Attracting new customers is especially challenging when it comes to B2B-companies. Traditional promotion channels like ads will not be efficient since they don’t target the audience that’s interested in a niche product or a service. On top of that, most clients of B2B businesses will not convert to leads after seeing a single appealing ad. Instead, they are looking for a stronger bond with the company.
To ensure your business provides leads and clients with a continuous stream of value, make sure to implement best content marketing and conversational copywriting practices. In this post, you’ll find out how to create appealing pieces even if you’re a PHP Laravel developer, not a writer, which trends will dominate 2020 and 2021, and how to choose the right marketing approach for your business.
What is B2B Content Marketing?
As the name points out, content marketing is the process of using written materials to increase brand awareness, create a link of trust between the client and the brand, promote the business’ vision and ambition. To make sure the web site’s content is well-formatted, consider finding a Laravel developer for hire.
There are noticeable differences in B2C and B2B marketing approaches. Take a look at the table below to know how to tell the two apart.
| Business-to-business content marketing | Business-to-consumer content marketing |
| Focuses mainly on value. Hence, companies try to contribute to the industry publishing meaningful research, white papers, and other pieces, useful to colleagues. | Focuses on emotional impact. B2C content doesn’t have to be useful as long as it’s memorable and evokes emotion. |
| Explains why a certain type of service or product is useful to a client. B2B companies often come up with innovative solutions customers never used before. It’s crucial to explain why investments like software development are beneficial to the client’s business. | Introduces the brand. Most B2C companies promote a familiar line of products/services – alimentary, beauty, electronics. Thus, instead of emphasizing the value of the product as a whole, a B2C business needs to explain why a customer should prefer it over alternatives. |
| The copy is grounded on data. B2B businesses tend to appeal to hard numbers, statistics, and concrete proof that motivates a client to choose their product or recognize the value of Laravel developers. | B2C companies are focused on telling stories that resonate with people on a personal level. Lately, the primary focus of B2C brands lies in relatability and taking a stand on global matters. |
| B2B content marketing requires a step-by-step approach. The decision-making process is lengthier in corporate environments than on a personal level. When it comes to B2B companies, content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. | B2C companies feed off the short-term virality. If a marketer succeeded to skyrocket sales and awareness over a short time frame, a content marketing strategy was successful – even if the impact didn’t last. |
Now that we have established the differences between B2B and B2C content marketing, let’s understand why the marketing method is still a must-have for companies that cater to businesses in any niche.
Why Is B2B Content Marketing Important?
Almost every corporate website on the web has a blog, a newsroom, and a resource library. It seems there’s no way a potential lead will go through so much information when choosing a product vendor or a service provider.
Nevertheless, content marketing is one of the few ways to get the reputation of the industry expert and leader. Here are the reasons why you should implement the B2B content marketing strategy for your company.
1.Higher odds of free exposure
By publishing research, unique pieces like interviews with the industry leaders, or useful how-to guide (e.g., How to start using the Laravel framework), your company will get more social media exposure and grow the number of backlinks. The colleagues will refer to your research data in blog posts, while potential customers will check out the how-to material.
Thanks to a wide range of content formats, a B2B business can write a piece that tailors a specific fraction of the audience – an investor, a client, a niche media, and so on.
2. It’s more affordable than regular advertising
Content marketing is a tried-and-true way to attract organic (free) visitors to the website. By investing in a team of writers along with web development, a business manager will be able to reduce advertising costs and maximize the efficiency of paid promotion.
Appealing content on the website, engaging social media posts, and value-driven newsletters strongly contribute to converting leads to customers. Also, content marketing is a way to stay connected to the client at all times – the odds of him reaching out again increase by numbers.
3. It makes the company more appealing to employees
Content marketing is not only a way to gain exposure and increase conversions –it increases employee retention as well and allows you to opt for lower Laravel developer rates. If you express your plans, vision, and ambitions clearly, job-seekers will be more eager to come your way. Content marketing is a good way to show your goal-driven attitude to ambitious candidates and retain top-tier talent like a Laravel developer for hire.
Content Marketing Tendencies in 2020
Content marketing is highly environment-driven. As the pressing societal issues, values, and generations change, so does the way businesses communicate with customers. It’s common for social media channels and other promotion methods to go in and out of style. That’s why marketing managers are always on the lookout for new trends and tendencies in content marketing.
Here’s what this and the next year are going to be like for B2B content marketing.
Authenticity
While B2B businesses are not as emotion-centered as the B2C ones, being a value provider with no distinct voice or personality is the luxury brands can’t afford anymore. In 2020, authenticity will be increasingly more important to B2B-companies.
There are several ways for businesses to communicate with the audience in an authentic way:
- By promoting company values and aiming for a big societal impact. Shift the focus from promoting a service like Laravel application development to the business – what your team stands for, what your global ambition is.
- Talk about the personal drive. Don’t be shy to mention how much you love the field you work in, describe what brought you to the industry in the first place. Salesforce is an amazing example of a way to inject personal motivations into advertising. Its home page features a video of a company’s VP describing his passion for the field.
- Humanize your content. Lately, brands took a turn to show their human side. Check out the Uberflip social media accounts to see how a distinct brand voice brings forth engagement.
2. Interactivity
Reading a plain-text piece on complex topics like Lavarel for e-commerce requires concentration and commitment. To make sure the visitor is engaged enough to get to know the piece, consider enriching it with interactive elements. Here are some of the ways to increase interactivity on the website:
- Offering customers personalized recommendations based on their search or purchase history.
- Creating interactive services that help estimate the budget of the project, run audits, and so on. Case in point, the New York Times accompanied its piece on the tax bill with an interactive calculator that helped Americans estimate tax returns.
- Running unscripted live streams on social media that give the company a chance to talk to the audience directly.
3. Cross-brand collaboration
There’s no harm in teaming up with another company – a dedicated Laravel team or other businesses – to engage your respective engagement rates. In fact, co-branding is getting extremely widespread in modern content marketing space. Here are a few examples worth checking out:
- Amazon and American Express joined forces to create an Amazon Business American Express Card.
- GoPro and RedBull arranged an epic acrobatic stunt in outer space.
4. Omnichannel distribution
Finally, marketers from all over the world come to an understanding that using a single promotion channel is not enough to bring forth revenue and engagement. That’s why using the website, social media, email, guest posting, and other promotion means in synergy is an optimal way to attract more traffic and strengthen the bonds with the audience.
Conclusion
Content marketing is a way for B2B companies to promote their vision, establish the expertise in the niche, and reach out to the target audience. By adhering to new tendencies – omnichannel distribution, cross-brand collaboration, interactivity, and authenticity, business managers will be able to get more exposure and organic traffic. A methodical approach to publishing new material and a keen eye for trends are the crucial success components for content marketing efficiency.