Everything You Need to Know About B2B Content Marketing

B2B content marketing continues to thrive as a top B2B marketing strategy in 2024. But what makes content marketing for B2B so popular? And how can you create a content marketing plan that supports your overall marketing strategy?

In this guide to B2B content marketing, we'll explore:

• What is B2B content marketing? And why is having a content marketing strategy important?
• Some of the best B2B content marketing examples.
• How to create a content marketing strategy for B2B, looking at both inbound and outbound content marketing strategies.
• Content production & creation.
• Content distribution strategies, such as B2B content syndication.
• Tips for choosing the best content marketing agencies to work with.

What Is B2B Content Marketing?

B2B content marketing is a strategic approach taken by marketers to focus on creating and distributing content which is:

• Valuable
• Educational
• Useful
• Relevant
• Free (typically using a mixture of ungated and gated content).
• Importantly, a consistent narrative reflective of your brand's voice.

The purpose of content marketing in B2B is to attract and retain your target audience over a period of time, all with the aim of educating and nurturing them towards your brand for future purchases. 

The key is to ensure you're creating content with your target audiences' challenges and real-life experiences in mind; essentially only creating content marketing materials that truly resonates with them.

B2B content marketing is not about pitching your products or services, but about providing genuinely useful information to your potential clients.

B2B Content Marketing Examples

When people who don't do marketing think of content marketing the first thing that usual comes to mind is 'writing words'. But there is so much more to content marketing that just writing, and there are now more ways of doing B2B content marketing than ever before.

B2B content marketing examples include:

• Blog content on your website (just like this one!)
• eBooks and guides (like The Complete Guide to B2B Technology Lead Generation).
• Research reports and whitepapers
• Toolkits and resources (like our Lead Generation Planning Toolkit).
• Social media posts
• Videos, webinars and podcasts

Creating Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Next up, let's explore how to create your content marketing strategy for B2B, taking both inbound and outbound content marketing strategies into consideration.

Taking a strategic approach to your B2B content marketing plan will help you get the most out of your available resources.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as a "strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action."

Producing and distributing high-quality content is a great way to expand your B2B marketing efforts and can help you increase your business' reach, enhancing your brand’s credibility.

Ultimately, you should design your content marketing strategy to drive new leads into your marketing funnel, ready for nurturing into sales opportunities.

Content Creation & Production

When creating your content, it's essential to optimize your strategy in line with the changing needs of your B2B target audience – from potential customers and prospects to your current clients.

Optimizing your B2B content marketing strategy regularly will help you create content that will resonate with your target audience, in line with your business's overall content marketing objectives.

Focusing your efforts on creating high-quality content which is relevant, useful, and engaging for the audience you're trying to reach will help you take a strategic approach to your B2B content strategy.

As the market you operate in evolves, so will the needs of your prospects and customers, so it's essential to revisit your content marketing strategy regularly.

A Process-Oriented Approach to Achieving Your Strategic Goals

Content marketing can be overwhelming. Information, advice, and the best B2B content marketing practices are continually evolving. Working with B2B content marketing agencies is one great way to create your content strategy.

Taking a process-orientated approach to achieve your strategic content marketing goals will help you consider all the required steps to create a solid plan.

This section will explore each of the steps you should take in more detail. Our advice can help you create a process-orientated approach to your content marketing and, ultimately, enable you to achieve your strategic goals.

Step One: Internal Data Analysis

Firstly, you will need to examine any previous content marketing strategies your team has developed and any results and internal data you already have available.

However, suppose you are establishing your content marketing strategy for the first time. Firstly, you'll want to consider what content your business already has (if any) and any results previous content has delivered.

This step is essential to help you focus on what content is currently working for your organization and what areas you need to work on. This step will also depend on your overall objectives for developing your B2B content marketing strategy.

The chances are you will have multiple objectives when creating your B2B content marketing plan.

Your internal data analysis step may include looking at content marketing metrics you already have, such as how many people downloaded your content via a campaign landing page and SEO-specific metrics.

But, again, these metrics will depend on the amount of content marketing activity your organization has engaged with previously and your overall objectives for creating your B2B content marketing strategy.

Step Two: Understanding Your Existing Audience

After examining any previous content marketing results and internal data, the next step is to understand your existing audience.

As a marketer, it's easy to assume you know everything about your existing audience, especially if you've been in your role and the industry for a long time.

However, it's essential to ensure you're continually reviewing the needs of your current audience as they will evolve. This will help you create a content marketing strategy that produces a variety of useful, educational, and influential content for your current audience while resonating with the new target audiences you're trying to reach.

 

Step Three: New Markets & Audience Persona Mapping

Once you've explored your existing audience, you should then look at any new markets and audiences your content marketing strategy can help you step into that align with your overall business and marketing objectives.

One way to do this is by using audience and buyer persona mapping to identify the common attributes of the new audiences and markets you want to reach.

When mapping out your audience's personas, some of the critical attributes you'll want to consider are:

• Job titles.
• Location.
• Professional experience.
• Organization type and size.
• Whether they are the decision-maker in a buying process or not.
• What are their challenges or pain points?
• Plus, any demographic information may be helpful and relevant– such as education level, age, gender, etc.

When completing an audience persona mapping exercise, you should analyze all the audience personas you have scoped out and then prioritize them.

Prioritizing the new markets and audience personas you want to target will help you create a content marketing strategy in line with your priority audiences.

Step Four: Brand Goals & Content Alignment

It's crucial to ensure your brand goals and content align. You need to ensure the content you plan, produce and publish within your B2B content marketing strategy is aligned with your organization's overall brand and marketing goals.

Step Five: KPI Mapping & Goal Setting

KPI mapping and goal setting are necessary steps when taking a process-oriented approach to your content marketing strategy.

Goal setting will help you to focus on the right content strategy to take through determining:

• The purpose of the content you're producing.
• The action you want the reader to take after consuming your content.
• The results you want to achieve using the content.

Key performance indicators are a great way to determine the success of your content marketing campaigns individually and your content marketing strategy overall.

Step Six: Campaign Ideation & Production

Once you've followed steps one to five, including mapping out your existing audience and the new markets you want to reach, you will want to scope out your content ideas to produce campaigns in line with your target audiences' needs and pain points.

Whether you outsource your content creation, production, and distribution or not will vary depending on the resources, your organization has available.

Plus, once you have produced your content, you will need to distribute it as far and wide as possible.

Content distribution may include sharing via several existing channels you already have – such as LinkedIn, your website's blog, and your monthly newsletter, and working with external suppliers to help your content reach further. 

When your team's time is limited, working with a B2B content marketing agency or supplier is a great way to distribute your content to the right people, using content syndication to generate high-quality B2B leads.

B2B Content Marketing Services

Working with a leading B2B content marketing service is a great way to get the most out of your content marketing strategy, in line with your marketing and company-wide objectives.

As a busy marketer, you know there are never enough hours in the day. Outsourcing parts of your B2B content marketing strategy can help you lean on the expertise of a content marketing expert while freeing up more of your time to work on a high-level strategy without trying to do everything in-house.

The benefits of outsourcing your content marketing include having access to an industry expert to free up your time to focus on other areas of your marketing strategy.

You may choose to outsource many elements of your content marketing plan, including your content production or content distribution.