How to write B2B content that has real value

In B2B marketing, there’s almost an urge to create a piece of content just for the sake of it. Or just because we need to fill out our blog page. Or because a competing brand is talking about it. Or because we’ve got a bit of leftover budget to see off before the end of the quarter.

And frankly, it’s a hard temptation to resist. Often, businesses write something on the go and fill their websites with useless content that has no real value. And that’s because creating content that’s actually valuable – something that answers a burning question or starts a promising conversation – takes a lot of work.

That being said, here are a few strategies to help you ensure every piece of B2B content you produce offers real value to your reader, as well as your business.
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1: Define what “value” looks like

The first portion of the work starts with defining what “value” actually means. What “value” means to you, your clients, and ultimately your business. However, judging every piece of content by the same generic measure of value isn’t going to do you any favors. Nor is it going to be very effective.

Some content is meant to solely convert a reader into a prospect. Other pieces work best as an opportunity to raise your profile and show your company’s expertise and competence in a particular work field. Sometimes you want to share a new perspective on a current news item from your industry. 

The point is: there is no specific mold that would work for every single piece of content.

This is because there are dozens of different ways content can perform - and all of them bring a different kind of value. But if you know the kind of results your copy has to achieve from the get-go, you can adjust your content to that goal.

2: Keep your personas in mind

Creating marketing personas can give a better understanding of the different types of people you’re creating content for. Personas are an especially helpful tool to vet your ideas going forward. So to produce content that’s valuable to your business, you need to be certain you’re offering the right value to the right audience personas.

If you’ve had an established set of personas in your strategy for a while, it is worthwhile going back and checking on those profiles again. If you haven’t visited them for a few months, it’s easy to lose the key messages you want to communicate. In some cases, you might even find those profiles just aren’t as relevant as they used to be.

So, make sure you’re focusing on the right needs, and priorities of your audience personas, so you can respond to their expectations with something useful.

3: Set your priorities

Think of B2B marketing as a Venn diagram: ideally, your stakeholder interests and your customers’ priorities would be a single circle. But in the real world, it tends to look more like two separate chunks that barely overlap – and that’s exactly what makes it difficult for your content to satisfy both parties.

Making valuable content relies on finding the perfect spot where the two interests meet. Typically, the most amount of content opportunities are hidden in that sweet spot of overlap.

Stakeholders are more likely to sign off on content that reflects their requirements and talks about their challenges. By satisfying both of these concerns you can get engagement from your prospect as well as revenue for your business.

4: Look for the unanswered 

As more time goes by, it’s getting progressively harder to create original content. When you’re looking at content put out by others in your work field, it may feel like they’ve already answered every question or filled every niche there is.

But sometimes, all they’re doing is answering top-level queries and offering very generic responses. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll often find unique opportunities to add your own expertise, opinions, and answers to. You can still look at the leaders for inspiration, but keep looking in-between the lines. Read what others are writing in your space, and think of ways to fill in the narrative with different angles and perspectives. 

Tip: Read the comments under competing brands’ posts to see what people are thinking or wondering about. Their questions may inspire a great piece of B2B content.

Tip #2: There’s no better way to identify your audience’s burning, unanswered questions than through primary research. A simple starting point is keyword research - to see which topics people are plugging into Google (you can use tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar etc.) You can also look into polls, surveys, and social media for a more detailed dashboard.

5: The mighty SEO

Once you have an idea that’s perfectly crafted to your readers’ needs and interests, it is now the time to pay your respects to the mighty king -  SEO. By convincing the search engines that your content has value, your piece is far more likely to turn up in the top results.

This is where keyword research comes in - and an understanding of how latent semantic indexing (LSI) works.

Keep in mind: stuffing your copy with a bunch of keywords is a no-go: it’s not pleasant to the eye and it doesn’t rank well with search engines anymore. With LSI, search engines look for words linked to a particular topic, through context. It’s unlikely that people would type in full, sensible sentences - we all use fragments and partial phrasing instead. But by using words that frequently appear together in a sentence, the search engine will recognize that you’re writing about an in-depth subject.

You no longer have to force awkward sentences like “How to Adopt a Cloud Native Approach” into your copy just because your audience types that into the search bar. 
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6: Share your content in the right places

Getting the desired ROI from your content heavily relies on sharing it in the right places, so the right people can read it. 

Think about what you’re creating carefully. Does it perform best on your blog? As a guest post on someone else’s website? Are there industry publications that can give your content extra recognition? Would it work better if it was being printed on heavy-weight paper and handed to your prospects in person?

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The Final Takeaway:

Remember: always put value first. Producing a certain amount of posts a month may satisfy your goals on paper, but it often makes you prioritize getting work done over doing work well. 

When quantity overshadows quality, everyone loses: you work hard on content that doesn’t work, and the people you’re trying to connect with don’t get the content they deserve. So, if you want your content to succeed, you need to focus on giving your B2B prospects real value.