Content marketing that targets consumers might capture the largest audiences but content for B2B businesses is where it will get the biggest returns.
The entertainment value of content in the B2C market is critical for raising awareness and influencing consumers to try, buy or experience the brand. For B2B, it is the depth of the content and the day-to-day value that it creates for the audience that makes it effective.
That is why B2B content creators need to look at the strategic value of what they’re creating and ensure it is meeting a business objective both for their own organisation and their target audience.
Read our B2B Content Checklist and see if you're delivering quality content to prospects.
That means generic content doesn’t work. This is where PR, creative and advertising agencies fail. They may be experts in marketing but great B2B content requires expertise in industry sectors or at least the ability to draw the expertise out of a business. In a way, it looks like agencies should be hiring industry analysts rather journalists to get the market knowledge that B2B content demands.
If the topic that needs to be addressed is something as niche as cloud orchestration for infrastructure as a service or telecoms capacity pricing trends between Singapore and Jakarta, the content and insight being shared can be extremely valuable for the audience but it needs to be delivered for the audience with true insight.
The topic may be niche or even obscure but valuable to the target audience and that means that the content being created needs to be even more skilfully crafted and delivered. The failing of much of the B2B content being created is that rather than mining exceptional stories or expertise, it is repackaging generic comment and calling it content.
B2B businesses have the most to gain from creating content as the expertise within these organisations can help partners, prospects or existing customers create new revenue opportunities. Each organisation can act as a resource for the industry and prove not just that they understand the sector but that they understand how to move the sector forward. The target audience can see benefit in the ideas and then act on them.
Creating content for a B2B audience means engaging an audience that has a defined niche, needs to see instant value and loves to hear expert insight. That means whatever content is being created needs to prove its purpose.