Content has the power to instantly capture and engage your audience’s attention and promote a consistent brand message in a variety of formats, across multiple channels. It’s no wonder content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, given that we spend an average of 6 hours 59 minutes consuming content every single day (Forbes).
Delivering compelling, high-quality material continuously reinforces your brand in a positive light. It drives customer loyalty and creates memorable experiences for your prospects by providing relevant and meaningful messaging with solutions to their challenges.
How can B2B marketers harness the power of content to aid B2B Sales Acceleration? Read on as we uncover why it plays such an important role in B2B marketing…
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Deliver the right content, in the right format, at the right time and on the right channel
Key to achieving this is to understand where your prospect is along the buyer journey. This enables you to plan the types of material most relevant to the stage they are at and intercept with your message as effectively as possible. As a result, front of mind awareness is attained at every touchpoint, establishing:
- Credibility
- Authority
- Trust and loyalty
- Enhanced reputation
By demonstrating expertise and an understanding of the most prominent pain points facing target audiences, content allows you to validate what you are saying you are capable of, by showing it. Therefore, having ample amounts that is suitable and readily available is how B2B marketers can boost ROI and conversions and amplify B2B Sales Acceleration.
How to begin your content plan: Content map template
Performing a content audit is essential for identifying how well your existing content strategy is performing. Not only will it highlight anything that is underperforming, it will spotlight areas that may need optimising and any gaps you may have.
Doing the groundwork on your content strategy not only improves engagement and return on your campaigns, but a clear and consistent strategy can help to enhance the perception of your brand. The audit should also help identify where and how can you deliver material to gain maximum results.
Here’s a handy content map template to get you thinking about key considerations – challenges and opportunities, content and channels, at every stage of the buyer journey.
Content mapping in this way ensures your carefully crafted messaging will get in front of the right people when it matters the most to them – allowing it to truly resonate against individual interests and goals.
It’s also important to map for every member of the decision making unit (DMU). This will ensure you are satisfying the different individual objectives at play, addressing as many as possible in your assets.
Content mapping: Key considerations
Your content should always be aligned with the pain points facing potential buyers, keeping it relevant to their key challenges. Taking the time to clearly explain how your solutions can alleviate their pains will go a long way in introducing them to a solution they might not have been aware of or considered.
To enable prospects to move forward along the funnel, it’s also important that you provide clear next steps – so think carefully about nurture workflows and Calls to Action (CTAs).
For example, do you want to direct them to your overarching pillar piece? Could an explainer video or infographic help to build awareness and interest? And, don’t forget to guide them towards a booking CTA when they are at the intent stage, to discuss your solutions in detail. Ultimately, conversion will always be the end goal when creating the buyer journey.
One size does not fit all: Mapping content to personas
When it comes to your audience and personas, a one-size fits all approach to your content is unlikely to resonate with individual drivers and motivations. Every persona is different, so the materials you create should speak to different types of people in your audience and their stage of the buying journey. Despite the complexity of this approach, if you’re able to deliver relevant and timely content to each target persona that addresses their top challenges – you’ll not only drive brand integrity but you’ll also ensure that what you have produced tightly targets the buyer’s needs.
Here’s how to achieve a persona based content approach:
Based on this, we’ve created a helpful persona based content mapping template to help map your persona based content, formats and channels in a sequential way, to resonate and make an impact with every persona:
How can sequential messaging enhance content?
Sequential messaging allows you to tell a story that can work across the marketing lifecycle. By tailoring the messages you deliver in your sequences to both the channel and the persona’s stage in the buying cycle, you’re able to create the kind of seamless multi channel experiences that respond to your audiences’ drivers while reinforcing brand authority, consistency, trust and loyalty. The more relevant and tailored it is, the more likely it is that people will notice, remember and engage with it.
With over half (51%) of senior B2B marketers citing their confidence levels in delivering sequential messaging across multiple channels as ‘Med-High’, 31% ‘High’, 15% ‘Medium’, and just 3% ‘Medium-Low’ (B2B Multi Channel Strategy: Market Research Report), it’s clearly becoming a more established practice to aid content creation and relevancy.
Ready to leverage the power of content?
Content is everywhere and in abundance, which is why creating an engaging, meaningful and relevant content strategy is critical in the B2B marketing landscape. Understanding your prospect’s most prominent pain points, where they are along the buyer journey and what solutions will best address their needs is key to gauging the content, formats and channels that will truly resonate.
Not only will this allow you to best engage and intercept your in-market buyers, it ultimately leads to increased ROI and conversions for amplified B2B Sales Acceleration.
