While the corporate website is the face of a B2B company, it is no longer enough to have all the content investments focused on the website alone. Although the primary goal of a B2B marketer is to attract a prospects to website the best approach to do that is through a well thought of content strategy that involves knowledge sharing, quality backlinks building and social media tactics.
More and more B2B marketers are now realizing the importance of placing high quality content in different formats outside the website. The key is to create high quality content that the customers are not just willing to consume themselves, but are willing to share as well.
Some of the popular mediums of content marketing outside the website include article marketing, email and newsletter marketing, marketing through blogs, advertorials, document sharing sites, bookmarking sites, social media content sharing, Q&A content sites, photo and video sharing sites, short message and link sharing (twitter), communities and groups, wiki content sites, podcast sites, networking sites etc.
The content strategy outside the website must have the following features.
Quality over quantity: While consistent flow of content is important to keep the prospects engaged, compromising on quality will have an adverse effect. Every piece of content that is associated with the company’s name must be vetted for quality before it is shared in public.
Reuse useful content: Instead of reinventing the wheel all the time, see how the content can be tweaked and reused to suit various channels. For instance, video content shared on YouTube, can be customized to create a presentation to be shared on slide share. Or, marketers could use the webinar content to create a blog post or article.
Use as many channels: Our customers use various channels to consume content. So, having the content in as many channels will help reach a wider customer base.
Follow content guidelines across channels: Most content sharing sites have specific requirements and reject content that does not fit into their set guidelines. This is especially true for article marketing and wiki sites. To save time and avoid rejection, read through these guidelines carefully.
Keep target audience in mind: Create and share content keeping the target audience in mind. Sometimes it is good to be specific in the title itself. E.g.: Marketing handbook for Start-ups or What a CEO must know about Marketing Automation.
Experiment and Test: There is no magical formula that can assure marketers the best results every time. If something does not work, try something different. Experiment with different channels as well as with different content formats and analyse the results.
These content strategies can largely aid lead generation services and lead management because they can help prospects to reach the right source of information they are looking for and keep them engaged as well.
Also read more on - Lead scoring, b2b marketing automation solutions
