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B2B Content Marketing Ideas For Every Stage of the Buyer's Journey
B2B content marketing is winning ground in the business arena. In fact, as per the Content Marketing Institute, 69% of B2B marketers have a thought-out and documented content marketing strategy. On top of that, many of them confess that they’re enjoying more success with content marketing compared to last year.
The graph below speaks louder than words:
As you can see, maintaining an online presence requires a lot of strategising and methodical planning that should invariably be in favour of a business' target market. Today, I'll talk you through the type of content to craft (or repurpose) at each stage of your marketing funnel. But before we delve deep into the topic, let’s first get a hang of the fundamentals!
What is a B2B marketing funnel?
A marketing funnel, also known as a sales funnel, is a mechanism that attracts new leads via an array of relevant and targeted content. Such leads are then converted into paying customers by “funneling” them through a well-structured content scaffolding that builds a durable relationship between a business and a customer.
Think of a B2B content marketing funnel as a consumer experience comprised of 4 segments — awareness, consideration, decision-making and action-taking (e.g. purchase, etc), loyalty, and delight.
Note that the funnels and their main attributes can vary considerably depending on what you sell and who your market is.
Here's the order you should stick to when setting up a marketing funnel:
At the top of the funnel (ToFU), you're reaching a qualified market to develop brand awareness.
At the middle of the funnel (MoFU), you're picking out the most engaged users from the top, and drive consideration upon your company and the benefits of your offering.
At the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), you influence the decision of prospects.
BOFU is also responsible for inspiring action among existing customers or highly interested users from the mid-section.
The interplay between B2B and B2C marketing doesn't apply to the chapter “Funnels”. Most of the times, B2C marketing is brand-based and pulls out emotional triggers, aiming to pique the interest of a wide audience. Unlike B2C-ers who tug at the heartstrings of their prospects, B2B-ers go heavy on consumer insights, graphs, numbers, tangible product features and rational decisions made by leading stakeholders.
Come along as I explore each stage of the buyer's journey more extensively.
What are the stages of a marketing funnel?
Awareness
This stage sits at the top of the funnel and is instrumental in boosting brand recognition and website traffic.
At this point, potential customers have entered the initial discovery phase of their research. Chances are, they still got tunnel vision — they've just began their info-seeking but haven't stumbled upon your product quite yet.
Survey revealed that B2B buyers consume 3 different pieces of marketing content about a vendor before heading to checkout. They elicit this knowledge predominantly from ads, search engine queries, social media, and email campaigns. If this is not a valid reason to carefully curate your messaging at any touchpoint possible, I don't know what else is.
Consideration
MoFu is all about consideration, i.e., convincing web visitors to become leads and drive profit. Once you start engaging with prospects and earning some degree of respect and trust, it’s time to nurture them into qualified leads.
Get the sales department onboard to spearhead this enterprise, as they can help prospects further down the pipeline. Implementing several inbound marketing strategies, from insightful blog posts on your website to riveting LinkedIn captions, can secure more deals.
Decision-making/Conversion
And we're sliding straight at the bottom of the funnel where decision-makers are all set to perform a purchase.
Don't worry — most of the strategies applied throughout the awareness and consideration stages of the selling cycle work in synergy with the closing bit. All you have to do to ease your customers in is to tackle issues related to technical SEO (e.g. UI and site architecture, loading speed, image compression, etc). These may also include providing enough information for a prospect to help them make a wise choice.
Loyalty/Retain
Normally, this stage is a bit of a stranger to a B2B marketing funnel and doesn't appear as much. This doesn't mean that it's not a pivotal moment in the buying journey. Retaining a loyal customer base is as crucial as acquiring one, if not more.
Think of it for a second — how much easier would it be to just follow the upselling or cross-selling path focusing on an already converted customer, rather than having to throw money, resources and energy to start something from scratch.
Advocacy/Delight
Advocacy occurs when people don't simply generate custom; they become product ambassadors. They probably bought from you several times in the past and they loved your goods and/or customer service. In a word, they're obsessed with your offering. They spread the word with the world about you and heap praises about your brand all across social media.
The aforementioned distinction between B2B marketing and B2C marketing begs the question: What content do you produce for each stage of the marketing funnel?
Type of B2B marketing content
Top-of-funnel content to spark awareness
SEO and content marketing, video ads, PR outreach and social media engagement on platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn coupled with user-generated content are some organic ways that facilitate exposure and awareness.
The focal point of such content should be your industry expertise, otherwise known as thought leadership content. You have to educate or inform as though you were teaching an introductory course.
Here are my suggestion for your awareness stage content:
Blog articles
Infographics
Guest blog posts
Bylines
Podcasts
Landing pages
Homepages (websites)
Videos
Social media posts
Mid-funnel content to grow consideration
Conferences and tradeshows are integral events in a traditional B2B marketing landscape. Now that these occasions have taken the digital path, webinars and online streaming dominate the scene.
Google applies this strategy by uploading live stream for users (i.e., fellow experts) who are pre-registered or for those who watch them later on YouTube. Online events may also be repurposed and promoted via social media, search engines, and email.
Find my recommendation for consideration stage content:
Influencer posts / customer profiles
Industry reports / eBooks
Email
Interactive content (e.g. quiz)
Live video
A sheet overviewing your company
Webinars
Video
Website feature pages
Bottom-of-funnel content to drive decision
Once again, your sales department is a critical player, responsible for showcasing your value proposition and generating ROI. Let them explain the features, and more importantly, the benefits of consumers using your solution. Motivate action by walking them through the process and share decision stage content such as the following:
Competitive analysis
Sales product page
Case studies
Help centre articles
A sheet overviewing specific features
Pitch deck
How-to tutorials
Website FAQ page
Website pricing page
Loyalty phase to ensure engagement
During the loyalty phase, consumers show trust to a brand and interact with it. Through outreach and community engagement, B2B marketers can build this personal relationship with their audience. Besides, when B2B buyers are committed to a business, referrals are very likely.
Some content that can guarantee this is:
White papers
Social media
Blog posts
Podcasts
Videos
Email marketing
Advocacy/Retention
Turning your paying customers into loyal fans is a great indicator of business success. For higher rates of lead generation, try distributing product reviews on your social media channels. Bear in mind that a non-branded external recommendation can have a massive impact on the decision-making of a prospects. B2B marketers should encourage them to take active part in case studies and user-generated social media content.
This can be achieved via:
YouTube videos
Community engagement
Email marketing
Social media
White paper
Podcast
Wrapping up
Coming up with new ways to meaningfully engage at each phase of the buyer’s journey is a crucial step to ensure an ongoing influx of leads through your funnel — seeing that traditional content saturates the Internet and obsolete B2B marketing forms overwhelm prospects with an overlong onboarding process and way-too-many selling points.
Content marketing is a rich cocktail of informing, educating, persuading and entertaining which commands the use of multiple sources and formats. Once you optimise how you combine different formats, you’ll nurture your leads into returning consumers in a truly unique way that strengthens your connections and supercharges your brand.
