’re going to share the great news first: content marketing can increase your conversion rates by as much as 600%. However, most businesses will see an increase of about 300% on leads for every dollar spent. These increases in conversion can help profits skyrocket. The best part? It costs, on average, 62% less than other marketing techniques.

Content Marketing is Your 24/7 Sales Team

If you have a sales team, you know how hard they have to work to build connections and relationships with the right decision makers at other organizations. You might also be aware of the team’s limitations whether it’s the number of hours in a day or their ability to find leads who are actively looking for your product or service. 

Content marketing, on the other hand, is constantly working to help you get more sales by sharing the benefits of your products on your blog, website, and social media platforms. These messages live forever and can be discovered easily by people actively searching for you with higher intent to purchase. 

Content Marketing and SEO

SEO and keywords are a relatively new phenomenon and aren’t usually recognizable by those outside of the marketing world. However, SEO is one of the biggest drivers for companies looking to reach more clients in the digital sphere, and you need to ensure your content meets SEO standards to drive business growth.

Content Helps You Rank

SEO simply means optimizing your content with formats and keywords that make them easily indexed by search engines. When your content is optimized properly, you are able to rank higher in search engine results, meaning your site shows up sooner and to more people. For more on building an SEO strategy that helps you rank, check out the Draft SEO Playbook. 

Building Loyalty

We’re going to start by pointing out that brand loyalty has never been more important than it is today. People are willing to pay more for a product because of their allegiances to a brand that aligns with their values and outlooks. However, building trust requires authentic content that people actually want to consue.

Content Marketing Builds Trust

One of the best ways to build trust with your audience is to showcase who you are and why you’re the right fit for your specific audience. Some brands do this by talking about how they got started. Others do this by participating in cultural moments or heritage months that are important to their audience. In the B2B realm, trust is often built by identifying clear audience pain points and speaking to their solutions.

Content Marketing Leads Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs usually offer some sort of discounts, freebies, or exclusivity that help drive engagement and retention of a brand’s top customers. Many leads are more likely to make a purchase with a company that offers a loyalty program simply because they are working towards a reward goal. 

Content is increasingly a part of loyalty programs as more brands shift into the media space. For example, you might offer your loyalty program participants exclusive guides or stories, or early access to your experimental programs or products. 

Content Marketing Retargets Past Customers

With a heavy focus on acquiring new customers, it can sometimes be easy to forget established customers. Creating content especially for them can help drive meaningful revenue and retention metrics. Consider:

• Guides that explain premium or add-on features, products, and services

• Customer stories and case studies that show your customers how to use your products and services in new ways

• Landing pages that reiterate your value to pre-empt potential customer churn 

There’s no limit to the types of customer content you can create.

The Bottom Line

Content marketing is an important aspect of connecting with consumers, so take the time to create a content marketing strategy that lets you build your audience, drive revenues, increase your SEO and establish brand loyalty amongst your customers.