6 Modern B2B Content Marketing Tactics You Need to Start Using

You may have gotten the basics right. You might have established a connect with the right audience, picked the right contents and formats, chosen some amazing topics and even have a great content authoring process in place. Do you also measure all the metrics you need to measure, such as current trends, benchmarks and top-performing content? You have done just about everything right then. Just about everything, and you think that your content strategy is in place. 

Even if you have a process in place, and you faithfully strategize, you need tactics to ensure success in engaging the customer. Some of these tactics are now listed below:

• Problem-solving content at the right buying stage

B2B content marketing must solve a problem. If you do not address a problem and provide the solution for it with your content, then you need to improve it. Also, the solution provided must be relevant and benefit the customer. 

If the customer is facing difficulty placing an order, sending an email which bridges the gaps in understanding will help complete the sale. If the customer is finding it tough to use a product or service, guiding the customer to a knowledge base article could be a great way to build a long-lasting relationship. 

• SEO for YouTube

Most people optimize their content for search engines like Google and Bing, without paying too much attention to the world’s largest online video streaming service, YouTube. Paying attention to YouTube for your content strategy will pay you rich dividends, no matter how big your business is and doing SEO for YouTube. 

The title, tags, and description fields in a video must be such that it is optimized to come up earlier in the search results on YouTube. Engagement also matters. The more comments and likes a video receives also improves the likelihood of a video coming higher up in the search results.

• Competitive research of Google search results

It would be great for your B2B content marketing if one could exceed one’s competitors when it comes to quality and popularity. And landing on Google’s first page for keywords that you should rank for is a great measure of how popular you are. Now you could do that so easily by piggybacking off your competitor’s keywords, if Google holds them in high esteem. 

If ABC, your competitor, has a product named XYZ, you could rank high if you go with headings like “Alternatives to XYZ”. Blog posts that suggest such alternatives will also rank high on Google and can generate more leads and subscribers than you could imagine.

• Make your case studies more user friendly

It’s great to have case studies in your B2B content marketing efforts because they communicate not just your product and solution but give a practical understanding of how you solved the customer’s issue. But case studies can be too technical, a bit stuffy, and dare we say, boring? You could get around this in three ways:

1. Add images and infographics to the case study to make it look more visually appealing and to encourage reading.
2. If you use any jargon, make sure the intended audience is able to understand, else define it clearly in the first instance.
3. Make tutorial-style case studies that are easier for everyone to follow. Break down the solution into a number of steps.

• Make your content snackable and educational

Users read just 28% of a web page when they visit, which is quite concerning for B2B content marketers. How does one ensure that all the critical information is consumed? Answer: By making the content snackable and educational. 

Make sure there are infographics and images with little but impactful text on your Instagram page that highlight the benefits of your product or service. Making the content interactive, that is, ending with a question or asking customers to share their feedback, or running a poll will also help your B2B content marketing.

• Get as many reviews out as you can

B2B buyers today do significant research on a company before they decide to use its product or service, and most of this research is online. Most B2B buyers agree that a great review can sway their decision in favor of the company concerned. People reconsider and get over assumptions with a great customer testimonial. 

When a customer vouches for having gained benefits from certain features of the product, then your company’s reputation improves. These testimonials could be on your website, they could feature as a LinkedIn post, or on a review aggregator site such as G2A. You should have at least 10 testimonials on your website and if they span across several industries, then even better for your content strategy.

• Nothing highlights product strengths like a whitepaper

Whitepapers are a strong foundation of any great content strategy. Decision-makers are interested in the cold, hard facts. They are not interested in faff. If you want a decision-maker to be on board with your strategy or buy from you, a whitepaper is the best route.

Through a whitepaper, you not only have an authoritative voice but could become a thought leader as well. They are a great way to provide valuable, unique, and innovative content to your audience.

Maintain a great structure for the whitepaper, stick to language that suits the audience, and reference every fact that you cite. These three things would ensure that your whitepaper has the desired effect, that of getting buy-in from a decision-maker.

• LinkedIn ad promotion for high-converting posts

LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B content marketing. And a great blog post is universally loved. If it is well-written, it would be appreciated by the modern B2B buyer/researcher.

You would have blog posts that bring the customers back again and again. Apart from generating leads and email subscriptions, they also help increase the number of conversations the customer has with your marketing team, even if it is with a humble chatbot!

Always make it a practice to post at least one such blog post weekly on your LinkedIn channel to facilitate better customer engagement. If it worked well for a particular customer, it should work just as well for their competitors as well.

Closing words

B2B content marketing tactics are not set in stone. Content marketing evolves day by day, and year after year, depending on your own capabilities, customer demands, and other market conditions. You could use this as a ready reckoner but be sure to add to it as you continue your B2B content marketing journey.