Bop Announces How to Get Started With B2B Content Marketing in 2014

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) January 06, 2014

Content marketing is becoming the marketing tool of choice among B2B companies, according to a report from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America. Their results show that 93% of B2B organizations currently use content-based tactics for their marketing campaigns, while 73% will produce more content than the prior year.

“If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to begin actively thinking about how to generate and share content that’s relevant and informative for your target B2B audience,” says Jeremy Durant, business principal at Bop Design, a San Diego web design agency.

Here are tips for molding a 2014 B2B content marketing strategy:

Know the audience. “Marketing campaigns only work if you know the people and businesses you’re attempting to reach,” Durant says. Email surveys are a popular tool for assessing customer concerns, but a more convenient approach is through avenues offered by social media, where businesses regularly gather in forums and chat rooms to discuss key industry challenges and opportunities. The issues they discuss offer great fodder for upcoming content marketing efforts.

Conduct an audit of the existing content library. Some businesses hesitate to embark on an aggressive content marketing campaign because they assume content creation is a long and arduous process. “Not so!” Durant says. “There’s a good chance that your business has already generated sufficient content to get started early on in 2014. Conduct an audit of content already existing in your archives—everything from published whitepapers, videos and blog posts to newsletters, case studies and feature articles appearing on your website.”

Create customer-focused content. Content marketing isn’t about advertising or promoting products or services. The key is to produce and distribute content that offers value to B2B customers. “They’re not interested in hearing about all the features you offer, only how those features can benefit them and solve problems they face going into the new year,” Durant notes. “They also want to read content that’s clear and free of technical jargon. The broader the appeal, the more likely it is that your content will be read and shared across different social media channels.”

Set up an editorial calendar. Content marketing efforts should be organized, rather than haphazard. This means creating an editorial calendar that establishes the following:

• When new content will appear (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
• Where new content will appear (in blog posts, whitepapers, social media, etc.)
• Who will produce new content (from internal experts or outsourced professionals)
• What resources you need to generate content today and through the rest of 2014

Begin promoting new content. “Great content only works if the right people know about it,” Durant says. “Be sure to actively promote new content when it appears—through alerts on your websites, in email messages, on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Also, take time to read and comment on content produced by other businesses and, where appropriate, offer links to your own materials. Get conversations going around B2B issues. This will spur new ideas for future content generation.”

Design metrics to track content marketing efforts. No B2B content marketing plan is complete without metrics to track and measure the success of a company’s marketing efforts. Include a variety of metrics, such as:

• Amount of web traffic generated by content
• Sales leads (both quantity and quality)
• Social media sharing
• Customer feedback
• SEO ranking
• Direct sales

“The B2B sales cycle can be long and complex,” Durant say. “Generating content offers an excellent way to nurture future sales, by establishing a reputation and resource for content that offers quantifiable benefits to your B2B customer base.”

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Bop Design is a San Diego marketing agency with offices also in Orange County, CA and the New York metro area. Specializing in B2B marketing, Bop Design creates holistic marketing plans geared toward lead generation and business development. Bop Design offers services in branding, logo design, website design and development, responsive web design, SEO, PPC, social media, and content marketing. http://www.bopdesign.com.