Central to a content marketing strategy is the blog and all those wonderful, insightful blog posts. You may be asking yourself, we have a lot of subject matter experts but what do our prospects really want to read? Great question, we are glad you asked.
In this week’s blog post, we are going to explore five main blog types that your prospects want to see on your B2B website.
Instructional Articles
Whether you are in biotech, accounting, manufacturing, or SaaS, many of your prospects want to read instructional articles that have clear directions. These can take on various styles, including:
- How-to instructions – Explain how to use a product or service. These are particularly great for SaaS companies or prospects looking to implement a new service or vendor relationship.
- Use cases – These can be a shortened version of a case study or include feedback from actual clients on how they implement your products or services.
- Real examples and applications – While you do want to tell prospects how a particular product or service works, your B2B website’s blog is the perfect place to SHOW them real examples and applications.
- Step by step guides – When in doubt, walk a prospect through a particular process or procedure. Take screenshots or discuss every phase in the process to really break it down.
Expert Answers
An effective content marketing strategy positions your B2B firm as a thought leader in your industry. Sharing answers from your subject matter experts are the perfect way to harness all that knowledge and insight across multiple departments in your organization. Great blog topics will cover:
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- Common issues and solutions – What are the pain points or common issues your prospects are facing? Address 3 to 5 of them in a blog post along with recommended solutions. Be sure not to tip to the sales side by providing straight-forward solutions.
- Basic and advanced questions with clear answers – Never assume that your prospect understands everything about your products or services, your industry, or even the terminology of your industry. Remember, for B2B companies, there are often multiple decision-makers spread out through different levels and departments in an organization.
- Advice on problem-solving – Your B2B web design should position you as the expert with multiple resources for prospects. As part of your blog strategy, craft posts that provide real advice on problem-solving certain issues or situations. If your blog provides great advice, it will naturally become the go-to resource for your prospects.
Strategic Guidance
What often separates B2B from B2C is the long-term nature of the relationship. Instead of a transactional relationship, it ends up being more of a partnership with the sharing of strategy and back-and-forth communication. For this very reason, it’s essential to draft and share blog posts that provide valuable strategic insights for prospects. How will they know what it’s like to do business with you unless you show them what it’s like? You don’t have to give away all of your knowledge, but start with writing up posts for your B2B website on:
- Best practices for implementation – You know your products and services inside and out. You’ve seen clients use them with great success and likely seen failed implementations. Share the best practices for using your products or services. What is the best approach to changing software? What is the best way to get all the internal users on board?
- How to get the most value – Before, during and after a closed deal, you must show the value of your products or services. Create blogs that demonstrate to your prospects how they can get the most value from a particular process, procedure, product, tool, or strategy.
- Where to save costs, time, resources – Blog posts that show prospects how to save costs, time, and resources are highly sought after. Think about it, if someone can save you time, money, or resources before you become a client – imagine what they can do once you are a client!
Hard Numbers
Let’s face it, it’s important to get down to the nitty-gritty and talk real numbers. Which numbers will resonate with your prospects? For example, we drafted a blog post that discussed B2B web design statistics. The intent with the article was to give marketing managers the data they needed to convince CEOs and CFOs that a website redesign can bring in money in the long run (or cost them money if they have an outdated website). It’s one of our most popular blog posts and helps our prospects get internal buy-in for website projects. Here are a few options for blog posts:
- Statistics – Real statistics from research, especially on what the industry as a whole is doing, can be critical. Rely on reputable data sources that are fairly recent and help your prospects by translating what the statistics mean for them.
- Real numbers and costs – Lay it all out and get technical with costs, fees, pricing, costs of outdated info, etc. Great articles are those that show the cost of not doing business with your firm. Lost dollars, time, efficiency, etc. speak to the emotions of your prospects.
- Data, data, and more data with real examples – Any data you have, whether it’s analytics, number of companies, placements, deals won, etc. that will resonate with your prospects should be included in blog posts. Don’t be afraid to share data (remember that your competitors might already be sharing data!).
Current Trends
You have your finger on the pulse of what is happening in your industry. Sharing that information with your prospects helps them to stay up-to-date and lets them know that you are an industry leader. Below are a few options for current trends blog posts that your prospects will be searching out:
- Industry overview – Provide an overview of what is happening in your industry. Discuss who is up to what, what you predict to be trending, trends that aren’t what they are hyped up to be, etc. Don’t just list facts about your industry, provide insight and takeaways for your prospects.
- Industry trends and happenings – Things are constantly changing, sometimes faster than ever. Pick one trend or 10 trends and analyze them. What is working and why? What is starting to show promise? What has died out and makes a firm look dated?
- The latest methods, research, changes impacting them – What’s In It For Me WIIFM)? Assume that your prospects are innately selfish and what to know what is impacting them and their business (because it’s true). Address the latest methods, processes, advancements in the products and services that will impact your prospects? Will a new advancement reduce costs or improve efficiency? Cover these topics in the blog and post them in a timely manner to avoid becoming yesterday’s news.
At Bop Design, we’ve seen how critical the blog is to the overall effectiveness of a B2B web design and content marketing strategy. By continually adding new, fresh content to your blog, you provide engaging resources for prospects that will establish your firm as a thought leader and reliable source of information.
