Question: We completely see how Blogging and Social Media can work for B2C, but what about B2B, especially SMB and SME where we have very specific audiences and target markets? Can Content Marketing and Blogging Work For Us?
While in many iterations, this may be the question I am asked more commonly than any other. To boil it down, you are asking how the heck do we make content marketing work for my business?
I’m going to answer this question in two ways. I am going to tell you some things to focus on to help your blogging and content marketing efforts be more successful and then I am going to give you a couple of things to NOT focus on as they will take your efforts off target.
Ready? Here we go.
The best and worst thing for many B2B’s trying to break into the content marketing game is that they have a very limited target audience. It is far easier to get a lot of eyeballs on a blog post about Miley Cyrus or Apple Products than it is to get people to read about your new Plastic Molding Injection.
However, the advantage of having a very specific product targeted to a very specific customer is that you know exactly who to target your content to and that is where all of your efforts should go.
In short, your content should be written with the ideal customer (current and new) in mind so that those whom benefit most from the product will have an opportunity to build a better relationship with your brand.
Once you have created the content the focus should immediately move toward promoting the content to the aforementioned audience. This can be done via direct email, newsletters, trade publications or targeted social media such as LinkedIn Groups or Google+ Communities. Other Social Media efforts can work as well if you focus on building targeted followings on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest for example.
The ultimate desire is to get your products or services in front of those that can convert into customers or become more loyal customers. That may be 5, 10 or 100 people/companies in total.
What Not to Focus on With Content Marketing in B2B
The number one thing that small and mid sized companies who are targeting content B2B should shy away from is the desire to drive giant metrics.
While it sounds terrific to have thousands of readers checking out your blog and perusing your site, raw traffic shouldn’t be the focus.
Law of averages works with door to door sales, but with a specific product going to a targeted audience, lots of eyeballs in itself will do very little for advancing the efforts of your content marketing.
B2B’s need to stay razor focused on their objectives and if selling more is your objective then make sure you are building content for and promoting content to your target audience.
Let your competitor get hung up in the wrong metrics so you can spend more time driving great content toward the eyeballs that count the most for your business.
Check out this short video for more on how to focus your B2B content marketing efforts.