What Is BOFU?
What Is BOFU?
BOFU is a marketing acronym for “bottom of the funnel.”
This term is derived from a marketing framework known as the sales or marketing funnel, which describes the different stages a potential customer passes through before making a purchasing decision.
The stages are categorized as follows:
- Top of the funnel
- Middle of the funnel
- Bottom of the funnel
The BOFU - the bottom of the funnel - is the final stage of the buyer’s journey and is where the marketer focuses on turning the already nurtured lead into a customer.
Decision-Making Stage Content
Prospects at the bottom of the funnel are at the decision-making stage of the buyer’s journey and only need an extra push from the marketer in the form of discounts, rebates, testimonials, etc., to make a buying decision.
Besides the incentives the marketer offers here, one of the major characteristics of BOFU is the type of content the marketer publishes.
Here, the marketer focuses on publishing materials that help the prospect make a decision.
These can include case studies, product demos, trials, customer stories and reviews, and even initial consultations to clarify any doubts or questions the prospects may have.
This is where the marketer provides a detailed description of the products or services and the benefits customers stand to gain.
Metrics
The metrics for measuring the success rate of BOFU strategies and content include:
- Conversion rate
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Average Order Volume
- Return on advertising spend (ROAS) and
- Cost per acquisition (CPA).
- Customer retention rate
- Sales cycle length
- Case study views and downloads
For more on marketing funnel content, please see our article on TOFU: Top of Funnel.
What Is TOFU?
What Is TOFU?
TOFU is a marketing acronym for “top of the funnel.” It is the first stage in the marketing framework, known as the marketing or sales funnel, which represents the customer’s journey to making a purchase decision.
Prospects at the top of the funnel are at the beginning of their buyer’s journey.
At this stage, the prospect knows they have a problem and need a solution but is unaware of the solution they need or the brand that offers it.
Here, marketers try to create awareness and attract attention to their brands or products.
They position themselves as industry authorities, providing valuable information relevant to the needs of TOFU prospects to make them interested in knowing more about the solutions.
The information becomes their first contact with a marketer’s brand, and if they’re interested in learning more, they go further down the marketing funnel into the middle of the funnel.
Marketers don't attempt to sell to their prospects at the TOFU stage of the buyer’s journey. Instead, they nurture the prospects by providing educational and informational content that answers their most dominant questions and gives them insights to understand their problems better.
Content for TOFU Marketing
TOFU content includes blog posts, infographics, social media posts, videos, e-books, and whitepapers.
After the TOFU in the marketing framework is the middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU), which describes the points when the customers are aware of brands that offer the solutions they want and when they’re making comparisons to choose the most suitable option for their needs.
Metrics to Assess Top of Funnel Success
The metrics for measuring the success rate of TOFU strategies and content include:
- Bounce rate
- Time on page
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Lead generation
- Social media followers, etc.
Creating high-quality, search engine optimized top of funnel content is an art. A good content marketing agency can help you quickly fill your TOFU content for optimal results.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO
Technical SEO (search engine optimization) involves optimizing a website’s technical elements to improve its rankings and visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
It is one of the three main aspects of SEO: On-page, Off-page, and technical SEO.
Optimizing a website’s technical elements helps the search engines understand, crawl, and index it effectively.
Furthermore, it helps provide a positive user experience to the website’s visitors.
Technical SEO includes these components:
Website Speed
This involves optimizing a website to load faster so a visitor doesn’t leave the website out of frustration. A fast-loading website increases user experience and ranks high on search engines.
Mobile Friendliness
Search engines use mobile-friendliness as an important ranking factor because most internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Optimizing for mobile responsiveness is a crucial aspect of technical SEO.
Crawling and Indexing
This involves preparing a website for crawling and indexing by search engines. Technical SEO specialists use robots.txt files to choose which pages should be accessible to search engine crawlers and XML Sitemaps to help search engines understand their website’s structure for proper indexing. They also ensure that pages are linked (internal linking) so that crawlers have an easier time finding and indexing pages.
URL Structure
Creating a clear and organized URL structure helps search engines and users understand a website’s content hierarchy and index it appropriately.
Structured Data Markup
SEOs use schema markups to categorize and label website elements, enabling search bots to understand, index, and rank a website’s page.
SSL and HTTPS
These are security elements that ensure a website’s content is encrypted. It enhances user experience and helps search engines rank a page faster.
XML Sitemaps
XML Sitemaps enable search engines to understand website structure and the relationship between different pages on the site.
Site Architecture
Website architecture is a vital technical SEO element, as it helps search engines and users easily navigate a website.
Technical Errors
Monitoring and fixing technical issues like broken links, server errors, and crawl issues is also an important aspect of technical SEO.
Canonicalization
Canonical tags help you identify and fix duplicate content issues on your page.
Other aspects of fall in between these vital components. With good technical, off-page, and on-page SEO, companies will excel on search engines, generate qualified traffic, and drive conversions.
The Case for Content Marketing
Engagement Matters: The Case for Content Marketing
The case for content marketing: this marketing tactic has emerged as a leading tactic in recent years due to its promise to engage audiences, enhance brand visibility, and drive conversions. However, skeptical business owners and leaders might wonder if it's all razzle-dazzle or if there's any substance. The short answer: It's still relevant, and it offers a great deal of value. Here's a look at the why and how.
The Case for Content Marketing
Content provides valuable, relevant, and consistent information to attract and retain a target audience. Unlike traditional outbound advertising — which can sometimes feel intrusive — content marketing seeks to engage and educate people. By inviting them in with trust and authority, your brand is perceived as a helpful guide, not merely sales-driven.
- Valuable: People hate "being sold to". But they do love learning. As one B2B customer said to us, "When you share information, I love it. When you sell to me, I hate it. That's why I love webinars, case studies, etc." - all types of content.
- Relevant: Make sure your content is relevant to the target audience. If your audience is using Sage, sending them content pieces about Acumatica or Oracle isn't relevant.
- Consistent: Don't publish sporadically. Consistent publishing helps build an audience and adds to engagement.
Advanced Analytics Help Assess ROI
Advanced analytics tools provide a look "under the hood." You can see how your audience interacts with your content, which allows you to refine or modify your content strategy. Adaptation is critical to creating content that meets your target audience's needs and preferences. On that note, content marketing transforms the brand-consumer relationship from a transactional one to a deeper connection based on trust and brand loyalty.
In short, content marketing is here to stay, and savvy business owners know they must subscribe to this strategy. Effective content marketing can deliver results and help companies reach people they might not otherwise. In other words, it's an investment brands cannot overlook if they want to stay in business.
Content Marketing vs. Social Media Strategy: Do You Need Both?
Content Marketing vs. Social Media Strategy: Do you Need Both?
Content marketing vs. social media strategy - what are they and do you need both?
Social media and content marketing are two distinct but complementary marketing strategies. Companies can generate mindblowing results from a robust content marketing or social media strategy. However, only top marketers understand the benefits of integrating both strategies.
A robust content marketing strategy provides detailed information that can be repurposed into social media content. Similarly, the insights from social media content provide valuable ideas for a robust content marketing strategy.
Only B2B companies that effectively integrate the two strategies gain optimal results from their marketing efforts. I’ll explain why.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
A content marketing strategy refers to a company's plan to create, manage, and distribute content. The main goal is to build a solid relationship with prospects by sharing relevant and valuable content that addresses their needs, interests, and pain points.
Content can be created in many forms - blog posts, infographics, emails, white papers, videos, podcasts, etc., to capture various audience interests.
Top B2B companies understand that content is a valuable marketing tool for earning customer trust and establishing industry authority. To achieve their content marketing goals, they focus on being the go-to resource for helpful industry information, helping their prospects and customers make valuable business decisions.
A comprehensive content marketing strategy involves:
- Audience identification
- Defining content goals
- Content creation
- Content distribution
- Lead generation, etc.
What Is a Social Media Strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is a plan on how a company intends to use social media platforms to educate, inform, and engage with its target audience, drive traffic to its websites or sales pages, build brand, product, and service awareness, and ultimately meet other business objectives.
It's one of the most popular marketing channels, and smart B2B companies understand the many opportunities it presents to build trust and authority while increasing their margins.
A comprehensive social media strategy involves:
- Audience identification
- Goal setting
- Platform selection
- Content creation and distribution
- Engagement strategy, etc.
Content Marketing vs. Social Media Strategy: How They Differ
Content marketing and social media marketing differ in many ways, from their focus to objectives, content types, and many more.
Focus
Content marketing uses different content types, like blog posts, infographics, videos, etc., to educate, inform, and address audience pain points while building a valuable relationship with them. Forward-thinking companies understand that by creating relevant and informative content, they establish their place as a reliable figure in the industry, giving them industry authority status.
However, social media marketing uses relevant and visually appealing content to attract engagement and interact with an audience in real-time. Customer-centric B2B companies leverage social media platforms to interact with their audience and understand their needs and interests.
Objectives
Content marketing’s objective is to use relevant and informative content to build brand awareness, establish authority and expertise, and generate and nurture leads into customers. It aims to capture customers at the different stages of their buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration to decision-making.
On the other hand, the objectives of social media marketing are slightly different. It aims to use relevant and engaging content to increase brand awareness, foster direct communication with the target audience, drive traffic to specific content or offers, and enhance customer service and support. Companies build strong communities on different social media platforms by engaging their customers consistently, making it easy to convert them into loyal customers.
Content Types
Content marketing comprises various forms of content, from blog posts to infographics, eBooks, white papers, videos, etc. These content are usually long-form, as they’re more in-depth and informative. Companies create detailed content and later break them into smaller pieces to repurpose them on many channels, including social media.
On the other hand, social media marketing is known for short-form content, such as posts, images, infographics, short videos, etc., created to fit into a platform’s content specifications.
Social media platforms have different content length limits. Twitter, for instance, has a maximum of 280 characters. Even when platforms like Facebook allow long-form content with a character limit of 63,206, smart companies make their posts short and crispy to capture their audience’s wavering attention and maintain engagement.
There are many other differences between content marketing and social media marketing, such as content distribution mode, measuring metrics, content lifespan, etc.
Why Content Marketing and Social Media Work Together
Some B2B managers ask, “What is the link between content marketing and social media strategy?” “Does content strategy include social media?”
While content marketing and social media marketing are two distinct online marketing strategies, they complement each other in many ways. Top B2B companies understand that they need both to achieve optimal marketing results.
Amplified Content Reach
Content amplification is one of the vital ways social media and content marketing work together to enhance B2B marketing efforts. Social media is one of the major distribution channels for content. When a company publishes well-written, relevant content on its website, the next step is to share it on different social media platforms.
By sharing valuable content with their social media followers, B2B companies also reach their follower’s networks. How? Most social media users will not hesitate to comment, share, and retweet vital information that would benefit their networks. The wider the content reach, the more significant the visibility boost.
Profitable Engagement and Interaction
Social media helps B2B companies interact with their audience in real time, allowing them to address inquiries and customer complaints.
But beyond that, this social media engagement and interaction provide companies with valuable insights that could inform their content marketing efforts. They get new content ideas to keep their content marketing efforts going. And with more content published on their websites, companies have multiple excerpts to post on social media to increase engagement. It’s like a positive feedback loop.
One of the key benefits of this for B2B companies is that it proves their expertise to their customers and shows them they listen to their complaints across these social channels. This allows the customers to speak up more and helps the companies to keep improving their products, services, and marketing efforts.
Quality Lead Generation
Social media is one of the primary traffic sources for B2B companies. With over 4.2 billion social media users worldwide, innovative B2B companies see social media's untapped potential and try to share their content consistently on these platforms to leverage them.
By sharing valuable, relevant content on social media, these companies direct their social media audience to their websites or sales funnels. Then, they receive in-depth information about their products and services.
After getting high-quality products and experiencing good customer service, these customers return to social media to discuss their experiences, generating more quality leads for the companies.
Integrate Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy for Optimal Marketing Results
While companies can implement separate content and social media marketing strategies, integrating both promises better returns. Companies repurpose their most valuable content on social media to drive engagement and traffic. Therefore, content marketing serves as a feeder source for social media content.Social media serves as an amplification tool for web content.
By integrating both marketing channels, B2B companies build valuable relationships. They also establish their expertise and authority, and generate high-quality leads that turn into loyal customers.
Yes, Content Marketing Still Matters!
Content marketing still has a place in the marketing mix. Consumers are hungry for information online and look to online sources to help guide their decisions. In 2021 nearly 70 percent of online shoppers typically read between one and six customer reviews before making a purchasing decision, according to Statista. This points to the fact that consumers are influenced by the content they encounter in their buying journey.
Leading the Way
That’s where content marketing enters the equation. It’s a powerful means to inform and influence potential customers about how you can add value, while establishing trust. Plus, optimized content marketing can bring organic traffic from search engines like Google. This can translate to improved Google rankings, online visibility and more robust sales.
However, effective content marketing doesn’t happen by design. Both art and science, the brands with the most success know to approach content marketing from an inbound perspective. In other words, marketers have become adept at reaching their consumer base in ways that don’t seem too sales-y or formulaic.
Custom Content Is King
While each brand has its own style, a storytelling framework resonates with consumers and lays a foundation for loyalty. It’s rooted in intentionally tailoring your content to your target audience and their needs, instead of pushing out a message to a general audience. In contrast, an inbound content marketing strategy means your brand and products appear naturally during their fact-finding mission.
For example, if a health-conscious consumer is looking for information about adding protein to their diet, they might be researching protein shakes. If you're a manufacturer or marketer of plant-based shakes, you could write a blog post with recipes. Based on keyword research that produces search engine results pages, you could drive consumers to your e-commerce website naturally.
In short, content marketing is still the secret sauce when it comes to creating brand awareness. Companies of all sizes can remain competitive in a crowded digital landscape while engaging with core consumers more effectively than ever before.
What's Working in Technology Content Marketing
What's working in technology content marketing?
In today's rapidly evolving marketing landscape, using the right strategies in technology content marketing can make all the difference. As marketing professionals, we understand that reaching potential customers with the right content at the right time is essential. Knowing your customers inside and out is at the heart of good content marketing.
On our recent webinar, “Trends in Marketing – What Works and What Doesn’t” our panelists debated shared what works in technology content marketing and marketing.
Our panel included a content marketing expert (Jeanne Grunert), an ABM Strategist (Melissa “Lisa” Watts), and our target customer, represented by Ryan Dube, a digital transformation director. Here, we summarize a portion of the webinar and share what works, with plenty of feedback from our target customer.
Five Content Marketing Tactics for the Technology Industry That WORK
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Webinars and Website Content: The Power Duo
Webinars and website content emerge as the dynamic duo in connecting with your target audience effectively. If webinars are on topic and focus on a technology, solution, or problem the target audience struggles with, they work well to engage customers.
Ryan, our subject matter expert, raved about webinars. “I love attending them because I’m not being “sold to” – I’m there to learn – and that’s key for me.”
Make sure your webinars are packed with information to make them effective for your audience to ensure they're working for technology content marketing.
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No One-Size Fits All Content
One key takeaway from the conversation is the understanding that technology marketing success depends heavily on understanding the customer and marketing to them on a much more detailed, personal level than other forms of marketing.
No longer can marketers rely on a "one-size-fits-all" approach. For instance, a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) might engage with content on Instagram, gathering insights from different sources, while someone from an engineering background might seek data-driven content, such as cases, comparisons, charts, and technical information. Recognizing these nuances is essential for tailoring content to suit the preferences of the intended audience.
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Personalization and the Customer Journey
Personalization extends beyond just understanding the customer's persona; it involves knowing where customers acquire their information and tailoring content delivery accordingly. This shift from broad outreach to targeted, relevant content addresses customers' specific needs at different stages of their journey.
The customer journey encompasses various stages, such as the education phase, the consideration phase, and the decision-making phase. Effective content strategies must align with each of these stages to provide the right information at the right time, ultimately guiding potential customers toward a purchase decision.
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A Customer-Centric Approach to Technology Content Marketing
A central theme that resonates throughout the conversation is the importance of understanding the customer. Listening to their preferences, pain points, and preferred channels of information consumption is paramount. Content strategies must revolve around the customer's needs, gaps, and challenges. Marketers must position themselves as solution providers who can bridge those gaps effectively.
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The Power of Engagement and Relevance
In a world where information is abundant, engagement and relevance are the cornerstones of successful content strategies. Engage with customers in meaningful ways, such as by attending conferences and industry events. By actively participating in the industry discourse, marketers can identify gaps and challenges that their solutions can address.
Technology Content Marketing - the Right Approach
The right approach to technology content marketing (and overall marketing into the tech industry) makes a big difference. Our panelists agreed: personalization, and a deep understanding of the target market, is essential for success. When you start with the customer's problems, and think of them as an individual, your messages will resonate with them.
Content Marketing vs SEO - Which Is Better for Marketing?
Content marketing and SEO are digital marketing strategies that guarantee optimal online visibility, engagement, and overall success for any B2B company. However, some content marketers and B2B companies are confused about the similarities and differences between the two strategies and which to devote the most effort to.
Three key questions remain:
- Is one of these strategies superior to the other, or do they function better when integrated?
- Should B2B companies focus on one or leverage both for overall company success?
- What’s the best way to approach SEO and Content marketing?
Understanding the distinct attributes of each strategy and the potential synergistic power of both remains the only way to determine the answers to these questions.
Content marketing and SEO complement each other, and research has shown they work best when integrated. B2B companies that resolve how to complement both strategies make the most of their powerful synergy and stay ahead.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable content in the form of blogs, videos, eBooks, and podcasts to educate or inform an audience. Companies leverage it to educate and inform their audience about their products and services, helping them understand how the company stands out from their competitors.
By consistently publishing and distributing valuable industry information, B2B companies present themselves as reliable go-to resources for industry thought leadership information. This helps the company build trust and authority, enabling them to convert their prospects easily.
To excel with content marketing, you need an efficient content marketing strategy that includes plans for audience research, content planning, creation, distribution, analytics, and others.
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the strategies and techniques used to improve a website and its pages to rank at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). Ranking high on SERPs increases a website’s visibility, as research has shown that most people don’t go beyond the first page of a search engine when seeking information.
The increased visibility generates more traffic, increasing the website’s leads and conversion rate. The primary aim of SEO is to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to a website from search engines.
Companies adopt SEO to increase their company's, product's, or service's awareness, improving their revenue generation chances.
To execute SEO successfully, you must have a robust SEO strategy that includes plans for keyword research, link building, competitive analysis,on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and technical SEO, amongst others.
Difference between Content Marketing and SEO
While content marketing and SEO are similar or complementary, they have differences in their goals, scope, and the role search engines play.
The Goals of Content Marketing and SEO
Content marketing aims to build brand awareness, establish industry authority, and build solid and beneficial relationships across all marketing channels with potential customers. To achieve this goal, companies create relevant and educational content that resonates with their target audience, depending on the marketing channel.
However, SEO aims to increase a website’s visibility and rankings on search engines, enabling it to attract high-quality leads. Companies achieve this goal by optimizing various elements, such as website load speed, meta, and title tags, HTTP status codes, mobile friendliness, backlink structure, etc.
SEO significantly increases the chances of success on one vital content marketing channel – search engine marketing.
The Scope of Content Marketing and SEO
Another difference between content marketing and SEO is their scope. Content marketing focuses more on content creation in various formats and distribution through multiple channels, such as social media, blogs, search engines, emails, etc.
On the other hand, SEO involves all technical, on-page, and off-page activities in helping a website achieve the most content distribution and visibility on search engines.
Role of Search Engines in Content Marketing and SEO
This is a more subtle difference between content marketing and SEO. Content marketing emphasizes creating high-quality, relevant content that addresses the target audience's needs, preferences, and pain points. When content marketing involves website content, the content might help the website rank on search engines.
However, SEO is more direct in helping websites rank on search engines. It focuses on the website’s technical sides, content structure, and other on-page and off-page elements like keyword research and integration, quality backlink building, user experience, etc. All these help search engine algorithms understand a website’s relevance and rank it at the top of SERPs for those searching for related information.
Content Marketing and SEO: How They Complement Each Other
Content marketing vs. SEO shouldn't be the question. The better question should be how can both work together for optimal results. SEO and content marketing complement each other, from keyword optimization to brand and product visibility, user experience, and link building.
Keyword Optimization
Keyword optimization is one of the most vital ways SEO helps actualize content marketing goals. When users seek information on search engines, they do so with keywords. Identifying and optimizing for these keywords is only possible through extensive keyword research, an SEO activity.
To rank high and generate traffic from search engines where prospects actively use these keywords, companies create relevant content that addresses prospects’ needs and pain points and integrate these keywords naturally into them.
Improved Visibility and Brand Awareness
Content marketing and SEO work hand in hand to improve a company’s website’s visibility on search engines, creating awareness for its products and services. SEO is used in content marketing to help search engines identify and index well-written content that addresses customer needs.
The more readers find the content useful, the more search engines will help push it to a larger audience. Content marketing efforts are more fruitful when the content reaches a broader audience, and SEO helps achieve this by pushing the content higher in search rankings.
Quality and User Experience
Content marketing and SEO also work together to improve content quality and user experience.
By conducting extensive keyword research and SERP audits, companies gain more insight into their target audience’s expectations. They can then create content that addresses those expectations.
The quality of a piece of content depends a lot on how relevant it is to the readers. And the more relevant the content is, the better the user experience.
Engaging, informative content improves a website’s search engine rankings. It keeps readers hooked on your website longer. And the more people stay on your website, the greater the odds they'll contact you.
Increased Link-Building Opportunities
Great, informative, and exhaustive content attracts backlinks from other websites. The more backlinks content receives, especially from authoritative sources, the more search engines recognize the content and website as relevant and trustworthy. And this makes the search engine algorithms push the content higher up on the SERPs.
Great content and SEO marketing strategies lead to more organic link-building opportunities. In turn, this increase a website’s ranking, visibility, traffic generation, and ultimately lead generation and conversion.
Integrate Your Content Marketing and SEO Strategies and Achieve Optimal Results
Undoubtedly, optimal online marketing results come with integrating SEO and content marketing strategy. An extensive content marketing strategy without a complementing SEO strategy is ineffective. You can miss out on many organic leads and leave a lot of money on the table. Similarly, a robust SEO strategy without solid content marketing backing it up is almost futile.
The ideal approach is to develop a complementary SEO content marketing strategy that includes content marketing and SEO plans. Smart B2B companies integrate both strategies to give their brand, products, and services much-needed organic visibility, ultimately increasing revenue-generating opportunities.
The Important of Content Marketing for B2B Companies
Content marketing is important for B2B and B2C companies.
Content marketing is a valid marketing approach for both B2B and B2C companies. However, many are skeptical of adopting content marketing as part of their strategy because they’re unsure of itsf ROI. Here, we dispel the myth that content marketing does not produce significant ROI and examine its importance in the marketing mix.
Content Marketing for B2B Companies Is Similar to Marketing for B2C Companies
Here’s a typical definition of content marketing;
‘A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (blogs, white papers, case studies, videos, social media posts, etc.) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.’
This definition shows that content marketing is crucial for every business.
There’s a need for B2Bs to understand their prospects' pain points and adopt content marketing strategies to educate and inform the prospects about their products and services and how they solve those pain points.
There are many reasons why content marketing is essential for B2B companies, from helping them build trust and authority to showcasing their products and services and generating high-quality leads.
7 Top Reasons Why B2B Companies Need to Have a Strategic Content Marketing Plan
1. Builds Trust and Authority
B2B buyers constantly try to mitigate risks and optimize purchases. They scrutinize every piece of information they receive before making purchasing decisions. When a company consistently presents itself as the go-to resource for expert industry information and insights, they become a trusted authority.
Smart B2B companies can use content marketing to build trust and authority by consistently creating valuable and relevant content. Building a B2B content marketing strategy that includes case studies, blogs, customer testimonials, thought leadership whitepapers, etc., signals industry expertise and helps build buyers’ trust.
2. Helps B2B Buyers Make Purchasing Decisions
B2B buyers are conscious of making purchasing mistakes that could negatively impact their ROI and customer relationships. They extensively research products and services before making any purchase decision.
B2B companies can use content marketing to provide relevant educational content that helps these customers make informed purchasing decisions. They can provide this information using marketing materials that show detailed product information, use cases, demos, and how the products and services help problem-solving.
By using transactional content for B2B marketing, companies can get their customers, who are at the decision stage of their buyer journey, to make instant buying decisions.
3. Improves SEO and Website Traffic
Strategic content marketing helps B2B companies rank higher on SERPs for different money keywords, increasing website traffic and driving MQLs. During product research, most B2B buyers use keywords to query search engines for specific information regarding their needs. This is especially true when they don’t know about companies offering the required solutions.
Because search engines reward quality content with high-ranking and qualified leads, strategic companies can rank for those keywords, have more visibility, and deliver exceptional content detailed enough to answer all the prospects’ questions. Creating content relevant to your target audience and search engines can generate high-quality leads, leading to increased revenue.
4. Helps Companies Stay Competitive
Most B2B companies are already leveraging content marketing to drive leads. And since B2B buyers conduct online research before purchasing, companies not adopting content marketing lose out on many sales and market share.
It has become a critical differentiator among companies with similar target markets.
5. Bring Higher-Quality Leads
High-quality lead generation is one of the many benefits of content marketing to B2B companies. Content marketing generates more qualified leads because it drives leads actively seeking solutions. These prospects don’t waste time making purchasing decisions when they encounter content they resonate with.
Different approaches to content marketing help companies attract people at different stages of their buyer's journey. With informational and educational content, B2B companies can attract customers at the awareness stage of their buyer journey. Companies can also attract higher quality leads at the consideration stage of their journey, with a different approach to content – transactional.
Knowing how and when to use each approach to content marketing for B2B lead generation is vital to increasing sales and revenue. . It all lies in the company’s content marketing strategy.
6. Content Marketing is Cost-Effective
Content marketing is a cost-effective marketing approach for B2B companies for valid reasons. Consistently updated quality and valuable content can rank at the top of search engines for years and generate leads year-on-year. This is cost-effective in the long run and requires an insignificant investment compared to paid marketing.
Furthermore, valuable content can be repurposed into other forms, such as infographics, videos, podcasts, eBooks, whitepapers, etc., which can be used in other marketing channels like email, social media, etc. This reduces the cost of generating separate marketing materials for these other channels, reducing the overall marketing cost for a company.
With a solid content marketing strategy, companies can save the costs of running daily, monthly, or yearly paid ads and achieve similar or even better results.
Showcase Your Products and Services
Content marketing is an excellent way for B2B companies to showcase their products and services. Customer-centric companies create content that answers their audience’s questions while suggesting their products and services as the necessary solutions.
Even more, they provide detailed content highlighting their products' specific features and benefits.
Since B2B buyers at the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey use online information to compare products and make buying decisions, content marketing becomes strategic for companies that leverage it.
The fascinating thing about using content marketing to showcase products and services is that, when executed well, it can be so engaging and fun that the customer never loses focus or interest. For instance, a product review can be developed to deliver value and drive conversions without the readers feeling they’re being sold to.
Leverage Content Marketing, Adopt a Strategy, and 10X Your Results
Companies that adopt content marketing and create valuable content are sure to win in a competitive B2B market. It’s a non-negotiable for companies that want to be future-proof and increase market share and profit margin. Hopefully, you have the insights to adopt an effective content marketing strategy, execute it well, and generate 10x your results.
Content Clusters: What Are They and How Do They Work?
Content clusters, also called a B2B pillar content strategy, consist of related groups of content on a website. This content may be a group of articles and blog posts, or multiple types of content, such as blog posts, articles, presentations, videos, infographics and so on. No matter what type of content pieces are featured, however, they are all grouped under a main idea or topic – an umbrella, if you will, or a pillar, whichever visual works for you – and are related through a series of logical, connected keywords.
Why Develop Content Clusters?
I’m not exactly sure when the term content cluster came about, but over the past several years, it’s become apparent that using big, long form content pieces (pillar posts) with layers of related yet separate content pieces works wonders to boost a site’s organic search traffic.
How Search Engines Work – How Content Is Discovered
If you think about how search engines work, the answer to “why develop content clusters?” readily becomes apparent:
- Search engines send scouts, called spiders or bots, to scour the internet for new content.
- They follow links from page to page to find and review new materials published online.
- Materials are indexed according to keywords – what the bot considers the main topic of the content piece.
- Google and other search engines use an algorithm to rank the content according to usefulness, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (the infamous E-A-T formula).
When search engines encounter content, they look for links as they scan the web page, and then they follow those links, and so on…and that helps the content rank well. We know from experience and data tracked over many years that the more your website interlinks in a logical, helpful way to the visitor or reader, the better.
B2B Pillar Content Strategy
A B2B pillar content strategy starts with pillars, or big concepts related to the heart of your website. On my gardening website, Home Garden Joy, pillar topics include vegetable gardening, composting, and seed starting, all basic concepts for new gardeners to master. On a fashion website, pillar topics might include capsule wardrobes, choosing flattering colors, or classic pieces to add to your wardrobe.
Each website’s pillar content varies according to the theme, unique spin, or ‘tilt’ as Joe Pulizzi calls it, of your site. A B2B pillar content strategy focuses on key concepts a business might be marketing to other businesses. Each topic, or pillar, in a B2B pillar content strategy should be broad enough to cover the idea thoroughly. Keyword-rich articles, linked from the pillar topic, create an ecosystem of content pieces related to a single concept or thought.
How to Begin a Content Cluster or B2B Pillar Content Strategy
Newcomers to content clusters or B2B pillar content strategies often wonder where they should begin. Ask yourself these questions:
- What questions does my audience ask that my business is unique positioned to answer?
- What key search terms do these questions relate to?
- What is the search volume for this term?
- Are there synonyms or related topics? If so, what is the search volume for those topics?
- What has my competition published on this topic?
- Have I published anything on this topic? If so, how many visits does it get?
- Could my previously published pieces on this idea benefit from a rewrite?
The Seven Oaks Consulting Technique of Building Pillar Clusters
At Seven Oaks Consulting, our team of professional B2B content marketers uses a technique we call spider mapping to develop content clusters.
- We put the main idea or big concept for the pillar content strategy in the middle along with its search volume, competition, and links to the top 3 content pieces into the big center circle.
- Then, we brainstorm ideas around the big idea. These ideas go into the little surrounding circles.
- We then conduct additional keyword research to develop out the shorter articles in the circles that looks like planets orbiting the sun.
Here’s an example from my own gardening website, Home Garden Joy. The primary idea is how to grow beets. We then spun off “beets” into multiple interlinked concepts, including recipes, to build a content cluster around growing beets.
And then – voila. We have a content cluster. Writers receive their assignments, with the pillar content piece (the big idea in the middle) a long form topic and each orbiting topic developed into a supporting yet unique article.
We make sure that the pillar links out to the shorter pieces, and the shorter pieces link to the pillar. Then, we make sure that there are other links from our website into each piece.
Tools to Help Develop Content Clusters
There are a ton of SEO tools available to help you develop content clusters. I’ll share some of our favorites here.
- SEM Rush – the big daddy of SEO tools. On the expensive side but you get a ton of great tools in one monthly package. It will help you assess keywords, compare competitive sites, and develop ideas.
- Moz – another great SEO tool to help you find keywords and develop your strategy.
- Keysearch – a low- priced yet feature-rich keyword search tool that also helps you pinpoint the top sites currently ranking for keywords you’re hoping to use and rank for.
- Yoast – I absolutely love the paid Yoast plugin and it is worth every penny. We use it on all of our sites. It finds orphan content, or content that is not linked to anything else on the site and thus harder to find for search engines. It also helps us see if our content is readable and hits the right SEO buttons to rank well. Lastly, a paid Yoast subscription provides access to their library of educational materials, which is also great if you are new to SEO!
- AnswerthePublic – this tool used to be free but is now a reasonably priced paid tool. It lets you assess keywords and develop conceptual lists around keywords.
Again, there are dozens more platforms and tools just like these out there, and every content marketer will have her favorite. I recommend starting with free or low priced tools (Google search analytics tools, Keysearch, AnswerthePublic) if you’re just starting out.
2B2 Pillar Content Strategy Part of Our Services
We provide B2B pillar content strategy creation as part of all of our content marketing packages, so if you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, give us a call. We worked with technology and manufacturing companies to develop robust content marketing strategies to boost website traffic, brand awareness, leads, and sales.
Our content clusters include keyword research, content topics development, writing and editing for proper organic SEO, and our unique subject matter expert review (which no other content marketing agency provides!). Please contact us for a free consultation and discussion of your content marketing goals.
Video: Content Clusters, Creating B2B Content Pillars
