Many marketers think that creativity has no place in B2B marketing. In fact, many believe that B2B content must be boring or done by people who cannot handle B2C marketing. However, this is a misconception and myth we want to break down in this post.
Like B2C marketing, creativity is the backbone of B2B marketing. It is a great way to capture the audience’s attention, differentiate your brand, and generate quality leads. As a B2B and B2C marketing agency, AlchemyLeads understand effective marketing needs creativity. Of course, B2B can require more sophisticated strategies than B2C marketing, but that doesn’t mean it has to be less attractive or engaging.
Even so, about 48 percent of customers describe B2B content they engage with as dull. And if your target audience cannot engage with your B2B content, your campaign won’t be effective.
In this post, we unleash strategies that you can use to ensure your B2B content isn’t boring to your audience but engaging.
Creativity is a Powerful Tool in B2B Marketing
Many marketers tend to think that B2B products or services are unattractive; thus, the content should be boring. However, this is not true. There’s also a misconception that B2B customers are different from B2C customers and are attracted to different things. This cannot be further from the truth.
While it’s true that creating content for home improvement or alcohol brands can be more attractive than creating content for “boring companies” like cleanroom construction companies, mining, well-drilling, aerospace, etc., it’s important to remember you are writing for humans, no matter the industry they are in.
Over the years, we have created engaging content and optimized SEO for many boring companies, including cleanroom construction companies, CBD companies, and other industrial companies, with great success. The secret is understanding the target audience fully and what drives their decision-making process.
Common Myths in B2B Marketing
The primary reason why marketers don’t see results from B2B content is because they are stuck in old strategies that don’t work. In other words, they use old strategies to solve modern problems.
To ensure your B2B content is compelling and gives expected results, let’s debunk the common B2B myths:
Myth 1: B2B Content has to be Emotionless
A common misconception among marketers is that B2B content has to be sterile. This is not true. As we stated, like B2C content, B2B content targets real humans who work in companies. Instead of creating an emotional ad, create a sentimental copy about the business brand.
Make your copy a little different, though. The best approach is to make your content informative, share human stories, and center it around human values.
Myth 2: B2B Content Equals B2C Content
While B2C and B2B marketing target humans, the latter requires different strategies and approaches. That means standard marketing strategies and toolkits may not be as effective in B2B as in B2C.
While storytelling is a great technique to build trust in B2B, it needs to share knowledge and establish expertise in the industry. For example, a company selling employee laptops to an ecommerce company should create content that transfers knowledge and shows its expertise in the latest technology.
Myth 3: Content Should Be Universal
Another common misconception is that there’s a one-fits-all content messaging for B2B marketing.
Mass consumer marketing was a thing in the 20th century. However, the industry has since evolved, and successful B2C and B2B marketers apply the latest techniques to reach their target audiences.
So instead of creating general messaging targeting anyone, create unique content targeting a specific audience.
Myth 4: B2B Should Take a Product-Led Approach
There are two approaches to marketing: product-led marketing and brand-led marketing.
Product -led marketing approach means that your marketing campaigns are guided by the product or service you offer. On the other hand, brand-led marketing means your content aligns to your brand values.
Unless you enjoy absolute monopoly, many companies offer the exact product/service you provide. Unfortunately, due to the many options available, the search isn’t about who can offer the best product/service but why company A is better than all other available options.
To shine in the B2B landscape, you need to focus on the brand-led approach instead of the product-led one. The best way around this is to tell creative stories about your brand that showcase your values and mission. Your stories must address the emotional need of your audience to remain stuck in their minds.
How to Make Your B2B Content Unboring?
As the marketing landscape changes, so should our marketing messaging. Having boring B2B content will impact your business negatively and won’t get the most from your marketing budget.
One way to tell whether your marketing messaging is boring is to read one of your copies and see whether you can easily read through without getting distracted and get the key points.
Remember, people don’t usually buy the best solutions. They buy from people they can trust. You can position your brand as a trusted provider by creating and publishing relevant and valuable information.
Here’s how to create unboring B2B messaging:
Understand Your Audience and Their Motives
The best way to write for your buyers is to understand their motives. The primary reason why companies consider buying a product/service is to solve a specific problem in their business. Instead of creating a lot of content on the benefits and features of your product/service, create content on how you can help solve their pain points.
Before creating your content strategy, take time to understand your audience’s main challenges. Below are questions we include in our onboarding questionnaire for our new B2B clients:
- What’s your primary role/function?
- What do you want to accomplish? Is it more qualified leads, more engagement, or more revenue? (what percentage increase).
- What keeps you awake, or what are the main challenges?
- Who is your ideal target audience?
- What are your worries and frustrations?
The answers to these questions will help better understand your audience and their motives which is crucial for any marketing campaign, including B2C.
Define Your Brand Value
No one will buy your product or service if they don’t understand the value they will get. Now that you know your audience, create content that focuses on the value your clients will get after using your product or services.
Talk about the problems your product or service can solve. For example, when creating content around our B2B SEO service, we focus on how we can help companies rank higher in search results and earn quality backlinks. The key benefits are vital for growth (generating more quality leads) and increasing revenue. This simple step enables clients who sign up with us to understand how they will benefit from our SEO services.
In addition to your value, talk about what sets you apart. Is it your many years of experience in B2B? Or is it because you are outcome-focused? Communicate clearly in your B2B messaging. For us at AlchemyLeads, our extensive experience in SEO and our passion for getting results for our clients set us apart.
When creating content for our B2B clients, we try to ensure it answers these three questions:
- What the client does
- What’s in for the target audience
- Call to action
The idea is to ensure the audience can relate to the brand values.
Humanize Your Brand
After years of handling SEO for B2B clients, we can confidently say that you need to show the human side of your B2B brand. We use this tactic to make our content exciting and create an emotional connection with the target audience.
A common mistake B2B marketers make is thinking of a brand as an entity. However, even for the most “boring” companies, humans run the daily operations behind the wheel.
People make companies; no business (regardless of industry) would exist without people. It will be a fatal mistake if content marketers could ignore this human aspect when creating B2B marketing content.
A brand can have a product or service with the best features on the market, but connecting with the target audience would be a challenge if they miss the human aspect.
People work with people, not businesses. Showing the human side and making connections is as vital in B2B marketing as with B2C.
Here are steps you can take to humanize your B2B content:
- Tell authentic stories
- Create engaging visuals
- Connect with your audience on social media
- Talk about your personalized experiences
Show the people behind your brand (we’ll discuss this below)
The idea is to personalize your brand and connect to your audience.
Create More Human Content
When writing B2B content, you can be tempted to make it very formal. While this can make you sound professional, we advise against going in that direction.
As mentioned, there are humans behind B2B companies, and the best way to reach out to those people is by making your content more human.
And not just your audience. Search engines, too, value content that provides a good user experience; the best way to achieve this is to write for humans.
Create engaging and easy-to-understand content instead of writing boring content filled with industry jargon. Ensure to keep things simple and use a friendly tone that appeals to your audience while maintaining professionalism.
Use Your Content to Educate Your Target Buyers
Instead of always trying to sell using your content, create content to educate your target buyers. This is a great way to position yourself as a valuable brand in your industry and gain authority. Interestingly, you can make valuable connections that can end up buying your product or service without selling directly.
Create content around products and tools that can help buyers solve their problems. But don’t just focus on your brand; educate them on the industry in general and provide valuable information to help achieve more of their goals.
The best approach is to find what keeps your audience awake and their interests and create high-quality and engaging content to connect with them emotionally.
Apart from creating educational content, use storytelling to elicit your buyer’s emotions. Create stories about who you are, why you started your brand, what the brand means to you, key challenges you encounter when running the brand, and the people behind the brand’s success.
Create Content Around People Behind the Brand
You need to be more creative than ever to get the most from your B2B marketing campaign. Instead of only focusing on your product features and benefits, focus on the people behind those key features.
You will realize more results if you handle B2B marketing as people-to-people marketing instead of company-to-company. Highlight the key decision makers in the company and the process they undergo to create the best solution for your audience.
The more you create content that focuses on humans, the less boring content you will have, and the more people (companies) will be willing to do business with you.
We Can Help Create Unboring B2B Content
There you have it. Those are steps you can take to create unboring B2B content. If you need a helping hand for your B2B and B2C content, AlchemyLeads can help. We have a team of experienced writers passionate about content that solves clients’ problems and delivers specific results.
Ready to humanize your brand through your content and create a connection with your B2B audience? Contact us today, and we’ll help you out.