Creating engaging content has become increasingly important for any company looking to acquire new customers, with many increasing the amount of budget they allocate to this form of marketing. Recent research indicated that on average, content marketing accounts for 28% of the total marketing budget, while the most effective organizations give it 42% of their budget and the most sophisticated, 46%.
The motivations of a B2B customer are entirely different to that of a B2C customer, which is why the message conveyed through your content marketing needs to be accurate, informative and directed at the customer you have in mind. This will help to generate further leads and will help increase customer acquisition for your company.
Here are 7 content marketing ideas to help you acquire customers:
1. Be consistent with blogging
Having a blog on your website is crucial when building your brand as it helps you to tell your story and establish credibility with your clients. Engaging blog posts that intrigue and stimulate your targeted audience allows you to showcase your expertise and why you are the best solution out in the marketplace. Leverage your blog to write about how you solve major problems that currently exist within your niche to answering questions you frequently receive from prospects.
InVision is a great example of a successful blog. They offer a platform that helps businesses collaborate on designs, but it’s not this platform that is mentioned in the blog. Instead, you find an abundance of information on culture and design strategy that evokes passion within the designers they are targeting. It’s unique, engaging, relevant and entirely different to other blogs you may find within the same industry.
2. Put a face to your brand with videos
With 75% of business executives watching work-related video weekly, the emphasis on video marketing is becoming increasingly important as it provides a highly appealing form of content that is easy to digest and process. You can incorporate different types of videos that range from interviews with influencers within the industry to giving people a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at your company and even simple how-to’s.
For example, Wistia has run a very successful video marketing campaign. You might think that as a video hosting company they’ve gone viral for their informative, educating product videos, but you’d be wrong. Instead, they continue to provide viewers with unique, funny and utterly engaging videos that keep them coming back for more. It is how they use humor in these videos that makes them stand out and allows them to promote their software to other businesses.
3. Know ‘where’ your customers are on social media
Facebook, for example, can be seen as more beneficial for B2C companies, but know that 41% of B2B companies that have used Facebook for marketing have also acquired new clients through the social network too. More specifically, make sure you narrow down the top social networks your target demographic is the most active on. Doing so will be key to helping you frame conversations around their interests and utilize those conversations for building trust.
4. Send out monthly newsletters
You’re generating incredible content through photos, videos and blogs, but sometimes they need putting in front of your readers to achieve the traffic they deserve; and one great way to do this is through eNewsletters.
Successful newsletter campaigns should incorporate high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience and make it easy for them to connect with you or your team. And, every once in awhile, don’t be afraid to even send out a simple survey to better understand the type of content your readers are most interested in. Doing so, will not only help with segmentation, but also ensure that you are developing the right type of content.
5. Case studies
Reviews and customer feedback can provide a huge benefit towards your content marketing strategy. They provide credibility to your company and showcase real, trustworthy evidence as to why your services/products are so beneficial to customers. Ask clients to review your services and give you case studies that show how your company has helped them; this will help to provide potential customers with peace of mind that you will do what you say you can do.
6. Infographics
Infographics help to transform your content into manageable pieces for your readers, making it engaging, informative and fun. The key to a successful infographic is presenting relevant information to your reader and by telling a compelling story from the start, and IBM’s “The Four V’s of Big Data” is a shining example of this. They took a topic that could be seen by many to be too technical and heavy-going and simplified it to make an infographic that could be read and shared by many.
7. Webinars
These have been identified as being a great way of promoting your business and engaging with your targeted customer base. Research conducted indicated that of all B2B leads generated, 20 to 40% of these came from webinars.
Achieving success through webinars involves meticulous planning to make sure the topic(s) you are covering are going to generate high interest, i.e. sign-ups. As such, your efforts will need also focus on promoting webinar sign-ups through blogging, remarketing, social media advertising and email marketing. A great example of this was done by HubSpot. They achieved 25,000 sign-ups for a webinar they hosted, which resulted in just under 10,000 people attending and over 3,500 new leads being generated.
Final Thoughts
Acquiring new customers will take time, but know that if you put in the time to creating the right kind of content, the results will speak for themselves by aiding sales objectives. Lastly, the key to successfully executing all of the tactics listed above lie in your ability to authentically connect with your target customers – and the best way to do that is to not overly sell yourself, but show value with your content pieces.
