Marketing for B2B tech companies can be really difficult. With ever-changing tech trends, complex buying cycles, and the vast yet growing number of tech companies in the market, we know how tough it can be to establish your brand as a top-of-mind business.
Many businesses today may already have powerful digital marketing tools ranging from paid ads to tracking website traffic. But we’re going to take you one step back to the drawing board – we’re going to talk about tech B2B content marketing.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing refers to putting out relevant content related to your brand or area of expertise on channels including social media, websites or even sites not of your own. It doesn’t always have to be about your business solutions, just any relevant and helpful information for your readers.
So, why is content marketing important?
We’re sure you have heard of the ever so-used quote “Content is King”. Well, it really is.
Content marketing for B2B tech companies is an effective method to get connected with your business prospects. It is about creating materials that you think would interest and benefit your readers. With a successful content marketing strategy, you can better nurture relationships with your prospects, increase brand recall, and establish your business as a trusted player in this competitive B2B tech industry.
We have gathered 6 tips for your B2B tech company to maximize your content marketing efforts here.
6 Content Marketing Tips for B2B Tech Companies
Personalise your content
One of the crucial B2B marketing trends today is that buyers want personalised content. Content tailored for buyers are no longer unique to B2C marketing, with an increasing number of business buyers who want to be more than just a number. A study by Accenture found that 73% of B2B buyers value personalized experiences which are similar to B2C consumer experiences.
To personalise the content that you’re putting out there, begin by identifying your target audience niche. Develop your buyer personas, with a clear understanding of what it is that your customers are looking out for. What are their purchasing habits and their sales cycles like? What types of information are your buyers looking for before they commit to purchases?
With a proper personification of your buyer, you can now create content for a specific target profile in mind, ensuring that they find your content to be relatable to their needs.
To get you started, here are some tips for you to better personalise your business content:
Leverage on data
While traditional tracking through information from cookies is well-known, we are aware that an increasing number of customers are hesitant to share personal data, limiting your purview of customer access to your content. However, you can still collect data from your existing database, or have a simple pop-up survey for new site visitors to answer some simple questions about their preferences. With the advent of social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn for businesses, you can also create polls to find out about user preferences.
Personalise your call to action.
If you are part of a hardware tech company, for instance, you could engage your existing customer base who do not have the latest products by offering insights about why they should consider upgrading their existing machinery. This could be in the form of infographics introducing extensive product features, pricing plans in emails, or product comparison charts. In contrast, new customers may be more interested in first verifying your company’s credibility, and may want to have easy access to information that could help them find out more about your business history and other customers.
Build segmented lists
Segmented lists are distilled lists of contacts categorised according to certain profiles. This enables you to send out targeted messages to each list, preventing an overload of unrelated content for the unintended audience. For instance, C-suite staff may not be as interested in finding out about entry-level industry tips, in comparison to insightful industry trend reports or thought-leadership articles. With your segmented lists, you can ensure that you send consistent and appropriate content that your audience can relate to, increasing engagement.
Create a strong brand identity
According to research for LinkedIn’s B2B Institute by Les Binet and Peter Field, marketing campaigns with brand impact are 4 times more likely to see growth in brand revenue and profits, and 50% more likely to see positive results compared to short-term objectives such as quarterly MQL targets.
Indeed, having a strong brand story increases coherence to your business’s strategy, and creates a sense of identity for your brand. Think about some largest field leaders in the B2B business like Dropbox, Slack or Zoom. These businesses have a clear brand identity that we can instantly conjure, and this aids our recognition of these brands everywhere and anywhere.
B2B marketing does not stop at merely providing loads of information. Surely, educating your readers is important. However, there remains immense value in engaging your audience emotionally to connect with them. This helps in fostering close relationships with your prospects, and leaving a lasting impression on people who access your content. Now, it doesn’t matter if your prospects drop off your site for a short while to grab a coffee or attend a meeting. You know they’ll remember your content, and that is the first step to pursuing the entire purchasing cycle with them.
Explore different types of content
The beauty (and fun) of content marketing is in its form of delivery. With proper channels, B2B marketing and tech marketing doesn’t have to be as dry as it sounds.
Here is a list of 7 types of content that your B2B tech company could explore today.
Blogs
Blogs are a staple to many sites today, as an easy and straightforward medium to communicate your opinions about industry topics, company events or your area of expertise. As blogs are usually long-form articles, this is a great opportunity for you to provide deep insight for your readers, establishing greater credibility for your business.
Interviews
Have a chat with industry experts, key stakeholders of your company, or any authority with an expert opinion on your area of expertise.
These interviews could be presented in the form of webinars, or just a short podcast, to provide your audience a means to find out more about what you do. This is a great platform to invoke meaningful conversations within your area of strength, and build greater authority for your business.
Case studies
Who doesn’t like to know that your methods have been tried, tested and proven to work?
Publishing case studies are an effective form of content marketing for your business. By sharing about what worked and perhaps what didn’t work so well for various companies in the industry, your readers can gain a greater understanding about what could work well for theirs.
Videos
Videos are a rising trend in B2B content marketing. It was cited as the top area of B2B content marketing investment for 2023, increasing from 69% in 2022 to 78% in 2023. By jumping on the bandwagon, you could be opening up a new platform for other businesses to find out more about your content.
Marketing videos are a fast and easy way for interested audience members to consume content, and have a higher probability of achieving virality compared to other traditional forms such as blog articles.
Infographics
With infographics, you can integrate eye-catching designs with educational content, and present a digestible but comprehensive perspective for your audience. This could include summaries on existing industry trends, product comparisons, or just benefits of the services you offer.
FAQ
Everyone appreciates a trusty Frequently Asked Questions page. Compile common questions you receive from prospective buyers, or that you’ve seen on the web during your content audit, and answer them. This FAQ page can be an evergreen content on your site, enabling readers to access it any time when they have doubts.
A credible and informative FAQ page also enhances the user experience, as searchers feel satisfied that their queries are answered.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a good platform to engage your audience consistently. By curating a list of audience contacts, you can schedule monthly email newsletters. Create value for your consumers by sharing industry trends, insights, opinions, and even exclusive deals unique to your newsletter subscribers.
Ensure great user experience
According to a 2021 Content Marketing Institute report, 51% of B2B marketers acknowledge that it has become increasingly difficult to grab and keep their audience’s attention.
Indeed, with growing competition and the advent of the digital space, there has been an influx of content for business buyers. It is easy for them to sieve through sites quickly, and no one wants to have to spend time understanding how to get access to information on your sites.
For proper content marketing, you need to prioritise the user experience. This includes readability, user navigation, and appropriate visual or text cues. Some seemingly trivial components such as – ensuring sufficient white spaces on your content to prevent readers from being overwhelmed by massive amounts of content, having a visible ‘Read On’ button on your scroll pages, or optimising your content for both web and mobile – are instrumental in retaining consumers on your pages.
Understand searcher intent
Content and data should come hand-in-hand in your content marketing plan. With relatable and brand-coherent content all ready, you now need to make sure your page obtains high visibility.
Search or user intent, is what your audience wants to know when they search something up on the Web. When preparing your content, it is important that you delve deep into why your audience is visiting your site, and understand what they hope to take away from it.
By identifying and catering to searcher intent, you can better drive targeted traffic to your site. This isn’t to say that you should just spam incessant keywords and cover broad scopes in all your content. (In fact, Google has clarified that this is instead likely to push your pages down the ranks of Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). Instead, relevant and helpful content is important to improve your site’s rankings.)
However, by conducting keyword research and analysing search result engine pages, you can better identify what your audience wants to know, and help them access your helpful content more easily.
With specific and specialised content, you are also likely to improve your E-A-T scores on Google’s Search Engine, an acronym short for “Expertise,” “Authority” and “Trustworthiness.” With its E-A-T guidelines, Google rewards sites with content that is consistently helpful and relevant, further enhancing your page’s organic visibility on SERP.
We’ve also shared a bit about some SEO trends in 2023 that could affect how you optimize your content here.
Use suitable metrics
Content marketing doesn’t just stop at putting content out for your audience. Tracking content marketing metrics is a lynchpin in identifying what type of content your audience best responds to. This could be different for each business, and it is vital that you make adjustments to your content marketing strategy depending on the metric results.
Sure, MQL and conversion statistics are always important in marketing. But, there are many other metrics that could be suitable to track the progress of your content marketing strategy.
Here is a list of some metrics that your team could consider for your next content marketing report:
- Website Engagement
- Conversions
- Website Traffic
- Quality of Leads
- Search Rankings
- Email Subscriber Numbers
- Time spent on page
- Email Engagement (Open Rates, Click-through Rates, Unsubscribe Rates)
- Social Media Analytics
- Cost per lead
The 2021 Content Marketing Institute report also identified the Top 3 Metrics that B2B companies felt provided most insight into B2B Content Performance to be Website Engagement (69%), Conversions (67%) and Website Traffic (65%).
Content and Context come together
We started off this blog talking about how content is king.
In preparing your tech B2B content marketing strategy, context remains the key to ensuring your content stands out from others. Write for the right time, place and people. With industry trends and talking points constantly surfacing in this fluid tech space, it is so important that your content keeps pace with the industry.
Change seems to be the only constant. With expected upcoming tweaks to SEO and search algorithms, coupled with rising platforms such as videos and podcasts, help your business to stay on top of the competition by placing greater emphasis on your B2B tech content marketing strategy today. Speak to us today!