An Ultimate Content Marketing Guide for Driving B2B Lead Generation in the Next Decade

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Content marketing is the core of inbound marketing and the efficacy of content marketing garners better return on investment (ROI) and attention to your business.

According to several pieces of research, more than 70 percent of B2B decision-makers across the world prefer learning in early buying via content over the internet, rather than relying on traditional advertisements. Hence, a company leader who is looking forward to doing any kind of business with you will more trust his learning about the product or service than the marketing message or campaign. This calls for a very strong content marketing strategy, for instance:

Video Content:  Another key approach to getting a prospect lead would be from video views.  In several cases, video content is chosen more than written content. Content is the king of marketing but Video is the king of content. Still working hard for getting your video content seen will be of no use if it doesn’t give a lead.

 

Call–to–action: Creating a comprehensive guide is just not enough; the main plan is to get the email of the reader. The main reason for practicing this strategy is to turn the reader into an email lead by adding CTAs, prompting them to download the comprehensive guide on the same topic. One of the best ideas would be automating every blog post that can lead CTAs directly to the relevant guide depending upon the topic chosen.

 

Blog posts can be the Ultimate learning Guides:  Almost every company is investing a huge amount of money in creating content that can generate leads. But turning the blog posts as an ultimate reading guiding and posting on relevant social media groups may perhaps attract a large number of your audience.  For instance, combining all the finance management posts into a large comprehensive piece of content that might get downloaded by some executives. The continuity of such activity offers a chance of knowing the choice of the preferred audience with the traffic they generate. This allows for better planning of content and targets the same audience every time.

 

Analyze Your Results Using Reports

 

Some marketers believe a myth that once the content is posted on social media then the job is done. But the truth is, posting content on various platforms based on your content calendar is not sufficient to experience success. You should keep an eye on the performance of posted content and analyze whether it is doing its job.

 

Free tools like Google Analytics help you analyze the success of your content marketing. Based on the results, you can change the current strategy or tweak it to overcome the complexities and to get the desired results. Analyzing your posted content allows you to see what type of content makes more impact and information from the lead generation stage can provide details about which content piece drives conversions and makes more money. By gaining these insights you can optimize your content and accelerate sales.

 

Different Formats of Content

Promoting blogs regularly can also be boring. Try to entice your prospects with various content formats to convert them into your customers.

Diversify your content based on your goals – try blog posts, podcasting, e-book, videos, and infographics. It is proven that nearly 53% of B2B marketers find the infographic effective as it delivers complex content in a most condensed format. 73% use YouTube to distribute their content and many marketers are jumping into the art of podcasting. Generate leads by diversifying your content format based on your niche.

On the contrary, there are some common mistakes often been made by marketers that can negatively impact the entire marketing strategy, like:

 

Creating Robotic Content

An overly professional tone is sometimes misunderstood as being robotic. The ultimate goal of a strong content strategy is to increase awareness and accelerate sales. To accomplish this, your target audience must feel that you value them. To get their attention, try not to be robotic and boring that can lead to ignorance. Ignorance, in other words, is a waste of time, resources, and energy.

Content marketing aims to create affinity and drive sales by attracting the right audience. To build affinity, your content must be emotionally appealing and relatable to your audience. As emotion is very crucial in decision-making, never compromise on creating emotional content that can range from infusing a sense of humor to a compassionate solution-oriented approach that helps to solve your client’s difficulties. And above all, always sound like a human.

Targeting the Wrong Audience

Having a killer content marketing strategy with powerful content is important. But, delivering it to the right audience is equally important. Let’s say your goal is to promote a new feature for your B2C business. You’ve developed a strong content strategy and created content that is highly technical to explain this feature. The result of this content could be less effective as your customers may shy away from highly technical content. They seek convenience from your brand.

The concept of three Ws and one H (why, what, who, and how) can help you understand your target audience and to improve your content.

Creating impactful content that is more engaging and relevant is easy when you know your audience inside and out. Your audience might vary based on your goals, try to understand the right tone to use in content based on your target audience. Avoid vagueness and keep content relevant to your target audience’s interests to grab their attention.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, content marketing is essential as it aids in delivering valuable messages to prospects and customers to gain their attention. And studies say that content marketing brings 3x more leads than traditional marketing. A well-planned content strategy with periodic analysis is a requisite for strong content marketing.