Delving into B2B marketing can always prove beneficial for your brand. However, writing a powerful B2B message which will appeal to your target audience is another matter entirely. According to Smart Insights, 36% of B2B professionals lack a concrete marketing plan and go for ad hoc marketing instead of planning their content strategy. Additionally, 84% of B2B experts use email marketing as a primary source of lead generation and outreach, with 56% allocating significant budgets to B2B marketing. In fact, 99 Firms reported that almost 50% of total B2B companies allocate 10%> to marketing, with 47% pushing personalization as their top writing strategy.
Whether you’re a small business, a startup, or an international corporation, the post-COVID-19 business landscape is bound to change in favor of stable B2B networking. There is no time like today to learn about how you can write a winning first B2B message and put your brand name out there. Let’s take a look at that, as well as the benefits of delving into B2B content marketing in the following paragraphs.
- Start by Writing a Brief
When we dilute B2B marketing down to its core elements, it’s not so different from B2C marketing in regards to writing. However, it differentiates in one major way – its target audience. Appealing to customers is different than approaching company representatives with offers of networking or collaboration. That is why the science of B2B content writing should start with the brief itself. In order to make the most out of your B2B messages, try to answer the following questions in your briefing:
- Who is your target audience?
- Do you want to appeal to local or international companies?
- Which industries do you want to target?
- How frequently and at what scale can you write B2B content?
- Which content types do you want to include in your strategy?
- What kind of budget and timeline are you working with?
Settle on your Delivery Channels
We’ve mentioned that email marketing is the predominant channel of choice for B2B messages – and for good reasons. Every company representative, CEO, or manager will likely check their email inboxes multiple times a day. What better way to reach them and appeal to their sense of networking than through email writing?
While email is indeed popular in B2B, it shouldn’t be a limiting factor for you. More and more companies use social media channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn to put their brand name out there. You can use sites such as YouTube and search engines like Google and integrate PPC ads into your B2B strategy. If you want to get creative, you can use social media live streaming or podcasts to attract B2B partners to your business.
Look for channels which can help you make a good first impression with potential B2B stakeholders. Settle for the ones which suit your affinities for writing and those that fit into your company’s marketing budget.
2- Stand by a Pressing Social Cause
Being socially responsible is a great way to create good first impressions of your brand with B2B writing. Companies in both B2B and B2C industries are expected to stand by something which relates to their mission statement and values. Some of the more popular and trending social topics you can try to address in your B2B content writing include:
- Gender equality
- Black lives matter
- Children’s rights
- Animal rights
- Environmental preservation
- Health and fitness
Opting to support one or more of these causes in your marketing materials will help your publicity tremendously. As a result, more companies will be inclined to work with you going forward. Make sure that your business portfolio and company history coincide with the cause you choose to support to avoid public scrutiny, however.
3- Reach out to Respected Influencers
Influencers can be a good way for your B2B messages to gain momentum early on. You can reach out to influencers via email, social media, or private messages on whichever platform you find them on. Influencers will always be keen on helping companies in exchange for certain benefits or monetary compensation. You can also use corporate B2B influencers in your industry, such as senior executives or retired professionals, and ask them for quotes or guest writing contributions.
Influencer marketing shows that you are willing to work with others for a common cause, which is at the core of B2B networking. This will incentivize companies to reach out to you in return and ask about your willingness to collaborate going forward. As such, influencer B2B marketing can be considered a “pull” tactic, rather than “push,” such as direct email marketing.
4- Numeric Data & Social Proof Work Wonders
If you want other businesses to be inclined to work with you, you need to prove your worth to them from the start. Social proof in the form of testimonials, reviews, quotes, and interviews can be extremely helpful as a part of your B2B writing. Likewise, statistical data which showcases your company’s performance in the past can help turn the tides in your favor. B2B messages without any social proof or empiric information can often fall on deaf ears.
Judging by Social Media Today, 84% of people trust the recommendations of familiar people, while social proof can generate a 210% increase in conversion. As such, you should reach out to your existing network and ask for reference materials, testimonials, and similar types of content. If you work with B2C stakeholders, you can also conduct interviews or send surveys in regards to their experience with your brand so far. Gather social proof constantly since you never know when you might need it, such as in the case of B2B message writing.
5-Take Time to Write a Punchy Opening
Regardless of whether you choose email marketing, social media, or PPC for your B2B message, your opening can make or break the marketing campaign. Very few people have the time and patience to read content from brands which they are unfamiliar with, especially in B2B. Thus, your opening line should be as informative and direct as possible to break the proverbial ice quickly.
You can catch your readers’ attention by asking a question or stating a fact about a known issue in your industry. Similarly, you can open with a quote from your known associate or B2B network partner about the state of the industry today. Don’t mistake B2B readers for B2C customers. Company representatives, while still human, have different emotional triggers and follow their logic more than intuition. Take all of the factors we’ve discussed previously into consideration when you approach writing your B2B message’s opening line.
6-Appeal to your Reader’s Professional Persona
Finally, it’s worth noting that in order to appeal to B2B readers, you will have to treat them as an extension of their companies. This means that a marketing executive in an international retail company is not a “Mike” or a “Lisa” – they are a marketing executive. It can be somewhat tricky to write B2B messages which are not personalized and instead treat individuals as companies themselves.
However, this is a professional and respectful approach to B2B writing, which doesn’t assume anything about the person on the other end. It might be a good idea to do a background check on B2B companies, which you aim to reach out to prior to doing so. This can give you an additional perspective on who they are, what they stand for, and which points of interest coincide with your own. Be a likeminded colleague when it comes to B2B writing, and other companies in your industry will certainly respond to your efforts in kind.
Why Writing Winning B2B Messages Matters for your Business
Before we close things off, let’s address the elephant in the room – why write B2B messages in the first place? There are a plethora of businesses out there which offer similar, if not identical, products or services such as your own. What separates you from others lies in your company culture, long-term goals, staff, and mission statement.
Companies that have a similar mentality, goals, and operations will likely work in a similar manner and be very open to B2B networking and collaboration. Thus, some of the primary and most consequential reasons to write B2B messages going into 2021 include:
- Professional brand representation and industry authority setup
- Identify potential partners and filter out unviable companies more quickly
- Scalable marketing strategy depending on current networking needs
- B2B lead nurturing and long-term cooperation possibilities through writing
- Improved marketing return on initial time and resource investment (ROI)
In Summary
Whether you already have a B2B marketing pipeline set up or are looking into jump-starting your B2B message writing now, your timing couldn’t be better. Start by identifying your current marketing pain points and focusing your message on a specific target audience within B2B.
With the increased potential and reliance on digital marketing channels such as email and social media in the wake of COVID-19, B2B marketing is essential. Once you get a handle on your writing style, you will be able to provide your corporate email lists and contacts with competitive B2B content.
Bio: Dorian Martin is a writer and business communication expert working with writing professionals on a regular basis. His career is focused on collaborating with academic writers and publishing written content on digital marketing, business development, and AI, among others. You can visit his site to get paper writing help and find out more about the plethora of writing types he likes to work on.