Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to build bonds of trust with your B2B audience.
By providing helpful, informative content to your customers, you address their burning questions and pain points long before they are ready to make a purchase. This lays the bedrock of a long-lasting relationship … one that stays strong through the weeks and months until the sale is made.
This is especially important in B2B marketing, with its exceptionally long sales cycles. Not only must content be easy to consume, it also needs to inspire trust. This often means addressing the concerns of multiple stakeholders in the consensus selling process.
Let’s look at five of the best ways to attract leads and nurture relationships with content:
Blogging
All modern businesses are publishers and the way to embrace that role is with a regular schedule of blogging. Blogging multiple times per week puts your expertise on display. It funnels leads to you at the moment they gain awareness of a problem you can solve and begin researching it.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is often the second step in the content marketing journey. Blog readers convert to email subscribers to obtain a report or other content, giving you long-term connections. Weekly updates to your subscribers can motivate them to explore your site or act on a limited time offer.
Video Content
Video content is becoming more sought-after in the B2B realm. With today’s high smartphone data caps, B2B decision-makers can consume video on the go. Commutes and “downtime” no longer need to go to waste. Many users love video’s power to communicate a lot of information in a short period of time.
Webinars
Webinars are short, interactive events where you address enrollees who’ve signed up to learn about a particular topic, tool, or technique. Webinars start life as live digital get-togethers. Once you complete one, however, the recording can enter your content ecosystem.
Tangential Content
Tangential content is content that’s of interest to your readers, but doesn’t connect directly to your products or services. For example, a chiropractor might post about posture, ergonomic furniture, or exercises to improve back pain – all subjects potential customers may look up.
Tangential content is the key to engaging modern B2B audiences – especially in crowded fields where your competitors may have content marketing projects of their own. Read more on The Benefits of Writing Tangential Content as Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy.