What is B2B Content Marketing?

B2B content marketing is a type of lead generation strategy in which an organization creates material such as blog posts, infographics, videos, webinars, research papers, etc. in order to maintain interest in an organization’s products or services. Organizations, depending on size, typically utilize a number of different types of content in order to attract leads at different buying stages.

In the 2017 Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends Report, 83% of respondents said that a content marketing strategy is extremely/very effective.

Content Marketing Promotion Channels

Content marketing pieces are promoted through a variety of different channels including search engines, paid media advertising, social media platforms, etc. Organizations try to optimize their content marketing efforts through a variety of different channels. Organizations choose their channels to focus their resources on depending on the industry, product and service, target market, etc.

Gated B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Gated content is a content marketing strategy in which certain content is restricted until a visitor fills out information in order to unlock the content. When marketers apply a gated content strategy, they are hoping that the benefit of getting more leads outweighs the negatives of not having their content accessible to everyone. Negatives to a gated content marketing strategy include search engines not being able to index your gated content as a result your gated content will receive exposure. Also, certain potential leads, especially those higher up positions will not want to fill out a form, so marketers maybe missing an opportunity to educate these possible leads. Marketers usually to not restrict all content to visitors, marketers choose more premium content to gate, such as ebooks and research papers.

Tracking and Analyzing B2B Content Marketing Efforts

Tracking and analyzing your content marketing efforts is an essential part of a B2B content marketing strategy. Typically, marketing operations would assist marketing teams in implementing a tool that would help track content marketing efforts such as website lead tracking. There are many different marketing automation tools that include the functionality to track and analyze marketing content.

Tracking and Analyzing Content on Social Media Platforms

Marketers need to choose which social media platforms to utilize when disseminating and promoting their marketing content. All popular social media platforms have ways to track activity and interaction with your content. For example, LinkedIn has built in tools to track engagement efforts such as impressions, shares, likes, etc. There are also tools that combine data from different social media platforms to create social media analytics dashboards.

Tracking and Analyzing Content on Search Engines

Search engines are a vital part of a content marketing strategy. Marketer’s can get the best results on search engines by utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies including on-page optimization and keyword research. SEO strategies and SEO analysis tools allow marketers to optimize existing content and to get insight into what marketing content should created in the future.

Tracking and Analyzing Paid Media Activity

Marketers typically leverage paid media channels to promote gated content or in-depth content such as ebooks and research papers. It is important to have the proper tracking and analysis tools for promoting content through paid media, because paid media channels are typically more expensive to manage and execute. Marketers can get insight into what content their target market is interacting with, because paid media channels allow marketers to be more defined in which personas or target markets to show their paid media advertisements.

Tracking and Analyzing Content In Lead Nurturing Strategies

Marketers can receive unique insights when tracking and measuring the results of content in lead nurturing strategies. Different types of content and subjects are optimal at different levels of the sales pipeline. Marketers can see how their content performs when leads are in different stages of the sales funnel by using the right tools. For example, when sales development representatives send nurture emails to different prospects, marketers can track which content is viewed and interacted with.