Content Strategy For B2B: Case Study & Checklists

Content Strategy For B2B is never free, even if it's stolen (don't do that). In any case, you will spend time searching and processing, even just layout, and this is already a cost.

We will tell you how to organize the production of content for a company so that costs are fought back and it is not excruciatingly painful to pay for articles and not see any return.

Disclaimer: there are no universal solutions, there are few ready-made schemes and they may not suit you, all hypotheses must be checked. But there are some things you can take and do directly.

Ecosystem of corporate content: goals

- Cover all target audiences.

- Respond at any stage of the user's journey.

- Close needs, engage and sell.

- Use all available channels.

- Stay within budget.

And now, point by point.

Cover all target audiences

This exercise should be done by a marketer: select groups of your consumers, uniting them according to some criterion - by behavior, by JTBD, by the length of "life", by the amount of the check, etc.

The usability of the grouping should be a guideline. It makes no sense, for example, to divide by the amount of the check, if the groups differ only in the thickness of the wallet, but you will provide them with approximately the same services and solve the same problems. Do not divide into boys / girls if they buy the same thing. Do not divide into Muscovites and provincials if they have the same motives for buying.

It is necessary to divide so that you can see: these need purple plumbuses on credit, and these are interested in our franchise.

Life hack: it may turn out that several groups of different characteristics will be "covered" with approximately the same content. This is normal.

At AIMagnus, the picture has been formed for a long time and does not raise questions - the benchmarks are clear, it is immediately clear who needs what. Now the column “Targeted advertising” has been added, but it is very similar to “Contextual advertising”.

Some groups are cut in more detail here, we combined them for the content strategy. But they are used in the selection of sites for seeding and publication.

Respond at any stage of the user journey

Obviously, doing only selling content is an attractive strategy, but not sufficient. The longer the path to purchase (contract, order), the more diverse the information needs of the future client. Sometimes you need to start from scratch - just tell that you exist and know how to do something good. Trust, loyalty, assessment of your advantages, removal of objections - it's too early to sell, but content needs to be done.

How do you determine where what content is needed?

A simple rule of thumb: the better they know you, the more honestly you can sell. Going to a massive site? Bring simple utilities that just about everyone on this site needs, add your own capabilities. We went into the professional community - do not retell the alphabet, proceed from the fact that colleagues are in the subject, show them an interesting solution to the problem, your solution.

Have you bought an accommodation? OK, you can sell, but it's better to package the sale again into a solution to some problem.

In their own channels, readers are already loyal to you, they know your product, read your blog and subscribe to your newsletter. So you can unselfishly share your knowledge, unobtrusively reminding you that you are not just for nothing, you have discounts on a new tool. Guides on using your product will be appropriate here, precisely because readers are already in the subject.

Life hack: always proceed from the presumption of awareness. You don't have to start every article with a definition. “Targeted advertising will help you reach your target consumer on social networks, such as Instagram and Facebook.” This is not necessary. Your reader already knows. Start with what he doesn't know.

Close needs, engage and sell

Obviously. The better you can help someone, the more trusting they will be when it comes time to get their wallet. So you need to understand how you can be useful in general, and exploit this knowledge.

In this sense, it is easy for us - we know what worries the two main groups of target audiences. We can generate enough content by telling you how to do something in the field of SEO, SMM, PPC with our own hands and inexpensively. Plus, we have free tools to offer as a solution to a narrow problem. Whenever we talk about collecting the semantic core, it is easy to mention the search hint collector - and now we have a transition to the system. And there the visitor is already waiting - banners, widgets, other temptations.

Use all available channels

Obvious again. Sitting upright and waiting for everyone to read our blog is not a strategy. They will not come of their own accord. Yes, no one canceled organic traffic, but it is long and (almost) unmanageable. Therefore, the strategy should immediately include not only content creation, but also ways of its distribution. More on this below.

Stay on budget

The costs must be counted. It would be nice to finally learn how to calculate the cost of a lead and compare it with other channels (context, for example). There are areas where the cost of content is almost zero, because other ways to attract customers are effective.

For example, in such a mundane area as the rental of construction equipment, the context rules, but a blog on the operation of excavators will look at least strange. Although it could be proposed to make a reference book of regulatory documents for construction, and this may be useful (this is just a hypothesis, it is necessary to check).

But a specialist who offers his services needs to write efficiently and a lot, and spend time both on his own blog and on external sites.

Ecosystem of corporate content: types

As you can see, the list is quite long.

- Internal content (guides, help, reference books).

This content also draws on consumer knowledge. It covers the features and problems of using your product, in addition, upselling is relevant in the texts. How? Mention related tools, insert native frames, links to other content.

- Service mailing (trigger letters, etc.).

This content is also internal, but there is one point: in any letters you can always add some informational content. We made a trigger letter “You have not completed setting up an advertising campaign”, add a link to the setting guide in the tail of the letter - suddenly the person stupidly does not know which buttons to press in the next step.

- Own platform (external / internal blog).

It's obvious here. We write about everything that can make a consumer's life better.

- Own mailing list (content).

It can be a simple digest of articles from a blog - we once did a survey of mailing list readers and this format won. Or maybe - like our big newsletter - a source of original content for clients.

- Your social networks.

Social networks need to be "downloaded". It is good if you have a strong targeting specialist, but even better if you have your own topic group or someone from the staff writes frequently and expertly in topic groups. Reposting to a good live group instantly and multiples increases the number of article views. And it's free.

- External "network" (platforms, mailings, social networks).

A subject of separate concern. You need to constantly look for information partners, monitor live public on the topic, look for someone with whom to exchange guest articles or announcements in the mailing list.

Life hack: It's very important to make sure that the conversions from your articles are targeted. It's a shame if you stir up interest in a new product, and then link to the main page, from where there are 3-4 more clicks to this new product. For especially important cases, it is generally worth preparing separate landing ones.

And most importantly: linking

Everything can be linked to everything. From mailing lists to a blog, from a blog to a product catalog, from an external article to a landing page and additionally to a blog, and so on. A visitor who gets into your networks should see at least two pieces of content, or even better, go further down the funnel and start looking at your catalog.

A particular example of linking: we have written rather detailed guides on using the modules of the AIMagnus system. They are in the blog, and our technical support sends clients to read these guides when they are asked, "why is this checkbox here?" And he brings us popular questions so we can make guides on this topic.

AIMagnus Blog: How we grew

We have already written in detail about how our blog developed . Now let's go over the main points.

In general, the topic of our blog and other materials is based on a simple rule: we help our potential clients solve specific, often rather narrow tasks. If they are solved with the help of our tools and system modules - great, if not - we will still write an article, just add an advertisement for the service in it.

Once we asked our readers what they want to see on the blog, and this is what happened:

Our statistics confirm this, the most popular blog articles are reviews of various services, from Snapseed to Screaming Frog .

From the very beginning, we put in quite a lot of effort to optimize the content on the blog, as well as to update the popular content.

This is something to do all the time, especially if you have a solid array of texts. If this is good content, it needs to be updated, if you inherited a SEO set of articles, they need to be sorted by popularity and systematically rewritten with preservation of the keys.

The main thing is blog sales

Why else would the company need a blog? Attract, warm up, sell.

We sell mainly through native inserts - they contain a link to a module or system tool. The article may be quite far from our specific tools, for example, about contests on Instagram or about zero-click results , it is difficult to enter here an organic mention of our service. And the native insert looks honest, not too intrusive, and does not force you to break the logic of the presentation.

The result of such "gentle" manipulations is the transition to the system and registration.

Clients who have replenished their balance and perform some actions in the system are considered active.

AIMagnus system is an advertising complex for attracting customers from the Internet. SEO, PPC, SMM in one account. Full automation, ready-made checklists, precise settings. One-click customer reports, result guarantees, industry solutions. Created for those who want to free up time for really serious work.

"Home" content

For its site, "evergreen", educational, honestly advertising content is good. You are here for a long time, visitors should get used to receiving useful information from your hands. Therefore, it is worth making a detailed content plan, considering your client's key need from all angles.

- Answers to frequently asked questions.

First, don't make these questions up. Go to your technical support, to account managers, to everyone who comes across with customers. Get a list of sensitive issues and sore spots. And write a FAQ. If there is no one to ask, read the thematic forums, look from competitors.

Important: these are questions not only about your product, but also around it. For example, it is quite possible to add a block of legal questions (whether you need a license to work), a large topic of illustration processing, and a simple usability guide to questions about setting up a landing page designer.

- Guides on tools (your own and someone else's).

This type of content has been mentioned above several times. It's amazing how much demand for easy-to-follow step-by-step guides is. Show "which buttons to press" and describe some of the most usable scenarios for working in the service - and hundreds of readers will be grateful to you.

- Service news and industry news.

It is obvious.

Life hack: any update announcements can be packaged into subject instructions. Not “We released a new feature, it does this and that”, but “How to solve such an applied problem using our new feature that can do this and that”. Example: How to quickly launch targeted advertising for a seasonal product [instructions] .

Learning the basics and subtleties.

Even if you tell me how to do it yourself, for which you take money yourself, it will be appropriate. Most often, an attempt to do something with your own hands or even just look at the instructions already leads to the understanding that everything is somehow very difficult. And it's better to order it all from professionals.

It is also important to take into account the so-called. Climber incident . Imagine that you start walking in the mountains. We mastered the surroundings, went to the Alps, climbed some wildly difficult peak. You go down, and you are asked to tell you how to correctly calculate the forces when climbing the hills.

- Pfff, what kind of questions, let me tell you better about spending the night on a steep cliff ...

- No, no, about the hills, please.

Because it is you who, in your development, have reached the rarefied air of mountain peaks. And those who came to the conference, read your blog, and most importantly, will buy your product - they are still down here. Conquer hilly surroundings.

- Cases and success stories (clients).

Your own site is the most suitable place for cases. They will even look for them here when they begin to study your proposal. Therefore, here you can make cases "It was / became" with customer reviews, statistics and other evidence-based beauty.

Outside, the cases need to be packed more carefully. On a third-party site, few people are interested in how bad your client was before, and how great you were. External cases should be made more like guides. "That was the problem, this is how we solved it, this is how you can apply our experience (or hire us, of course)."

Guest content

Strong texts must be carried to someone else's site. “In a dressing gown and slippers” you can only enter a narrowly professional platform, where you have long been known and highly appreciated as an expert. In all other cases, you will not only have to prove that your text is worth reading, but also compete with other texts.

The exception is micro-blogging and content projects, which we talked about above. Here it is enough to write texts of a normal level, without trying to do something outstanding.

What you can write about on external sites:

- Answers to frequently asked questions.

The same questions from the FAQ can be parsed in the articles. Of course, you need to choose the most pressing and demanded questions. And answer them in detail.

- Collections of usefulness (including your link).

We have already talked about the popularity of collections. Collections are loved by everyone, including the editorial staff - especially if you add materials from this site to the selection.

- Situational content: what happened and what to do in this case.

If you can catch trends, you need to do it. For example, last year Google introduced a new ICS puzomerka to replace the TCI. We first wrote the " History of the TCI ", and then our experts conducted several experiments and provided analytics on ICS .

- Well thought-out promotional materials (benefit plus benefit).

Naturally, sometimes you can and should just sell. If you are buying accommodation on a rather expensive site, take care to package your offer with the highest quality.

- Thought-out benefits for site visitors. It can also be entertaining material, like, for example, our cards on Meduza: "We translate from SEO into Russian . " It is obvious that it makes no sense to publish serious SEO recommendations on a mass portal.

- A neat bundle of your product with the topic of the article.

- A strong landing page that will receive traffic from the article.

And you don't always need to set a sales target. The image of the company needs support, your HR brand, the product itself needs to be popularized in all ways.

Optimizing content costs - Content Strategy For B2B

In order not to be excruciatingly painful to write off the costs of content, it is worthwhile to dispose of it wisely. For example, use the "shot" material more than once.

Do not follow the lead of SEOs who are in awe of the uniqueness of the content. Yes, sometimes the first post is no longer considered the primary source, but it's all your content. Any material will link to products, any material works for you. If the site allows, you can repost.

Almost anything can be repackaged. Any piece of content can be revised and served in a different format. As soon as your expert has created something useful, as soon as you see that the article has caused a lot of comments and reposts - you need to look for ways to use the content again.

- Have you written a great guide? Do a lot of small instructions (and vice versa).

A large guide will go to a blog, small instructions will go to internal content, a library of terms, and user tips. Sometimes a large guide can be broken down into two or three materials. For example, we wrote about contextual advertising in Google, then we took it apart and slightly supplemented it, and two articles were published - about Google Ads.

- Collect a thematic selection of articles every six months.

Selections - TOP-1 by shares. This is inexplicable, but any post with a collection collects many times more shares than anything else. In addition, making selections is less labor-intensive than regular materials, since you do not need to create a coherent well-developed text, it is enough to come up with a topic, collect links and write short links.

Important: do not make selections without a topic. “10 popular articles from our blog in half a year” is not an idea. But " 50+ guides: how to attract buyers to an online store " - normally falls into the interests of blog readers.

- Webinar passed - submit an article (and vice versa).

Most webinars are quite good in terms of content. Collected material, prepared illustrations, there is a record. If the speaker is not very good at writing, you can decipher the recording, the editor will process it, and the speaker will then review and correct the details. The expert's article is ready.

In the opposite direction, it also works - if there is a good article, you can use it to make a webinar for clients.

- The conference has passed - do a lot of articles.

Exactly the same way you can process a speech at a conference. And if you hold events yourself - make materials on the speeches of all speakers. They will appreciate the preparation and posting, and you will get good blog posts.

- Made a good guide - record the video (and vice versa).

Good guides don't have to be dead weight. If you have a video feed, guides are great resources for recording training videos. And again - in the opposite direction it works no worse. For example, if an expert has made a screencast on setting up a certain instrument, it is not difficult to decipher the recording and make a guide on this setting.

Necessary Steps to Launch Content Marketing

Below we summarize the experience of working with content in the AIMagnus edition.

Before you start

There are a few things that need to be clarified that can influence goal setting and decision making when developing a Content Strategy For B2B.

The difference between regular routine work with content and content marketing is in goals. Anyway, any company produces content. The fun begins when you think about how this content pays off and how you can make it work better. Before investing in content, it's worth understanding how content marketing will fit into your strategy.

- You are already using channels to quickly acquire traffic / customers.

Selling articles are fired once, blog articles do not lead to explosive growth in leads, external expert publications can attract traffic, but not the fact that they will be sold. It's better to get involved in content when you've learned how to get enough customers in other ways.

- You don't expect to make KM your only sales channel.

See above. Yes, there are areas where content is the main sales driver. But the bulk of the work is still complex marketing.

- You understand that it is not free or even cheap.

There is simply no free content. And a cheap article can multiply in value when it is re-read three times and eventually rewritten by a staff editor.

There are strategies that cheap copy can fit in, but usually there should be a lot of them. So pennies are multiplied by tens and hundreds - and turn into the same thousand dollars.

- You realize that the story will drag on for more than six months.

Yes, this is the slogan “Content marketing is a game for a long time”, which has already been imposed in our teeth. Even indexing a blog takes at least three months. As in other areas, some time and money will have to be spent on tests. Some articles written by strong experts and posted for a fee will go into milk. Understanding how to do well, and regularly with the expected effect, does not come immediately. All this is worth a budget.

- You are ready to take the time to work with the content.

Surprise: this factory won't work without you. Even if you find a strong editorial staff and outsource all content marketing, they will still come to you regularly. For expertise, fact-checking, check benchmarks, find new questions and client pains, just talk.

OK, you're ready and willing. Let's then see what and how to do with the content.

Content must be produced

- Cook: gather information, interview experts,

- Create: write and edit text, prepare illustrations,

- Make up the site,

- Promote in social networks, newsletters, targeting and context,

- Post materials on third-party sites,

- Analyze the results.

All this will be done by people (for money)

- Cook: author or editor,

- Create: author, editor, content manager,

- Layout: layout designer / content manager,

- Promote: smmschik, traffic specialist, marketer,

- Post: PR / marketer / content manager,

- Analyze: marketer, analyst.

As you can see, in the end, you will have more than just an editor and a couple of remote copywriters on your payroll.

The good news is that some positions can be combined. For example, in Lifehacker, authors typeset their articles themselves. Sometimes the authors choose the illustrations themselves. You can have a contributing editor and he can do content analytics. You can upload the layout of your blog to your in-house layout designer, involve a designer to prepare illustrations.

But in general, as you can see, the implementation of a Content Strategy For B2B will require your complicity, considerable investment and long-term efforts.

To calculate what the work with content will result in, you can paint this list (prepare / create / typeset) in the form of a table. And opposite each action, put down the executor and the estimated costs. If the work is done by a full-time specialist, you can roughly estimate the hours of work and their cost.

This will show you what resources are required.

Life hack: it's worth doing all these calculations with an already hired editor. The editor is more familiar with all these processes; he can suggest some ways to reduce the cost of production or reallocate funds for more priority work.

Likewise - with the editor - it's worth making a content plan and choosing the channels that you will use first. You can do it yourself, but then you still have to rethink the strategy, based on what the editor will dig up from you.

As a result, everything works. It costs money, sometimes it does not work, it requires patience and the ability to negotiate. But it works.