B2B Content Marketing: What is it & How to do it in 2024?

The Future of Content Marketing: 24 Strategies Shaping 2024

Content marketing has seen a massive transformation over the years. What started as a way to rank on search engines has evolved into a multi-faceted approach that prioritizes building trust, engaging communities, and driving long-term business growth. As we head deeper into 2024, these trends and strategies are defining the new era of content marketing, especially for B2B companies. Let’s break down these 24 crucial insights:

1. The Evolution from Content Marketing 1.0 to 2.0

Content marketing has evolved significantly. We’ve moved from content marketing 1.0, which was designed primarily for search engines, to content marketing 2.0, which centers around engaging with audiences on social media and content platforms. Today, it’s not just about optimizing for Google; it’s about creating content that resonates across LinkedIn, YouTube, podcasts, and community forums.

2. Why Every B2B Company Needs a Strong Content Creation Arm

In the modern B2B landscape, outbound marketing, paid advertising, and even product-led growth (PLG) alone are no longer enough to stand out. Companies must invest in content creation that educates, engages, and builds relationships with their audience. A well-rounded content strategy now serves as the backbone for long-term growth and brand equity.

3. Focusing on the 95% of Buyers Not Yet in Market

Content strategies that focus only on the 5% of buyers actively seeking solutions today miss the bigger picture. The real opportunity lies in nurturing the 95% of buyers who aren’t in-market yet but will be in the future. By creating value-driven content for this segment, you build awareness and trust long before they’re ready to purchase, making them more likely to choose your brand when the time comes.

4. Investing Properly in Demand Creation

If your goal is to create demand, you need to fund and resource your content strategy accordingly. Too many businesses set ambitious goals like "creating demand" but allocate budgets as if content marketing were a side project. Achieving meaningful results requires the right team, tools, and time commitment.

5. The Power of Series-Based Content

One of the most effective ways to convert non-followers into followers is through “series-based content.” Creating anticipation with episodic content like "On the next episode..." builds engagement and keeps your audience coming back. This approach works particularly well across platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and podcasts.

6. The Rise of the “10x Content Marketer”

A few years ago, the “10x Engineer” was seen as the ultimate key to success in tech. In 2024, the “10x Content Marketer” holds that title. A single highly skilled content marketer can amplify your brand, drive engagement, and generate leads more efficiently than a whole team of average marketers.

7. Building a Trust Machine with Video

In 2024, trust is currency, and the best tool to build that trust is video. Whether through educational content, behind-the-scenes glimpses, or thought leadership videos, creating authentic connections through video is a must.

8. Driving Revenue with “Small” Social Numbers

You don’t need millions of followers to generate significant revenue. Micro-communities, niche audiences, and even small but engaged LinkedIn networks can drive big business outcomes if you’re delivering the right message to the right people.

9. The Difference Between Attention and Intention

Generating attention doesn’t always lead to conversions. In 2024, content needs to drive intention—making prospects want to choose you when they’re ready to buy. Intent-focused content aligns your brand with the specific needs and problems your audience is seeking to solve.

10. Making YouTube Your Sales Machine

You could ungate all your educational content and use YouTube as your primary platform to drive inbound sales. Long-form educational content, how-tos, and deep dives into industry topics can make YouTube a powerful sales tool when approached strategically.

11. First-Person Stories Outperform Other Formats

Personal narratives, first-person experiences, and stories from your subject matter experts (SMEs) connect with audiences on a deeper level. In 2024, first-person storytelling trumps other formats in terms of engagement and trust-building.

12. Video Shows: The New Content Frontier

Video content continues to dominate, and video shows take many forms: video podcasts, YouTube series, short-form social video shows, or live event series. Diversifying your content formats ensures you reach your audience where they are most comfortable consuming content.

13. Budgeting for Consistency, Not Campaigns

Content marketing isn’t a short-term campaign—it’s a long-term strategy. The best budget is one you would be comfortable spending indefinitely. Content marketing requires consistent, high-quality output over time, and cutting corners won’t yield sustainable results.

14. B2B Podcast Goals: Inbound Intent Over Popularity

If you’re running a B2B podcast, your goal should be to create a content engine that positions you as a thought leader and drives inbound intent—not to become the #1 podcast on Apple. Building influence in your industry and attracting high-quality leads should be your focus.

15. Podcast Video Trailers for Full-Episode Consumption

Short trailers that highlight the key takeaways or exciting moments from your podcast episodes are an excellent tool to drive listeners to consume the full content. These trailers can be distributed across social media to generate curiosity and interest.

16. Podcast Clips Provide Value But Won’t Drive Full-Episode Engagement

While clips from podcast episodes add value and perform well on social media, they don’t necessarily drive full-episode consumption. Their real value lies in keeping your brand top-of-mind and providing bite-sized knowledge to your audience.

17. Empowering Your SMEs as Creators and Thought Leaders

To stand out in today’s crowded content landscape, you need at least one SME (Subject Matter Expert) who can take on the role of a creator or thought leader across platforms. This person should have the knowledge and authority to represent your brand while resonating with your target audience.

18. Creating Content That Helps People Excel at Their Jobs

People will always seek ways to improve in their professional roles. Content that focuses on helping them excel—whether it’s through tips, frameworks, or industry insights—remains evergreen and consistently valuable.

19. Maximizing Video Podcast Production for Social Media

Video podcasts offer the flexibility to capture large volumes of content, which can then be repurposed across social media platforms. By post-producing snippets, highlights, and key moments, you can extend the lifecycle of your content while engaging your audience across multiple channels.

20. Debunking the Myth: “B2B Content is Boring”

It’s a misconception that B2B content must be dry and uninspiring. Even highly technical content can be engaging when it’s relevant to your audience. You don’t need humor to be interesting—relevance and value are enough to keep your ICP engaged.

21. The Trust Recession and the Role of Content

We’re in a trust recession, where people are more skeptical than ever about brands. In this environment, content equals trust, and trust equals future demand. Building and maintaining trust through your content is critical to securing long-term growth.

22. The Mega-Trend: Video Content is Everywhere

The shift towards video content is undeniable. Whether it’s short-form, long-form, or live content, video dominates in terms of engagement and reach. If you’re not prioritizing video in 2024, you’re missing out on massive opportunities.

23. The Ideal Content Team Structure

The minimum-viable content team structure involves three key roles: an internal thought leader (usually a SME), a content architect or producer (internal), and a production team (external). This setup allows for effective strategy, execution, and scalability.

24. Quality Over Quantity: The Importance of the Right People

It’s not about having more people on your content team—it’s about having the right people. Quality and expertise always trump sheer numbers when it comes to content strategy. Having the right mix of talent will yield better results than simply scaling up.

Content marketing in 2024 is about more than just creating content—it’s about building trust, nurturing relationships, and driving long-term growth. As you refine your strategy, keep these 24 principles in mind. They’ll help you stay ahead of the curve, whether you’re a startup trying to carve out your niche or an established brand looking to maintain market leadership.

Remember, the landscape is constantly evolving, and the brands that succeed are those willing to adapt, invest, and think long-term.

Pivoting Your B2B Content Strategy for the AI Era: From SEO to Example-Driven Content

For years, B2B content marketers relied on a tried-and-tested SEO strategy: educational content plus targeted keywords. This approach proved effective—scalable, measurable, and ultimately profitable, turning visitors into leads and leads into customers. However, the rise of AI has fundamentally altered the content landscape. As AI increasingly provides direct answers to queries and generates high-quality educational content autonomously, it’s becoming harder for brands to win with traditional SEO tactics.

In the AI era, the content that truly stands out is the kind that AI can’t replicate: example-driven content.

Why SEO-First Content Strategies Are Losing Ground

In the past, the SEO playbook was simple: create content that educates your audience, sprinkle in high-value keywords, optimize for search engines, and watch the traffic roll in. The formula worked well because it aligned perfectly with search engine algorithms. Educational content targeted the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel, capturing search traffic at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

But AI has upended this model:

1. AI Gives Instant Answers: Search engines like Google and Bing are increasingly using AI to provide instant answers to user queries without requiring them to click on a link. This reduces the chances of users actually visiting your site, even if your content ranks well.
2. AI Creates Human-Quality Content: Advanced AI tools can now generate educational content at near-human levels of quality. As a result, the competition for organic search rankings has become fiercer, making it challenging to break through the noise.
3. Content Saturation: With so much similar content available, simply offering information isn’t enough. Audiences are overwhelmed with articles, blogs, and videos that all cover the same ground. The key differentiator is now depth, originality, and real-world relevance.

Enter Example-Driven Content: The Strategy for the AI Era

In this new environment, pivoting from pure educational content to example-driven content is a game-changer. Example-driven content layers in real-life case studies, stories, and sourced examples to bring your educational content to life. It’s content that AI can’t easily replicate because it’s grounded in original research and unique insights.

Here’s how you can implement this strategy:

1. Content + Sourced Examples + Keywords: Instead of just focusing on educational content optimized for keywords, enhance your content with sourced examples. These examples can be drawn from interviews with industry leaders, customer success stories, or even historical references.
2. Hire a Full-Time Researcher: Dedicate resources to research. You need someone who can dive deep into case studies, interview experts, sift through books, journals, and even old newspapers. This researcher becomes an in-house journalist whose job is to gather original, hard-to-find examples that can’t be found with a simple Google search.
3. Layering Real-World Insights: The examples you source should be directly integrated into your content. This layering approach makes your content more relatable, actionable, and memorable for your audience. Whether you’re writing about AI applications in marketing or the latest B2B sales trends, sourced examples can give your content a unique edge.
4. Exclusive Stories and Insights: The sourced examples you feature in your content should be exclusive to your brand. AI scrapers and content generators can’t replicate stories or insights that have been obtained through direct interviews, personal connections, or archival research. This gives you a competitive advantage and positions your content as more authoritative.

Why Example-Driven Content Works

1. It’s Human-Centric: People relate to stories and real-life examples more than abstract concepts. By incorporating stories into your content, you’re providing something of value that resonates on an emotional level.
2. It’s Harder for AI to Compete: AI-generated content relies on existing sources found on the web. If your content is built on original examples that aren’t publicly available, AI can’t replicate it, giving you a unique advantage.
3. It’s More Engaging: Educational content is useful, but it can also be dry. By adding real-world examples, you breathe life into your content, making it more engaging and memorable for your audience.
4. It Builds Trust and Credibility: When your content is backed by real-world stories and examples, it builds trust with your audience. They see that your insights are based on actual results, making them more likely to view your brand as a reliable authority.

How to Build Your Example-Driven Content Team

To execute this strategy effectively, you’ll need to reimagine your content team:

• Researcher/Journalist: Someone responsible for finding, interviewing, and sourcing examples. This person is your secret weapon, as they will gather unique stories that elevate your content.
• Content Architect: A content strategist who can seamlessly weave these examples into educational content, ensuring that it remains informative while also being compelling.
• Content Producer: A production expert who can format and distribute your content effectively across different platforms, ensuring it reaches the right audience.

Moving Forward: The Competitive Edge in the AI Era

As AI continues to disrupt content marketing, brands that adapt to these changes will have a significant advantage. Pivoting from purely educational content to example-driven content isn’t just a trend—it’s the future of B2B content marketing. By incorporating real-world examples that can’t be easily duplicated by AI, you ensure that your content remains relevant, engaging, and, most importantly, valuable.

In the AI era, it’s not just about creating content; it’s about creating content that stands out. And in a world where AI-generated content is flooding every corner of the internet, the only way to stand out is by offering something AI can’t replicate: unique, example-driven insights grounded in real-world stories.

Creating content and experiences

Creating content and experiences that are so valuable and engaging that people would be willing to pay for them sets a high bar for brand awareness and demand generation efforts. This approach emphasizes quality, relevance, and uniqueness, which are key to cutting through the noise in today's saturated markets. Here are some strategies to achieve this:

1. Understand Your Audience Deeply: Start with a thorough understanding of your target audience's preferences, pain points, and behaviors. This insight allows you to tailor your content and experiences to meet their specific needs and interests, increasing the perceived value.
2. Deliver Exceptional Value: The content or experiences should offer immense value, whether it's through educating, entertaining, or solving a problem for your audience. The goal is to make your offerings so compelling that your audience sees them as must-haves.
3. Create Unique Experiences: Offer something that your audience can't get elsewhere. This could be exclusive access to industry insights, innovative use of technology for interactive experiences, or highly personalized content that speaks directly to individual needs.
4. Engage and Interact: Create opportunities for your audience to engage and interact with your content or experiences. Interactive webinars, workshops, and community events can foster a sense of belonging and significantly enhance the perceived value of your brand.
5. Leverage Storytelling: Use storytelling to connect on an emotional level, making your content more memorable and shareable. Well-crafted stories can convey your brand's values and mission, making your audience more likely to support and advocate for you.
6. Focus on Quality Over Quantity: It's better to produce fewer pieces of high-quality content or fewer, more impactful experiences than to overwhelm your audience with quantity. Quality reinforces your brand's reputation for excellence.
7. Encourage Sharing and Advocacy: Make it easy and enticing for your audience to share your content and experiences. Word-of-mouth and social sharing can exponentially increase your reach and attract new audiences who are willing to pay for the value you offer.
8. Measure and Optimize: Continuously measure the impact of your content and experiences. Use feedback and analytics to refine and improve your offerings, ensuring they remain relevant and valuable to your audience.

By focusing on creating content and experiences worth paying for, you not only elevate your brand awareness but also build a strong foundation for demand generation. This approach helps in establishing a loyal customer base that sees your brand as an essential part of their personal or professional lives.

B2B content marketing strategy

Focusing on 3-4 core themes in B2B content marketing strategy is indeed a strategic approach that can offer numerous benefits:

1. Ownership of Topics: Specializing in a few key topics allows a company to establish itself as an authority in those areas. This depth of knowledge can set your brand apart as a thought leader, attracting a specific audience looking for expertise in these topics.
2. Team Expertise and Focus: When your team concentrates on a limited set of themes, it can develop a deeper understanding and expertise in those areas. This focus can lead to higher quality content as the team becomes more knowledgeable and skilled in these specific subjects.
3. Preventing Overextension: Limiting the number of themes helps avoid spreading your team's resources and efforts too thin. This focus ensures that the quality of content is maintained and the team is not overwhelmed by trying to cover too broad an array of topics.
4. Differentiation from Competitors: By specializing in a few select themes, your content can stand out in a crowded market. This differentiation helps in building a unique brand voice and identity, as opposed to echoing what competitors are saying.
5. Consistent Messaging and Positioning: A focused approach to content themes allows for consistency in messaging. This consistency is key in building brand recognition and loyalty, as audiences come to know what to expect from your brand.
6. Speeding Up Content Production: With a clear focus, content creation can become more streamlined and efficient. The team can quickly become adept at producing content within these themes, reducing the time spent on research and ideation.
7. Ease of Content Reuse: When you have a wealth of content in specific areas, it becomes easier to repurpose this content across different channels and formats. This not only saves time but also reinforces the key messages.
8. Easier Content Ideation: Having a few core themes simplifies the process of coming up with new content ideas. It's easier to brainstorm and develop fresh perspectives within a well-defined scope.

In essence, a simplified, strategic approach to content pillars allows a B2B company to build a strong, recognizable brand, cultivate a loyal audience, and efficiently use its content creation resources. This approach can lead to more impactful and successful content marketing efforts.

What should be your approach if you are the first b2b content marketer in a company?

Being the first content marketer in a company is a unique opportunity to shape the organization's approach to content. Here's a breakdown of the three-part strategy:

Show People How to Work with You:

1. Inclusion in the Process: Involve team members early in the content creation process. This not only fosters a collaborative environment but also ensures that content is aligned with various perspectives within the company.
2. Encourage Cross-Departmental Contributions: Motivate teams outside of marketing to contribute ideas. This can lead to a diverse range of content that resonates with a wider audience.
3. Openness to Feedback: Sharing drafts and inviting feedback can bring new insights and improve the quality of content. This approach also helps in building trust and openness within the team.

Demonstrate the Power of Good Content Marketing Strategy

1. Sharing Successes: Regularly share content successes, no matter how big or small. This can be done through internal newsletters, meetings, or dashboards.
2. Quantify Impact: Use statistics, stories, and quotes to showcase how content positively impacts the business. This helps in demonstrating the tangible value of content marketing efforts.
3. Highlighting Top-Performing Content: Identify and share high-performing content so other departments can repurpose it for their needs, enhancing the overall content strategy.

Make Your Partners and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) Look Like Rockstars:

1. Acknowledge Contributions: Publicly recognizing the contributions of partners and SMEs fosters goodwill and encourages future collaboration.
2. Transform Insights into Stories: Convert the expertise of others into compelling content. This not only provides value to the audience but also highlights the expertise within the company.
3. Ease of Collaboration: Make the process of working together as seamless and effortless as possible to encourage ongoing participation.

By cultivating a strong culture of content, you can broaden your network of support within the organization. This not only enhances the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy but can also significantly contribute to your professional growth, increasing your visibility and influence within the company.

How content marketing can help your brand?

There are certain brands I recommend to other people all the time without being their customer. That’s how much I’ve enjoyed and gotten value out of the content these brands have created over the years.

The phenomenon I am describing here is a powerful testament to the impact of b2b content marketing and brand building. It highlights how companies can create significant brand loyalty and advocacy through effective content strategies, even among individuals who have never directly used their products or services. Let's explore the key aspects of this approach:

1. Building a Content Brand: These brands have successfully built a strong presence and reputation primarily through their content. This approach goes beyond traditional advertising or product promotion. Instead, it focuses on delivering value through content that is informative, engaging, and useful to the audience. By consistently providing high-quality content, these brands have positioned themselves as thought leaders and trusted sources of information in their respective industries.
2. Engagement Over Transactions: The strategy here revolves around engaging with the audience rather than directly pushing for sales. This long-term engagement builds a relationship with potential customers, who may not currently need the product but will think of the brand first when the need arises.
3. Brand Evangelism: Even without direct product experience, people can become brand advocates based purely on the content's value. This word-of-mouth marketing is incredibly powerful as recommendations from peers often carry more weight than traditional advertising.
4. Broader Audience Reach: By focusing on content, these brands reach a wider audience, including those who may not be in the market for their products or services immediately. This broader reach creates a larger pool of potential future customers and brand advocates.
5. Educational and Informative Focus: These brands often focus on educating their audience or providing insightful information related to their field. This approach helps in solving problems or answering questions, which can be a significant value-add for the audience.
6. Consistency and Quality: Maintaining a high standard of content and delivering it consistently over time is key to building a successful content brand. This consistency helps in keeping the audience engaged and strengthens the brand's reputation.

In summary, b2b content content strategy trends demonstrate the power of b2b content marketing done right. They show that providing real value through content can build brand loyalty and advocacy, even among those who aren't current customers. This strategy can be a game-changer for businesses, turning their content into a powerful tool for brand building and customer engagement. People need to understand this while designing for their b2b buyer journey.

What kind of b2b content marketing should you invest in if your budget is tight?

Investing in high-impact content with a limited budget requires strategic choices that maximize the return on your investment. The are some ideas that are excellent starting points, tailored to different stages and needs of a business. Let's delve into each of them:

1. Evergreen Lead Magnet: Creating a lead magnet like an industry report, guide, or checklist is a great way to offer value in exchange for email sign-ups. This content should be evergreen, meaning it remains relevant over time, and it should be specific to the interests of your target audience. The lead magnet can be promoted through paid ads to enhance reach and generate leads.
2. LinkedIn Ghostwriter: Hiring a ghostwriter to create consistent, problem-solution content on LinkedIn can be a smart move. LinkedIn is a powerful platform for B2B marketing and thought leadership. The content should align with your brand's expertise and funnel viewers to your lead magnet, enhancing your email capture strategy.
3. Targeted Case Studies or Account-Specific Content: Creating case studies or content tailored to specific accounts can be an effective way to engage prospects personally. This approach demonstrates your understanding and expertise in their specific challenges and needs.
4. Invest in Video Content: Video content can be highly engaging and versatile. Marcus Sheridan's "Selling Seven" concept focuses on creating videos around the most common questions, product-service fit, and landing page explanations. These videos can be used across various platforms, including your website and social media, to enhance engagement and conversion.
5. Topic Cluster Close to Product Keywords: Investing in a content cluster that revolves around your product keywords, especially in niche markets, can be highly beneficial for SEO and establishing authority. This approach involves creating a series of interlinked articles or blog posts focused on a specific theme related to your product or industry. This not only improves your website's appeal but also serves as valuable sales collateral.

Remember, the key to success with these b2b content strategy is quality over quantity. Focus on creating valuable, relevant, and engaging content that resonates with your target audience. Each piece of content should serve a specific purpose in your overall marketing strategy, whether it's lead generation, brand building, customer education, or sales support.

The approach of building b2b content topics based on elements like a strategic narrative, customer insights, your Ideal Customer Profile's (ICP) challenges and goals, product details, concepts tying business goals with audience interests, and unique frameworks or theories is a forward-thinking strategy in content marketing. This method focuses on creating valuable, engaging content first, with SEO considerations following to enhance discoverability.

1. Strategic Narrative: Develop content that tells the story of your brand, its journey, and its vision. This narrative can emotionally connect with your audience and distinguish your brand in the market.
2. Customer Insights and Wins: Share stories of customer successes and insights gained from their experiences. This can include case studies, testimonials, and data-driven results, showcasing the real-world impact of your product or service.
3. ICP's Challenges, Goals, and Interests: Create content that addresses the specific challenges and aspirations of your ideal customer. This approach ensures relevance and adds value to your target audience's life or business.
4. Product Focus: Develop content around your product, explaining what it is, how it helps, its unique features, and why it's a necessity. This can be through tutorials, feature breakdowns, and use-case scenarios.
5. Linking Business Goals with Audience Interests: Craft content that aligns your business objectives with what interests your audience. This ensures that your content not only serves your goals but also resonates with your audience.
6. Unique Frameworks and Theories: Share any original frameworks, theories, or ideas you have developed. This positions your brand as a thought leader and adds unique value to your content.

After creating content, then consider the SEO aspect: what terms people would search for when looking for the information you’re sharing. SEO-keyword-first strategy for topic ideation is becoming outdated. It emphasizes the importance of first creating content that is worth consuming, remembering, and sharing, before optimizing it for search engines.

Perspective on content strategy for B2B SaaS brands

The focus on curating a content hub that showcases expertise rather than just a collection of various media types is crucial. Here's a breakdown of the approach and why it's effective:

1. Prioritize Expertise Over Format: SaaS clients are typically looking for solutions to specific problems or challenges they face. Therefore, organizing content by expertise areas rather than types of content (like ebooks, videos, etc.) is more aligned with their search intent.
2. Content Hub as a Credibility Check: When potential clients visit your website, especially the resources section, they are often in the phase of verifying your credibility and expertise. Making it easy for them to find what they need is key.
3. Feature the Best, Not Just the Latest: Highlighting your 'greatest hits' or most impactful content in each category can be more effective than simply showing the latest publications. This approach ensures that visitors are immediately presented with the most valuable and relevant content.
4. Organize Content by Categories: Having 3-5 broad content categories that reflect the main areas of your expertise can guide visitors more efficiently. This categorization helps in tailoring the content discovery process to the visitor's needs.
5. Optimize Category Pages: Each category page can start with a showcase of the best pieces and then list other resources. This setup provides a depth of content while still prioritizing the most impactful pieces.
6. Consider the Medium as Secondary: While it's good to offer content in various formats (like videos, blogs, ebooks), the primary focus should be on the topic. The format is secondary and should cater to the user's preferred way of consuming content.
7. Reduce User Effort: By organizing content in a user-friendly and topic-centric manner, you reduce the cognitive load on visitors. They can easily navigate and find the most relevant and high-quality content without having to sift through less impactful material.

This strategy underlines a more thoughtful and user-centric approach to content organization on SaaS websites. This method not only enhances the user experience but also bolsters the brand's image as an authority in its field. The psychology behind b2b purchase decisions is a complex and multifaceted field of study. 

The Content Marketing Roadmap Planning Principles

The Content Marketing Roadmap Planning Principles image outlines a structured approach to developing a content marketing strategy. It starts with defining Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and progresses through strategic considerations, audience research, and content distribution optimization, ending with content opportunities and reporting.

Content marketing is the engine that powers digital growth for SaaS businesses, but without a strategic roadmap, efforts can often be akin to shooting arrows in the dark. This guide will explore the principles of crafting a content marketing roadmap that aligns with your business's objectives, resonates with your audience, and drives measurable results.

Here's a detailed breakdown:

Start With OKR (Objectives and Key Results):

Before you write a word of content, define what you want to achieve. OKRs are not just about setting targets; they're about aligning those targets with the broader vision of your company. Whether it's increasing top-of-funnel (TOFU) organic traffic or improving conversion rates from high-intent visitors, your OKRs should guide every piece of content you create.

• Define the desired perception for your audience.
• Research competitor narratives and where they fall short.
• Craft positioning that highlights what is for, the narrative, differentiators, and your best attributes.
• This section underlines the importance of clear goals, thorough market research, and strong positioning.

Key Strategic Items:

Content marketing is not a solo mission. It requires input from across the organization. Sales and customer support teams can provide invaluable insights into customer pain points and success stories. Use these insights to create content that addresses real-world challenges and showcases how your product provides solutions.

• Align marketing strategies with business goals and growth potential.
• Optimize spending based on ROI potential.
• Articulate unique brand values and measure against key performance indicators.

Increase TOFU/MOFU Organic Traffic:

Your content should guide potential customers through their buying journey. From awareness to consideration to decision, each stage requires different types of content. For TOFU, you might focus on blog posts that address broad industry challenges. As prospects move through the funnel, more product-focused content like case studies and demos become important.

‍TOFU (Top of Funnel) and MOFU (Middle of Funnel) refer to stages in the buyer's journey. The goal here is to increase organic traffic at these stages by a certain percentage.

Improve Conversion Rate From High-Intent Traffic:

• Focus on converting users who are already considering a purchase or engagement, indicating they are further down the sales funnel.

Increase Non-Branded Conversion Traffic:

• Attract visitors who are not searching for the brand specifically but for the solutions the brand offers.

Audience Research & JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) Framework:

The most impactful content speaks directly to the reader's needs and challenges. Utilize the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework to understand the core tasks that your audience is trying to accomplish and the hurdles they face. This approach shifts the focus from selling a product to solving a customer's problem, which is far more effective in building trust and engagement.

• Conduct interviews with cross-functional teams and customers to understand perceptions, desires, and problems.
• Utilize the JTBD framework to identify user tasks and pain points.
• This part emphasizes the need for audience research to tailor content to the customer's needs.

Each piece of content should serve a strategic purpose. Whether it's demonstrating how your product aligns with industry trends or showcasing the ROI of your solution, content needs to connect with business goals and growth potential. Prioritize strategies with the highest ROI potential and ensure that your content communicates your brand's unique value proposition. Successful b2b content marketing examples.

BOFU cheatsheet for B2B (Business-to-Business) Software as a Service (SaaS) marketing

Here's a breakdown of the content categories and examples provided:

• Use Case Pages:

Keywords focusing on how a product can be used (e.g., "email automation software," "user onboarding tool").

• ICP Pages:

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) targeted pages, using keywords like "cms for commerce," "outreach platform for marketers," and "feedback platform for design teams."

• Comparison Pages:

Pages that compare products with their competitors (e.g., "Figma vs Sketch," "Mailchimp alternative").

• Buying Guides:

Guides that help the buyer make a decision, with keywords like "top form builder software," "best design tools for developers," and alternatives for different products and competitors.

• Case Studies:

Examples of how a product has been used successfully, like an email automation case study showing a 123% increase in open rate for OpenAI.

• Lead Magnets:

Resources designed to attract leads, such as "cost calculators," "templates," and "reports" related to the use case of the product. 10 Essential B2B Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Professional Services Firm.

Distribution & Optimization:

Even the best content is ineffective if it's not seen by the right people. Distribution is critical, and understanding where your audience spends their time is crucial. Whether it's LinkedIn, industry blogs, or email newsletters, tailor your content for each channel and optimize it for maximum reach and engagement.

• Move buyers from low to high commitment via effective CTAs.
• Optimize internal linking and improve user experience.
• Remove stale/deadweight content that doesn't contribute to goals.

Messaging Amplification & Content:

In the digital age, content amplification is non-negotiable. This means using paid advertising, social media, influencer partnerships, and SEO to ensure your content reaches beyond your immediate network. Think of amplification as the megaphone that broadcasts your content to the world.

• Map content across all touchpoints with the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).
• Utilize content amplification and distribution techniques.
• Organize a budget and execution plan.

Content Opportunities and Reporting:

In a sea of content, quality stands out. Create content that not only informs but also provides clear, actionable takeaways for the reader. This positions your brand as a thought leader and builds credibility with your audience.

SEO is the bridge that connects your content to your audience. Understand the basics of keyword research, on-page optimization, and link-building to ensure your content is found by those looking for it.

‍This section identifies various types of content that cater to different levels of audience awareness:

• Problem-Unaware: General content that addresses broad concerns.
• Problem-Aware: Focused content that addresses known issues.
• Solution-Aware: Detailed content about specific products or services.
• Comparing Solutions: Content that compares different solutions available to the audience.
• Using Your Solution: Content that demonstrates the application and effectiveness of the offered solution.

Metrics for Measurement:

The only way to know if your content marketing is successful is to measure its impact. This means going beyond vanity metrics like page views and likes to look at engagement metrics, conversion rates, and ultimately, revenue impact. Use these insights to refine your content strategy continually.

• Track non-branded/branded clicks, impressions, views, and engagement metrics.
• Measure non-branded conversion keyword performance and inbound lead quality.

The plan advocates a comprehensive approach to content marketing by integrating strategic planning, audience understanding, content creation, and performance measurement. The ultimate goal is to support business growth by effectively reaching and converting the target audience through carefully crafted and distributed content.

This roadmap serves as a guide for businesses looking to establish a robust content marketing strategy that drives traffic, engagement, and conversions, ultimately contributing to the company's bottom line.

For more in-depth exploration of content marketing strategies, you might want to look into resources like Content Marketing Institute or MarketingProfs, which offer extensive guidance and best practices.

A content marketing roadmap is a strategic plan that ensures all your content efforts are aligned with your business goals, focused on your audience's needs, and designed to drive measurable results. By following the principles outlined in this guide, you can create a content marketing program that not only reaches your audience but also resonates with them and compels them to action.

Remember, the key to successful content marketing is not just in the creation but in the strategic planning, execution, and continuous optimization based on performance data. With a clear roadmap, your SaaS business can harness the power of content marketing to fuel growth and establish a strong digital presence.

In creating a content marketing roadmap, remember that it's an iterative process. The digital landscape is always changing, and so are your customers' needs. Be ready to adapt and evolve your strategies to stay ahead and maintain relevance in a competitive market.

What are some content strategies to offer a comprehensive and creative approach to propelling a B2B SaaS company to market leadership?

Let's briefly summarize each:

Master the Growth Stage Game:

Early Stage: Emulate Slack by addressing specific pain points with focused features.

Growth Stage: Follow Salesforce's lead to offer broader benefits that enhance productivity and streamline workflows.

Define Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) Like Zendesk:

Identify and communicate your distinct advantages in customer service, akin to a superhero, with clarity and confidence.

Be the Google of Your Customer's Needs:

Stay ahead by deeply understanding and anticipating your target audience's evolving needs, much like a market researcher.

Customer Centricity as Your Guiding Principle (HubSpot Style):

Prioritize customer success and satisfaction to the highest degree, ensuring their experiences are at the core of your business strategy.

Content as Thought Leadership Fuel:

Share valuable insights and engage in industry discussions to establish your brand as a thought leader, similar to what Gary Vaynerchuk does in his field.

Embrace Change Like Netflix:

Stay adaptable and innovative, continuously experimenting with new features and technologies to keep up with the dynamic tech landscape.

Consistent Messaging Across All Platforms (Zoom Choir Approach):

Ensure your branding and brand messaging is consistent and clear across all communication channels to avoid confusing your audience.

Each strategy draws inspiration from successful companies and figures, providing a model for growth, innovation, and customer engagement that can be instrumental in achieving market leadership.

How to do content marketing beyond just blog posts?

Here's a plan to expand your content strategy:

Incorporate Newsletters and Interactive Content:

1. Newsletters: This is a powerful way to build a direct relationship with your audience. Tailor content to their interests and needs, offering exclusive insights or early access to new products or services. Newsletters can be a mix of industry news, company updates, and valuable resources.
2. Interactive Content (Checklists/Templates): Develop practical tools like checklists or templates that provide immediate value to your audience. This could be workflow checklists, template documents, or interactive tools that help them solve specific problems.

Venture into Podcast Guesting:

1. Identify Relevant Podcasts: Look for podcasts that align with your industry or your audience's interests. The goal is to find platforms where your thought leaders' expertise can shine and resonate with listeners.
2. Prepare Key Messages: Develop a list of key insights, stories, or data points that your thought leaders can share. This preparation ensures your participation is both informative and engaging.
3. Leverage Podcast Appearances: After guesting on a podcast, promote the episode through your own channels. This not only gives the podcast exposure but also showcases your thought leadership to your audience.

Maintain and Optimize Your Blog:

1. While expanding into new formats, continue to maintain your blog with mid-length content that’s optimized for search engines. This ensures your visibility in search results and provides a home for your diversified content.

Monitor and Adapt:

1. Regularly assess the performance of these new content types. Track engagement metrics like newsletter open rates or podcast download numbers and gather feedback to refine your approach.

By diversifying your content strategy in this way, you'll be able to reach a broader audience, provide more value, and stand out in a crowded digital space. Remember, it's not just about creating content; it's about creating the right content for the right audience through the most effective channels.

How to build an effective content strategy?

Building an effective content strategy is paramount for any business, regardless of its size or domain. It involves various facets, from the timing of posts on social platforms to the frequency of email newsletters. However, the cornerstone of a successful content strategy lies not in these operational details but in the development and communication of a strong, distinctive Point of View (POV) on your market. This perspective shapes how you educate and engage with potential customers, significantly influencing their decision-making process.

Understanding the Importance of POV

Your POV is essentially your business’s stance or perspective on the industry it operates within. It reflects your values, expertise, and unique approach to solving problems. Here’s why it stands as the 80/20 of a great content strategy:

• Differentiation: In a sea of competitors, your POV sets you apart. It’s what makes your content—and by extension, your brand—memorable and engaging.
• Value Proposition: A well-defined POV helps you articulate your value proposition more clearly. It demonstrates not just what you do, but why you do it and why it matters to your target audience.
• Audience Engagement: A compelling POV resonates with your audience. It speaks directly to their needs, challenges, and aspirations, fostering a deeper connection.
• Content Direction: With a clear POV, content creation becomes more focused and purposeful. Every piece of content serves to reinforce your stance and educate your audience, making your content strategy more cohesive and impactful.

How to Sharpen your POV?

1. Identify Your Unique Insights: Reflect on what unique insights or approaches you bring to your industry. Consider how your experiences, expertise, and values differentiate you from competitors.
2. Understand Your Audience: Deeply understand the needs, challenges, and aspirations of your target audience. What do they care about? How can your POV address or resonate with these aspects?
3. Articulate Your Stance: Clearly articulate your POV. It should be concise, compelling, and easily understood by your target audience. This will become the foundation of your content strategy.
4. Create Relevant Content: Develop content that aligns with your POV and speaks directly to your audience’s interests and needs. Whether it’s blog posts, videos, or podcasts, each piece should reinforce your POV and provide value.
5. Be Consistent: Consistency in communicating your POV helps build trust and credibility with your audience. Ensure that your content across all platforms reflects your POV in a coherent manner.

Beyond Operational Details

While operational aspects like publishing frequency and email timing can optimize your content strategy, they do not define its success. A strong, well-articulated POV is what truly engages your audience and sets the foundation for a powerful content strategy. By focusing on developing and honing your POV, you position your brand as a thought leader in your industry, making the rest of your content strategy more effective and easier to execute.

In summary, your POV is not just a part of your content strategy; it is the essence of it. By sharpening your POV, you have something significant to say to your target audience, making everything else—from content creation to distribution—fall into place more naturally and effectively.

A robust Point of View (POV) in your content strategy acts much like a high-precision lens in photography—it focuses your message, ensuring that it is clear, impactful, and resonates deeply with your intended audience. This focused approach not only differentiates your brand but also elevates the effectiveness of your communication. Here’s a closer examination of how a well-defined POV enhances your content and, by extension, your brand’s appeal:

1. Clarity and Conciseness

With a strong POV, your content cuts through the noise, delivering messages that are direct and to the point. This clarity ensures that your audience understands your message without unnecessary complexity or ambiguity. It’s akin to using a sharp lens to capture a photograph where the subject stands out crisply against the background, making the viewer’s focus inevitable.

2. Engagement and Persuasion

Content crafted from a distinct POV is naturally more engaging because it speaks directly to the values, needs, and interests of your audience. It’s persuasive because it presents a viewpoint that either aligns with the audience’s beliefs or challenges them to think differently. Just as a photographer adjusts the lens to capture a scene with the right depth, your content, too, adjusts its focus to engage viewers on a level that feels personal and relevant.

3. Memorability

A unique POV helps your content stick in the minds of your audience. Like a memorable photograph that stays with you long after you’ve seen it, content grounded in a strong POV leaves a lasting impression. This memorability is crucial in a digital landscape saturated with fleeting content, helping your brand to remain top of mind.

4. Distinct Voice and Brand Identity

Your POV essentially serves as the voice of your brand. It’s a reflection of your brand’s values, mission, and approach to the industry. This voice distinguishes you from competitors and builds a recognizable brand identity. Just as a photographer’s style might be recognized through the use of color, composition, or subject matter, your content’s style—shaped by your POV—becomes a signature of your brand.

Shifting the Focus Back to POV

In the digital content ecosystem, there's an understandable preoccupation with analytics—optimal posting times, content frequency, and engagement metrics. While these factors play a role in content strategy, they should not overshadow the essence of what makes content truly effective: a strong, clear, and engaging POV.

Investing time and resources into refining your POV is akin to a photographer mastering their craft with the lens—they become capable of not just capturing images, but of telling stories that captivate and move their audience. Similarly, a strong POV in your content strategy doesn’t just capture attention; it engages, persuades, and creates an enduring connection with your audience.

Therefore, rather than focusing solely on the operational aspects of content creation, pivot towards cultivating a unique and resonant POV. This shift not only enhances the quality of your content but also amplifies its impact, ensuring that your message not only reaches your audience but also inspires and motivates them.

‍

Craft b2b content that makes readers want to "chat with you over a beer"

The advice to craft content that makes readers want to "chat with you over a beer" emphasizes a highly engaging, personable, and accessible writing style, particularly valuable in the B2B (Business-to-Business) sector. In industries often laden with jargon and complex concepts, the ability to communicate in a manner that is both relatable and engaging can significantly differentiate a brand and facilitate deeper connections with its audience. Here are several strategies B2B content writers can employ to achieve these "easy wins":

1. Embrace Conversational Tone

Write as if you're having a one-on-one conversation with a friend. This doesn't mean being unprofessional but rather making your content more relatable. Use simple language, contractions, questions, and even humor where appropriate. A conversational tone helps break down the complexity of B2B subjects and makes your content more digestible.

2. Tell Stories

Stories are universally compelling. They can make even the driest material come to life. When you weave narratives around your products, services, or industry insights, you create a hook that keeps readers engaged. Sharing success stories, challenges overcome, or even everyday anecdotes related to your business can make your content more memorable and relatable.

3. Show Personality

Don't shy away from letting your brand's personality shine through in your writing. Whether it's through the use of specific phrases, a unique perspective on your industry, or sharing insights from your experiences, a distinct voice will make your content stand out. Readers are more likely to want to "chat over a beer" with someone who seems genuine and interesting.

4. Be Helpful, Not Salesy

Focus on providing value through your content. This means addressing your audience's needs, questions, and pain points with practical advice, insights, and solutions. When readers feel they are gaining useful information from your content, they'll be more inclined to view you as a trusted advisor rather than just another business trying to sell them something.

5. Encourage Interaction

Make your content interactive by inviting comments, questions, or discussions. Whether it's a call-to-action at the end of your articles, engaging with readers in the comments section, or encouraging sharing on social media, interaction can transform passive readers into active participants. This approach not only fosters a sense of community but also makes your audience feel more connected to you.

6. Use Visuals and Formatting to Enhance Readability

Break up your text with headers, bullet points, images, and infographics. Visual elements can help illustrate your points and make the content more engaging. Proper formatting also improves the readability of your content, making it more likely that readers will stay engaged from start to finish.

7. Know Your Audience

Understanding who your readers are, what they care about, and how they speak can help you tailor your writing style to match their preferences. This alignment makes your content more appealing and relatable to your intended audience.

By implementing these strategies, B2B content writers can produce content that not only informs and educates but also connects with readers on a personal level, making them feel as though continuing the conversation in a more casual setting would be both enjoyable and beneficial. This approach to content creation fosters stronger relationships between businesses and their audiences, ultimately contributing to greater engagement and loyalty.

‍

The distinction between B2B content and general-purpose entertainment content captures an essential truth about content marketing: relevance and value are paramount, particularly in the B2B sphere. The key to engaging B2B content isn’t about avoiding boredom through entertainment but about ensuring that every piece of content is packed with value that is directly relevant to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Let's delve into how to craft B2B content that is compelling without resorting to entertainment gimmicks.

Value-Driven B2B Content Strategy

1. Understand Your Audience Deeply

• Identify the specific challenges, interests, and goals of your ICP.
• Segment your audience to tailor content that addresses varying levels of expertise and roles within industries.

2. Offer Unique, Actionable Insights

• Share first-person stories and case studies that provide a roadmap for solving specific industry problems.
• Conduct original research that offers new data or insights, enhancing your credibility and providing your audience with information they can’t find elsewhere.

3. Showcase Thought Leadership

• Position your company and its spokespeople as experts in the field.
• Share forward-thinking opinions and predictions about industry trends, backed by solid reasoning and research.

Production Quality and Presentation

4. Professional Production

• Invest in high-quality video and audio production to ensure that your b2b content is clear and engaging.
• Use smart editing to pace the content well, keeping it engaging without diluting its informational value.

5. Clear and Effective Structure

• Organize content logically, using headers, bullet points, and summaries to enhance readability and retention.
• Integrate visuals such as charts, infographics, and relevant images to help explain complex information and break up text-heavy content.

Engaging Content Without Entertainment Gimmicks

6. Educational, Not Entertainment, Focus

• Prioritize education over entertainment, ensuring the content educates on best practices, innovative strategies, and industry standards.
• Use real-world applications and how-to guides that provide practical value.

7. Interactive Elements

• Incorporate interactive elements like quizzes, worksheets, or digital tools that help apply the content’s lessons.
• Use webinars and live Q&A sessions to engage directly with your audience, allowing for real-time interaction and learning.

8. Consistent and Contextual Delivery

• Deliver content consistently to help build a habit and expectation among your audience.
• Ensure each piece of content fits within a broader content strategy that aligns with your brand’s strategic goals and audience’s evolving needs.

By focusing on these elements, B2B content can transcend the trap of being labeled "boring" and instead be recognized as compelling, valuable, and essential for its target audience. It’s about respecting the intelligence and professional needs of your audience and delivering content that enhances their knowledge and skills. This approach not only sets your content apart in a saturated market but also builds trust and credibility with your audience, fostering a loyal and engaged community around your brand.

Content marketing challenges in b2b content marketing

Many company's approach to content marketing often results in isolated efforts across different platforms, each with its distinct focus and metrics, leading to a fragmented strategy:

1. Blogs -focus on SEO-driven topics with success measured by search traffic.
2. Podcasts - center around guest expertise with success gauged by downloads.
3. YouTube channels -target video-specific keywords, measuring success through viewer counts.

This siloed structure can be problematic because:

• Content lacks a unified strategic narrative.
• Different content mediums don't interconnect, leading to inconsistent messaging.
• Each content form has its success metrics, creating divergent goals within the same team.
• Success in one area doesn't necessarily translate to overall company success.

Aligning all content under a coherent strategy that serves a common purpose can address these issues, ensuring that all marketing efforts contribute effectively to the broader business objectives.

Closing the Content Gap: A New Approach to B2B Tech Marketing

The traditional approach to content marketing in B2B tech often results in siloed activities, with different teams working independently on blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels, each focused on different metrics like search traffic, downloads, and views. This fragmented strategy is based more on keywords and trends than on a unified strategic narrative, leading to content that does not interconnect across different mediums and does not necessarily align with the company's overall content marketing campaign success.

The Need for a Strategic Narrative

A strategic narrative is crucial because it aligns all forms of content with a common purpose, ensuring that every piece of content, regardless of the platform, contributes toward the same company goals. This approach helps create a cohesive brand story that resonates across all channels, enhancing the customer journey at every touchpoint.

Integrating Content Creation

Integrating content creation involves:

• Developing content based on a deep understanding of customer needs rather than just following SEO trends.
• Ensuring that content topics across different mediums relate to one another, providing a seamless experience for the audience.
• Standardizing success metrics across different mediums to align with the company’s broader goals.

Achieving True Content Success

True success in content marketing should be measured by its impact on the company's overall objectives, not just by medium-specific metrics. By focusing on a strategic narrative and integrating content efforts, B2B tech companies can ensure that their content marketing strategy supports long-term business goals, driving meaningful engagement and conversion.

For B2B tech companies, breaking down the silos in content marketing and adopting a unified approach under a strategic narrative can significantly enhance the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. By doing so, they can ensure that their content not only reaches their audience but also resonates and converts, ultimately contributing to the company's success. B2B content marketing strategies are crucial for businesses looking to thrive in today's competitive environment. The evolution of B2B marketing in the digital age is characterized by rapid technological advancements and changing customer expectations.

What are the best B2B content writing examples?

The best B2B content writing examples often include in-depth whitepapers, thought leadership articles, comprehensive case studies, and industry-specific blog posts. Companies like HubSpot, Salesforce, and LinkedIn are notable for their compelling b2b content marketing strategies that combines expertise with engaging storytelling.

Balancing Content in B2B Marketing: The Need for Both Practical and Conceptual Approaches

When creating a commercial for a project management tool, you might wonder which approach to take: a straightforward, feature-focused ad or a more memorable, conceptual one. The answer lies in doing both.

Commercial Options:
1. **Straightforward Content**:
  - Example: A high-production commercial with a paid actor demonstrating the tool's features.
  - **Benefit**: Clearly communicates what the product does and its benefits.

2. **Conceptual Content**:
  - Example: A high-production commercial creatively showing the tool's use by Ancient Egyptians for building pyramids.
  - **Benefit**: Creates a memorable, shareable experience that sticks with the audience.

Why Both Are Important:
- **Educational vs. Entertaining**: One informs while the other engages and retains attention.
- **Paid Ads vs. SEO**: Both drive traffic but in different ways, offering a balanced approach to reach diverse audiences.
- **Good Design vs. Good Copy**: Effective marketing requires a blend of visual appeal and compelling messaging.
- **In-feed Consumption vs. Website Visits**: Different content formats cater to different user behaviors and stages in the buyer journey.
- **Features vs. Benefits**: Highlighting both aspects ensures comprehensive communication of the product's value.

Strategic Implementation:
- **Prioritize but Don't Eliminate**: Depending on your resources, timeline, and goals, prioritize certain strategies while incorporating elements of others.
- **Holistic Approach**: Focus on creating a balanced content engine that drives brand recognition, demand generation, and ARR growth.

By integrating both straightforward and conceptual content, you can create a marketing strategy that is both informative and memorable, ensuring that your message resonates with and sticks in the minds of your audience. This balanced approach will help drive meaningful engagement and long-term success for your brand.

Why nuanced content is valuable and how it can ultimately lead to a stronger ROI, despite initial inefficiencies?

The Value of Nuanced Content

1. **Depth and Expertise**:
  - Nuanced content demonstrates a deep understanding of the subject matter, positioning your brand as a thought leader in the industry. It shows that you’re not just skimming the surface but are capable of providing comprehensive insights.
  - This depth of knowledge can help distinguish your brand from competitors who may rely on more superficial content.

2. **Audience Trust and Loyalty**:
  - When you provide detailed and nuanced content, your audience can see the effort and expertise behind it. This builds trust and credibility, as your audience will recognize the value and effort put into creating such content.
  - Loyal readers and followers are more likely to engage with your content, share it within their networks, and turn to your brand when they need reliable information or solutions.

3. **Long-Term Engagement**:
  - Nuanced content tends to have a longer shelf life. It remains relevant and useful over time, attracting continuous traffic and engagement.
  - Over time, this sustained engagement can lead to higher conversion rates as your audience becomes more familiar with and trusting of your brand.

Strategies for Creating Nuanced Content

1. **In-Depth Research**:
  - Invest time in thorough research to understand the complexities of your subject matter. This can involve consulting multiple sources, including academic papers, industry reports, and expert interviews.
  - Use this research to create content that goes beyond the basics, addressing the intricacies and subtleties of the topic.

2. **Storytelling and Case Studies**:
  - Use storytelling to illustrate nuanced points. Real-world examples and case studies can make complex topics more relatable and easier to understand.
  - Highlight success stories, lessons learned, and practical applications to add depth and context to your content.

3. **Interactive and Multimedia Content**:
  - Enhance nuanced content with interactive elements such as infographics, videos, and interactive charts. These can help convey complex information in an engaging and digestible format.
  - Multimedia content can also cater to different learning styles, increasing the overall impact of your message.

4. **Expert Contributions**:
  - Collaborate with industry experts to co-create content. Expert insights can add credibility and depth to your content, making it more valuable to your audience.
  - Consider featuring guest articles, interviews, and webinars with thought leaders in your field.

Measuring the Impact of Nuanced Content

1. **Engagement Metrics**:
  - Track engagement metrics such as time on page, scroll depth, and social shares to gauge how well your audience is interacting with your content.
  - High engagement rates can indicate that your nuanced content is resonating with readers and holding their attention.

2. **Audience Feedback**:
  - Collect feedback through surveys, comments, and direct interactions with your audience. This can provide valuable insights into what aspects of your content are most appreciated and where there might be room for improvement.
  - Use this feedback to refine your content strategy and continue delivering value.

3. **Long-Term ROI**:
  - Monitor the long-term performance of your nuanced content. Look at metrics such as repeat visitors, lead generation, and conversion rates over time.
  - While the initial ROI may be lower, the long-term benefits of building a loyal and engaged audience can outweigh the initial investment.

Creating nuanced content requires a significant investment of time and effort, but the rewards in terms of audience trust, loyalty, and long-term engagement are well worth it. By focusing on depth, expertise, and meaningful engagement, B2B brands can build a strong foundation for sustained success and a higher ROI in the long run.

Top Content Marketing Recommendations

Content marketing strategies need to adapt to the changing digital landscape. Here are the top recommendations to maximize your efforts:

What to Avoid:

1. Incomplete Website Pages:
   • Don't publish blog articles until your key pages are polished. Focus on creating a few search-optimized, conversion-oriented service pages. These can drive better results than numerous mediocre blog posts.
2. Content Restriction:
   • Don't limit your writing to your own site. Publish on platforms where your audience spends time, even if those sites have low Domain Authority. A significant portion of your content might be more effective elsewhere.
3. Redundant Content:
   • Avoid writing typical, repetitive articles. Instead, publish original research and strong opinions. Thought leadership requires you to take a stand and present new statistics.
4. Search Traffic Expectations:
   • Don't expect high traffic from search engines. Focus on the quality rather than the quantity of traffic. Target key phrases that attract the most qualified visitors.

What to Embrace:

1. Sales-Enablement Content:
   • Create articles that can be shared with prospects during sales. These should demonstrate your extreme expertise and address common questions from prospects.
2. Comment-Free Blogging:
   • Remove comments from your blog. The era of blog comments contributing significantly is over.
3. LinkedIn Publishing:
   • Publish directly on LinkedIn. Engage in conversations on this platform, republish articles from your site, and launch a LinkedIn newsletter.
4. Collaboration:
   • Collaborate with subject matter experts and influencers. Conduct interviews and discuss counter-narrative views to enrich your content.
5. Video Content:
   • Invest in video content—both long and short formats. Embed videos in relevant articles, share them on LinkedIn, and build a YouTube channel.
6. Email Nurture Sequences:
   • Turn your best articles into email nurture sequences. This keeps your audience engaged and helps move them through the sales funnel.
7. Hosting Events:
   • Launch small events if you have the bandwidth. People enjoy gathering and discussing industry topics, which can enhance your brand’s presence.

Key Takeaway:

Prioritize efforts that directly drive sales. Start with a well-optimized website and bottom-of-funnel content, followed by differentiated content like research and opinion pieces. Utilize upgraded formats such as influencer collaborations, videos, and events. Repurpose and update existing content before creating new material to maintain consistency and relevance.

Should you gate your content?

Gating content fundamentally shifts the strategy and potential impact of the content. When you place a form in front of an asset, you're not just trading off reach and awareness for potential conversion; you're assuming that awareness already exists. No matter how simple the form, it creates a barrier—a price of admission that only those with a pre-existing belief in the content’s value are willing to pay. This inherently means that gated content cannot be a tool for building brand awareness, because awareness itself is required for the audience to perceive the value of handing over their information.

Top-of-funnel gated content is, therefore, an oxymoron. Gating works when there’s a perception of exclusivity or value, like a "members only" option seen in media publications, but even that model depends heavily on the value of ungated content being evident first. This is a level that few brands reach. While it's true that some brands without strong awareness still generate leads through gated content, this often results from optimizing ad platforms to target audiences more likely to convert. The issue here is selection bias: you're narrowing your audience to those who are already inclined to fill out forms, but this doesn’t necessarily correlate with a higher likelihood to purchase.

In many cases, the decision to gate content becomes a short-term strategy aimed at achieving immediate KPIs, but it may lead to reaching a very different audience than intended. Gated content doesn't guarantee better leads—it merely captures those most willing to submit a form. The true goal of marketing is to reach as many potential buyers as possible and increase their likelihood of choosing your brand. Gating content works against this, potentially excluding people who could become high-value customers in the future.

The long-term cost of preventing the right audience from accessing your content might outweigh the short-term gains from gating it.

Nobody in your company wants to admit this—from the junior sales rep to the CEO:

At any given time, only 5% of your buyers are ready to make a purchase.

The other 95%?

They're:

• Scratching their heads, trying to understand their needs
• Participating in demos without full commitment
• Gathering requirements to present to their team
• Convincing the CFO to allocate budget
• Reading reviews and comparing your product with others
• Checking with peers about their experiences
• Postponing decisions until they're 100% confident in your product

In other words, they’re doing exactly what you would do if you were in their shoes.

Yet, you try to sell to them anyway because:

• They visited your website once
• They sat through your 45-minute demo
• They opened an email you sent
• They triggered all the intent signals

But here’s the problem:

• Your competitor is doing the same
• Your brand building is taking a backseat
• Content creation isn’t a priority
• You’re missing out on connecting with the 95% when they are ready to buy
• Your brand lacks recall due to a trust deficit
• You haven’t clearly communicated your positioning or the challenges you solve

In short, you’re too late to the party.

Here’s what you should be doing instead:

• Identify the recurring questions from the 95% who aren’t ready to buy
• Develop content pillars that define your brand positioning
• Create content that resonates and sticks with your audience long-term
• Show up consistently without fixating on immediate engagement
• And much more...

Bottom line: Start creating content for the 95% who aren’t ready to buy yet.