Best Practices for Content Marketing

Marketing content for industrial companies

Marketing content that is relevant and engaging will help support your sales force and marketing teams to effectively communicate your value proposition to your target audience.

Considering the average buying cycle for industrial B2B companies can be up to 12 weeks long, marketing content plays an important role in educating, building interest, and nurturing your target audience.

So how can you make your marketing content work for your brand?

Here are five key best practice practices we follow to generate successful content marketing for our clients:

1. Make your marketing content tangible

Marketing content could be a blog post, article, editorial, and/or video, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tangible. Content marketers should start keeping a list of all the marketing content they develop. This offers up a stockpile of all the content they’ve made for their brand.

By keeping stock of your content, marketers can keep track of their journey and success. You can also refer back to previous content you may have forgotten about. Older content can be so valuable, particularly if the subject area still strikes a chord. Many marketers re-purpose content. However, you need to know what you have and where you can find it.

2. Research your target audience

You need to research and deep dive into your target audience. Determine the industry, geography, scale of business, types of decision-makers, product usage, and service offerings that will need to be looked into.

Leave no stone unturned – this practice is critical in setting the foundations for your marketing content. Develop personas and segment your messaging to appeal to different clusters of your target audience.

3. Develop the marketing content

Next, you will need to craft your messaging to appeal to your target audience. Create a framework to develop the right type and mix of marketing content.

Think about messaging that would appeal and strike a chord with your target audience. Ensure they are the “hero” of the story you create and develop your value proposition around their challenges and growth plans.

4. Identify your mediums

Identify your mediums that will provide the best reach to your target audience. For example, EDM (Electronic Direct Mail) may be a primary medium to get your message out to current clients and prospects. Social media channels such as LinkedIn could also be used to leverage the same marketing content.

5. Measure and Improve

Identify the right metrics to measure and then improve your marketing content. From soft metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, visits, and engagement clicks to hard metrics such as quotes, orders, and win/loss rates. Ensure to measure to then be able to improve.

Marketing content is critical to the success of your B2B industrial marketing approach. Adding these five best practices will help you to deliver unique, relevant, and memorable content to your target audience using the right mediums.

If you’d like some help with your approach to industrial marketing, let’s chat.

Related: Download your Marketing Content Guide

Other Reading: Modern marketing – McKinsey

MARKETING CONTENT GUIDE

Learn how to develop a winning marketing content strategy. You’ll need to consider a different approach to crafting content to set your industrial brand up to win for the long-term. With our Marketing Content Guide, you’ll have access to a proven approach to create a consistent and strong content strategy underpinned by your brand promise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Zafiris is an industrial marketer and founder of Industrial Ideas. Having built his experience in B2B marketing from the ground up, Peter understands what it takes to succeed with your marketing strategy. All client projects are personally managed by Peter to help industrials like you get the return on investment you deserve. Peter and team, work hard to become an extension of your business, to help you get the most out of your marketing efforts. Get your free 30 minute marketing consultation to learn more.