Good quality content is a crucial component of any marketing strategy. Proving value to your prospects is key to developing their trust, and building a relationship with them. However, the key to B2B content writing is just that, value. Content for the sake of content is unlikely to have any impact, and may well have a negative effect on your website, and your connection with leads.
Around 55% of successful content marketing strategies focus on increasing the quality of the content.
While content is important, it can be particularly challenging to know where to start. B2B content writing varies from other forms of copywriting, and requires a keen understanding of the industry, and the buyers.
SEO also plays a crucial role in effective content writing, and content marketing overall. Research suggests that 46% of content marketers make SEO the priority in their marketing approach.
So, how do you combine good quality, valuable content with the best SEO in order to build real relationships with the right leads?
Content Writing for B2B Tech
Generating leads and sales is about more than just brand awareness for B2B tech companies. Typically, B2B tech sales cycles are longer, as there is more consideration involved before full commitment to a solution. Ultimately, decision-makers need to take their time before spending large amounts of budget.
As a result, B2B tech sales require trust in the solution, and the company behind the solution. Inbound marketing is a key strategy for this industry, as this has the potential to build stronger connections, when compared to other strategies like paid ads. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that B2B content writing can back up your outbound and paid strategies, too.
Content writing for inbound means providing SEO-optimized, valuable content that is directly related to the issues that your buyer is facing. Address their problems, even solve them, and they will learn to trust your resources. Again, this relationship takes time, but the foundations are then much stronger.
The best content writing is clean, concise, and takes complex ideas and makes them more palatable for readers. Your content should be driven by your audience, what problems they are looking to solve, and keywords based on those topics or problems. Answer their questions, without pushing a sale.
Guide: B2B SaaS Marketing
First Steps
Before you even begin writing your content, you need to know what your content should say. Your content will carry an overarching message, and should appeal to your buyers on a subconscious level. To create really outstanding content, you need to understand your market, your buyers, and your solution.
Market and Competitive Research
Take the time to learn more about your market. If you don’t know what’s already happening in the space, how can you compete? Take a look at your direct competitor’s campaigns, and analyze what is resonating with buyers, and what isn’t.
You might even take a look at their website and what content they are producing. What message are they trying to get across? Consider whether this aligns with your solution, or whether you think you can do one better.
Once you know your market, and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, you can establish your business’s own brand positioning within the industry.
Buyers Persona
The next key component of effective content writing, and an effective content plan, is your buyer. You need to have a clear understanding of who your buyer is, their pain points, and what solutions they’re looking for.
Construct a clear buyer persona, and communicate it across your marketing and sales efforts. A buyer’s persona is a profile of one individual buyer, based on your preferences and some educated guessing.
Take a selection of your ideal buyers and existing customers, and gather their demographics. Is there a clear trend? Take note of their age, gender, ethnicity, job role, location, and more.
Next, using some educated guesses, consider what their pain points might be in relation to their life or job role. What solutions are they looking for? What are their interests and goals? Create a clear profile of a singular person that you’re looking to attract with your content.
Once you have a buyer’s persona, you can target your content writing to resonate with that specific person.
Messaging
Your content carries your message, so it needs to be clear. Combine what you’ve learned about your market and your competitors, with your buyer’s persona to establish a message that will resonate.
Be clear about what problems your solution solves, and why you’re the top choice. Your positioning should also guide your message.
Thread this messaging throughout your content during the writing process. Ensure that your buyers get value from your content, but also understand that your business could be the expert that they’re looking for.
B2B Content Writing Best Practices
Now that you have the foundations in place for your content, it’s time to start writing. There are some key best practices to understand and implement for every piece of content, to ensure it resonates with buyers and is able to deliver value.
Outline each piece of content
Always start with a clear outline for each piece of content. Split it into sections and write a brief summary of what each section will cover. This will ensure you don’t miss any points, and effectively answer the question or problem.
Gather stats and useful data
No matter how good your content is, your points need backup. While your personal experience may still be valuable to users, take the time to find research and stats that solidify your positioning.
Your content should be valuable to the reader
As mentioned, value is the key. Use the buyer persona’s pain points to guide your content. Answer their question or solve their problem as clearly as possible.
Your content should be skimmable and palatable
Heavy blocks of text aren’t appealing to anyone, nor are lengthy sentences that don’t get to the point. Utilize whitespace to make your content skimmable, and use clear and concise language. You can also change font formatting to help highlight key points.
Your inbound content should be SEO-optimized
Tools like SEMrush help to ensure that your high-quality content is found by the right readers. Choose high-value and specific keywords that suit your audience, and optimize your content writing accordingly.
Finish with a CTA
Your content should never be a sales pitch. Your readers came to your website in search of answers, so always provide those. However, reinforce brand recognition and your own solution with a CTA at the end of each piece of content. Remind readers that you have other useful resources available.
Write content for outbound strategies and gated content
Content isn’t just for inbound strategies. Create written content with outbound marketing in mind. Gated content behind landing pages makes for an excellent way to gather contact data. Written content for nurturing campaigns also ensures that you make the most of all connections.
Set the foundations, and follow the above B2B content writing best practices, and you’ll be well on your way to establishing solid relationships with leads. The best content generates traffic, and then transforms that traffic into qualified buyers over time.
At Nituno, we can offer a combination of B2B content writing, video content, strategy management, Hubspot implementation, and more. Our content writers are experienced in a variety of tech industries, and are ready to boost your content offering for increased traffic and lead generation. Get in touch with us to discuss your marketing needs.
