Targeted content marketing has replaced traditional, product-focused marketing. This type of marketing delivers higher quality leads because it encourages potential customers to trust your company and view you as experts in your industry: experts that can help them with problems they are having in their business.
Content marketing focuses on relationship building rather than transactions. The logic behind this type of marketing is that when you build an atmosphere of trust and establish your business as an expert in your industry, customers will automatically turn to you when they need your product or service.
The majority of your content marketing should be aimed at top of the funnel prospects. The top of the funnel is the first stage in the sales funnel where prospects will experience your brand probably for the first time. These business buyers are unaware or barely aware of your company and what products and services you offer. First impressions now matter.
Targeted Content for TOF
Content to attract top of funnel (TOF) potential customers needs to be more general than the content that you’ll write for those further along in the buying cycle. In this stage, your content strategy should be to speak directly to qualified potential buyers in problem awareness language. They are self-focused. Their problem is what motivates them to take action – read your content. Identifying these problems and writing content around these topics is the first step to building trust.
The added benefit to you is they are now aware of your company and will view you as a trustworthy option. You can mention your products and services, briefly and contextually, but this shouldn’t be the primary focus of your marketing at this stage.
To get the most from targeted content, you want to target the people in an organization who have the authority to make a purchasing decision or are tasked with information gathering. Where do these people look for content? Good choices are networking sites like LinkedIn and other B2B social media platforms, websites for trade publications in your industry, websites for industry organizations, and your website and blog.
The aim of posting on networking social media sites or guest posts on industry sites is to draw potential customers to your website, where you can market to them more specifically. And perhaps, they will convert to your newsletter or your other events.
Your lead-generating content can be in any format, such as articles, blog posts, videos, or infographics. However, you want to keep the content somewhat general and not too sales or product-specific. Content at this stage needs to stay ungated to continue to build trust. They are probably not ready to convert yet.
What Targeted Content do They Need?
To attract quality leads early in their buying journey, you need to focus on problems that are unique to their industry that your product can solve. There are studies that have shown that trust is achieved not by demonstrating how you will solve their problem, but if you can articulate their problem clearly. This is not unlike the sales strategy of restating what the prospect says to make sure you are hearing what they need.
If you can use a real example, story, case study (with permission) of one of your clients and how they used your product to solve an issue, you will benefit further.
You may find that you need different types of content, topics for each product you sell, and for unique segments of customers. For example, a small business owner and a purchasing manager at a large corporation may both be good candidates for your product. However, they are likely to be drawn to different types of content and different publications. This is where buyer personas can be invaluable. These are detailed profiles of the target customer for each of your products or product lines.
Where to Post Your Content
B2B customers are not like most B2C customers. They don’t go home and spend hours scrolling through business networking sites or reading trade websites and publications.
For that reason, it’s a sound assumption that your targets are going to miss most of your social media posts. That’s why you’ll need to repeat your message multiple times in multiple ways. In other words, Create, Reuse and Replicate. You can’t expect that your first post or second or third will have the impact you need or reach the number of target purchasers you’ll like.
Of course, you don’t want to simply cut and paste your content. That will cause search engines to punish your website by sending it far, far down in search engine results, where only the most dogged internet surfer will ever find it. The best strategy is to say the same thing in different ways, using different mediums.
Creating content to entice new B2B customers to try your products and services isn’t difficult. However, you need to view these targets differently than you would your existing customers or targets who are further along in the sales cycle. For maximum results, focus on content that solves customer problems and subtly introduces your company to your target audience. Show them, instead of just telling them, why your company deserved their trust and how you can make a positive difference in their business.
