Are you really aware of the components or essentials of content marketing? Can you really define right or wrong activities for your content marketing?
The answer to both the questions can be anything but important is to have an effective plan and implement it in right manner. Most of the clients we work with had reservations at the initial stage to accept the fact that content needs to be created in various formats and in different types as well. It was hard initially to explain to clients that the content created by any brand cannot have unilateral tone or style but it should be curated keeping different sets of users in mind. Blogs with awesome images, insights, graphs, etc. are obvious things to have in your strategy but the language and style can be different as per the target audience. In a nutshell, as a client you should know what type of content can excite your prospects.
Let us explore various types of textual content formats that can help you convert prospects into clients easily:
Textual Article Content
As a business you would like to create content so that your prospects can read and understand. This can also help them to get engaged on the page for a longer time and get cross linked with other forms of content. There are different types of articles that you would like to create to attract your B2B prospects:
Listicles
This is a very trending format of content used by many B2B and B2C companies. Search engines prioritize content in search results for open queries by the users. Listicles also help readers to compare or in getting better details before deciding on anything. E.g.
- Top 10 things
- Best 5 Places
- Top 7 industry trends, etc.
Instructional Articles
This type of article helps the prospects in knowing better detail about any particular query. Brands create guidelines step by step so that these can be used by various people to follow some process or procedure. These are basically helpful articles created with the intention to guide the prospects better in understanding the products or services E.g.
- What to do?
- How to Use?
- How to Install? etc.
Case Studies
You can create case study content in multiple formats. It can be either in form of nice PPT, PDF and can be a Video too. A Case study can include challenges, solutions, and output for a specific client or industry. It can also include brief testimonial from a client. It can also be a nice blog mentioning all the above points and videos embedded in the same.
Highlight Example Applications
It is essential to highlight the key applications you have built for past clients. If possible, try to tag related industries so that people can easily search as per their industry to match the relevancy. You can also create an article for each application and use the same in your content marketing plan. It is the best way to engage with the prospects and showcase them the relevant applications.
Be A Thought Leader
In every Industry, there are a huge number of companies that are offering their products or services to their clients but only a small percentage of these companies are able to retain their goodwill in this tenure. For companies to retain their goodwill, it’s essential to highlight their services and their brand must be positioned in the industry as a thought leader.
Thought Leadership can be achieved with the help of a well-defined effective Content Marketing strategy and implementation plan. You need to excel in your industry to recognize as thought leaders and that should get highlighted in your branding too. Be ready to response queries in open or close platforms as a subject matter expert to harness all the knowledge and insight. You can also pen down great articles on this topic covering various aspects like:
Article Addressing Issues: As a thought leader you are expected to mention the pain points that your prospects may be facing or the common challenges addressed by your clients in the past. You should try to create an article by highlight few pain points (issues) and providing solutions to those issues.
Questions & Answers: It is always better to have assumptions, but in case of gauging your prospect it is always better to understand that know how on products, services, industry, terms or phrases may not be known. As far as possible, try to keep it very simple. Also, you should be aware that in any company there are multiple stake holders and decisions can be decentralized as well with various other departments. Few of them may or may not be fully aware of the technicality as well.
Any business should be taking extra care of their communication and try to position more authoritative with the help of multiple resources for the prospects. If you are really keen on content marketing aspect, try to create content in various formats on specific issues or situations.
In order to function within the latest trends, methods, processes you should be aware of all the facts and figures about your industry. You should try to solve the issues with all the latest methods and advancements.