Keep reading and pay close attention to points 3, 6 and 7. You need to build out your topic clusters with rank-ready content that answers your prospect's questions, gets you on their radar, and introduces them to your business. View original. Content Strategy & Framework Building The difference between a great and unsuccessful content marketing program is ‘strategy’. Lo sentimos, se ha producido un error en el servidor • Désolé, une erreur de serveur s'est produite • Desculpe, ocorreu um erro no servidor • Es ist leider ein Server-Fehler aufgetreten • Plan is the first step in building a successful content marketing strategy. Creating a B2B content strategy that drives results takes industry expertise, audience understanding, and strategic implementation. Home » Blog » Content Marketing » How to Create a B2B Content Strategy The demand for quality content continues to climb among marketers and businesses. B2B SaaS companies are churning out blog posts left and right, but the reality is few marketers are creating strategic content aligned with their business goals —whether that's increasing retention, generating leads, or boosting brand awareness.. You can see how it follows a basic template: audience + topics + benefit. But the results are generally 100x that of a typical article. But creating content marketing that delivers results is not an easy feat. Messaging and positioning are the most under-rated tasks in marketing. A Content marketing strategy sets the vision and roadmap for brands to attract, engage, delight their audiences with the right content and convert them into leads. Blogger B pitches four of those articles to other websites. Unless you enjoy your boss breathing down your neck asking It’s the visitors who land on our service pages that drive demand. For this, I’ll use Moz, but other SEO tools would work as well. Choose a content framework Choose the right content themes and formats Find and maintain your brand personality Distribute and amplify your content Adjust your strategy as needed Content marketing: It’s a marathon, not a It isn’t very complex, but it is something you can use. Sure, you can check out resources, but most of them will end up telling you something similar. Great content or social media programs are backed by a strong strategy. We’re 40 strong spread across design, development, and project management. That’s what they say. In this guide, I’ll share an eight-step framework you can use to create an effective B2B content marketing strategy … We have a mission-driven, research anchored, influencer powered, PR-focused content strategy framework. For our office coffee delivery service, I’ve decided that the content will target a specific audience, but cover a wide range of topics and have a light tone. But we also aren’t naive. Because these visitors have information-intent, not commercial-intent. A super helpful article with some immediately actionable insights. Here is the content marketing mission of Speedy Bean’s content (blog, emails, social posts, etc. It’s why the army does “war games” and B2B content marketing teams create a content marketing strategy. The link between success and planning is well understood. When we look at the lead generation conversion rates for visitors who start their visit on a blog post, it’s abysmal. Thanks for compiling your presentation into an exceptional post, Andy. Thanks, Joshua. Everything is better with friends. That might be an overused mantra, but it still rings true. But even without a so-called “thought leader” publications will take your pitches if the topic and quality are strong enough. Blog enough and you’ll eventually win. Having a solid foundation when it comes to your content can make things so much easier. That’s our plan! Together we can make an impact. But your comment makes me wonder about the period of time. This tool provides a framework or “skeleton” for marketers to use as a template for their plans. Step 5 takeaway: Our content strategy includes consistent use of visual formats, including infographics and video. That’s how links and authority work. With any industrial marketing strategy, there are key components that should come together to create a solid base and plan of attack for getting the word out and ultimately securing you more business. That idea, blog and grow rich, fails because it misses the key connection between content and traffic. According to the B2B Content Marketing 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, 91% of B2B organizations use content marketing. It’s the most link-worthy content you could possibly create. Here’s my idea for original research for our office coffee delivery company: What are the office perks offered by the top workplaces in the world? They reward you for the favor with a link. As of January 2020, this guide ranks #1 for “B2B SEO,” so you’re in good hands. Probably not. A website without a blog is an online brochure, one with very low domain authority and rankings. Anyhow thanks!! It’s a fun exercise that I’ve done with dozens of clients. I put our domain into the Moz Link Explorer…. Those who produce content within the context of a holistic content strategy. Customer acquisition is an approach where “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” By integrating every aspect of this customer acquisition framework, you’ll construct a program that best serves the non-linear buying behavior of your B2B buyers.Learn more about the customer acquisition framework. Blogger B has more links (great for search) and more friends (great for social). But at the same time 6200+ B2B marketers say that their biggest challenges are generating traffic and leads, and proving the ROI of marketing activities. Less, but more focused time will beat more unfocussed efforts any day! “Keep on blogging and eventually, you’ll create a river of leads.” We started by saying that this isn’t true. Learn more in our B2B marketing strategy framework guide. Requested URL: www.udemy.com/course/2020-b2b-content-strategy-framework/, User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.89 Safari/537.36. Nope! It looks like it’s a bit outside our range. According to our annual blogger survey, only 25% of bloggers have published original research in the last 12 months (our friends at Mantis Research asked companies, not bloggers, and found a higher percentage). Especially for younger content programs, earlier in the process of building an audience, guest blogging and digital PR are so important. Over 15 years developing content for enterprise B2B sales and marketing organizations, we have developed and documented a 6 Competency Framework for Business Level Information and Content Strategy. The best source for content ideas is the audience themselves. Great content or social media programs are backed by a strong strategy. Every successful content strategy also uses visual formats regularly (images and video). That’s very easy. Our B2B marketing strategy framework will allow you to: Use research to make data-driven decisions about marketing campaign targeting and be able to back up tactics to your leadership team Gain a full understanding of your market and ideal customers … It builds upon April's framework and comprises a stack of marketing "layers" that build upon each other, each centered around the customer’s buying process. Keep on blogging and eventually, you’ll create a river of leads. Even a little uncertainty will kill conversions. Two amazing things happen when you write content that answers their specific questions. And mentioning the research without citing it with a link would have been improper. I’d look for candidates on my team and build up their rep with some strong bylines, polish their social profiles and then pitch editors on their behalf. The first thing that you need to do when planning a content strategy is to define your goals. There you have it. The visitor is looking for insights, the editor of the 3rd party publication is looking for quality, the search engine is looking for authority. Why are some content strategies so successful while others are not? The idea is partly to make our brand and our content more visible to people who create content. When planning your content strateg… Assuming our article about the amazing benefits of whole bean coffee was successful, it’s a candidate for repurposing as a visual. It’s no surprise that a documented mission correlates with success. According to the B2B Content Marketing 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, 91% of B2B organizations use content marketing. Content Writing. This becomes our content calendar. We’ll use a fictional coffee delivery service, Speedy Bean. Thank you for the inspiration! It includes a strategic process to create better and more valuable content for an audience. Doing this even once a year would be far better than occasionally putting out medium quality blog posts. Original research is hard work. Approach your B2B content marketing strategy using a framework to plan and develop content around your marketing objectives. So maybe instead of publishing twelve pieces of content per year on your blog, you’re going to be publishing four pieces to the blog and 8 other pieces in the forms you’ve described (guest posts, infographics, etc.) They have shifted from a product-based to a persona-based content They’ll flow in all day every day. In this guide, I’ll share an eight-step framework you can use to create an effective B2B content marketing strategy for your business. B2B content marketing strategies to drive more leads. This chart shows how all of the content connects. Our Domain Authority is 16. If length and detail help, great! Imagine two bloggers. Unless you want to waste the next six months creating content that nobody sees. Content strategy is much more than just an editorial calendar. They’ll flow in all day every day. Our B2B marketing strategy framework will allow you to: Use research to make data-driven decisions about marketing campaign targeting and be able to back up tactics to your leadership team Gain a full understanding of your market and ideal customers to bring more relevant traffic to your website Blogs help the service pages rank by being link-worthy. I think you pinpointed the biggest challenge: persistence. Most content strategies do the usual (blogs, newsletters, an occasional ebook) while others use less common tactics (research, influencer collaboration, and video). The customer journey map is an opportunity for you to become familiar with the various touchpoints that are involved in your B2B marketing strategy as customers move through the sales funnel , as well as what influences their decisions and what questions they may have. The top issue for businesses is finding the time to create and publish high quality content. We have found this framework explains the competencies required for effective business level content strategy: They’ll flow in all day every day. the usual conversion optimization best practices, Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Guide to Content Marketing, The benefits of the content to that audience, You can send the article to companies that are currently in your pipeline, keeping those conversations going, All sales associates are unified in their messaging, they can send the link to future prospects who have that same question, Improve the quality of your content (assuming they’re experts), Increased traffic from social media (assuming they share), Greater credibility (assuming they are reputable and support your message), Good for your personal network (assuming you keep in touch), Ask a relevant, credible source for a contributor quote, Send a few relevant questions to a small set of relevant sources (round up), Find one very relevant influencer and email them a series of questions (interview), Invite a relevant content creator to write an article for your site (host a guest post). Look at the difference. Andy, you are a recent discovery for me but I am so glad I’ve found you. After all, the prospects in our sales funnel are our most important audience! A strategic B2B marketing is a huge opportunity to position your brand as thought leaders; as masters at the top of your field and to become a cardinal voice in your industry. It shouldn’t matter if the SMEs are in-house or outside experts, one person or lots of contributors. Here’s what it might look like as an infographic. They contain short chapters 100-150 words each of your Pillar page. If you have access to an SEO tool, enter any domain and see which of their pages has been linked to the most. That content is critical because of its indirect benefits. That might be a tough one for folks to get their heads around — but it’s essential for this strategy. It’s not why they’re visiting. And the commercial-intent visitors are far more likely to convert into leads. To read more about the immerj Content Strategy Framework, head over here. All good things (including search rankings) are built on relationships. Those that do are twice as likely to report success in their content marketing. Next, I’ll need to reach out to office managers and HR folks at each of these companies and do a quick phone interview. At the center of all digital marketing is the sales page. In fact, “organic influencer marketing” (which is really just collaborative content marketing) is free and can save you time. What if you are on a small marketing team in say a pharmaceutical or hi tech company? Step 1 takeaway: Our content strategy begins with a well-optimized set of services pages, optimized to rank and targeting a phrase that is (eventually) within reach. Within a year, we’ll have a river of qualified leads flowing in through our contact form. And a very small percentage of content strategies (about 1%) combine these tactics to build powerful platforms for high rankings, huge traffic and loads of conversions. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. Publishing original research and building relationships with content creators might lead to links, but when you write for someone’s website, you’re almost certainly going to create a link back to your site, in the author bio if not in the article itself. Br Joshua. This is why the best content marketers work closely with sales teams. They can pass it along to current and future prospects forever after. For our little coffee company, this page about our coffee delivery service. If they have big job titles, all the better. A content strategy framework is essential to prepare for these inevitable epiphanies. Every successful content strategy I’ve seen has a foundation of well-written articles (text). If this is the case for you too, your content blueprint may look a little different. Original research is news and that’s just what they’re looking for. B2B Content Marketing Case Studies Water Technology Content Marketing Strategy Industry: Water Technology Kasco Marine approached MTC | The Content Agency to develop a content marketing strategy framework and content deliverables for the CertiSafe™ Municipal Mixer. Step 3 takeaway: Our content strategy is anchored with high-value original research. 39% of content programs have a documented content mission, 18% have ongoing influencer marketing campaigns. It would be nice if a blog reader suddenly realized they need your business services, but it doesn’t happen a whole lot. Once you’ve documented your mission, you’ve basically written your calls to action for your content. It’s surprising that, despite the data proving that marketers who have a documented content Strategy execute more effective content marketing, as many as 63% of businesses still don’t have one! Like I said this can work but if implemented incorrectly you can also kill conversions for both segments and lose potential customers. We need to go beyond text and create more visual versions of our most important content. In the end, you’ll gain more exposure, more backlinks, and better rank, correct? In theory the process of creating and implementing a B2B content marketing strategy may seem simple enough but there are some common challenges businesses face when it comes to putting it into practice. Tags: strategy brand phase. Some content programs achieve results much sooner, while others never get there. They each write eight articles. Use this B2B messaging framework with templates guide to create your messaging framework for products and thought leadership. We’d like to rank for “office coffee delivery” but before we target that phrase, let’s check the competition. 1. Chicago Community Member However, only 56% say they are “extremely committed” or “very committed” to content marketing, and only 37% say they have a documented strategy in place. It declares three simple things: Simple, right? Happy rankings, Chad! Let’s step back and see how each all this content fits together. Here are five quick ones: And it doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. The Best Marketing Framework to Guide Your B2B Strategy I wrote an article similar to this about the B2C buyer’s journey , and I stand by the framework I used to drive that article—as I said above, the B2B buyer’s journey is now the same as a B2C buyer’s journey, it just involves more people. You can’t plan a strategy unless you’re clear about what you want to achieve from your initiatives. Read More This piece is for B2B content marketers yearning for a simple, effective, “evergreen” content marketing plan to follow… Watch this video to get a gist (or see the full 7-step content marketing framework below): When you talk to prospects and customers, you learn their cares, hopes and worries. Designing, building, and supporting the web since 2001. Service pages are definitely not link-worthy. So what’s the difference? Content strategy is the practice of creating, governing, and measuring content that meets business goals and audience needs. Regardless of the structure of the service page and regardless of which page is the “pillar” just be sure that your strategy has a comprehensive plan to rank, which probably means some kind of PR + original research + influencers. The money phrases. It makes your website the primary source of new data. The Best Marketing Framework to Guide Your B2B Strategy I wrote an article similar to this about the B2C buyer’s journey , and I stand by the framework I used to drive that article—as I said above, the B2B buyer’s journey is now the same as a B2C buyer’s journey, it just involves more people.