Tag Archives: B2B

How to boost your B2B business with content writing

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B2B Content Writing

First, some statistics: (these represent North America but the analogy is applicable to anywhere in the world) according to this research by Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs and Brightcove combined, 93% B2B marketers use content marketing one way or another. 42% of them say they are quite effective at it, this means they have a clue of what they are doing and they are getting positive results. $ 16.6 billion are being invested annually by B2B companies creating and publishing content. That’s a lot of money.

Content is needed everywhere, whether you get it written, videod, drawn or photographed. This is what people see, acknowledge, grasp and then base their decisions upon. It is the experience that they have on your website or blog. They wouldn’t bother checking out your online presence unless something draws them to it and what draws them to your website? Right, your content. You may think that it’s your product or service that is drawing them, but exactly what represents your product or service. If you’re selling mobile phones, you can’t put mobile phones on your website, can you? You need to put photographs. You need to publish their descriptions. If possible you also need to submit reviews. Then there are specifications, model details, et cetera. Whatever you put on your website, it’s content.

Why do B2B customers look for content, especially written content?

Take the mobile phones example. If you’re just a normal customer (and not a B2B customer) not much is at stake. At the most you may buy one or two mobile phones.

But what about the bulk buyer? He or she is your B2B customer. Maybe he or she is buying in bulk in order to sell the phones on his or her e-commerce website or even a normal retail store. Not only is he or she spending lots of money buying from you, he or she is also making a critical business decision. Wouldn’t he or she like to know more about your mobile phones? Wooden he or she like to know more about you as a reliable supplier of the product that he or she intends to sell? What are the prospects of selling these mobile phones? Primarily for what features would people buy these mobile phones? How many people are already buying these phones? If more people are buying these phones, why? What do the existing users have to say about these phones? Your B2B customer would like to know as much as possible about the product before investing so much money.

B2B customers do lots of research, and study. Otherwise they may end up losing lots of money. This is why they consume as much content as possible before making a decision in your favor.

Boosting your B2B business with content writing

So how does content writing help your B2B business (actually it sounds strange, “B2B business” means “business to business business)?

You need to convince your B2B customers that you are giving them a profitable deal. Profitable deal doesn’t just entail selling your product or service as cheap as possible, the more important thing is, you are reliable, trustworthy and above all, you have full knowledge of your field. If you are selling mobile phones of a particular brand at a particular time, you know the inside out of that mobile phone. You not only know the technical specifications, you also know exactly why people are buying that particular model and why your B2B customers should buy this phone in order to do further business. How can you achieve that? How can you instil such confidence among your B2B customers?

By constantly engaging them with your content. You need to satiate their desire to know more and more. Remember that when they come to your website they already have a plethora of apprehensions, and naturally. After all they are going to make a business investment. They’re going to spend lots of money on you. So they need to know more about your business, about you, and the product that they are about to purchase, in bulk, by paying you lots of money. They need to feel confident. They need to feel at ease. The best way to instil confidence in them is to make them familiar to you, your presence and your product as much as possible. This can be done by writing content regularly. Useful content. Content that helps them make a decision.

Now, the decision doesn’t necessarily have to be in your favor – your primary motive for publishing content is helping people make a better decision for themselves (even if they don’t buy from you, the others will). Of course you have to draw a line. It’s no use publishing “helpful content” if all you are achieving is sending customers to your competitors.

Difference between B2B and B2C content writing

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B2B ContentBusinesses need websites to instantly provide relevant information to their visitors. They also need engaging content that prompts them to take an action, and eventually turn them into their paying customers and clients.

Regardless of the type of site you have, its content should help generate traffic and build relationship with your target audience. Businesses are normally of two types: B2B (business to business) and B2C. For instance, Credible Content Services is a content writing service primarily catering to the B2B market because we provide content to businesses.

How do you differentiate between writing B2B and B2C content?

When writing for a B2B website, consider the language you would be using. B2B content is normally written for professionals working within a particular niche. These professionals use a certain jargon and terminologies in their day to day interactions with potential clients. Your content should therefore be written with phrases that would make them feel at ease, identify with your business and perceive your business as an expert within that niche.

On the other hand, the language employed in B2C website writing should be devoid of professional jargon and terminologies. It should be written with one thing in mind― how do we meet the needs of the consumers with easily understood content?

In a B2B, the buying process begins when a prospect accesses a company’s website or blog. Decision makers from different departments from within that particular company need to have access to some kind of information to accelerate their buying process. Because of these varied audience involved in the buying process, your web content must have sections addressing all these. But when writing for a B2C website, you are writing to the general public (which may be a varied audience I agree) and they all have one thing in common―How does this product or service meet my needs? If you are able to capture this in the content writing process you are done. Anyone who visits your website would see his or her needs met (though they are from different backgrounds).

B2B websites purchases require evaluating multiple factors. The buyer needs to do more research on the products, organize thoughts and analyze before a purchase is made. The content writer should go the extra mile to make whatever information a company may need to facilitate the buying process available, research should be presented in a form of write-ups (web contents) and condensed in an easily readable and or downloadable format. Such write ups may include white papers, case studies, referencing, e-books etc.

On the contrary, B2C writing does not need deep research in order to generate the contents as the consumer makes the buying decision alone. As such if he or she is convinced, the product or service meets his or her expectation and more importantly, if the pricing is right compared to other competitors, he or she would settle for yours.

How to create content to engage your prospects

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The primary purpose of content writing, content publishing and content marketing is to first, engage your prospects, and eventually, convert them. The biggest challenge, according to the graph published on this link titled “Create content that pulls prospects in” is creating a constant stream of engaging website material. This is the pie chart (I have recreated it to make it look more neat on my website)

Content marketing challenges

The challenges, according to the levels of difficulty are

  • Producing the kind of content that engages prospects/customers: 41%
  • Producing enough content: 20%
  • Budget to produce content: 18%
  • Lack of buy-in/vision from higher-ups inside your company: 12%
  • Producing a variety of content: 7%
  • Budget to license content: 1%

Well this is a revelation that the budget constraint is just 1% of the challenges faced while executing a content marketing strategy.

Coming back to creating engaging content for prospects and customers.

In order to produce engaging content you first of all have to clearly define what is “engagement” vis-a-vis your business. How do you want to engage your customers and clients, what would that engagement mean and eventually to what it will lead? Then you start producing content accordingly. There are two key issues here that are highly crucial in order to produce engaging content:

  • Relevancy
  • Regularity

Your content has to be relevant in order to engage your prospects

Content marketing entails sending out content to your prospects on an ongoing basis. Now, sending out content doesn’t mean that they are automatically looking forward to it. They need to want it. Why would they want your content? It solves their purpose. Nobody is interested in hearing from you for sheer love except for your mom or your smitten girlfriend or boyfriend. You have to deliver them content that solves problems. You have to deliver them something that entertains them, informs them, and encourages them to remain in touch with you and engage in conversations whenever desirable.

But how do you deliver relevant content when different people have different tastes?

For that you have to properly understand your audience (your prospects). Why would they want to hear from you? Step into their shoes instead of assuming that they would like to hear from you anyway (because your product or service is so great). The relevancy of your content depends on

  • The product or service you are marketing
  • The format of the content people prefer in your market
  • The regional/indigenous preferences
  • The pressing needs of your readers/visitors

Once you have these things sorted out you can create relevant content for your market.

You need to publish content regularly

Just as quality and relevancy is important the regularity of your content publishing is vital too. You need to be constantly visible only then you can become familiar to your visitors. When you publish content regularly it gives everybody a reason to talk about it and consequently, maintain a buzz around it.

With the right mix of relevancy and regularity you can create engaging content that encourages your visitors and your friends and followers on social networking websites to engage in conversations with you and establish long-term relationships that eventually may turn into business partnerships.