Hey everyone, Jason here, digital marketing consultant and this B2B content marketing
guide.
You're going to learn the five foundational principals of successful B2B content marketing,
and hopefully ease your mind when it comes to all of the overwhelm you're dealing with
while you're trying to figure out this content marketing thing.
So a timestamp table of contents is in the description along with two other videos that
are going to be very helpful.
As you put together your own content plan, including a full walkthrough, how to put together
a content sales funnel, as well as come up with an evergreen content strategy.
I'll be referencing those as we go through these five principles.
Now the very first principle is to throw logic out the window.
Well kind of, right?
When it comes to B to B sales, specifically creating content for B to B, for some reason,
a lot of marketers and business owners seem to throw that conversational tone out the
window and start using business talk is if you're in a board room and you really don't
want to do that at all, because at the end of the day, you're still selling to people,
just because this isn't B to C and this is B2B doesn't mean you're selling to a completely
different type of person.
Emotions still play a huge role in the buying decision making process.
So when you're coming up with your content, no matter what type of content you're creating,
you want to make sure that you're still using not only a conversational tone, but you're
also ensuring that you're not speaking as if the other person is only using a hundred
percent logic to make their decisions.
At the end of the day, we would think that other professionals and business owners are
only thinking logically when they make purchasing decisions for their business or company, but
at the end of the day, we're all humans, emotions play a part in almost everything that we do.
And that's true for your business customers as well.
So just make sure you keep a conversational tone as if you're talking to someone at a
coffee shop, not like you're making some negotiation or pitch in a boardroom.
Now the second principle of success, when it comes to B2B content marketing is going
to be problem centered.
And this means all of the content that you create should be designed as a, how to posts,
to help someone achieve a problem or solve a problem that they're dealing with.
Now, there are lots of other different types of content that you can do, but when specifically,
it comes to B2B and generating leads, how to content tends to perform the best.
And why?
Because you're simply not only just talking about how great you and your business are.
You're actually demonstrating that you can be helpful and valuable before you start asking
to do business with them or pitch your product or service.
Now I'll link up in the cards in the description to a super deep dive video that will actually
walk you through two other types of content you can make as well.
Whether you're doing a podcast, a video like this one, or just doing blog posts, they will
actually walk you through a strategic process of not only choosing the right types of search
phrases and keywords.
So your content ranks, but also how to actually make good, how to content.
So link that up in the description.
It will walk you through that entire process.
But principle number two here in summary is to just make sure that your posts are actually
valuable and problem centered, because when you focus on problems and solving problems
for your ideal customer, you're demonstrating your value and you're building rapport before
you even start your sales process, it's a much better position to be in, when you ultimately
start asking for their contact information to start your sales process, anecdotal information,
just isn't going to cut it here.
When it comes to B2B content marketing.
Now there is a lot of pushback I tend to get when I bring up principle number two, and
this is where principle number three comes in, because in order for your content to actually
be valuable and demonstrate your worth and build that rapport and Goodwill that you need,
it actually needs to solve a problem, which means you can't hold any golden nuggets back.
Now, I'm not saying you have to give away the farm here.
You don't have to share your proprietary processes.
You don't have to share your own data or things that you have put a lot of sweat equity into
learning.
That's not what I'm trying to say at all.
We do a bunch of YouTube ads tutorials here, and we don't share our personal campaign structures
or our personal numbers, but we do make sure that when we create those videos, we give
the viewers everything they need to be successful without straight up just saying, Hey, copy
exactly what we've spent tens of thousands of dollars figuring out, that being said,
though, you should never go into creating a piece of content with the assumption that,
Hey, you know what?
When we get to step number six or seven, I'm just going to casually drop in here.
You can only do this step if you have our service or our software, because then the
entire piece of content is going to be seen as disingenuous.
Now it is okay to show examples of your product or service throughout a how to guide.
And you're still giving away the information, but just a quick check, make sure that every
piece of content that you create for your B2B lead generation, someone who's going through
it would actually be able to solve the problem that you're helping them solve without having
to purchase something from you.
If it doesn't pass that test, then it's not going to be a good piece of content to use.
And don't worry.
There are plenty of people out there, who would never buy from you anyway, your ideal
customers, if you don't have an ideal customer, I'll link up in the cards, in the description
to a video that walks you through how to put together an ideal customer avatar.
But your ideal customer is not looking to do everything themselves.
There are tons of DIY people who just want the answer so they can go try it themselves.
Obviously, that's not your ideal customer.
So you don't have to worry about creating a piece of content and thinking, Oh, people
won't do business with us anymore.
That's definitely not how it works at all.
Now the fourth principle of success, we're going to go ahead and turn inwards, because
you need to focus and that's going to be the fourth principle here.
Now, when I say focus, I mean focus on one platform and one medium.
Yes, there are tons of big businesses and influencers that seem to post multiple times
a day and they're posting everywhere, but no one starts off like that.
Unless you're just sitting on a few thousand dollars a month can throw at this and you
already have a talented team.
Great.
You can try it.
But for the other 99% of business owners and sales managers, you need to focus on just
one platform.
So we're going to do a quick rundown, but I'll link up below in the cards, in the description
to a video that will help you choose your mediums.
But here are the three mediums you can choose from.
The first one is of course going to be video.
I think this is the most powerful, similar to a video like this.
And of course, it's going to be YouTube.
Number two is going to be podcasts.
So you're just doing a podcast, whether it's just you talking, you and someone in your
company, or you're doing interviews, if you really want to get fancy.
And then you're posting that to iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, and any place else that you can
like Spotify.
And then finally, we're going to have the good old proven, but true blog posts.
And that's of course going to be on a WordPress site that you own.
Now I've listed these in order of importance.
I think if you're just getting started with your B2B content marketing, video is still
tremendous opportunity just because a lot of people don't want to get on camera.
And for good reason, it's kind of awkward, right?
No one is really just wakes up one morning and goes, you know what?
I'd really like to make videos, right?
But the good news is the equipment isn't going to be something that's going to get on the
way, especially if you have a phone as made in the past two years.
So link up in the description and the cards to a video that actually goes through how
to do YouTube content marketing.
If you're interested in learning more about video.
Now, the real reason you need to focus here is because creating content is a lot harder
than most of marketers and business owners would lead you to believe.
And so what you want to do is become really good at one medium and one platform.
And then when you have the budget, after you're starting to get all those new leads and customers,
you can start delegating the syndication and repurposing of the content to other platforms.
And this is a quick chart that you can take a look at just to show you how easily any
piece of content, whether it's a podcast, a video or blog posts can be transformed into
a different medium or syndicated across other social media platforms.
And the prices at the top are approximately how much you could expect to pay per post
for an expert to get this done for you.
Now, the final key to success, key to success.
Number five here, when it comes to B2B content marketing is of course going to be consistency,
because content marketing is not an overnight thing.
Something I really like about paper, click advertising with Google and Facebook is we
throw a couple thousand dollars at it.
And 24 to 48 hours later, we have our answer and we either have some customers, or we have
some campaigns to fix, content marketing, not as fast, right?
It's going to take three to six months to start to see any sort of traction.
And then six months to a year to actually start seeing this being something as an actual
revenue generating activity.
It really does take that long in order to be successful.
This channel is a perfect example where took almost two years before we consistently started
getting leads from this YouTube channel with videos like the YouTube ads tutorials that
I talked about earlier, or our Google ads or Facebook ads tutorials, but there is light
at the end of the tunnel.
And it really does make a huge difference, when you can have content like your videos,
your blog posts, or your podcasts out there working for you, day in and day out in an
evergreen fashion, bringing in new leads and customers, and of course, building Goodwill
and rapport.
And you're going to get much better leads from people who've gone through your content
than those who simply just saw an ad one time and then enter their name and email on a landing
page.
There's a much longer warmup process with that side versus what we're doing here with
B2B content marketing.
So hopefully that eases your mind a little bit, especially number four, just focus on
one platform.
Don't try and be all over the place.
If you got some value out of this video, go and hit that like button subscribe for more
marketing tutorials and tactics strategies, just like the ones covered in this video.
Make sure you check out those links in the descriptions to putting together your content
marketing funnel, a YouTube content guide.
If you want to do video.
And of course a full blown video on how to actually make the B2B content to bring in
those new customers.
So until the next, hit that like button subscribe and keep building the business you love.