If you have been struggling with your B2B content marketing plan, you are not alone. According to research, approximately 82% of business owners plan to increase their digital marketing budgets by at least 50%, just to add more content to their marketing plan.
Digital content marketing is an excellent way to attract new customers and to keep the existing customers interested. Yet, many business owners have no clue how to create an effective B2B content marketing plan.
The problem is, how can you develop a B2B digital marketing strategy that works? There are many different elements involved in a successful content marketing plan, so the last thing you want to do is spend your entire marketing budget and not bring in a good return on investment.
If you have been wondering how to improve your B2B content marketing skills, we have the answers for you. Keep on reading to learn how to avoid these content marketing mistakes and create better sales!
A major problem that many business owners make is that they get scared of cutting out too many potential clients, so they try and market to nearly everyone. This drowns your business in the sea of competition, as you are not able to stand out when you are not specific with who you are talking to.
Your business cannot provide something to everyone, but it can definitely be everything to someone. In other words, focus on narrowing down on who you are speaking to. To do this, you have to get very clear on what your ideal client's pains and struggles are, then speak about how you are there to help them.
You need to speak about the services that your business offers, however, many businesses focus too much on their services and not enough on why it will help their customer. Do some deep market research and discover your client's main concerns and struggles in life, then speak to that.
Many studies have discovered that people are more likely to purchase from a company that they relate to, they want to feel understood.
You need to think more about your customer's buying journey, which everything that leads up to that last second of the sale than you would be thinking about your sales process. This helps you establish more trust with your customers and establishes a deeper relationship with them.
A very common B2B content marketing mistake that many businesses make comes from the fear of being different. This is quite evident on social media, with a majority of similar niches having the same look. If your business looks like every other competitor in your niche, how will your customers pick you out from the crowd?
The trick is to know why you are different and curate your content with that different approach. This is otherwise known as your USP (unique selling proposition).
A USP is not bragging about why you are the best or having the top-rated product in the industry. It is more about daring to be different, and working from a unique approach. Do some market research and discover what separates you from the rest, and stop following the crowd.
The content marketing world is a rapidly evolving industry, and if you are not following the changes, you will be left in the dust of your competitors. If you want to increase your sales, you have to be willing to grow and adapt to the latest in your industry.
The most successful companies are following the latest trends, have no attachments to their current marketing plans, and are ready to change directions at the snap of a finger. To fix this, try using different B2B content marketing strategies and techniques, such as new SEO techniques or a new content calendar.
If you are not optimizing your content, you are essentially wasting your time writing content that will never be found. There is a phrase amongst the content marketing industry that says "the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search engine results page".
According to a study, the first five results on the first page receive 67.6% of clicks, while the next five receive only 3.73%. This means that rarely anyone searches on the second page of Google.
You need to learn how to rock your SEO by strategically implement keywords for Google to even recognize you. Check out our informative article on mastering content marketing to learn more.
One major mistake that many B2B business owners make is they forget to incorporate links into their content. There are two major types of links that will help you to speed up your brand awareness; inbound and outbound linking.
Inbound linking is the process of adding links to other pages of your website throughout your content. This helps the reader to learn more information from you and keeps them around a bit longer. By doing this, you are also decreasing your bounce rates which tells Google that you are reputable and provide enough quality information to keep your audience interested.
Outbound linking is essentially relationship building with other websites who have a higher domain authority than you. These are popular, well-established websites that are already recognized well by Google. By linking to them, they may eventually link back to you, which tells Google you now play in that same ballpark of quality content.
When creating outbound links, make sure you are not linking to a competitor's website, or else you may lose your audience!
If you avoid these mistakes when creating your B2B content marketing plan, you will be guaranteed to make more sales and increase your brand awareness. Remember that any marketing plan takes time, and you must track and measure your progress to see how well your plan is working.
To learn more, check out our step-by-step guide on starting any content marketing plan.
