The Complete Guide to B2B Content Marketing in 2023

A decade ago, B2B marketing was limited to setting up booths at trade shows and sending flyers through direct mail. Cut to today, B2B companies are progressively turning into media brands fuelled by the power of content. 

It’s no surprise that content has become the cornerstone of marketing success for B2B players: at least 77% of them have a content marketing strategy.

But here’s the kicker: not every company is bound to succeed at B2B content marketing. It’s not easy competing against thousands of businesses with an already thriving marketing presence. 

And yet, it's incredibly rewarding. In this guide, we'll discuss all the keyWe'll discuss the key differences between B2B and B2C content marketing, the five most popular content types, and seven best practices to nail your marketing strategy.  

What is B2B Content Marketing?

B2B content marketing uses content in different formats and across channels to position a brand before its ideal customers, win these prospects' trust, and drive conversions. B2B content is solely targeted toward an executive audience, i.e., decision-makers holding senior positions at an organization. 

According to Semrush, B2B content marketing combines four key aspects: strategy, positioning, value proposition, and business case. 

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B2B vs. B2C Content Marketing: What Sets Them Apart

B2B brands produce starkly different content than their B2C counterparts because of fundamental contrasts in the target audience and objectives. Let’s see how B2B marketing compares to B2C content in terms of:

• Messaging
• Buyer intent
• Content strategy
• Content touchpoints 

Messaging 

B2B buyers follow a need-based, research-intensive, and lengthy buying process. Their decision-making is driven by a thorough analysis of the utility of a product or service. 

On the other hand, B2C consumers are more spontaneous and impulse-driven in their buying choices. They can be swayed to buy something even when they don’t have a strong need for it. 

This explains the difference in messaging between these two marketing techniques. B2B messaging is more rational and value-specific, while B2C messaging is purely emotional. B2B messaging has to build trust among prospects that your product/service can fulfill their jobs to be done and solve all pain points.  

Buyer intent

Businesses weigh every buying decision before they even set out to search for vendors or solutions. Their buyer intent is complicated and well-calculated. High-impact B2B content campaigns express buyers' exact intent, convincing them to buy from a specific brand. 

On the other hand, B2C customers have a more straightforward intent. They buy when they need a product/service or are convinced by a compelling marketing campaign. 

Content strategy

B2B content strategy maps the buyers’ journey from awareness to purchase. It’s more nuanced with multiple buyer personas, different content assets, distribution and promotion plans, and many other moving parts. 

Besides addressing customer pain points, the B2B content strategy aims to build sales enablement. This empowers sales teams to communicate more seamlessly with buyers. 

In contrast, the B2C content strategy focuses on capturing buyers' attention, playing on their emotions, and nudging them to place an order. It's also more community-driven since B2C brands need to earn social proof through customer testimonials. 

Content touchpoints

B2B sales cycles are comparatively longer and time-consuming. This calls for multiple content touchpoints to take prospects from a state of discovery to that of purchase. These touchpoints spread across the stages of your content marketing funnel to cater to buyers in different stages of the buyer journey, like:

• Ads, infographics, and blogs for the awareness stage 
• Whitepapers, webinars, and guides for the consideration stage
• Competitive analysis, case studies, and pitch deck for the evaluation stage

B2C brands have fairly shorter sales cycles and require fewer content touchpoints. They mainly rely on retargeting customers on specific channels until they purchase.

Content touchpoints

B2B sales cycles are comparatively longer and time-consuming. This calls for multiple content touchpoints to take prospects from a state of discovery to that of purchase. These touchpoints spread across the stages of your content marketing funnel to cater to buyers in different stages of the buyer journey, like:

• Ads, infographics, and blogs for the awareness stage 
• Whitepapers, webinars, and guides for the consideration stage
• Competitive analysis, case studies, and pitch deck for the evaluation stage

B2C brands have fairly shorter sales cycles and require fewer content touchpoints. They mainly rely on retargeting customers on specific channels until they purchase.

5 Popular Content Types to Produce in 2023

Ready to start creating content but clueless about what content works best for B2B audiences? Here are five popular content types to command your buyers' attention.

1. Thought Leadership Content

Establish your brand as a credible leader and become a standout name in your industry with thought leadership content. This content showcases your unique perspective through a contrarian opinion, a new ideology, a personal lesson, and more. 

This blog by Jimmy Daly presents a perfect example of thought leadership content. It challenges the widely accepted ideas related to B2B content strategy, explains why he thinks differently, and proposes better alternatives. 

2. Buying Guides and How-Tos 

A large part of the buying process for your prospects is determining whether your brand can actually solve their pain points. You can give them more confidence with value-packed buying guides and product-focused how-to content. This can be in the form of blogs, videos, podcasts, or social media posts. 

For example, Nuclino created a topic cluster for project documentation with multiple guides and templates to help its target audience. 

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3. Reports

Reports presenting original research include findings, predictions, trends, and insights from your industry. These reports add credibility to your name and can position you as a thought leader.

Here’s an example of an original report by Mailmodo. The report debunks myths related to email marketing with insights from industry experts. It also shares survey insights, benchmarks, and tips. 

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4. Case studies 

Case studies showcase how your product/service has helped other businesses succeed. Done right, case studies can seal the deal for you by giving prospects the confidence that you can help them accomplish their goals. 

Whatfix’s in-depth case studies, packed with key insights and product screenshots, present a great example. These case studies are available for download, too, acting as a lead generation avenue for the company. 

5. Testimonials

Testimonials are customer reviews available on your own website or third-party platforms like G2, Clutch, and similar. These reviews build social proof and help prospects make an informed decision about choosing your brand over others. 

Here’s an example of testimonials by ZoomInfo on G2. These video reviews talk about the pros and cons of using the platform. 

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7 Tips to Improve Your B2B Content Marketing in 2023 

Are you not getting the expected ROI from your growth marketing efforts? Here are our seven best practices to make your content marketing plan fail-proof and result-ready.

1. Create content that addresses your audience’s needs

Whether you want more leads or higher traffic, your first priority should always be your audience. You can create a more meaningful impact when you know exactly who you're targeting and what keeps them up at night. Here's how Foundation Inc puts it:

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Now, the bigger question is how do you create content tailored to your buyers’ needs? 

Simple—by digging deeper into their preferences to see what makes them tick. Here are a few criteria to accurately map your buyers’ needs and guide your content strategy:

• Goals: what do they want to achieve

• Needs: what solutions are they looking for

• Challenges: what factors are restricting their performance

• Pain points: what problems do they want to eliminate

• Motivations: what parameters motivate them to buy from you

Use these core pillars to create more buyer-centric content and appeal to every persona individually. 

Pro tip: Want to use content as a lever for growth but don’t know how? Divisional’s experts will work as an extension of your team to create and scale a solid content strategy. ‍

Reach out to us to know more. 

2. Focus on keywords with commercial intent

Commercial intent keywords bring high-intent leads. Prospects search for these keywords when they:

• Want to buy from you
• Want to learn more about buying from you

In either case, these prospects are more likely to convert than those searching for navigational or informational intent keywords, like in this example.

Creating more content targeting commercial intent keywords can significantly improve your conversion rates. Follow these tips to find the right keywords:

• Use a combination of words typically indicating commercial intent, like best, cheapest, comparison, X vs. Y, and similar
• Pair up your keyword search with transactional intent phrases, like buy now, order online, discount, and similar 
• Leverage SEO tools like Semrush to generate a long list of keywords with commercial intent and pick the relevant ones based on density, competitiveness, and volume

Combine your organic content around commercial keywords with PPC ads on search engines. This can multiply your visibility and potentially increase the number of leads coming in.  

3. Create a multi-channel distribution plan

Producing the right content is only half a job done. You have to proactively distribute every content piece to maximize its reach and create a visible impact. 

Instead of leaving distribution as an afterthought, make it a critical part of your strategy from the start. If you find and hire the top marketers, you should know that they use multiple channels to distribute B2B content; here's proof from a survey by Content Marketing Institute. 

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Here’s our best advice on creating an airtight distribution plan:

• Outline the purpose for every content piece and choose the distribution channels accordingly—for example, if you want to promote an important content asset, use a combination of paid and owned channels
• Decide the right KPIs to track your performance and pick metrics for each funnel stage, like awareness (impressions, traffic), consideration (time on site), evaluation (marketing-qualified leads), and similar
• Create a pipeline or framework for repurposing different content formats and distributing them on selected channels

On top of these tips, follow this bonus advice from Justin Simon to make your distribution strategy work!

4. Integrate video marketing into your strategy

Video was the number one area of investment in B2B content marketing in 2022. Video content is all the rage primarily because short, snackable videos are easier to consume than textual content. 

B2B brands can make the most of this growing appetite for video by integrating it into their content marketing plan. Here are a few potential ways to create videos for your brand:

• Case studies showcasing your product/service and team in action with real-life reviews from your customers 
• Educational content by repurposing blogs into videos to educate viewers and boost brand awareness 
• Product overview and demo videos to give interested prospects a glimpse of your product and send them further down the funnel
• Short-form videos for social media platforms to maximize customer engagement 

Gartner recommends this framework for using different types of videos for different channels. 

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5. Build an email newsletter

Despite the raging popularity of social media, email remains a timeless marketing channel. It’s a more personalized and reliable avenue without fluctuations in reach after every algorithm update. Besides, 69% of B2B marketers use newsletters to distribute content. 

So, launch a newsletter to maintain active communication with your subscribers, including potential and existing customers. Reflect your brand personality and use this space for:

• Sharing the latest company updates
• Sharing the best reads for your users
• Sending product insights and use cases
• Spotlighting industry insights and news

Litmus shows how it's done with its newsletter. The email marketing platform keeps things interesting with its newsletter, covering various topics in every edition. 

6. Analyze performance with relevant metrics

Running marketing campaigns without the right content marketing metrics is like flying a plane without the instrument panel. You might get off the ground but struggle to know where you're headed. 

Define what success looks like for you by picking relevant metrics beforehand. Here are three broad areas to consider:

• Basics: Unique visitors, page impressions, visits per post, traffic sources
• Engagement: clickthrough rate, share ratio, engagement rate, time on site
• Positioning: keyword value, brand mentions, media value, follower growth

Schedule regular audits to track progress and switch gears when things don’t go your way.  

7. Post on a consistent schedule 

Most unsuccessful content teams drop the ball with their posting cadence. Without a consistent publishing schedule, you’re leaving money on the table. 

Instead, create an editorial calendar to establish timelines for posting every content piece. Remember that your calendar can only help maintain continuity in publishing new content. Don't rely solely on this calendar to guide your overall strategy—as Ross Simmonds puts it.

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Get Ready to Kick-start Your B2B Content Marketing Efforts 

B2B content marketing was dubbed boring for years. But today, companies want to let their brand personality shine in all the content they create. 

With a keen focus on your audience and a strong game plan to publish and distribute content, you're all set to crack the code for content marketing. But if this seems like too much heavy lifting, you have a trusted content partner in Divisional. We'll be your one-stop content team led by a dedicated Head of Growth to tick off all your goals. 

Ready to take your content efforts to the next level? Connect with a growth marketer today.