The right content can help your organization create a connection with audiences; it has the power to make them sit up and pay attention to your brand. If you can leverage content to deepen relationships with customers or prospec ts in an authentic and human way, instead of focusing only on the sales aspect, your results will increase exponentially in the long run.
You need to always put your audience first while creating content marketing strategies for your organization. In fact, according to CMI and MarketingProfs’ B2B Content Marketing 2019: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America report,1 almost 90% of top-performing B2B content marketers put their audiences’ informational needs ahead of their companies’ sales and promotional messages.
Here are some of the other highlights of the report1 that content marketers should pay attention to boost the company’s ROI:
Use Content Marketing to Build Trust and Credibility
When you provide valuable information to B2B customers or prospects through your content, you’re building a bond with them at a deeper level. They view your organization as a trusted and credible source and are more likely to do business with you, either now or soon. According to a report, 68% of all B2B marketers say they’ve used content marketing successfully to build credibility with their audience.
Talk to Your Audience Directly
As a B2B content marketer, you need to make the effort to talk to your customers or prospects directly rather than depending on research based on website analytics and feedback from your sales team. Processes need to be put in place so that you get first-hand information about your audience’s needs and preferences regarding content. Although this is likely to take up a considerable amount of time and involve a lot of effort, it’s going to pay off later.
“Processes need to be put in place so that you get first-hand information about your audience’s needs and preferences regarding content.”
Use Different Types of Content to Engage Audiences
The most popular types of content used by marketers today are videos (e.g., short clips, explainers, live streaming, webinars), text-based digital (e.g., articles, eBooks) and images (e.g., infographics, charts, photos), while email campaigns and educational content are the top two channels for nurturing relationships with audiences. Although not mainstream yet, podcasts, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are steadily gaining traction with audiences. Meanwhile, getting content ready for voice search needs to be another area of focus for content marketers.
Stay Up to Date with SEO and Social Media Algorithms
Content marketers need to consult SEO and social media experts to stay on top of ever-changing algorithms. This ensures that your content is produced with the technical expertise to always rank high on search result pages and trend on social media feeds. There’s no point in investing in great content if it is not searchable or cannot be easily found by users on the internet.
“There’s no point in investing in great content if it is not searchable or cannot be easily found by users on the internet.”
Invest in Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly coming to the fore in almost all disciplines and content marketing is no exception. Investment in AI is almost a necessity now since it can gather and interpret huge amounts of audience data for you in seconds. This goes a long way in helping you come up with better content marketing strategies. The more data and analysis you have about your audiences and their preferences, the easier it becomes to target them with personalized content. Personalization can be based on factors like personality traits, shopping behavior, interests and location, among other factors.
References:
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/10/research-b2b-audience/
