A Guide for B2B Content Marketing

The rapid growth of content marketing is something we cannot ignore. Look at the non-stop blogging that B2B SaaS businesses are doing. But how good are marketers at crafting content that perfectly represents their ultimate business goals?

Sadly only 39% of marketers enjoy the privilege of having a sound marketing strategy that is perfectly aligned with their specific goals. Goals, and any further business plans, require informative strategies. Excellent content marketers don't take a blind dive.

How successful are you with building your content marketing strategy?

Don’t worry.

Uncertainty is always part of it before things finally add up. Here is an elaborate way to craft the content marketing strategy that lends a hand in everything good your SaaS B2B company is striving to be.

How Do You Get Started to Achieve an Ultimate Built of a Great Strategy?

• Knowledge of your ideal customer (Buyer Persona)

• Set your business goals

• Put an editorial mission in place

• Evaluate your current position

• Have an appropriate content framework

• Choose appropriate formats and themes for your content

• Establish a fitting brand personality

• Plan your content distribution and amplification

• Make any required adjustments to your strategy

To get started, content marketing requires a step at a time.

Content marketing strategy is a living document making part of the larger marketing strategy you want to establish. It's a solid guide to your content choices that caters for every "why" at the center of your content marketing efforts. It’s time to drop the ‘one-fits-all’ notion and give your strategies a more unique approach. One that fits into your own business environment.

There are some questions we need to answer if we have to achieve a sound content marketing strategy:

• Have we specified our content marketing goals?

• Are they in line with our overall business goal?

• What are our evaluation metrics?

• Who does our content target?

• Do we have the topics for our content?

• Can our audience relate with it?

• What are we looking to include in the planning, creation and distribution?

Content marketing is all about getting practical.

1. Knowledge of Your Ideal Customer (Buyer Persona)

You’ve probably heard about KYC countless times. And we just have to mention it again since it's crucial to have your ideal buyer in mind. How else would you create content that addresses peoples' wants and needs if you don’t understand them? It's a #1 consideration if you truly want to reach your ultimate business goals. How do you develop a perfect understanding of your prospective customers? How do you figure out the things they want? What is their motivation and what do they value? Customer research comes in handy.

From past customers, current, and potential. Interview them and get to the very bottom of your target audience and the kind of problems they face. In addition to establishing peripheral demographics like gender, age, and profession; you should purpose to identify your customers' struggles.

Getting to know your customers struggles can be achieved by incorporating Clayton Christensen theory known as ‘The Theory of Jobs to Be Done’, This theory lends a framework to reach a deep understanding of customer behavior. And it departs from the traditional marketing that is more of product attributes. It gets us beneath social, functional and emotional dimensions to give us a solid understanding of the reasons behind various customer choices.

Knowing your audience's struggle is the only way you're going to figure out everything that drives their purchases. Only then will you successfully create content that provides solutions to both current and potential buyers.

2. Set Your Business Goals

We're now defining your goals. Without which your content strategy would just be wasted effort. Fit your content into the larger business picture and give it a clear purpose. Identify the exact thing you want to achieve and bring every member of your team on board. Having thorough knowledge of your goals will help you establish appropriate KPIs and metrics to evaluate your strategy.

3. Put an Editorial Mission in Place

An explicit editorial mission looks into the following:

• What your content is set to achieve?

• Who your audience are and how to get to them?

• What is your goal when creating this content?

Your content should be aimed at helping your customers attain success in their jobs. That's why you need to know them deeply in the first place. Having an editorial mission is key to a well guided content planning and production throughout your content marketing strategy. It brings you in alignment with your writers and lights your path when it comes to content prioritization. It helps you know the kind of content to develop.

4. Evaluate Your Current Position

Your next move in the right direction is much guided by the knowledge of your current position. Having an idea of your current content status can be achieved through running a content audit. This will also give you an idea of the actions you need to take in terms of your current web content. Take note of the content that has had significant performance. That which has achieved positive appreciation from your audience. Then you know where to direct much of your effort.

These three basic steps will help you undertake a content audit:

• Create an Inventory

  Start by collecting all the links of the web pages you need to analyze. Then with the help of online tools such as spreadsheet, evaluate your content in terms of the type of content, content format, and the journey of your customers down your sales funnel.

• Collect Data and Analyze

  The second step is to collect and analyze the data. This should be included in your spreadsheet. Trackable metrics range from page views to sessions, the backlinks, average time on page, bounce rate and the impressions and shares on social media. How you assess your content is mostly based on your goal. Are you looking to provide more of the content with high ranking or are you looking to improve the content with the least conversions? The results of your analyses will help you decide whether to delete, maintain, or upgrade the content.

• Decide on the Action

  From the assessment above, you will have an informed decision on your action plan. Do you think that the content needs improvement? What type of improvements? (such as SEO, backlinks, keywords). While providing recommendations, you should pay attention to; Business goals (such as increase in quality leads and organic traffic) User friendliness (evaluate the content structure, voice and tone, the website navigation and its readability) Recommendations could move from adding new interlinks to existing blog posts to updating CTAs, replacing irrelevant or outdated ones, to reusing the best performing content including publishing it in different format. If you already have a content marketing structure, a content audit will help evaluate its effectiveness.

5. Have an Appropriate Content Framework

Your content’s framework is dependent on how you organize the content on your site to meet the SEO threshold. Various frameworks you can adopt include: Blog categories Topic clusters Content format driven hubs

6. Choose Appropriate Formats and Themes for Your Content

This is dependent on what you are writing. How relevant is the information to your business?

Only the right content themes will fit into your set goals. Whether short-term or long-term. Ensure your topics tick these boxes:

• The targeted audience finds meaning in the topic

• The topic is aligned with what your company offers

• The topic affords a seemingly natural connection with your business

• The topic is broad enough to produce up to 10 isolated cluster pieces

When developing new content, it is important to know the part of your buyers' journey the piece caters for and come up with specific KPIs. Also, ensure your topic fits into your ultimate goal which is to convert visitors. Thus, be certain that the content in your eBook or landing pages, meets the key points mentioned above. 

7. Establish a Fitting Brand Personality

Your brand is the only way potential customers can identify you in a crowded and competitive market. SaaS companies are also reporting overwhelming competition. The clever bunch are, therefore, working on their brands to help stand out of the crowd. Your audience’ perception is mainly based on how they view your brand. Your voice stands up for your personality.

Brand personality and voice should get you asking:

• What would be your description of your brand if it were a person?

• How would you describe it using an emoji?

• What is the feeling you would want those visiting your site and reading your content have?

• What brand voices do you admire? And which do you dislike? Reasons? 

To build your audience’s trust, you should purpose to have a consistent tone in all your content.

8. Plan Your Content Distribution and Amplification

If you have invested in providing quality content and end up having no audience, then all the effort will go to waste. You need to promote and distribute your content. Here are various ways you can develop an audience:

• Search Engine Optimization Even with a well-crafted blog post or excellent podcast, you still need them optimized for search to help the right audience to find them. When you incorporate a pain-point driven SEO approach, you will identify topics that attract quality leads and multiply conversions unlike when using the keyword-first strategy.

• Paid Promotions Walk the organic road first before you get to paid promotions. Paid promotions are more effective in the SaaS industry since the results are more factual and can be backed with evidence in the statistics. However, you should use targeted paid search particularly if you just want to get the word out there regarding your business and you don't have much domain authority.

• Organic Social Distribution An effective customer research should help you identify where your ideal customers spend most of their time. With the right platforms, you don’t need to have a channel plan since you can draw your customers by sharing content that they can relate and interacting with them on these channels. 

• Email Marketing Check with your contact list. Do you have anyone who might be excited with your newly compiled information? Send personalized emails to these specific people and make them understand why you find the information valuable to them. Also, have your sales team including links to your content when doing follow-up emails to potential buyers. It works great when such content is actionable enough to address specific questions from your prospective customers.

9. Make Any Required Adjustments to Your Strategy

Your content marketing strategy and customer research aren't meant to rot in the dark corners of your Google Drive. Bring them to the light of the day via constant revision, refinement and reworking. There is more to learn about your potential customers over time. Sometimes you 'll have changing business aspects which require you to go back to your content marketing strategy and make relevant updates.

And keep flowing the communication between you and your team, especially when new insights come to light.

10. No Finishing Line, No Sprinting

Do not rush to get everything you’ve learned all in a day. Every step in content marketing should be a calculated move to drive traffic to your site. It's not an overnight process but rather an ongoing effort to keep your business thriving among your potential customers. Test different tactics, monitor your progress, understand why one thing is working while the other isn't and make fitting changes to keep everything on course.

Are your sales and marketing teams aligned? If so, how has your business benefits from it?

If not, Schedule a discussion with our expert and we’ll show you how to bridge your sales and marketing teams.