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THE EXPERT'S GUIDE
to Buyer-Focused Content Marketing
MAKE CONTENT COUNT
There’s too much B2B content for marketers to skate by with bland E-books and mediocre white papers. Today’s buyers expect immersive, personalized experiences and interactivity. You need to leverage your resources to produce content that persuades the C-suite and the end user. And you probably need to do it quickly, on a tight budget. Challenge your teams to embrace new ideas, new formats and the ability to decide when to develop net-new content and when you can polish and refresh assets that might be languishing in your existing libraries. Get inspired to think differently about your content. This is your handbook for success.
DID YOU KNOW?
– Demand Gen Report, 2022 Content Preferences Survey
64% of buyers consume 3 to 7 pieces of content before making a purchase decision.
Lay the groundwork for your successful content with our Expert's Guide to Buyer-Focused B2B Content Strategy.
EXPLORE THE STRATEGY GUIDE
It’s important that your content be educational, demonstrate your brand’s unique positioning and offer thought leadership. But you need to do more to make sure target buyers see it, share it and engage with your sales team. Break free from the status quo, get creative and have some fun with your content. As you plan your next asset, ask yourself:
color outside the lines
Can I tie my content to a specific theme or story? Can I align my topic(s) to cultural references, events or trends to be more relevant to my buyers? Can I replace copy with images, graphs or other visual elements to make my asset less dense? Can I use animations or interactive capabilities to immerse buyers deeper into our story? Are there any new formats we can test to see how our audience responds?
Buyers strongly agree that they want content that is:
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Mobile Optimized
Short
From Industry Influencers
2022 Content Preferences Survey Report, Demand Gen Report
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Immerse Buyers in Your Story
Interactive content isn’t a flashy new trend anymore. It’s become a cornerstone of the most successful B2B marketing programs—and an expectation from buyers who want to choose their own journey through the path to purchase. Create brand-new experiences or re-imagine existing content in fresh formats that appeal to new audiences. Use animations, embedded videos and much more to draw viewers’ eyes where you want them, simplify complex processes and tell a deliberate story. Best of all, you’ll uncover metrics that tell you who’s viewing, what they’re looking at and where they are in the funnel.
Take a look as some of the captivating content we’ve developed for our clients to get a taste of the possibilities for your next campaign.
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BMC collected case studies in an engaging interactive portfolio.
SAP Concur brought a school campus to life with a virtual experience.
Poly turned a white paper into an interactive “wow” moment.
Veracode visualized data in a stunning interactive infographic.
HqO walked prospects through a “day in the life” to demonstrate its value.
BMC embedded a calculator in this interactive E-book.
Veracode tested buyers with a quiz.
BMC used interactivity to simplify a complex process.
There are so many new content formats at your fingertips that will help you address buyer needs and tell your brand story in a more powerful way. Here are some of our favorites.
Embrace New Formats
It’s important to experiment with different content formats to see how your target buyers respond, whether it be in the form of engaging with the content itself, sharing it on social media or submitting an inquiry to learn more about your solution. Your personas are a good place to start to get a feel for which formats are likely to resonate with your buyers, but also make sure the format you move forward with is the best vehicle to deliver your messaging.
Content Format Discovery Tool
Use our
to see which content formats might be ideal for your next great content asset.
Videos and Podcasts
Video is an effective medium to tell complex stories quickly and efficiently and pull viewers into your story. Podcasts can broadcast your thought leadership and brand story to a fast-growing audience.
G-books
Turn the traditional E-book on its head by focusing on visual, buyer-focused stories, hard-hitting statistics and relevant trends.
Interactive Infographic
Put key data in context and make it easier to understand using compelling callouts, animations and even characters.
Listicles
Sometimes buyers just want the facts. Get to the nitty gritty by creating dynamic lists and countdowns optimized for all screens.
Interactive E-books & White Papers
Bring traditional E-books and white papers to life in an interactive scrolling format that brings the audience deeper into your story.
Content Hubs
Curate and organize assets by industry, topic or another common theme to deliver a self-serve, Netflix-inspired experience.
Virtual Experiences & Simulators
Re-create product demos and virtual walk-throughs in the digital realm for the ultimate immersive experience.
Influencer Content
Build brand clout and credibility by aligning with relevant partners, SMEs and influencers to leverage objective third-party and expert perspectives.
Day in the Life
Bring buyers deeper into your story by showing key differentiators in the context of their lives, walking buyers through the impact of your solution over the course of the workday.
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Get Discovered
Getting those shiny new assets in front of your buyers takes planning and promotion. Here are some best practices to help you spread the word and engage your audience.
Reuse Imagery for Social Content
Social is an important channel to get your brand and content in front of a vast audience of current customers, prospects and their networks. Reuse charts and images to create social posts for Twitter, LinkedIn and your most relevant platforms. And of course, remember to include a call to action and link to the asset.
Rev Up Your Landing Pages
The same best practices for email nurtures can be applied to your landing pages. You can shake up your standard landing pages by packaging together similar content into a comprehensive toolkit. Content bundles create a great experience where buyers can choose their own path and download several assets at one time that align with their needs. At the same time, you get insight into which buyers are downloading several assets at the same time—a great indicator of a highly engaged prospect.
EXPERIMENT WITH EMAIL
Test different designs, color palettes and image options to see how your buyers respond. Invest the time to write a personalized subject line to get your email opened, and then reward those opens with carefully crafted copy that sparks their interest and wraps with a compelling call to action. Bonus points for eye-catching GIFs, short video snippets and emojis.
EXPERIMENT WITH EMAIL | REV UP YOUR LANDING PAGE | REUSE IMAGERY FOR SOCIAL
76% of B2B buyers said they share business-related content with their LinkedIn networks.
REV UP YOUR LANDING PAGE
REUSE IMAGERY FOR SOCIAL
An endless stream of content is constantly shooting into the Internet stratosphere—which means your brand can easily get lost in the mix. You can implement these tactics and best practices to accelerate your content creation and approval processes:
Dial in on News and Trends
REPURPOSE WHAT YOU HAVE
Repurposing starts with a comprehensive asset with data, best practices and even quotes and case studies. E-books and survey reports offer a lot of repurposing potential. With little additional effort, you should be able to split a larger asset into a series of new, shorter pieces. For more tips on repurposing, check out:
REPURPOSE WHAT YOU HAVE | BUILD CONTENT BLOCKS | KEEP UP THE BLOGGING
Do More With Less: 4 Ways to Maximize ROI Without Breaking the Bank
Modular Content: The Building Blocks of Cost-Effective Content Marketing
The goal of modular content is to map and create content with repurposing in mind. Rather than trying to find ideas within existing content, you start out with a series of smaller assets and map them together to create a new hero asset. You can turn one idea into a variety of different pieces while compressing approval processes exponentially. Learn more in:
Build Content Blocks
Blogging is a great way for your brand to build ongoing dialogue with your audience while spotlighting the unique opinions and experiences of subject matter expects. It’s also an ideal vehicle to promote new content and research, and to show off your subject matter experts. Use social media to extend the reach of your blogs, ask questions and encourage followers to share their feedback.
Keep Up the Blogging
SEE WHAT WE'RE DOING ON THE C4D BLOG
– Demand Gen Report, 2022 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey
The two top priorities for marketing teams in 2020 are to improve conversion rates/campaign performance and generate lead volume.
Repurpose What You Have
BUILD CONTENT BLOCKS
KEEP UP THE BLOGGING
CHECK OUT THE C4D BLOG
Your team members are a powerful vehicle for maximizing content reach and performance. It’s just a matter of ensuring they have the right information and best practices available. Internal empowerment programs get your whole marketing team on board with clear communication and processes. The more in tune your team is to new buyer-focused marketing tactics and processes, the faster you can plan and roll out effective programs and campaigns. You can even go beyond the marketing circle to collaborate on central themes and maximize their reach.
Empower Internal Teams
69% of B2B marketers said their demand generation budgets would increase between 1% and 20% in 2022.
No one has a more important role than the sales team. They’re the face of your company in every client and prospect meeting, and they deserve all the tools you can give them to deliver your buyer-focused messaging. Sales enablement campaigns will help you drive tangible results with the buyer-focused content you create. Sales enablement programs begin with sales-facing tools and training programs and can extend to digital workshops and internal-facing content and resources to close the gap between marketing messages and the sales close. These resources can serve your reps in a variety of ways: They can help them better understand buyer behaviors and their response to marketing messages, but they can also educate sales teams about new marketing campaigns and assets, the key takeaways and how they can use that content to have more relevant conversations. Think cheat sheets, summary slides and FAQs to start, then consider monthly webinars on new campaigns—and brief sales reps about the types of leads they should expect in the near future.
Serve the Sales Team
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to share your specific challenges and learn how Content4Demand can help you engage buyers and drive results.
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Are you Ready to go All in
on Buyer-Focused Content Marketing?
Content4Demand’s expert Content Strategists and Client Services Managers have decades of marketing and journalism experience working in technology, manufacturing, healthcare and other complex B2B sectors. As a client, you’ll have a dedicated team aligned with your market focus and fully immersed in your business, and that team will collaborate with writers with experience and expertise in specific verticals. We work with a hand-selected roster of writers with expertise in our clients’ industries. They know the terminology and the current industry landscape, and they know how to speak authentically in your buyers’ language.
Immersive Interactive Content Experiences
Content4Demand’s outstanding creative teams work with cutting-edge platforms and low-code solutions to develop interactive content. These projects get to market faster and deliver the kind of immersive experiences that will engage and delight your audience.
Custom Research Campaigns
Our dedicated research team can help you source and build lists, craft surveys, analyze responses, package results into custom reports and position surveys for maximum value and impact. The data is yours to keep, use and refresh for future campaigns.
Our process and approach to influencer content means we can help you identify and secure the right influencers, develop the content to position you as a thought leader and deliver engaging assets to new audiences through influencer networks and improved organic search.
Videos & Podcasts
Done well, video is worth so much more than a thousand words. Whether you want a 30-second social video or a tailor-made animated segment, we can help you gain maximum value from this form of storytelling. And we produce podcast episodes and series to help position you as an authoritative voice in your sector.
Content Repurposing
Extend the value of your content investments. We can transform your existing assets, reimagining them for new delivery channels, formats and experiences, so you can get awesome new content—without the time and hassle.
Promotion & Amplification
Your team can map the strategies and develop the content to create email, landing pages, social media posts and more to make a splash and get your fantastic content into the hands of your prospects.
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