Picture this: you’re part of a B2B tech company, driving innovation and ready to make waves. But there's a catch—you’re stuck at the top of the B2B Content Marketing Funnel, casting a wide net and hoping for the best. It feels like shouting into the void, right? Imagine transforming that chaos into a streamlined process that captures attention and guides leads through a meaningful journey. This article is your roadmap to mastering B2B tech content marketing, breaking down barriers, and showing you how to create a win-win strategy.
Feather’s notion to blog makes it easier to craft that strategy. It’s like having a trusted guide, helping you turn complex concepts into actionable insights without getting bogged down in jargon.
What is B2B Content Marketing
B2B content marketing is like a conversation between businesses. It's about using content to engage, educate, and persuade other companies to understand, trust, and ultimately buy from you. Think of it as sharing innovative ideas in ways that other companies appreciate. You might create articles, videos, white papers, or blogs. The people you're talking to could be business owners, corporate investors, or anyone who cares about how you can help their business.
This approach isn’t new. Creating and sharing valuable content has been a key part of marketing for a long time. But during the pandemic, content usage went up by 207%. Many of us are planning to share content more often and make it even better in the future. Choosing the right content will attract more attention from the people who matter most.
B2B vs. B2C: Different Goals, Different Approaches
B2B content marketing is different from B2C content marketing. B2B content targets specific audiences and focuses on delivering value, while B2C content aims to create broad awareness and get lots of people talking about your brand. B2B content must be thoughtful and detailed and address each stage of the long B2B customer journey.
Executives want to know how you’ll impact their bottom line. You also have to get buy-in from influencers in the buying group who have a say in the final purchase decision. B2C content, on the other hand, casts a broader net and segments audiences using demographic and psychographic data. Popular B2C tactics include:
Quizzes
Contests
Interactive content
B2B content must deliver exceptional value to earn trust and drive conversions in a niche market. B2C content focuses on entertainment and inspiration to build brand affinity with the masses.
The Future of B2B Content Marketing
As content usage grows, it’s clear that B2B content marketing will keep evolving. 55% of marketers plan to post content more frequently, and 53% plan to boost the quality of their content shortly. It all comes down to choosing the right mix of content marketing media that will turn more heads.
Why Should Tech Businesses Use B2B Content Marketing?
When B2B researchers look for new products or services usually begin with a general search engine query. Tech companies that publish relevant and informative content stand a better chance of appearing higher in the search results. This increases the likelihood of researchers visiting your website and engaging with your calls to action. Best of all, these visitors are already interested in your offerings, making them high-quality leads more likely to convert.
Driving Organic Traffic: A Cost-Effective Strategy
Many tech marketers spend heavily on PPC ad campaigns to drive traffic. Creative content can boost organic traffic, reducing your PPC spend. This improves your website’s SEO, signaling to search engines that your site is popular. As a result, your links are more likely to appear at the top of search results.
Dominating Keywords: Rise Above the Competition
The tech industry is highly competitive, with countless companies vying for the exact keywords. Your brand can climb the rankings by consistently adding fresh and informative content with targeted keywords. This increases your chances of getting multiple links on the first page of search results.
Fostering Client Loyalty: Keep Them Coming Back
Content marketing isn’t just about attracting new leads. It’s also a fantastic way to keep your existing clients engaged and loyal. By publishing content aimed at current customers, you can maintain their interest and encourage them to spend more in the future.
Inbound marketing is as much about delighting customers as it is about acquiring new ones. You don’t want to lose clients to competitors that offer more helpful content.
Cost-Effective Marketing: Get More Bang for Your Buck
Content marketing is often the most cost-effective method for generating leads, increasing conversions, and improving SEO. While other strategies require significant investment, content marketing can be managed in-house without excessive spending.
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How to Create a Successful B2B Tech Content Marketing Strategy
Understand Your Audience: Engage and Solve Their Problems
Start with a thorough understanding of your audience. You need to know their needs, behaviors, and the questions they have. This will allow you to create content that engages them and helps them make informed decisions.
If your B2B product, for example, aids hiring managers, identify their challenges and craft content that addresses these issues, positioning your product as the solution they seek. A keen grasp of their pain points will guide you in developing content that truly speaks to them.
2. Dive Deep Into Research: Know the Market and Your Competitors
Once you understand your audience, conduct market research. This means determining the market size and potential for your product and how it’s likely to perform against competitors.
Competitor analysis will show you what types of content are working for them. Combine this with keyword research to gain insights into your target audience's search habits and online behaviors so you can tailor your strategy accordingly.
3. Set Clear Goals and Objectives: Measure and Track Progress
With a solid understanding of your audience and market, set clear, SMART goals for your content marketing strategy. This ensures that you can track and measure progress. Consider questions like:
What are the next steps to achieve your goals?
How important are these goals to your brand’s success?
What metrics will you use to measure success?
What content aligns with these goals?
Answering these will help you stay on track and make informed decisions as you build your strategy.
4. Ideate Topics for All Stages of the Buying Journey
Now that you deeply understand your audience and goals, start brainstorming content topics that will engage them at different stages of the buying journey. Keyword research will help you identify relevant topics.
Consider conducting content audits to identify what content performs well and what formats resonate with your audience. You can also use platforms like Quora or Reddit to analyze search trends related to your niche.
5. Determine Formats and Create High-Quality Content
In addition to covering different topics, it’s essential to understand the right content formats for your business. To boost your content online, you can choose from visual content, blogging, videos, podcasts, and more. Once you’ve determined the formats you want to use, create high-quality content for each. Empower your content with solid research and high-performing keywords to make an impact.
6. Leverage the Right Content Distribution Channels
Creating stellar content is just one part of the game. Once you have high-quality content ready to go, finding the right platform to distribute it is equally important. Your choice of content distribution channel can determine how well your content performs and how many potential customers you engage. Ideally, you want to have various distribution channels to choose from.
7. Develop a Winning Strategy for Content Promotion
Once your content is strategically structured, created, and distributed, it’s time to promote it to your target audience. Start with organic promotion strategies, but if you have a particularly lucrative piece of content likely to gain traction, consider leveraging paid promotion strategies.
Use your social media channels and website for initial promotional efforts, and then consider influencer marketing and paid boosts to double down on your content promotion efforts.
1. Curate the News: Stay Ahead and Be the Go-To Source
Technology is always changing. Keeping up with these changes is tough for everyone. This is where news curation comes in. Pick out the most relevant updates and share them in ways that are easy to understand, like newsletters or social media posts. By doing this, you position your brand as a reliable resource.
People will start turning to you for the important information they need. This adds value to their day and builds trust and loyalty. You become more than just a brand; you become a partner.
2. Leverage Thought Leadership: Share Expert Insights
Thought leadership is all about showcasing your brand as an authority. Share insights and expert analyses on current events and trends. This is how you connect with decision-makers and help them make informed choices. But finding experts can be a challenge. Many brands overcome this by licensing high-quality content from reputable sources.
This way, you provide trusted material without the hassle of sourcing it yourself. It’s a win-win. Your audience gets valuable content, and you strengthen your brand’s position.
3. Use Visuals to Your Advantage: Make Complex Simple
Visual storytelling is a must in tech content marketing. Complex topics need simplification, and visuals are perfect for this. Since about 65% of people are visual learners, using videos and infographics is a no-brainer.
They break down complicated concepts and make them accessible. Explainer videos and animations work particularly well. They show what your product or service does in simple terms. Whether on your website or social media, these visuals ensure your message gets across clearly.
4. Create a Content Calendar and Document Your Strategy: Stay Organized and Aligned
Having a documented content strategy and editorial calendar is crucial. It aligns teams and keeps everything consistent. Define who you’re talking to, what you want to achieve, and how you will do it. Then, map out your content creation and publishing schedule. Use tools like Google Sheets or Airtable to stay organized. This ensures that every content serves a purpose and contributes to your broader goals.
5. Outsource Content Development: Get Help When You Need It
Creating enough high-quality content is tough, especially when you need to target different personas. Tech purchases often involve multiple roles, from users to procurement teams. Each stage of the journey needs different content.
Outsourcing can help. It alleviates resource strain and gives you access to industry experts who can create targeted content. This frees your team to focus on what they do best. Plus, many content marketers plan to increase their content creation budget, recognizing the value of outsourcing.
6. Focus on Retention: Keep Customers Coming Back
The customer journey doesn’t stop after a purchase. Retention-focused content keeps customers engaged and prevents them from leaving. Retaining a customer is more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. Many content marketers use blog posts and newsletters to drive customer loyalty. Marketing automation tools can enhance retention by delivering personalized experiences based on customer needs.
7. Use Storytelling: Build Emotional Connections
Storytelling creates emotional connections and makes your content memorable. Not many tech marketers use storytelling, so it’s an opportunity to stand out. Authentic stories humanize your brand and show its values. Use customer testimonials, case studies, and staff profiles to engage readers. These stories reinforce your brand’s value proposition.
8. Establish Authority: Become a Trusted Leader
Building authority in a crowded tech marketplace is a challenging feat. But it’s possible with clear messaging and high-quality content. Authority content marketing helps differentiate your brand and instills confidence in your audience.
By consistently providing informative materials, you establish your brand as a trusted leader. Use product brochures, thought leadership and licensed content to strengthen your credibility and resonate with your target audience.
Go From Notion to Blog With Ease Today with Feather
Feather transforms how companies publish blog content and newsletters. By working through Notion, Feather eliminates the need for coding or design expertise. This is a huge game-changer for teams eager to scale their B2B content marketing efforts without getting bogged down in technical details.
Feather also allows you to set up a subfolder blog, which means you can publish your content to a subfolder on your domain (domain.com/blog) instead of a subdomain (blog.domain.com). Why is this important? Because subfolder blogs are better for SEO.
Feather also enables you to manage all your CRM and website blog content through Notion, which gives you the HubSpot experience on a budget.
Manage Your Blog and Newsletter from One Place
One of Feather’s most appealing features is that it lets you manage your blog and newsletter from one place. This saves time and reduces the risk of errors. You can also use custom CSS to change the design of your blog, which means you can create a unique look and feel that aligns with your brand. And because Feather is integrated with Notion, you can collaborate with your team during the publishing process.
Publish SEO-Friendly Blog Content with Ease
Feather also allows you to write blog content in Notion and automatically publish it to your Feather blog. This is a huge time-saver for busy teams that want to focus on creating quality content rather than getting bogged down in the technical details of publishing. And because Feather is SEO-friendly, you can rest assured that your content will be optimized for search engines.
Reach Your Audience with Feather’s Newsletter Feature
Feather also lets you set up and send newsletters to your email subscribers directly from Notion. This is a great way to keep your audience engaged and informed about your latest content and updates. And because Feather is integrated with Notion, you can easily manage your newsletter content and collaborate with your team.