Thought Leadership
July 2022
For over 15 years we’ve been creating content and helping our clients market themselves more effectively. As consumers become overloaded by endless media channels, it is more important than ever to pierce through the noise with high quality B2B content marketing.
B2B (business-to-business) purchases are complex, and often involve decision making from more than one person or department. For this reason, creative and well-crafted content is incredibly important within the B2B space. Not only to demonstrate what you can do, but also to provide opportunities to connect, share your story and define your brand.
With almost all information now accessible online, the art of research is in our blood. Potential customers want to make sure you are offering exactly what they want. They will look at your homepage. They will look for examples of your work in practice. They will read your blog to find out more about how you think and how you work. They will look at your team page to find out who the people are behind your business. They will probably stalk you on LinkedIn.
Every one of those places that they will seek out information is an opportunity to share your story, and demonstrate your expertise. Neglect one area and it’s a wasted opportunity where your customers might disengageyou’re done. Spent Spend time and attention perfecting each area and you’re on track to a win.
On average, 70% of the buying decision is made online before people pick up the phone. Potential customers (and perhaps future employees) are looking at not just what you do but who you are. That’s why content marketing is so important, particularly in the B2B space.
Here’s a conversation we had with a client who wasn’t convinced about content marketing.
“I don’t want to give my competitors all my information.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll just copy what I do.”
“Yes, they might. But is it just your information that makes you who you are?”
“No.”
“And what about if you kept on giving more and more information. Would they be able to keep up?”
“Probably not.”
“Then you’ll be leading the market — which is what you want to achieve.”
Allowing your competitors to dictate what you do is the wrong focus. Your customers should always be your priority. What do they need? What will help them? Content marketing is about giving your potential customers the information they need to make an informed decision.
Did you know that 100 years ago the average person would consume the content of one Sunday Times edition in their entire lifetime? And now, US adults spend on average over 12 hours per day consuming media.
As much as having information at our fingertips is great, we are inundated with information. This presents an interesting challenge for content marketing. It is important to get it right.
Be front of mind. If we don’t keep ourselves front of mind with our market, someone else will grab the attention. And we'll have to hope that it’s not at the time that our customers and clients are ready to buy.
Loyalty is in decline. We turn to our laptops and emails far more frequently than we open up our contact book. Research conducted by Verint shows that between 2015 and 2019 customer loyalty declined by 39%. That’s a sobering statistic and is relevant for B2B companies as much as B2C organisations.
Make it easy. The same study showed that convenience is important for 77% of customers and loyalty was increased if brands made it easy to engage.
High quality content marketing puts you front of mind. It supports your customers with useful information. It defines your brand. And it makes it easy for people to engage with you. If you regularly release new and informative content, you will be front of mind when your customers are indeed ready to buy.
Great content marketing is hard to come by. You need people who both ‘get your business’ and understand your market. Marketing is proactive and requires reaction to situations as they emerge.
We become an extended part of your marketing team.
Every piece of B2B content marketing starts with a Deep Dive where we drill down into the essence of your business.
We then host Topic Workshops where we meet (virtually for now) to identify key themes and topics that are relevant to your market. From these we create angles and themes that will capture the attention of your market.
We begin content marketing pieces by developing the theme in more depth to create an outline, before sending it back to you for confirmation.
Drafting the content. Each piece is then carefully crafted, ready for review by you before a final version is produced.
This process is the same whether we’re producing longer form thought leadership pieces, website content, digital content marketing blogs or creating social media content. This process gives you what’s important. Quality. Consistency. And great writing.
If you’d like to transform your content marketing, we’d be delighted to have a conversation.
Find out more about our B2B Content Marketing services here.
Drop us a line at veronica@transformcomms.co.uk or give us a call on 01225 863846
We're always up for a coffee and conversation.
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Together.