How enticing is your content to your target audience? Companies often get caught up in trying to promote their products, failing to keep the customer at the center of their strategy. This is especially true for B2B companies that sometimes forget about the human aspect of the buyers they are targeting. Buyers making purchase decisions for their company are still persuaded by the same marketing tactics as consumers in a B2C model.
Top Marketing Tactics are Buyer-Centric
Old-school advertising was interruptive and promotional; the focus was on presenting the product, service or brand in a direct attempt to persuade the buyer to take action.
Newer marketing tactics persuade buyers by understanding their audience and focusing on the customer’s experience. The powerful approach of modern B2B marketing is more personalized and buyer-centric.
In other words, your content shouldn’t always push for the sale.
Some of your best-performing content will directly answer your potential buyers’ questions or offer them valuable support. Your audience may not be looking to make a purchase at all, so pushing for the sale in everything you create is a turn-off. And, while buyer-centric content might be seemingly selfless, the ultimate goal is to attract leads and build trust with potential buyers.
Not Everyone Cares About Your Brand
You isolate potential buyers with sales-centered content. Branded content that focuses on products or services only appeals to audiences who already like your company. Not all content should directly tie into a service or product.
Buyers Aren’t Always Ready to Make a Purchase
Content should be crafted to appeal to readers during different stages of the buyer journey—not just the decision stage. Leads at the early awareness stages of their journey want to learn more about the problem they are having and aren’t ready to consider specific solutions. And potential buyers who are doing research on solutions want to read your expert problem-solving tips without feeling pushed towards a sale.
Brands Need to Earn Trust With Buyers
Are you convinced to trust a company if they are solely focused on a self-serving sale? As buyers are looking for solutions, they want to find helpful information and build a relationship of trust before making a purchase commitment with a brand.
What you will find is that some content is better suited for offering pure value, while other content may shift towards a sales call to action (CTA).
Know Your Buyers (and Create Content Accordingly)
So, how can your company avoid a self-centered strategy? Creating content your audience wants to see starts with getting to know your buyers. While this might seem obvious, it’s a step that is often skipped by companies who assume they already know their audience or are too focused on pushing a sale.
Just like with B2C marketing, B2B companies should create buyer personas that accurately detail some of their top customers. By defining individual buyer types, the marketing strategy can revolve around the things that matter to target buyers.
Buyer personas should include details, like:
- Job Title/Company Position
- Likes/Dislikes
- Motivations
- Needs
- Frustrations/Challenges
- Location
Understanding your top buyers will naturally help shift the focus from your company goals to what your buyers need and want.
Use Evergreen Content to Draw in Leads
Content that positions you as a trusted industry authority and offers educational value can be extremely valuable in growing your brand.
High-quality blogs and whitepapers that stand the test of time are considered evergreen content. Built to last, evergreen content may need occasional refreshing of links or statistics but the core concepts stay relevant for years (or decades).
Evergreen content typically takes more work to produce, but it holds a lasting value and is easily repurposed. Usually, evergreen content answers questions in detail without using time-sensitive answers.
So, are you creating enough evergreen content to engage your audience?
The right content will position your brand as trustworthy and draw in buyers looking for solutions.
The buyer-centric approach is what makes modern marketing tactics so powerful. Even for B2B brands, potential buyers are an audience who must be won over if you want them to make a purchase from your company.
If you need help creating content that is buyer-centric, we can help. With an experienced, holistic approach to marketing, our team creates and implements game-changing growth strategies for B2B companies.