I have often come across people who tend to mistake B2B marketing and B2C marketing to be the same.

As a business expert myself, I would like to inform you that both the concepts are very different from each other.

B2B marketing stands for business to business marketing whereas B2C marketing stands for business to consumer marketing.

There are clear differences between the two forms of marketing. Since they are different, you need to apply different marketing strategies in each of the cases.

If you are running a business, you must already know that every customer has different needs.

Every one of them has different buying reasons. Not just that but even the way you promote your content can be different depending on your target audience.

These are the basics of marketing that you are probably already aware of.

B2B content marketing is different from B2C content marketing. But you still spot a major similarity between the two.

The main point of content marketing is that whether you are interacting with an SMB or a modern consumer, the basics of creating the content doesn’t change.

There are different content marketing techniques for you to apply. But in order to make them effective, you should take a step back and think of the tactics that actually matters.

In this case, you can also use SEO to grow your B2B business.

This is why today, I am going to tell you five of the best B2B content marketing techniques.

By following these tactics you can easily stay ahead of your competition. I have learned these tactics from my personal experience in the field.

Each of the techniques provided by me is effective to boost your business. If you are new to the business field, you can find my article really helpful. For the experienced businessmen, they can take ideas from the given pointers.

By going through this content, it is my guarantee that you will learn something important.

B2B Content Marketing Techniques You Should Follow

If you want to run your business successfully, it is very important that you use the right marketing techniques.

I have often seen newbies struggling to hold their business together. After all, the initial days are always the toughest.

To give you some idea, I have listed some essential techniques that can help your business.

1. Sell your story before you sell your product

This is an important aspect of content marketing that many businesses tend to ignore.

What you fail to realize is that a compelling story can work miracles for your brand.

This is why I have put this point at the start of the list.

There exists a mutual understanding between B2B marketing communities that no business is going to spend money frivolously.

Other businesses spend money on your business because they know that is going to help them earn more than what they have spent on you. However, the way you earn money from your business will depend on the kind of products and services you offer.

To put it differently, you are providing tangible value that an employee can take to their manager. Also, there is nothing wrong in creating content that revolves around tangible value.

Even I do this all the time.

However, you should not let that affect the content you create. This is when the problem starts and can lead to the following:

• Your content has such a focus on being straightforward that it becomes less engaging.
• Your content turns into self-promoting articles which can shoo away your readers.

Self-promotion is fine but you should know the limit.

The main purpose of the content is to tell a story. The story can be anything from entertaining to educational. The main point here is to make your content engaging.

After all, you cannot expect people to read your content, if it gets boring to the core.

Now the question is how do you make engaging content all the time?

From my experience, I would tell you to focus on the story you want to tell and worry about selling the product later.

Every business has a story. All you need to do is sell your story before you sell your product.

Tell your clients to know how your products can change people’s lives. Like this video by IKEA Singapore, where they use humor to captivate the viewers while positioning IKEA as the go-to retail store for improving your home.

You don’t have to be Shakespeare to create engaging content. Just try to be creative and that would be enough for you.

Also, make sure not to make any mistakes in your content. High-Quality content is everything.

2. User experience is important

The way the audience experiences your content is important. That’s because it is very essential for effective content marketing.

To be more precise, this is where your marketing funnel meets your sales funnel.

The content you are creating is not important because of the message it conveys. I mean, it is important but that’s not the only thing.

What matters the most is to get your business from point A to point B and then finally converting them.

You cannot make this possible unless your users experience your brand in a good way.

Creating enough content won’t help you if your audience is not able to connect with your brand. You need to make your brand stand out from the rest through your content marketing.

Creating good content is fine. But being able to create engaging content that can be identified by a variety of different audience is great.

Also, brand loyalty is everything here.

Just because you are selling the cheapest product in the market doesn’t mean that people will buy your products. You need to offer them a unique experience that will make them loyal to your brand.

In this case, you need to have a strong product. A product that stands out from the rest of the competition.

Here’s a good example of a strong brand that offers a unique experience to its customers.

Starbucks.com

Starbucks

But the main key point is to have a strong brand that can continue to get you sales today and even tomorrow.

3. Create multi-layered content

If you have been paying close attention to the way content marketing evolving then you should already know about this new technique.

No matter how much you are experienced in B2B content marketing, you should know the importance of creating engaging, multi-layered content.

Now the question is what does a multi-layered content look like?

To describe it simply, the best content is going to have aspects of both visual content and text-based content. This helps you to make the content more engaging.

Also, don’t forget that B2B business can benefit from SEO techniques.

I would break it into three main categories:

• Text
• Videos
• Images

The text part is the part where you don’t have to struggle much. Out of all the three categories, this is the easiest. Also, you have more experience with this.

You need to use keywords to drive more readers to your content page.

Now coming to images, it can be anything relevant to your content. You can include custom-made infographics, screenshots, etc.

Below is a simple custom-made infographic about Chatbots I created a while back:

Not bad.

The next thing that you should be bothered about is videos.

From my experience, I will tell you that entering the field of video marketing without any prior experience can be really difficult.

But the truth about digital media marketing is that if you are able to include a relevant video in your content then it can work wonders for you.

Learning digital marketing can help your business a great deal. Along with that, you should also adjust your SEO strategy.

Your video content should be able to provide value regardless of the category it belongs to.

You don’t have to make your videos look like Hollywood movies. The key to creating compelling videos is to make it engaging just like your text-based content.

You need to make sure that at the end of your video, your viewers are able to extract value from it.

In my case, I try to make sure that I use string visual media in my content. There are two reasons for this:

• Videos are the best way to engage your audience. That’s because the majority of the audience is not quite fond of reading.
• It is a great way of breaking the monotony of reading giant blocks of textual content.

However, it is needless to say that different business will have a different approach to this.

But then again I will remind you that having an SEO strategy can benefit your business in many ways.

4. Use metrics for long-term growth

Throughout this entire process, you need to do a lot of experimenting. In other words, you will end up trying a lot of other stuff that may not work for you.

Well, there is nothing to be ashamed of as it happened with me as well.

Even when you have a full-proof plan from the beginning, you cannot be sure of the type of content that will resonate with your audience.

Well, this is why we have metrics.

Trials in the initial days are fine as you are working with assumptions.

Tracking the results of your content marketing efforts allows you to do two things:

• It helps you realize your mistakes so that you don’t repeat them again.
• It allows you to start creating a marketing strategy that revolves around something your audience can actually relate to.

Your long-term, consistent growth is actually based on this very thing.

By using metrics, you will not only be able to avoid the mistakes that you made but you will also be able to build strategies that actually work for your business.

It may not appear to be much in the beginning. But over time you will realize that even the smallest of victories matter. This helps you to strengthen your business and even your content marketing strategies. Well, this is what makes all the difference.

5. Reap the benefits of paid ads

You should already know the importance of paid ads.

When it comes to B2B and paid ads, the first thing that comes to your mind is LinkedIn.

There is no doubt that LinkedIn is a useful tool for B2B and it can help you gain a bit of success even.

But the most effective paid ad platform that you are ignoring is Facebook ads.

Some of you may think that Facebook isn’t targeted enough. But you should take a look at the kind of attention you can get on Facebook.

Gaining more shares indicates getting more attention from people. This means more potential for conversion.

Facebook ads are useful because you are not just casting a bigger net but you are also targeting a community that actually gives a damn about B2B content.

You see you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

In the words of some of the freelance business experts:

• “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.” Dee Hock
• “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” Napolean Hill
• “Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.” Stan Smith

Over to You

So these are the 5 main B2B techniques that are important for you to know. By following these techniques closely, you are surely going to benefit your business.

Running a business is not as you think it is. There are hundreds of things that you need to take care of. Also, you need to adjust with changes coming with time.

Tips and guidelines can help you get an idea. But if you want to taste real success, you have to do it on your own. Struggling in the initial days is fine but you need to make that struggle rewarding in the end.

If you found this article useful, you should share it with your colleagues and friends. You never know who may get benefitted from this simple article.

Also, this article can be helpful for newbies in the world of business or aspiring people who want to enter the business world.

About the Author

Bill Acholla is a digital marketer helping small business owners build their brand through content marketing. Visit his business blog at BillAcholla.com for more actionable tips.