The buyer’s journey isn’t what it was even ten years ago.
B2B buyers spend increasingly more time researching online and off, self-nurturing, and connecting with potential suppliers on more casual terms.
The latest Gartner research shows B2Bs only spend 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. That 17% covers all suppliers too. In other words, your sales team only gets about 2% to 5% of a lead’s attention before they decide.
Your digital experience is your main tool for earning trust and building relationships – and it all starts with content.
Here’s why content marketing is so important for B2B marketing and how you can use it to its full advantage.
Why is Content Marketing Important for B2B Marketing?
For content marketing to work, it must be 100% relevant for your unique audience segments. Research is key to understanding your buyer’s specific needs and problems. You’ll also want to set unique goals to track your progress and effectiveness.
1. It’s Vital for an Account-Based Marketing Strategy
84% of marketers using ABM say it delivers higher ROI than other marketing strategies. Account-based marketing isn’t just for connecting with new leads either – it’s vital for forging deeper relationships with your current customers and preventing churn too.
Engaging content is at the heart of every effective ABM strategy. You need relatable blogs, eBooks, case studies, whitepapers, videos, and podcasts for your various firmographics.
Keep in mind that you might not want to create ALL types of content. Instead, research what types of content your firmographics prefer. Some at the C-level might prefer videos while end-users at a company might rather absorb information through infographics.
That’s another reason content marketing is so important for B2B: It forces you to study your audience.
2. You Can Rank for More Keywords
If you want to take SEO seriously, you must publish consistent high-quality content. Brands that blog regularly earn 434% more indexed pages than those that don’t.
Content marketing is an effective SEO tactic because it boosts rankings across your entire site. Here’s a little example of how it works:
- Develop high-quality blog content around long-tail, low-competition keywords.
- Earn rankings for those easy-to-rank keywords.
- Target broad keywords on your category pages, landing pages, product pages, and home pages.
- Prove your worth to Google algorithms and searchers with low-volume keywords and your ranking will improve for broader high-volume keywords.
Content marketing isn’t an overnight solution. However, publishing regular content seriously pays off long term.
3. B2B Content Marketing Helps You Generate More Leads and Sales
Content marketing delivers 3x more leads yet costs 62% less than outbound tactics.
B2B buyers spend 45% of the journey researching alone so content is key for helping them learn about your company and products.
Make sure your content solves specific problems your audience faces. Research their conversations on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit before writing content.
This level of research and quality matters. That’s why 75% of B2Bs with the most successful content marketing strategies say content is useful for earning sales and revenue.
4. You Can Empower Leads to Self-Nurture
A whopping 84% of B2Bs with the most successful content marketing say nurturing leads is a top goal.
Unfortunately, most brands hide their best content behind a lead magnet form. That’s not an ideal situation for people arriving at your site on a mobile device.
Think with Google estimates that 70% of all B2B searches happen on mobile devices so removing forms should be a top priority in your B2B content marketing strategy.
Instead, use an AI-driven adaptive content hub with machine learning to help your visitors find the perfect piece of content. An adaptive content hub provides content recommendations – like Amazon or Netflix – so every visitor gets a 100% relevant and unique content experience.
5. Content Marketing Lets You Have Conversations with Your Audience
If your content is successful, people should feel compelled to comment, like, and share it with others – opening you up to new conversations and relationships.
Content marketing is important for B2B social selling as well. Your content, especially thought leadership content, gives you a launchpad for discussing nuanced concepts and ideas.
Email marketing is also a useful tool for promoting your content. You can study which links your subscribers click and study their behavior and interests to provide curated content in the future.
6. You Can Earn More Web Traffic
Earning more indexed pages in Google search results means you increase your chances of visibility and new audiences. Organic traffic tends to stay on your website longer and consume more pieces of content for each session too.
Searchers value content because it’s not salesy or promotional. Instead, it helps them resolve nagging issues they face each day.
Boosts in traffic can also come from sources like LinkedIn, Facebook, guest posting, and blogging platforms. The more content you publish, the more backlinks you earn to your website. Not only is that good for SEO, but it also increases your long-term visibility and traffic.
7. B2B Content Marketing Delivers Incredible Analytics and Insights
Every time someone arrives at your website, you have a new opportunity to learn about your audience based on their behavior.
AI-powered tools can help you take your insights from content a step further. When you use AI and machine learning to create a hyper-personalized experience, you can learn more about their stage of the buying cycle and interests based on their behavior.
Using analytics and insights from your B2B content marketing, you can find new accounts to target and fresh market segments as well. This can help fuel your future content marketing efforts and create a positive reward cycle.
Hyper-Personalize Your Content Marketing Experience
Crafting incredible content for your website is only half the battle. How can you ensure each visitor finds the most relevant piece of content when they arrive at your website?
Adding an AI engine to your website is fast, easy, and creates a hyper-personalized experience for every visitor.
Hushly makes AI and machine learning accessible to everyone. Learn how to empower leads with self-nurturing landing pages.
