Closed B2B sales aren't like persuading people to buy new sparkling water or a match-three app. B2B products aren't being purchased on the spur of the moment. Make a compelling case for your product or service and you'll have a better chance of closing sales.
What is content development?
It is the process of gathering, creating, and disseminating information in order to achieve a strategic objective. "Develop a deeper connection with your audience" could be an open-ended goal. It's possible that a goal has specific, measurable outcomes in mind, like increasing a certain kind of marketing or sales activity.
This is typically seen as an iterative process with a set of steps to be followed by most successful content marketers. Once you have gathered the necessary information, you can begin the process of creating and distributing your content.
As a result of this cyclical nature, developing content is different from simply producing content.
It's a feedback loop that generates new information that helps you achieve your goals. Your content is shaped by your objectives. You'll be able to improve your content's effectiveness by analyzing how well it performs.
What is the significance of content creation?
The spray-and-pray approach is an alternative to content development: make a lot of content and smear it all over the place.
Ads everywhere, emails in every inbox, and promoted posts on every social media feed are all symptoms of a bad case of spray and pray.
Spray-and-pray isn't the best approach if it makes you recoil a little bit after reading that. The vast majority of people loathe being inundated with generic advertising.
As a B2C seller, you might get some random conversions, but as a B2B seller, it's usually a massive waste of time and money. You have a smaller pool of potential customers, each of whom has a well-defined set of requirements.
Using content development, your marketing dollars are put to better use by putting relevant and effective content in front of actual leads.
In other words, you have to go to where your audience is. Marketing campaigns should include content tailored for email, social media, your website, and any other online location where leads congregate. It's easier to spray all those bases if your campaign isn't focused.
Marketers who excel understand the importance of putting the needs of their customers before their own promotional messages. With a scattershot approach, you don't get the harmony between the message, the audience, and the platform. To make your content even better, you'll need a well-oiled development machine behind you.
How to Develop B2B Content that Crushes It
What does a successful content creation process look like? Step by step, here's how it works:
1. Research and Information Gathering
Who are you trying to reach? What is it that they actually require? Most B2B companies already have a good idea of what they want to do. No matter how deep you go, you'll always learn something new about your target audience.
Customer personas are easier to develop when you have more information about your target audience and how best to reach them.
Different B2B buyer positions in various industries have distinct online habits and haunts. Take note of what's hot, what's trending, and who your rivals are. With this information, you will be able to spend less money while attracting more leads and keeping them engaged for a longer period of time.
2. Strategize and Schedule
Now, you should have a clear picture of your target audience and some data-driven insights into your own strengths and weaknesses. It's possible to use this data to begin developing a content strategy to help you achieve your goals.
What kind of content should I create? What voice and themes should I use? Which platforms should I focus on? These are some of the questions that you can answer here.
A content calendar is also a good idea for scheduling your posts at this point in the process.
A calendar can help you build on topics, avoid repetition, and avoid dumping too much content too early. Additionally, you'll save your marketing budget and your creative team from exhaustion.
3. Create Your Content
The most important part of the process is actually creating content that is both informative and engrossing.
Think about the people who are going to buy your product. They're going to consume your content where, when, and in what manner. More traffic and more shares are generated by longer posts, despite the fact that 73% of readers prefer to skim them.
If you want to keep your readers interested and entertained while also providing useful information, you need to strike a balance between the two.
Images and videos are more likely to be shared on social media than written content. Stock images should be avoided and replaced with striking, brand-consistent graphics that are appropriate for the medium.
Video is a great medium for social media, but don't forget who you're trying to reach with your content. Click-bait viral content does not have the same impact on B2B buyers as educational demo videos and thought leadership.
4. Optimize Your Content
The only time you should be concerned with optimization is after you've produced quality content. All the meta-information that makes it easier for people to find your posts is included in this step.
This is also the time to edit for readability and a unified tone across all of your marketing materials. Repurposed content can be surprisingly effective, so keep that in mind.
Don't be afraid to bring back old content that worked well for you and incorporate it into your new content strategy.
The next step is to begin publishing and adhering to your content calendar. It may seem like a lot of work to post all of your exciting new content to your website and all of your various social media accounts. To ensure a unified and consistent rollout across all your social media platforms, marketing tools can automate this process.
Don't be afraid to use some marketing tactics to help your content gain traction.
Be aware that broad-targeted paid promotions can backfire or even harm your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Instead, think about using natural methods like guest posting and employee advocacy programs.
Bottom Line
It's time to close the feedback loop at the end of your content development process. Go back to the drawing board with everything you've learned and start all over again with a new content strategy that is even more effective.
For this reason, it is important to have a content strategy in place that is built on the foundation of thorough research into your target market's needs, as well as being measurable, unique, and interesting to your target audience.