Content Marketing

5 Essentials for Content Marketing Strategy Creation Using SWOT Analysis to Kickstart Your B2B SME

5 Essentials for Content Marketing Strategy Creation Using SWOT Analysis to Kickstart Your B2B SME

Marketing /

Creating a content marketing strategy is a crucial step for any B2B company. SMEs (small and medium enterprises) have a lot to gain from a successful content plan. Using this as a way to connect with your target audience helps kickstart a strong relationship with customers.

Small businesses benefit from repeat clients, and investing in a content marketing strategy can help improve your overall sales. Keep reading, or use the links below to “jump ahead” to learn more about the essentials of content marketing:

Creating a Consistent Content Marketing Strategy

Why B2B companies need content marketing

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A content marketing strategy is part of your overall marketing plan that focuses on attracting, engaging, and retaining customers through shared media. Depending on the type of product and solutions your company offers, this outreach may occur through social media, articles, and podcasts.

Social media marketing has skyrocketed in recent years, causing trending ideas to emerge. However, maintaining a consistent tone and voice across your digital marketing channels should remain a top priority. While hopping on trends can temporarily boost engagement, your company’s values should always be at the core of each post.

Your team should create and share content based on the interests of your target audience. Thanks to the convenience of online buying and virtual sales interactions, buyers today have increased control over their overall customer experience (CX). Your SME must take charge of branding by adhering to consistent messaging and tone.

To get started, you should begin by defining your target audience. Begin by evaluating your product, creating an ideal client profile, and using data to segment marketing lists.

Rather than just looking at demographics like gender and age, dive deeper by assessing lifestyles and other factors. This information will help your team understand what influences customers to complete a purchase. Using this data, your marketing department can focus on attracting and engaging similar prospects to fill the sales pipeline.

With the right target audience, your team can start creating and sharing content. Develop an active presence on the online platforms your target prospects already use to search for content. Meet your target audience where they are most likely to be!

Determine whether your company gets more engagement from social media, website traffic, or email marketing. From there, ensure your marketing has a consistent schedule when posting to the platforms with the highest traffic. 

Establishing a brand, voice, and tone for your company is crucial for cultivating brand loyalty. Consumers can easily follow and engage with multiple companies simultaneously, especially on social media. Consistent messaging and tone let customers know what to expect from your company. 

This approach helps establish your brand as a leader in the industry, and prospects can use your content as a knowledgeable resource. Rather than constantly posting ‘fluff’ content, your team can share relevant industry information and help guide customers to the solution offered by your product.

How to Connect and Create a Lasting Relationship With Customers

Long-standing customer relationships are the key to success for B2B companies. Developing a strong, easily identifiable brand voice helps build awareness while encouraging engagement with your content. Measuring audience interaction rates allows your team to tailor future content to the interests of your target prospects.

Your marketing content should help funnel customers toward the sales pipeline. By understanding your ideal client profile and your quality customer journey, you can target audience segments where they are in their sales experiences.

Audience segmentation based on interests helps your customers enjoy a more personalized experience. Providing value to prospects, regardless of where they are in the sales funnel, can earn your company a reputation as a key player in your industry.

Consistency in your brand helps content work across the different stages experienced by each prospect. For someone just beginning the research process, engagement through social media or your company’s website can provide valuable insight into the solutions you have to offer.

Prospects more advanced in the customer journey may benefit from email marketing campaigns that direct to downloadable content. Both of these, however, should work to explain the benefits of your product.

Brand awareness is an additional piece that must be part of developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy. Educational resources that help establish your company as a knowledgeable player within the industry and introduction pieces targeted to new prospects are vital for success.

Building this awareness helps customers understand your company and see examples of how the solutions you provide can be beneficial to them. The keys to achieving this include having an optimized website, tracking engagement on links, and creating thoughtful content that encourages conversations with your team.

Customers who recognize your brand as a leader in the industry will likely make repeat purchases and view your company as an expert source for business knowledge and guidance.

What is a SWOT analysis?

A SWOT strategy that focuses on your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). The goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that should contribute to your overall business strategy. It helps companies see the big-picture of their mission and correctly identify new pathways for success.

Breaking down the components of SWOT analysis can help your team utilize this strategy in company planning.

Strengths. These are the services or products your company excels in providing and what makes your business stand out among its competitors. For example, if your company is in a niche industry, having an extensive network of industry contacts sets you apart from other businesses.

Weaknesses. These are factors that need improvement to ensure your business is performing to the best of its ability.

Opportunities. These are external factors that help boost your company within the industry. If something gives your team a competitive advantage, it can create opportunities for advancement in the marketplace.

Threats. Anything that may cause harm to your company is considered a threat. Your team’s ability to recognize factors outside your company’s control such as an increase in the cost of materials or the introduction of new competitors, can minimize the harm to your business.

Using SWOT Analysis to Improve Your Business

Successful use of a SWOT strategy, which creates a matrix analysis with the proper framework, relies on team collaboration. By freely sharing feedback and ideas, as well as using data to back up observations, this information will help your team see the most benefits.

This strategy can help the marketing department identify gaps in its yearly plan. With this data, your team will be able to pivot and change objectives to ensure the highest level of success. By using data analytics, the marketing team can set realistic KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and track the performance of their content marketing campaigns.

Getting started with a SWOT analysis requires asking questions to understand each aspect of the strategy. Going further into this plan, a TOWS analysis, or matrix, helps map strategic choices.

TOWS analysis matrix

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This strategy combines the factors of a SWOT analysis to help form plans for the future. Integrating the 4 elements of SWOT can help audit your organization, as well as move forward with successful marketing campaigns.

Utilizing Data Analytics to Measure Success

When creating your yearly content marketing strategy, it’s important to set up KPIs that will help determine the success of your outreach. Rather than basing these indicators on hypothetical goals, your team can use data analytics to measure a campaign’s success.

Content marketing should be focused on attracting new prospects, engaging with warm leads, and funneling customers into the sales pipeline. By actively tracking these objectives, your team can gain an accurate understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. Data analytics also play a role in brainstorming and initiating change within the marketing plan.

By tracking engagement like link interactions and form submittals, your team can see what content resonates with potential clients. These benchmarks help your team create a winning strategy to stay competitive within the B2B market.

Since customers can choose which brands they want to interact with most, having updated data on audience interactions allows your team to compare itself to competitors. Tracking success is important to remain a key player within your industry.

Engagement with content and sales conversions are both factors that help your team understand what type of marketing works for your target audience. A quality customer journey begins with marketing outreach, and this communication should continue until a sale is finalized.

Kickstarting your B2B SME may seem like a challenge, but taking it one step at a time and implementing a content marketing strategy can help you get ahead of the competition. Measuring how your team successfully connects with your target audience will play a huge role in increasing your company’s overall ROI.

Learn how LeadBoxer’s cutting-edge Lead Generation platform can facilitate the growth of your SME through online Lead Identification, Qualification, Lead Management, and the native integrations compatible with your existing tech stack that you need to build a solid content marketing strategy.

Get started with your free Leadboxer account or schedule a demo today!

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How to Create a Content Distribution Strategy to Boost Lead Generation

How Do You Develop an Effective Content Distribution Strategy

Lead Generation, Marketing /
Your company, like every business, wants to draw in website traffic and generate sales. With everyone online, your first step is to create a website. You could try and wow potential customers with a fancy website and hope that word gets around about it. However, a snazzy, optimized website is not a recipe for effective digital marketing and lead generation. You’ll have to do more. You need a comprehensive content distribution strategy. A content-focused marketing strategy is essential for many reasons. The most important reason to invest in content distribution is that content fosters relationships between your customers and your brand. When it comes to people buying your products or services, relationships mean everything. People who have a relationship with a brand are more likely to do business with that company. Content distribution and content promotion are key to building vital customer relationships. Lead generation content begins with a solid content distribution strategy. Keep reading, or use the links below to learn how to create a content strategy in your company:

Content Distribution

To produce piece of content your customers will love, you must know what content distribution is and how to do it well. Content distribution is when you share, create, and promote content across various media channels to an online audience. Content comes in many forms that include:
    • Ebooks
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Infographics
    • Case studies
    • Webinars
    • Blogs and articles
    • Social media posts
Types of content

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There are three types of content you can share with your online customers. These are: owned, earned, and paid. For effective content promotion, you need to distribute your content in a way that uses all three types.

Owned

Owned content is the content you already produced. With this type of content, you can control how and when it is published and distributed. Examples of owned content include website content, blogs, social media pages, and e-newsletters.

Earned

With earned content, third parties share or promote your content. These third parties include bloggers, customers, influencers, and journalists. This sharing and promoting of content is free to your business. Earned content are product reviews, social shares and mentions, guests posts, forums, and public relations shared by third parties. Though the sharing of the content is free, the third party owns it, not your business.

Paid

With paid content, you pay to have your content distributed. The most common paid content distribution forms include pay-per-click ads, sponsored content, paid influencer content, and paid social ads. Each type of paid content has varying price points, format, and audience.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

With pay-per-click (PPC) ads, you pay a third party when people click or have an impression on your ad.  These ads are commonly seen on search engine results pages (SERPs). They can also appear on social media platforms where they have “ad” identifiers next to the page listing. PPC is a search engine marketing tactic that, when paired with your SEO strategy, can produce quality leads. Google Ads is a popular pay-per-click ad platform used by businesses.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is paid for by an advertiser that is shared by a publisher, person, influencer, or brand. The most effective sponsored content includes a company or person that targets your ideal audience. Sponsored content can include videos, images, podcasts, and social media.

Paid Influencer Content

With paid influencer content, you pay a top content creator to write, refine, and promote the content for you. This influencer should be a well-known person in your industry. Influencer content benefits your business by boosting your brand awareness, conversions, and website traffic. Paid influencer marketing uses word-of-mouth and social proof. Both of these are crucial in establishing brand trust with customers. This type of content has been so successful that companies spend around $15 billion on influencer marketing.

Paid Social Ads

Paid social ads include influencer content, PPC, and sponsored content. These paid ads share your content on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Your content targets a specific audience most likely to interact with it. To maximize your content’s impact on social media, you need a strategy.  A strong paid social strategy will include native social media tools to create, schedule, and share the ads. To have an effective content marketing strategy, you need to incorporate owned, earned, and paid content. SEO, PPC, and paid promotion are ways to blend the three content types. The most powerful content is the middle ground where the three types overlap.
Content Distribution Trifecta

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The Power of Content Marketing

Content production and distribution takes time, effort, and resources. It also tends to be overlooked. While content marketing may have taken a back seat in your strategy, there are many reasons to prioritize it. You can undergo a thorough search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to make your website and your brand more visible. What you’ll find is that you can’t optimize your website without quality existing content. Additionally, posting content because you have it will not do you any good. High-quality content production and distribution are important in your lead generation strategy. Content marketing is important because it centers around relationship-building. It is a chance for you to both share information and bond with your online customers. Chances are that, your customers are already being bombarded with different content pieces. With all the websites out there, they will only do business with those whose content is valuable. This is because people want quick, relevant answers to their problems and questions. Hence it becomes essential to refine your content distribution strategy. If you’re still skeptical of content marketing, here are some key statistics to consider:
    • 91% of business-to-business marketers use content marketing
    • 80% of customers learn about a company through custom content
    • Content marketing costs 60% less than traditional marketing and generates 3 times as many leads
    • 87% of business-to-business marketers use social media to distribute content and encourage sharing
    • 78% of customers feel there is a relationship with a brand through custom content
    • Content creates brand awareness, cultivates loyal customers, and incentivizes readers to convert
Now you know the importance of content marketing, we’ll show you how to build an effective content distribution strategy in 6 steps.
Current state of content marketing

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6 Steps To Develop an Effective Content Distribution Strategy

Not all content distribution strategies are created equal. Throwing out poorly conceived digital marketing content everywhere you possibly can is not a good strategy. You can develop a successful content distribution strategy once know your audience and understand what they find interesting. Promoting your new content can be overwhelming and time-consuming. If you want your create an effective content promotion plan, here are some steps to get you started:

1. Clearly Identify Your Target Audience

As great as you think your content is, not everyone will be interested in reading it. Those who could care less about your great content will go to another website for content they deem to be more relevant. When people bounce from your website, your search rankings and reputation can take a hit. For successful lead-generating content, you need your content to be read by people interested in it. This requires you to research and identify precisely who your target audience is. People who see value in your content are more likely to continue consuming the information you make available. Ultimately, these are the leads that are most likely to convert into successful sales. This is your target audience. To create content your target audience will value, in addition to properly identifying who your ideal audience is, you must understand  their typical consumer journey. Look at their demographics, pain points, objections to buying, and what they are interested in reading. Research your customers’, website visitors’, email subscribers’, and social media followers’ income, age, gender, education, location, and other relevant demographics. You can find this information using Google Analytics and social media analytics tools. Try to narrow down the reach of your content, but don’t over-filter your audience so that it is too narrow. After looking at the demographics, collect customer feedback. Ask readers how they feel about the content and how it’s distributed. Ask them what their pain points are and whether the content you provide adequately addresses these issues. Use the feedback and demographics to create buyer personas. These buyer personas represent the preferences, motivations, and pain points of your ideal customers. Write different versions of content geared toward each of your personas.

2. Choose Your Content Types

There are different types of content. Each type of content caters to a different audience.  To develop a good content distribution strategy you need to understand that every channel requires a specific content type. The kind of content you choose to create will largely depend on where it is distributed. For instance, content developed for a blog is very different in style and length compared to what would be appropriate to share in a social media post. A company blog is a highly recommended place to start creating online content. Blog posts are easy to share and repurpose.  Additionally, nearly half your customers will read your blog before making a purchasing decision. Depending on your objective, tailor your blog content to match the type of action you want the reader to take. If you want to generate leads, for example, offer lead generation and traffic generation content. In contrast, social media content is much more casual and concise. With social media, it is important to research your audience using each platform’s analytics tools. This knowledge will assist you in delivering multiple pieces of content that will not only catch the readers’ attention, it will help you to make personal connections with them. Similarly, when you send emails, you have to carefully think about what to say and how to say it. Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of lead generation around, making it a form of content marketing you should engage in on a regular basis. Content can also be shared via videos and images. Infographics work well when promoted via social media. Video content needs to be engaging, interesting, clear, and brief.

3. Choose Your Distribution Channels

Your website is your first-stop distribution channel. On your site, you have greater freedom as to what you say and how you say it. Your website includes information on your pages and your blog posts. You must conduct audience research and choose your distribution channels before you write your content. These two pieces of data will inform the type of content you write and where and to whom it is distributed. Popular content distribution channels include blogs, social media, email, directories, guest posting sites, and forums. Sometimes traditional public relations may be an option. The content distribution channel you choose must be aligned with your target audience’s interests, demographics, and behaviors. It’s important to know your audience and where they regularly visit online. Young people, for instance, spend a lot of time on various social media sites. Even among social media sites, there are different audiences. Look to see where your target audience tends to go to gather information. Do they read industry blogs, watch YouTube videos, or scroll through Facebook? Knowing which distribution channels your audience frequents most is vital to planning a successful content marketing strategy. Your blog should be your first distribution channel as it is one of your company’s owned properties. Two others that you need to optimize are your social media pages and e-newsletter. With these three channels, you control the content and its distribution.  Also having a content calendar helps you ensure that content distribution is going according to your plan. Social media is a popular distribution channel. In fact, 87% of marketers use social media to share content. Of those, most use an average of five social media platforms. Content distribution via social media is a good option for many reasons:
    • Ease of distribution
    • The content is short and largely image-dominant
    • Ease of audience targeting
    • Provides a great opportunity to have casual, personal interactions with customers
    • A majority of your customers likely use at least one social media channel
    • Content is instantaneously shared with customers
    • It is free to share your content
People are more likely to do business with your company when they trust you. Finding the best combination of distribution channels to share your content will boost your brand authority. When customers see and consume your knowledgeable content, they are more likely to accept you as an authority in your field and will look to your organization as the best solution to their challenges. Guest posting on reputable, industry-specific websites and forums like Reddit or Quora are excellent ways to distribute content to new customers. Be sure that the information you provide is high-quality and free from self-promotion and spammy links. This content should not be focused on your company, products, or services, but should be geared toward educating readers.
Best times to post on social media - Facebook
Best times to post on social media - Facebook

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4. Develop a Content Distribution Plan

An effective content distribution strategy involves having a plan for how, where, and when to disperse information. Both the creation of lead-generating content and its distribution need careful thought. Once you settle on a writing and distribution process, you need to be consistent. Writing content and publishing it everywhere on the Internet will lead to unsuccessful content promotion. If search engines don’t rank your content highly and the appropriate marketing strategies aren’t applied, your target audience will never find your content. A good foundation for your content distribution strategy is having S.M.A.R.T goals. These goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Having such goals helps you see where your current strategy is at and what future success looks like. With your content distribution strategy goals in mind, develop a detailed content calendar. There are many tools out there for you to use such as Google Sheets, Excel, Asana, Trello, and Google Calendar. To start a consistent content distribution plan, assign certain people to develop and create different kinds of content. Then, establish an editorial calendar for publishing the content on a consistent basis. An editorial calendar focuses and aligns your team to work toward common goals. If you contract out your writing, a calendar can inform your editors and writers about what’s coming up. Some questions to ask as you start developing your editorial calendar include:
  • What audiences use which channels?
  • What opportunities exist on each channel that you can’t achieve on others?
  • What subjects are most likely to resonate with your target audience?
  • How often and when does each audience post on each channel?
  • What content types or formats should you use on each channel?
  • When should you post on each channel to get the most engagement?
  • What conversations work best on each channel?
  • Who will be in charge of managing each channel and posting on them on behalf of the company?
  • Where do you want to drive traffic to on each channel?
  • What metrics will you use to assess the success of your content distribution strategy?
No two content distribution strategies are the same. The best one for your company will be unique as there is no silver-bullet solution. How you produce and publish content will depend on how many resources you have, team size, industry, and brand. The concept of creating a comprehensive content promotion strategy can seem overwhelming at first.  Useful content distribution tools include Anchor, AnswerthePublic, Canva, and Vidyard.
Content Backlog in Asana
Content Backlog in Asana

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5. Develop Effective Lead Magnets

You’ve created lead-generating content, but if it doesn’t have a call to action (CTA), it won’t be effective. CTAs tell the reader what to do next after reading your content. With CTAs in your content promotion, be sure to somehow capture the reader’s contact information, especially phone number or email. To bring more readers to conversion from your content, you need to consistently get new leads to cultivate. Lead magnets are the best ways to capture the names and contact information of prospective leads. Through lead magnets you share the content for free with your audience for the exchange of their contact information. Lead magnet content needs to be interesting, valuable, and applicable to the reader. If you don’t know where to start, here are three lead magnet strategies to try:

White Papers

White paper content highlights industry news like trends, the current state of the industry, and what the future holds. Industry overview white papers are the most common. The other type of white paper is a product breakdown. Product breakdowns highlight company products. These white papers may go into detail about what a product does, who benefits, and the problems these items help solve. White papers let prospective leads know that your brand understands their pain points and questions. These types of content also show leads that your product solves their problems.

Webinars

Webinars are another effective lead magnet. You can use live and recorded webinars to get a lead’s contact information. With webinars, you can ask someone to leave their phone number or email address to access the webinar. Webinars can be one-off or regular events. Webinars are great ways to show your product or service. When you conduct live webinars, you allow the audience to interact with you.

Risk-Free Trial

Offering a limited-time risk-free trial has been a long-time favorite lead magnet for B2B and SaaS companies. With this type of lead magnet, customers enter their contact and payment information to access a product or service. Besides free access, some free trials give customers temporary access to an upgraded or premium version of products or services. For most sign-ups, the terms and conditions of the risk-free trial must be clearly stated. You should be up-front about subscription cancellation and when a customer will be charged after the trial period ends. Besides transparency, your risk-free sign-up form must be simple and quick to complete. Once you’ve created your lead magnet, publish it on your website, in blog posts, and on your social media channels. Lead magnets are also effective when used as part of your email marketing strategy.

6. Publish and Promote Content

Now that you’ve created your content, it’s time to publish it. Use your editorial calendar to push it out to your ideal audience at the best time and on appropriate channels. Regardless of what channel you use, follow the rules to optimize your content promotion on each channel. Using a combination of platforms for your content distribution is a great way to maximize its effectiveness. For example, you can publish an industry white paper and push it out via email, social media, and paid ads. Use these channels to get your content before readers or have them sign up to see it. Content creation is and will be key in generating leads. For effective lead-generating content that drives sales, you need carefully-crafted content. A strong content distribution strategy looks at the best content type and what channels you should use. Thorough familiarity with your target audience is the foundation of any successful content promotion strategy. Contact LeadBoxer today to learn how we can partner with you to generate more leads and drive more sales.

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B2B Marketing Funnels

B2B Marketing Funnels

Marketing /

Regardless of your industry, you need customers to buy your product or service. However, satisfied customers who make repeat purchases, upgrade and become brand ambassadors for your company are even better. A positive customer experience generates loyal customers. You can accomplish this with B2B marketing funnels.

To read this article in its entirety, continue, or you can “jump ahead” to the following topics:

The Importance of Positive Customer Experience

Think about it. Would you do business with a company you don’t have a relationship with? Probably not. This is why a positive customer experience through the B2B customer journey is so important. 

When customers have a pleasant interaction with your business, they are apt to spend more and recommend your company to others. Conversely, B2B customers who have a bad experience will ditch your company for another and broadcast their disappointment in word of mouth and online reviews. In fact, customer experience will be the main differentiator between brands. 

Customer experience is catching the attention of marketers. One study found that almost half of the companies responding seek to invest more in ensuring a positive customer experience.  

Customers value customer experiences

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In a competitive B2B market where customers can access everything at their virtual fingertips, a positive customer experience is everything. The most successful companies deliver superior customer experience throughout the B2B marketing funnel stages.  

A positive customer interaction begins with successful navigation through your B2B marketing funnel. This powerful relationship-builder starts with the first interaction with your brand and extends beyond conversion or purchase. Your B2B marketing funnel is designed to not only result in initial sales, but to create a loyal, repeat customer base.

A positive customer experience begins with a map of your customer’s journey through all the touchpoints with your business. This map will help you identify trouble areas and barriers that keep people from making a purchase.

Mapping the B2B Customer Journey

To deliver a positive customer experience, you need to get into the customer’s shoes. This involves being familiar with all the touchpoints a prospect will encounter in becoming a paying customer. 

LeadBoxer Marketing Funnel
LeadBoxer Marketing Funnel

The customer journey begins with making them aware of your brand and ends when their relationship with your company ceases. Touchpoints commonly include advertising, PR, marketing, content production, sales support and interactions with sales representatives.

A B2B customer journey map moves a company to be more customer-centric. Your company will be more mindful of your customer’s experience with your brand throughout the purchasing process. This tool helps you improve your funnel to ensure a pleasant customer service interaction so people will return. 

Each company will have a different customer journey. For B2B customers, this journey is complex and time-consuming because of the following: 

  • It takes more time to get buy-in from senior management
  • It requires getting cooperation from various staff involved in the different stages of the customer journey 
  • There is the unknown availability of resources needed for a company to implement a new product or service 
  • Possible uncertainty about how to get started using your product or service, especially for multi-site locations 
  • Technical or service requirements a product or service needs to pass before being implemented

The added complexities of B2B customer journey mapping can either make maps overly complex or simplified. As a result, there is the risk of being process-driven instead of experience-driven. This can make your brand seem out of touch with customers. 

The B2B Marketing Funnel

Marketing funnels are the processes of taking website prospects and converting them into customers and advocates for your brand. Each stage of the B2B marketing funnel has relevant content that boosts your company’s trustworthiness. The more authority your company has, the stronger your relationship with customers, resulting in a better customer experience.

In B2B marketing funnels, prospects are broken into customer journey stages where they are delivered tailored messaging. Each of your customers will travel through these stages on the way to becoming loyal, repeat customers. Your prospects must be moving onto the next stage through the funnel.

B2B Marketing Funnel Stages

As previously mentioned, the B2B marketing funnel is divided into stages. These stages are top of funnel (ToF), middle of funnel (MoF) and bottom of the funnel (BoF). The top of funnel stage will have the largest audience while the bottom of the funnel will have the smallest.

Top of Funnel

At the top of the B2B marketing funnel, you have prospects who aren’t aware of your brand, product or service. This stage is all about spreading awareness of your product or service and how it can solve a prospect’s problem. This is usually done by educating prospects and answering their high-level questions in blogs, articles and videos.

At the top of the funnel, you want to attract prospects to your website in order to spread awareness. As people don’t know much about your brand, product or service, this is not the stage in which to try a hard sell. Once your prospects show interest or desire, they are ready to move forward toward the middle of the funnel.

b2b marketing funnel stages

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Middle of Funnel

While the bottom of the funnel focuses on awareness, the middle of the funnel is about sharing product details. Prospects that make it to this stage are interested in learning more about what exactly you have to offer. The extra sharing of information about your offerings helps you gauge your user’s experience.

Some of the content you might use at this B2B marketing funnel stage include:

  • eBooks
  • Whitepapers
  • Case studies
  • Webinars
  • Tutorials
  • Landing pages
  • Surveys
  • Email sequences

Customers who respond well to the middle of the funnel stage, then move on to the bottom of the funnel stage. This is where you push for the final sale. 

Bottom of the Funnel 

At the bottom of the funnel, your goal is to sell your product or service. A secondary goal at this stage is to build customer loyalty. Purchases are good, but generating loyal, repeat customers is even better. 

At this stage, customers are familiar with your brand and offerings. They also have had many relationship-building interactions with your company. Your chief aim is to build customer loyalty by informing them of the value of your product or service. 

Email marketing, especially onboarding email sequencing is effective at this final stage of the funnel. In these emails, teach customers to fully utilize your product or service and let them know all the ways your offering can benefit them. 

Bottom of the funnel content types

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You can also send surveys to new customers asking about their experience and inviting them to join a loyalty program. You not only want customers to make a purchase, you also want to persuade them to become brand ambassadors for your company. 

The Role of SEO Content in the B2B Customer Journey

Strong content is a game-changer in digital marketing. The more informative, relevant and personal your brand’s content, the better your lead generation and sales will be. This is because well-written content delivered to the right people builds your brand’s authority and trustworthiness.

People who see that a company is knowledgeable and transparent will be more willing to do business with that company. As in generic digital marketing, great content is crucial in your customer journey mapping and funnel effectiveness. In fact, 87% of marketers create content for each stage of the customer journey.

The B2B marketing funnel and all the B2B customer journey steps can’t build customer/business relationships without content. Each touchpoint along the customer journey needs to have well-written, strategic content. What you communicate with the customer should meet them where they are and encourage them to move forward.  

Customer Journey Mapping and SEO

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With content marketing for B2B marketing funnel stages, produce quality content that answers your audience’s questions. Cover topics of interests in your niche or industry to make your company the authoritative source of information. 

Content marketing also includes search engine optimization (SEO). This type of B2B marketing funnel content will utilize researched keywords and link building techniques. 

In today’s digital age, you can’t create effective content without using keywords. Content without keywords will not be picked up by search engines. When this happens, your great content will never be seen by your ideal audience. 

After you identify your keywords, use them throughout all your digital assets. This includes website content, product descriptions, blogs, whitepapers and video transcripts. 

Another tactic used in SEO content is link building. This involves strategically inserting links throughout your content. These links can be either internal, linking to a page on your website, or external, linking to outside sites. 

It is best to use a combination of internal and external links. The external links need to go to reputable sites to further your brand’s credibility. When link building, don’t use too many links, as your content will be penalized.

All the B2B marketing funnel stages and each touchpoint along the B2B customer journey need SEO content. This type of content will target a specific audience, catching their attention and compelling them toward the next stage. Your content will inform prospects and turn them into loyal, repeat customers. 

To generate B2B leads and sales, you build relationships with your prospects and customers. Excellent customer service and experiences with your company are the foundations for this relationship building. 

Great customer experience comes through meeting your customers where they are in the buying process. It also comes through understanding the journey your customers go through from brand awareness to making purchases. 

LeadBoxer’s unique lead generation platform with its full complement of integrations, make it easy for you to target and communicate with your ideal customer base consistently and effectively, ensuring a great customer experience. 

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Top B2B Lead Magnet Examples

Top B2B Lead Magnet Examples

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales /

Attracting qualified leads to the sales pipeline is crucial for B2B businesses. Identifying prospects and cultivating relationships will increase sales conversions and create loyal customers.

With email marketing filling up a prospect’s inbox from your company and competitors, it is important to offer valuable content that will help your product stand out. Finding ways to establish yourself as an expert in the industry and producing informative marketing materials can help create lasting customer relationships.

When trying to find potential clients and obtain their contact information, utilizing a lead magnet can kickstart the conversation. Use the links, or keep reading, to learn about lead magnet examples and how your company can benefit from their usage:

What is a Lead Magnet?

Number of lead magnets on websites

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Simply defined, a lead magnet is an incentive that companies can provide to prospects in exchange for contact information. More than that, though, this type of offer can start building trust with potential clients from their first interaction with a business.

Types of lead magnets can vary across industries, but all of them should provide value to the recipient. For example, retailers may offer first-time website visitors a small discount code if they join their mailing list. 

For B2B companies, lead magnets can be more than just a way to grow their email marketing outreach. Connecting with prospects and exchanging contact information is vital for building out a B2B sales pipeline. 

By utilizing a lead magnet, prospective clients can begin to see the value your product offers. With this in mind, planning and executing lead magnets may be different for each potential customer. 

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this marketing strategy, and businesses that provide innovative and informative lead magnets can boost themselves ahead of competitors. The content within the lead magnet is crucial to forming the foundations of a strong business relationship.

Lead magnets are not seen as optional for businesses that want to remain competitive within their industries. These tools can help plot the trajectory of a prospect’s customer journey by providing a valuable glimpse into a business’s product. 

For technical industries, a lead magnet tends to lean into a demonstration of a product’s solution. This can be done in many ways, like White Papers or Webinars, but the content should provide valuable market insight. 

The Importance of Customizing Lead Magnets

Just like any other marketing tool, customization of outreach is important for lead magnets to be used to their fullest potential. Whether your business has a large array of products or only a few solutions to offer, customers will be coming to you with unique problems that are specific to their organization.

Initial content provided by your business, especially as a way to gain contact information and create first touchpoints, should begin the process of selling your solution. The magnet isn’t a sales pitch itself, though. Rather, it’s a marketing tool to generate interest and educate prospect’s on your product’s capability.

The goal of your marketing efforts is to be seen as an expert in the field. This means prospects and current customers will look to your content for industry insight. Using a lead magnet should entice prospects to provide contact information because they want to engage with the content of value.

Knowing your audience and understanding their needs will help create trust between customers and the business, as well as cultivate interest in your products. Alongside providing solutions, loyal customers will appreciate customized content that caters to their interests.

Before choosing the types of content you want to produce, it is important to identify your target audience and take the time to understand their needs. Research prospective clients, find pain points that your product can help alleviate, and pay attention to market trends. 

Identifying and targeting the correct audience will make sure your content is providing information to those who are most likely to become loyal customers. By investing in research to understand your prospect’s interests, your company should see a higher ROI for lead magnets and other marketing materials.

Along with customization for specific customer bases, making sure your content is up-to-date and relevant to current events can help create engagement. Utilize statistics to show ongoing trends in your industry. For example, as the economy continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, providing customers with content that addresses this topic will help your business be seen as an informed source.

Lead Magnet Examples

Lead Magnet with Highest Conversion Rate

Source

Email marketing, lead generation, and content engagement are all important tools for becoming a successful B2B company. These are no longer optional if you want to be a competitor in the market. On top of utilizing digital marketing to reach prospects, any content provided to potential clients should begin to build a relationship.

Creating sales pipelines and adding qualified leads to the funnel can be a tough task. Some prospects may be weary of providing contact information, and others may have no idea who your company is. 

By creating and providing quality lead magnets, your business should be able to showcase its value to these potential clients to build trust and begin the sales journey.

Not all lead magnets are the same. Some will serve different purposes depending on the type of customer you are working to attract. All of these tools should be enticing enough to earn contact information. 

Digital marketing continues to evolve as new social media platforms pop up and customers continue to be inundated with content. However, lots of clients are still beginning their search for solutions by turning to Google. 

Attracting potential clients through organic web traffic is a great way to score contact information from potential leads. This is where lead magnets can become a huge game changer. This content should be accessible on your website, in exchange for contact data, and it should be interesting enough to catch a prospect’s attention.

Below are lead magnet examples that can help your business take its lead generation to the next level.

White Paper

This tool is one of the top lead generators for B2B companies, but it needs to be interesting enough to garner interest from website visitors. There are several approaches you can take to white papers, and any form should provide unique information that is specific to your client’s industry.

A white paper is a tool that provides industry information using facts and statistics, but also helps build a case for the product that is sponsoring it. This content provides research-backed knowledge and promotes a solution through authority on the topic. 

As with all lead magnets, the content within the paper should be valuable, and it is important to make sure it’s enough to convert a prospect into a qualified lead. The subject should be creative, but something that can be heavily backed by data.

Providing a professional reference guide or one written by a C-Suite member can be a great start for a white paper. Allowing the CEO or COO to be the face of a paper on a trending topic in the industry can help establish your company’s expertise.

A professional reference guide would act as a comprehensive resource for professionals in your industry. While this type of content may seem basic and geared toward beginners in the field, it helps show off the knowledge of your company. This content is also easily refreshable, which takes fewer resources to maintain. 

Taking a more statistical approach can help gain points from prospects who may value insight into market trends. Analyze a case study or write about market predictions based on past trends. This content can help establish your organization’s credibility and focus on how your product fits into the current market. 

A simple type of white paper can be a comprehensive product breakdown to provide crucial insight into the solutions your business provides. This helps with the technical aspect of your sales pitch and can help introduce prospects to your tools.

Webinars

Leaning into a product demonstration, webinars are an easily accessible avenue for prospects to become acquainted with your company. Live webinars are a great resource to pitch your product to potential customers who may be exploring several solutions. 

These live streams provide in-depth product demonstrations and leave time for questions that participants might have. By showcasing your product and demonstrating your team’s expertise through answering questions in real time, webinars help prospects familiarize themselves with the solution your company provides.

Also, webinars make capturing contact information extremely easy. Many platforms require participants to sign in with their email addresses and include information regarding their role within the company. This allows your team to start targeted outreach to these prospective clients as soon as the webinar begins.

Live webinars help give easy to provide participants with a call-to-action at the conclusion of the demonstration. After seeing your product and its features, potential clients can easily take the next step to set up a meeting with one of your business development employees.

Another option for webinars is creating an ongoing series that is relevant to current market trends. This moves the presentation away from a simple demonstration and allows your team to discuss your product’s role within the industry.

This type of series helps create fresh content to promote engagement from prospects and loyal customers. Along with providing valuable market insight, these conversations and the Q&A following can help potential clients see the way your team interacts with existing customers.

By showcasing your customer service and your expertise within the industry, prospects may feel more inclined to move along within your sales funnel.

Risk-Free Trials

A classic lead magnet for many B2B companies is offering a free trial of the product. This is particularly popular for businesses that are promoting software as a solution. Some prospects may benefit from exploring the product on their own to determine if it’s a good fit.

Important factors for a risk-free trial to be successful in qualifying leads include clear communication about the trial’s terms and ease of cancellation before being charged for the service. 

Free trial sign-up forms will capture contact data so your team can reach out to these prospects and discuss their needs while they’re trying out the product. This is a great way to establish a relationship and help potential customers see the full benefit of your services.

Another aspect of the risk-free trial is gaining feedback from prospects as they self-navigate your product. Conducting check-ins to the contact information provided can start the conversation and allow your team to hear about the customer experience.

This type of lead magnet does require a product that can be easily trialed, but other types of products may be able to utilize a virtual demonstration if a free trial is not possible. Allowing prospects to test the software before purchasing can help build trust. 

Communication is important for successfully providing free trials as a lead magnet. Make sure your team is able to reach out to the user as they work, listen to feedback that’s given, and be transparent about the subscription details. 

eBooks

Similar to a white paper, an eBook is a long form of content that can serve as an informational guide to prospects. However, an eBook tends to cover general topics and may combine multiple pieces into one piece of content.

This type of lead magnet is great if your marketing team works heavily with blogs or has a series on specific topics that relate to your product and industry.  Different from a white paper, an eBook tends to be less academic and bundles more information together.

Sharing an eBook with prospects helps them save time that they would’ve spent searching through your website. The information covered in the content can go over trending industry topics and the solution your product provides. 

Since prospects won’t be able to view the content in your book before providing contact information, the brief overview and title should be catchy enough to catch their interest. 

Quizzes

A creative option for lead magnets is creating a quiz that prospects can take on your website. This type of content encourages direct engagement with your site, and should tell the potential client something about themselves and your product at the end of it.

A quiz can be a fun way to introduce your product and help clients feel comfortable sharing their contact information with your business. 

Making sure you’re implementing an appropriate quiz format is important for this type of lead magnet to be successful. Create a relevant title that entices website visitors to engage.

For example, if your company offers multiple solutions to workplace problems, you could use something as simple as “What Type of Product is Right For You?”. Next, the length of the quiz matters. Avoid making it too long because you don’t want prospects to get bored and abandon the activity.

The results of this should prompt action from the prospect. Try to tailor the results to collect contact information from qualified leads. You can take it a step further by using a quiz to assess where the prospect is in their customer journey.

This type of lead magnet can provide your team with data to move the lead within the sales funnel, as well as encourage prospects to take the next step with your product.

Templates

Offering a way for a prospect to streamline their process by simply providing contact information in return is an easy way to start building a relationship. Often, potential clients are trying to achieve something through their search and that’s how they’ve ended up on your webpage.

By providing templates as a lead magnet, customers are able to gain access to a quick solution and then explore your product in more depth as your team begins targeted outreach. Templates are a great resource for your marketing team to create as well because they don’t require constant refreshing.

Templates can also be used for most industries since they are easy to create in any form. For example, your business can offer email, design, social media, or spreadsheet templates. This type of content targets qualified prospects by tapping into their needs and providing a quick solution.

While templates don’t necessarily demonstrate how your product works, they are able to provide market insight. Tailoring these templates to things such as “Cold Outreach” or “Instagram Posts” can help your prospect see the understanding you have of the industry.

Email Courses

While online courses are easily accessible, taking it one step further and implementing an email course can expand your reach. According to a Statista survey, 96% of workers check their email outside of office hours, and 13% say they check theirs multiple times per hour. 

Email inboxes are cluttered with promotional emails and irrelevant content, so it is important to find ways to reach your prospect with valuable information. Email courses are a great way to allow potential clients to opt-in to a sequence providing insight into industry topics.

This helps establish a relationship between your company and the customer, and they are actively engaging with your content by reading the course. Also, it can help promote the ways your product integrates with the topics covered in the emails.

An email course provides multiple touchpoints to continue nurturing the lead and qualifying their needs. While some prospects may download an eBook but never get around to reading it, email courses provide a consistent stream of digestible content.

This helps your company stay at the forefront of prospect’s mind while they are searching for solutions to their needs. By sharing educational content, the customer will feel like your business has added value and they may be more inclined to move forward in the sales process.

Another great thing about email courses is they can help continue engagement with prospects who may not be ready for purchase yet, but will want to buy your product in the future. These sequences serve as a quick reminder of your business and help cultivate the business relationship, even before a sale is made.

Using Lead Magnets to Demonstrate Product Solutions

Lead magnets are resources that your marketing team is investing time and money into creating, which means you want it to serve a strong purpose. Rather than passively capturing contact information, a lead magnet should do more than just expand your email campaign lists.

Using these tools to their full potential means finding ways for them to demonstrate how your product provides solutions. Potential clients want to see the value your business can share, and a lead magnet is a great first step.

By relating the magnet to your service, your business should be able to qualify the incoming leads and ensure they are getting to the right salespeople. High-tech service providers need to demonstrate the value of their product, whether its data analytics or AI software. By using a lead magnet to begin showcasing the product’s features, potential clients will start to understand the solution.

While it may seem like the easiest way to do this is using a free trial as a lead magnet, other formats can provide the same kind of experience. Webinars, email courses, and white papers help establish businesses as key players within their industries while building trust with clients.

The important thing is to make sure lead magnets are providing educational information, not just serving as an advertisement for the tools your business offers. White papers can lean into your product’s ability while providing data-backed research on market trends. Webinars and email courses can cover industry-specific topics and demonstrate the solutions offered by your product.

This content should be specific to the audience you are trying to engage. Lead magnets should be tailored to the interests of your potential clients and refreshed as needed to stay relevant within the industry. By demonstrating how a product works and the features it has, targeted prospects should feel more confident in allowing your business to provide the solution.

To get started with engaging prospects with these lead magnet examples, check out Leadboxer’s free trial. 

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How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

Marketing /

Want to stimulate interest in your brand without paying for ads? Content marketing is the answer. This type of marketing involves making videos, blogs, and social media posts that solve problems for your ideal customers, thus building loyalty to your brand and encouraging them to buy from you. 

This strategy is essential for staying ahead of competitors. A 2021 report from HubSpot found that 70% of over 1,500 marketers surveyed are actively investing in content marketing. The same study noted that 40% of marketers consider content marketing vital to their overall strategy.

Creating and implementing a content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be time-consuming. The following techniques will set you up for success.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

Get Company-Wide Support

Great content marketing happens when everybody in a company collaborates. To do this, you’ll need to get the leaders of various teams and departments behind you.

Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions explains, “You need executive backing to fund and source a content strategy. You also need the support to ensure there is enough commitment to see a content marketing strategy through.”

To get leaders of your company on your side, position content marketing as a way to help their departments reach their goals.

Understand Your Audience

Before creating content, you need to think carefully about your ideal customers and anticipate what videos, blogs, or resources they want. Consider these questions:

  • Who is the ideal person reading your content?
  • What information do people want that isn’t readily available?
  • What pain points are your customers feeling?
  • How does your target audience make buying decisions?

By creating content that anticipates and answers your ideal customer’s questions and pain points, you can simplify their decision to buy from you.

Invest in Branding

Consider hiring a reputable agency to develop your brand’s look. The visuals and messaging used to represent your company impact your bottom line. A 2019 Reboot study of 2,500 consumers found that the right color can increase brand recognition by 80%. Furthermore, a 2019 Lucidpress survey of 400 organizations found that a consistent presentation of brand imagery, messaging, and values across channels can increase revenue by 33%.

Publish Guest Blog Posts

Curating blog posts from thought leaders in your industry is a win-win for all involved. It creates new content for your website with less lift from your marketing team and gives contributing writers a platform for sharing their ideas.

Guest blog posts also encourage the creation of backlinks, or links connecting one website to another. This happens when the contributing writer shares the article on their personal site. Backlinks signal to search engines that your content is valuable, which in turn boosts your site’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Here are some tips for finding and recruiting credible guest bloggers:

  • Visit other blogs in your industry and see who is writing for them
  • To grow your audience quickly, reach out to in-demand writers with large audiences and offer to pay them
  • Mention the benefits of writing for you, such as the number of monthly visitors to your site and the exposure writers will receive

Create Evergreen Content

While new content is helpful for keeping social media and email audiences engaged, there’s no need to churn it out all the time. Instead, invest energy in creating evergreen content, or resources that are always relevant. Examples include:

  • Frequently asked questions
  • How-to guides
  • Tutorials
  • Encyclopedia pages
  • Troubleshooting articles

Over time, these pieces of content will rise to the top of SERPs and draw new prospects into your audience.

Repurpose Content

Another way to save your marketing team time is to reconfigure content for different channels. For example, transform an interview between a member of the marketing team and one of your executives into a podcast episode, blog post, infographic, and series of social media posts. 

Content repurposing ideas

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This gets more mileage out of the original piece of content and can help you reach audiences on various platforms.

Organize Content on Pillar Pages

A pillar page is a high-level article that provides prospective customers with an overview on a topic. The page includes links leading to blog posts or pages that cover subtopics in more depth.

Pillar page blog structure

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Pillar pages help keep your site organized. They’re also another effective way to reuse existing content.

Include Videos and Graphics

Visuals help break up long blog posts, appeal to visual learners, and can increase site traffic and the amount of time visitors spend there. A 2020 survey conducted by Wyzowl found that 86% of marketers say video has increased traffic to their website. The same survey noted that 83% of marketers credit video with helping increase the average time visitors spend on a page. Similarly, engaging graphics can also significantly boost your website’s appeal and traffic. If hiring a professional graphics designer is beyond your reach, you can use Picsart’s templates and craft stunning visuals for your content.

Measure Your Results

Analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing helps determine what types of content lead to the most sales and what parts of your strategy need improvement. To measure your results, use a tool like Google Analytics or LeadBoxer to study your site’s data.

LeadBoxer tracks what your leads do on your website or when you email them. You can see what pages they visit, how much time they spend there, and what resources they download.

Leadboxer content analytics features

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By comparing customer journeys, you can identify common pathways or pieces of content that lead to sales. You then know which content types are most effective and worth replicating. You can also determine which pages to keep updating and sharing on social media.

Final Thoughts

Content marketing is vital for attracting, nurturing, and retaining customers. By anticipating and answering questions with your content, you establish your brand as a thought leader with unparalleled customer service.

Techniques like publishing guest blog posts, creating evergreen content, organizing content into pillar posts, and repurposing content across channels help your marketing team reach the most people with the least amount of lift.

A tool like LeadBoxer helps you analyze your strategy. With LeadBoxer, you can see what pages or downloadable resources are driving the most sales. Get started today with a free trial.

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content marketing traditional advertising

Content Marketing Will Replace Traditional Advertising

Marketing /

Blog posts, ebooks, email drip campaigns, and similar marketing activities will replace traditional advertising.

It’s a bold statement, but it’s hard to deny that there is currently a massive surge in interest in content marketing from all types of brands underway.

With this surge in interest in content marketing happening, a more tactical approach is now required to turn readers into email subscribers, social followers, repeat readers, and then eventually customers.

There is a very simple reason why content marketing will replace traditional advertising: it works really well. …

Content Marketing Will Replace Traditional AdvertisingRead More »

Content Marketing Will Replace Traditional Advertising Read More »