Have you upgraded your content marketing strategy for 2019? What strategies have you put in place to improve your content marketing campaign?
Every seasoned marketer will always search for more content marketing ideas and the most effective ways to strengthen his marketing practices to enable him to stay ahead of the competition and, maximize return on investment (ROI).
And as the world of digital marketing continues to evolve with new marketing procedures, the competition has also become more intense.
So, to keep up with the competition, you need to figure out the best formulas and apply them to your B2B content marketing approach.
To that end, we have put together 5 powerful strategies that will help you boost your content marketing strategy.
1: Use Customer Feedback to Improve Content Marketing Strategy
Are you taking advantage of customer feedback to up your B2B marketing techniques?
Customer feedback is one of the best marketing methods that help to build long-term business relationships. In this connection, relationships can only be built on good communication grounds.
In effect, if you are not collecting responses and opinions from consumers, you are leaving money on the table.
This is true because, without customer assessment which they present as feedbacks, you cannot determine what your target market is thinking about your brand, product, or services.
Hence, use feedback to create content that aligns with your target market’s journey and fuels your content marketing strategy.
Where and how can you collect customer remark or feedback?
Social media is one of the best places to start collecting remarks from consumers, with Facebook groups playing the lead role. You can also get feedback from your blog’s comment section by encouraging your readers to leave feedbacks or their opinion about the article they read. Use the data to improve customer experience.
Pro tips:
- Facebook groups – Simply join Facebook groups that are relevant to your industry and actively participate in discussions. After about a week of joining the group or groups, open a poll and ask respondents what they think about your brand. Ask any related questions that will draw out their honest opinions about your company, product, or the services you offer. Some groups might not allow that, in such cases, first contact the admin or moderator for permission.
- Use Survey tools – Survey Monkey is a remarkable digital marketing tool that can help you get to the minds of your buyers and potential customers. You can as well use Survey Any Place. These tools will enable you to find out what your buyers are thinking by simply creating a simple survey of point questions. Then send your survey to both present and future customers through emails. Respondents will tell you exactly what’s going on in their head.
- The market research team – If you have the budget, I also recommend hiring a market research team to streamline the process for you. The team will create captivating surveys that will bring in rich rewards. The information gathered will enable you to make better marketing decisions that will skyrocket your B2B content marketing activities.
Other ways to collect consumer feedback are, but not limited to:
- Facebook live chat
- Twitter chat
- Offer feedback forms on your blog or website.
- Set-up an online community.
- Give away prizes in exchange for feedbacks.
- Gauge feedbacks on competitor websites.
2: Use Case Studies and, or Customer Testimonials
As humans, we relate to fellow humans. This makes word-of-mouth an effective marketing practice. To back this up, a survey of B2B companies revealed that the purchasing decisions of 90% of buyers are influenced by word-of-mouth.
Source
The study further shows that customer testimonials are the primary marketing techniques for 62% of B2B marketers. Thus, it makes sense to include customer testimonials to your marketing campaigns to help boost your B2B content marketing tactics.
Furthermore, case studies are equally phenomenal as they work in similar ways as testimonials.
Case studies help to build brand credibility because the case study is coming from satisfied customers who have used your product or services with positive results.
*Important* Although case studies and testimonials have a striking resemblance, they are very different. Please read this article to learn the difference between a case study and testimonial.
Consequently, with the effectiveness of customer testimonials and case studies, it is best that you take advantage of these marketing tools to enhance your B2B content marketing plan.
3: Incorporate Mobile Marketing to Improve Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy
In today’s digital marketing arena, mobile marketing has become the way to go as many studies have shown.
For example, research by Salesforce points that 70% of marketers say mobile marketing is key to their business’ successes.
Another research by e-Strategy Trends revealed that mobile apps played an essential role in the success of 80% of B2B marketers’ marketing campaigns.
Yet another survey by Think With Google indicates that 90% of mobile users who conducted a search on their mobile devices made a purchase. On this account, you must apply mobile marketing technique to boost your content strategy, because almost everyone now accesses content via mobile.
Furthermore, Smart Insights article, by Dave Chaffey, revealed that mobile users spend more time on a platform than desktop users.
The statistics show that mobile marketing is a formidable content marketing strategy-a must use!
Pro tip:
- Make sure your site is mobile-optimized–meaning that users can easily access your content via mobile devices. Make your blog or website mobile-friendly and mobile responsive. Use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to calculate how friendly your site is to mobile.
- Nonetheless, apply Google Accelerated Mobile Pages to boost your content marketing activities.
4: Use Brand Storytelling to Boost Your B2B Content Marketing Campaign
Why do you sit for hours on ends watching movies or reading good storybooks?
It is because the stories and movies seize your concentration and make you feel like you’re in the story. In essence, it absorbs you entirely and makes you experience what is happening in the story-world.
Stories can relocate or transport you to a place you can only dream of and, make you imagine you are in the story. There, in the storyland, you might accept and connect with things you never would in the real world.
In other words, with stories, you are easily persuaded to accept and do things you never would in real life.
That is the might and power of storytelling. It is more about persuasion. When incorporated correctly in your marketing tactics, storytelling will definitely boost your content marketing plan.
For instance, BeardBrand is a fantastic brand that is using storytelling to market and grow their business.
Source
The company which was launched in 2012 as a simple blog by Eric Bandhoiz, is today selling beard grooming products and making 7 figures annually.
His big opportunity came when New Your Times contacted him for some details on beard products. He responded and used the opportunity to advertise BeardBrand.
Ever since that event, Eric’s BeardBrand has not looked back.
This example is an inspiration for you.
Here is what to do…
Find the pain problems of your buyers and provide the solution in different content formats on your blog and other marketing channels. Incorporate stories to make them stick.
This will help you attract a loyal target market that will grow your business.
Therefore, use stories to persuade those behind the businesses you are selling to, make them take your desired action to assist you to grow your business.
5: Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy
Even though we didn’t specifically mention or create a section for “goals” as a remarkable content marketing plan for enhancing your marketing strategy, it is obvious that smart marketers will always set marketing goals to boost their content marketing campaign.
That is exactly why you need to set key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you track your content results. Your selected marketing KPIs will help you measure the success of your content strategy to know when you have reached your target goals.
Consequently, by tracking the right KPIs, you will be able to adjust your marketing procedures to improve your content results. In this connection, when setting your marketing KPIs, make sure to include the following areas:
- Organic traffic
- Social media traffic
- Lead generation
- Cost per lead
- Conversion rate
- Customer value
- Sales revenue growth
- Inbound marketing ROI
- Email marketing performance
- Traffic-to-lead ratio
- Lead-to-customer ratio
- Mobile traffic and conversion rate
- Landing page conversion rate
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Etc.
Being able to track these KPIs will surely boost your content marketing strategy.
A significant part of monitoring the performance of your content strategy is that it will let you know whether your content marketing efforts are paying off or not.
Due to this, choose the best content marketing KPIs that align with your content strategy and measure them regularly.
Wrapping Up
Obviously, there are many more ways to boost your content marketing strategy, such as to establish a content plan for your business. But it obvious that as a smart marketer you already have a content plan for your business. Thus, these 5 steps are indispensable.
These are powerful content marketing tools that will aid you to realize your business objectives. Therefore, apply these tips in your marketing techniques to take your B2B content marketing strategy to the next height. Your content marketing strategy must be well prepared to enable you to boost your ROI.
From having a profound understanding of your target audience to set the best marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor, you must consider every step of your reader’s journey–from the first interaction to the ultimate goal of conversion.
Regardless, while your marketing techniques might not work as planned, a vital element of your content marketing success is trial and error.
In light of this, test your content marketing strategy and take appropriate steps to fix what is not working and improve on those that are working. This will aid you to increase the ROI of your content marketing efforts.
Moss Clement
@mosclement
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Hey Moss!
Fantastic list you have here. I scheming through all of the resources online for some points on how to get better in Content Marketing this year, and I love the ideas you have written in here. What sold me out is how you've been able to support all your tips through data and provided a good way to visualize most of it.
By the way, are you also a follower of Brian Dean? I bet you're gonna like his post related to content marketing, specifically content optimization. I am not sure though if he has released his latest blog or video about 2019 content marketing trends.
Hi Moss,
Thanks for this post, some great insights and recommendations. The Facebook group one especially is a nice little tactic!
One thing that could also help, depending on your company size is getting your employees to share your content, webinars, podcatss, as its essentially a free way to get your content in front of more eyeballs. If you’ve got a sales team I imagine they might have a large network on LinkedIn for example!
Another that can help both find content to write about and drive traffic is answering questions on Quora. It’s now huge and can drive good qualified traffic, plus you can show you and your companies expertise if you answer well.
Thanks again for the good read
Andy
Moss great to see you here. Brand story telling creates a lasting impression. Tell those stories, guys.
Hi Ryan,
My pleasure meeting you here as well. As you noted, brand storytelling is a remarkable step to improving your business’ content marketing strategy because it create a lasting impression that helps your buyer persona to relate with your brand build trust, which is necessary to grow your business.
Thanks a lot for stopping by and contributing to the conversation.