How valuable is your B2B content to your customers and readers? Just as with crafting a quality project or offering a valuable service, it’s the value added that matters. In the past, online content has been seen as an afterthought and as a carrier for keywords. Blog articles, especially those written for B2B markets, were notoriously sparse on useful content. Blogs were either keyword fluff or serve as narrative service pages.
Content Quality Takes the Lead
But times have changed — and continue to change. There is more competition for audience attention and even your secure B2B markets have plenty of websites to choose from. If you want your content to both attract users and convert customers, it’s important to understand your audience and give them the information they’re looking for.
Today’s B2B content readers are looking for more than just a reflection of the service page. When they research a question, they expect answers. And the more skilled and experienced your readers are, the more they will expect from quality content.
Business customers, in particular, are careful about their provider selections and often prefer a long research phase before reaching out to a supplier. The better your online content, the more appealing your brand will be for leads doing pre-quote online research.
Representing Your Expertise
Even more to the point, clients can and will judge a brand’s expertise based on the content of your blog or resource page. Consider a business customer doing research on the best service for their company. In this research, they will find and read blogs from various relevant websites. If the articles on your site are accurate, useful, and insightful then it will suggest your team as equally valuable under work conditions.
Conversely, fluffy, uninformed, or non-existent content can reflect poorly on the expertise of your team. This is where we’re seeing a major paradigm shift. Where once it was normal to leave blog-writing to the marketing team or social coordinator, now your on-site content is becoming a professional asset. This is especially true in the B2B industries where your depth of knowledge is essential for meeting the needs of your varied niche business audiences.
Representing with Experts
The natural answer is to change who is writing your articles and information content. Instead of leaving this to your marketing team, put expert content into the hands of experts. Ask your technicians, designers, coordinators, engineers, ecommerce experts, and other internal pros to supply the content for your brand’s professional writings.
Instead of fluff pieces, publish gritty pieces about logistics and product design. Talk about how your team overcomes common issues with industry equipment. Share an article on fleet maintenance instead of rephrasing the delivery schedule. Write a knowledge-base on troubleshooting equipment instead of a product listicle.
Not only will this in-depth expert content reflect well on your services, it will also become a page-turner for engaged industry readers. Your content will shine through the marketing fluff pieces and readers will come back time and again to reference your past work or check out your new expert content.
Editorial Tip: Use dictation and re-writing or film videos for your pros whose skills do not include writing.
Giving the Customer the B2B Content They Deserve
As your customers put more value into what they read, it’s only right that you put more value into the content you print for them. Once, your average blog reader would be just as happy with a detailed service page. Today, online articles serve the purpose of a knowledge base. The quality of your knowledge base also determines the value you offer to readers.
As a B2B brand, you are already aware dedication to the customer’s experience is crucial. Your understanding of your clients’ industries is what sets your team apart and makes your innovations valuable to the customers. Take this same attitude into your content creation. Your customers deserve good content because they are professionals working with you. Just as you’d give accurate directions or instructions, the quality of your content matters.
Creating Value in Each Article
Whether you are writing a tool manual or a holiday greeting, your online content can provide value to the customer. Always define the facts you’ll be sharing and why the information is useful when you set down to write a content topic. Why does the audience want to know? What will they have learned or gained after reading?
From there, you can break down the usefulness section by section. Many people skim the sub-heads for a specific answer or based on what interests them. So write your content as if every paragraph matters.
Becoming a Trusted Source of Industry Knowledge
Finally, there is the natural consequence and reward of providing valuable expert content: Becoming a trusted source. Consider how some websites have gained a reputation for trustworthy stories and useful insights. Consider how you are more likely to believe articles from these sites and to reference these sites if you want the real answer to a complex question.
By using your experts to provide accurate industry content, you too could become a trusted internet source. From a handy catalog of industry tool descriptions to thought-leadership articles on how to improve the industry, great content is really what most consumers are looking for.
There are few better results of a website blog than to become the encyclopedia of your industry terms and a trusted source for expert-backed tips.
Content marketing can quickly turn you from a nobody to a trusted expert in your niche. And if you want to sell your product or service, you need to become a thought leader.
Content That’s REALLY for the Customer
Writing B2B content for your inbound marketing and social media campaigns has changed. As a B2B company, the quality of your online content reflects on how well you can serve your business customers. Instead of a placeholder blog, it’s time to get serious about writing content your customers can really benefit from. Publish current articles on important topics in the industry, explore industry tech with your engineers, or answer common questions with in-depth exploration into the answers.
Give your readers something to take away from the reading and knowledge to remember you by. Not only will you build a readership, but that readership will become customers who come back time and time again because they trust your brand to keep providing great value — from the online content to logistical services.
