There’s a lot more to content marketing than just posting regular blogs to your website.
The industry knowledge your business possesses and the client experience it has gained over time are potent sources of information for creating a range of digital assets. With the right content strategy, you can tap into this knowledge to produce content that:
- Showcases your business’ expertise and experience
- Positions your company as an industry leader
- Educates your audience and help them along the sales funnel.
Producing content other than blog posts can initially seem daunting. Why do you need to write a whitepaper? What’s the point of creating an eBook, and when is a video more appropriate for capturing leads?
To answer these questions, consider the big consulting or market research companies. These companies produce in-depth trend reports and content on specific topics and industries every year. Such content is usually gated and targeted toward decision-makers. Where do these firms get their information to produce such reports? You guessed it right—they tap into their organizational knowledge. Not only that, they repurpose the content over time.
You may not be running a global multi-billion dollar company, but you too can produce valuable content for your clients and prospects and use those as powerful lead magnets.
Here are six types of content we recommend every B2B company should produce. You should also recommend these to your clients if you are a digital marketing agency.
Whitepapers
Whitepapers may have a reputation for being bland and dense, but well-written whitepapers can truly differentiate your business from your competitors. As we mentioned in another blog post, people read them because they have to, not because they want to. This is because whitepapers usually have a formal tone, are written for specific audience types, and focus on a single topic from a high level. The audience is usually well-versed on the topic but needs guidance to solve a problem or make a critical decision. When you give readers such information at their fingertips, a well-written whitepaper becomes a well-received resource that establishes your company’s authority. It becomes an essential resource for gaining trust.
Your whitepaper should explain a single problem and offer a solution without being too hands-on or coming across as overly promotional. It’s a high-quality report that persuades your audience with evidence rather than hype. You are educating your readers, not selling them anything.
eBooks
The cool and casual sibling of the whitepaper is the eBook. Presented in a less-formal style, they can be a how-to guide, highlight company research findings, or explain a new service. Typically, eBooks are not as specific as whitepapers when it comes to topics. Oftentimes eBooks cover a broader topic with the content broken up into chapters covering various subtopics. Thus, the content flows less cohesively than in a whitepaper because whitepapers have sections instead of chapters, but the eBook is designed for the reader to skim through.
Also, just like printed books, eBooks often have tables of contents. They also make heavy use of diagrams, imagery, or infographics. Another feature of eBooks is that critical points are often highlighted for the busy reader.
Like whitepapers, eBooks are high-value resources that can improve your lead nurturing processes.
Case Studies
Case studies are a written portfolio of your company’s work. Unlike eBooks or whitepapers, case studies are usually not gated. They are primarily available as web copies instead of downloadable documents, although exceptions exist.
Like eBooks and whitepapers, case studies show your business’ expertise and commitment to solving customer problems. A case study structure is divided into distinct parts:
- The client problem: what challenges was the customer facing?
- The effect of the problem: how was it affecting your customer’s business? For example, losing revenue, lower customer satisfaction, and complex processes taking too much time.
- When and how was your business involved: how did the client find you? Why did they hire your business?
- What did your business do to solve the customer’s problem: this is usually a detailed description of which products or services you recommended and how those were pivotal in solving the problem.
- What else did the customer get: other tangible and intangible benefits besides the immediate solution?
- Testimonial: did the customer leave any feedback?
As you can see, properly-written case studies can become persuasive social proof. In some cases, long-form case studies can be written as eBooks, or multiple case studies can be bundled into a downloadable resource.
Videos
When it comes to video marketing, everybody seems to know its importance, yet nobody seems to do it enough. The thought process behind this is that videos are too time, resource, and cost-consuming to produce, and there is not enough ROI. Yet, videos are a compelling means to convey your message. And they don’t always have to be created with professional actors, lighting, and studio setups.
Your video library can reside in a few places. For example, an introductory video from the CEO can be featured on the main page or landing pages. How-tos, onboarding, and explainer doodle videos can be featured on public or private documentation sites. These can also be on your YouTube channel. People subscribe to such channels when you convey enough helpful information. Think about Google or HubSpot video series as an example.
The types of videos you post can be as varied. Many companies post their webinars online. Similarly, you can post client interviews, new product launches, or award ceremonies, to name a few.
Sites like YouTube allow you to add closed caption subtitles to videos. The text is fully crawlable by search engines and, if SEO-optimized, may often feature on the first page of search results.
Another place to post videos is your social media channels. Social media videos can have a broader impact depending on your type of business. Think of TikTok as an example. Many people think of it as too consumer-oriented, yet brands are slowly but surely using it for awareness and conversion.
The key to video success lies in the content’s quality. When presented succinctly, valuable information can leave a long-lasting effect on the viewer, priming them to return for more.
Infographics
If pictures are a thousand words, infographics are worth the adage (beside videos). These are short forms of content, usually freely downloadable and not gated. Infographics are often part of eBooks as well.
As the name suggests, Infographics show information in a graphical manner. The information is typically statistical in nature. They can show current status, predictions, comparisons, or even how-tos. For example, if you are a luxury car wholesaler, you may want to add an infographic on your website showing the top ten cars based on their market shares, user satisfaction level, and features. By showing such statistical figures through images, you are advising your B2B customers (retail car dealers) on which cars they should buy from you and stock up on. If you are a Fintech company, you may want to advise your website visitors about the top 5 sources of cloud waste.
Outreach Content
The final item on our list is what we call outreach content. We named it so because although such content can be used for inbound marketing, you are not hosting it on your website—you are reaching out on the Internet for potential leads.
The first type of outreach content is your guest blogs (yes, we know, we said this article is not about blogs). You write these blogs on reputable third-party sites where many of your target audience may congregate. For example, if you are a digital marketing firm, you may want to start a publication on Medium or create irregular LinkedIn articles. If you are a tech start-up, you may want to publish on sites like InfoQ, Dev.to, or Hackernoon. Writing in industry-famous publications and linking to your site can help build brand awareness and develop quality leads.
You can create the next type of outreach content on Q & A sites. Your B2B content marketing strategy can target sites like Quora and Stack Overflow and answer questions from possible leads. Again, such content establishes your brand authority. However, such sites usually have algorithmic rules to deter brand promotions. For example, your answer in Quora will not be directly visible if it contains links to your products or services. But the best thing about such content is that it can be featured on Google Answer Box for some queries.
Finally, we have social media posts and email newsletters as outreach content. You may not be creating something new here but using these channels to promote existing content. Writing email copy or social media posts requires careful planning and targeting specific customer segments (email) or hashtags (social media). And unlike blogs, whitepapers, infographics, or videos, social posts or email campaigns happen on a recurring schedule.
Besides promotion, emails are often used to announce new products or service offerings, explain a business decision to customers or suppliers, or even acknowledge and correct previous mistakes. Social media is a powerful tool for answering customer queries and highlighting user-generated content.
Final Words
So there you have it—our list of six types of content you should consider for your B2B business. It may not be possible (or even relevant) to tap on all six, but that’s where you can talk to an agency like ours. We are always keen to hear about your content needs and help you create both content strategies and content.