Be Recession-Proof: Marketing Tips to Protect Your B2B Business During Unprecedented Times

Part 3 – Content Marketing

Marketing is the lifeblood of your company. Without a continual infusion of new customers and successful efforts to retain current customers, things can look pretty bleak. In this third part of our four-part series, we’ll look at the role of content marketing in your success and why you cannot afford to sacrifice these efforts even when the financial going gets tough.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves creating content that provokes interest and attracts, engages and retains the target audience. It involves developing a content marketing strategy that outlines each piece of content, and what role it plays to help a business achieve its marketing objectives. Instead of focusing on selling a product or service, it focuses on educating the audience and inviting them to learn more about the brand.  

Technically, anything that you publish online can fall under the umbrella of content marketing. That applies to blog content, social media updates, whitepapers, and eBooks. However, it also applies to things like email marketing, video marketing, infographics, and even podcasts. In short, any type of collateral that you publish and make available in any way, shape, or form online can be considered part of your content marketing efforts.

Why Does Content Marketing Matter?

Imagine how much it would impact your B2B company if you never posted on Facebook or LinkedIn again. How much would your success plummet if you no longer offered an eBook or whitepaper in exchange for a potential customer’s contact information? How much would your authority suffer if you stopped producing case studies and publishing infographics that went viral? 

Chances are good that if you were to just stop your content marketing efforts, most of the leads and new conversions would dry up very quickly, leaving you struggling. Of course, with ongoing economic upheavals, it’s imperative that you make smart decisions with your marketing budget and efforts.

Contact us to get support in your content marketing strategy

If you’re still not sold on the idea that content marketing is vital for your B2B professional service firm or B2B distributors & manufacturers business, check our blog post about lead generation techniques. Most of these tactics are forms of content marketing proving that content marketing is a tactic powering quality lead generation for your business. 

Content Marketing Tips: Maximizing Your Results

As you can see, content marketing is an essential ingredient of success today. However, not all marketing efforts are created equal. If done incorrectly, your efforts can be a drain on your finances and your employees’ productivity. So, how do you maximize value, improve reach, and ensure that your content is doing all that it should to fuel growth and success?

1. Know Your Audience – This is perhaps content marketing 101, but it bears repeating: know your audience. Every piece of content should be tailored to someone specific. If you haven’t yet, build accurate personas that represent the different audience segments that you need to reach, and then use those to guide your content creation and outreach.
2. Topics Matter – Content marketing should drive targeted traffic, but it should also take advantage of search traffic. If done correctly, you can capitalize on passive traffic rather than constantly hustling to reach new people.Developing a correlation between your content marketing and your brand assets, such as your website can be difficult as a business owner, but it’s absolutely crucial. Learn how Ballistic Arts improved not only website design but also content marketing efforts by making website content easy to find and increasing traffic through consistent branding in this case study
3. Fight Fire with Fire – Usually, more fire just makes the conflagration bigger, but if your competitors are outdoing you when it comes to specific topics and keywords, use their tactics against them and create better content that outperforms theirs.
4. Knowing the Best Formats – Content format is increasingly important. Make sure that you’re publishing content in formats that are in demand. Think guides, how-tos, and in-depth explorations.
5. Stick to a Calendar – You can’t afford to publish content willy-nilly. You need a content calendar that guides your efforts and is dialed in to deliver optimum results. Stick to a schedule and your audience will reward you.
   As a busy business owner of B2B professional service firm or B2B distributors & manufacturers business, it can be hard to see the line between content that sells, and contact that attracts. Here’s our guide on creating binge-worthy content to help you start filling up your content calendar with quality content. In the world of content marketing, quality always trumps quantity.
6. Use Links – Your content needs links if you want to benefit from additional juice from Google. They should be contextual, sensible, and designed for real people.

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The Takeaway

Content marketing is not optional, even when the financial going gets tough. However, it must be done the right way. Use the tips above to fine-tune your marketing and improve its reach, effectiveness, and conversion. And if you’re not sure how to do all that, reach out to us for more information. We’d be happy to create a custom content marketing strategy for your B2B professional service firm or B2B distributors & manufacturers business.