The B2B buyer’s journey is the process that potential customers go through when researching and making a business purchase.
It involves four stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Purchase.
At each stage, the business buyer persona is looking for different kinds of content and information that can help them make an informed purchase decision.
However, amid taking care of customers, sales and a gazillion other things, it is easy to forget about building relationships with those who are just walking into your sales funnel.
An effective B2B content marketing strategy has to take into account all the potential buying journey stages and provide relevant online content to meet their potential buyers’ needs from the earlier stages down to the edge of purchase stages.
For example: 90% of customer buying decisions start online (Forrester) 75% of B2B buyers use social media to research vendors (IDC)
Social media is a great way to reach out to potential customers and build relationships with them.
It can also be used to nurture leads, drive traffic to your website, and increase brand awareness.
Different Content Types For Your B2B Buyer Customer Journey
Social media updates
Social media can be used to reach out to potential customers and build relationships with them. It can also be used to nurture leads, drive traffic to your website, and increase brand awareness.
To get started, create social media accounts on the most popular platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Once you have set up a presence on these platforms, post social content that is relevant to your target audience.
This could include educational guides, product/service overviews, customer reviews, case studies, and more.
You can use social media scheduler tools to help you save you time when managing your B2B social media profiles.
These tools allow you to schedule social media updates, monitor conversations, and measure the performance of your campaigns
Blog Content
The internet and social media have drastically altered the sales process – giving buyers the chance to utilize an abundance of data when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
90% of customer buying decisions start online (Forrester);
75% of B2B buyers use social media to research vendors (IDC)
Blogs are a great way to provide educational content for B2B customers on their journey.
They can help prospects understand their problem and the potential solution available to them, as well as showcase customer reviews or case studies that demonstrate how successful clients have implemented your product/service.
By providing helpful and informative blog content, you can help prospects make an informed decision about whether your product/service is the right fit for them.
What Is a common rejection about a corporate blog?
Many businesses are hesitant to start a corporate blog because they don’t think it will be effective or that it won’t generate enough leads. However, this is far from the truth.
A corporate blog can be an invaluable tool for B2B customers on their journey, providing them with educational content and helping them make an informed decision about whether your product/service is the right fit.
No time to blog? There are many companies out there that can write SEO-ready posts targeting your niche.
By creating leadership content that is relevant to your target audience, you can build trust and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. This will help you attract more leads and convert them into customers.
Things to Decide on In-House When Publishing Blog For Your B2B Company
Live or Recorded Videos
On-demand video contents are a great way to engage with prospects and provide them with educational content.
Live or recorded videos can be used to showcase product/service overviews, customer reviews, case studies, and more.
Live videos can be used to host webinars or Q&A sessions with customers, while recorded videos can be used to provide tutorials or demonstrations of your product/service.
By providing informative video content, you can help your B2B clients make an informed decision about whether your product/service is the right fit for them.
You can record and repurpose your web calls and you can also do virtual shop floor tours, which what manufacturing companies did to celebrate #mfgday in 2020.
You can use tools like: GoTo Webinar, Vimeo and YouTube.
Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with prospects throughout their journey. You can use email campaigns to nurture leads, provide educational content, and keep prospects informed about your product/service.
Email marketing is a powerful tool for staying in touch with prospects throughout their journey.
It can be used to nurture leads, provide educational content, and keep prospects informed about your product or service.
At the beginning of the customer journey, you can use email campaigns to introduce prospects to your company and its offerings.
You can also use emails to educate prospects on the benefits of your product or service and how it can help them solve their problem.
At the middle of the customer journey, you can use email campaigns to provide more detailed information about your product or service and answer any questions prospects may have.
You can also use emails to showcase customer reviews or case studies that demonstrate how successful clients have implemented your product/service.
At the end of the B2B clients’ journey, you can use email campaigns to encourage prospects to take action and purchase your product or service.
You can use Email tools Such as:
In-Person Events
In-person events are a great way to engage with prospects and build relationships. By hosting events, you can provide prospects with the opportunity to learn more about your product/service and ask questions in person.
You can host events such as seminars, workshops, or conferences that will help educate prospects on the benefits of your product/service and how it can help them solve their problem.
“The best way to engage prospects and build relationships in the B2B sales
process is by leveraging in-person events as social media content.”
You can also use events to showcase customer reviews or case studies that demonstrate how successful clients have implemented your product/service.
In-person events can also be used to build relationships with prospects and create a sense of community. By hosting events, you can provide prospects with the opportunity to meet other customers and get to know your company on a more personal level.
In-person event tools you can use:
Case Studies
Case studies are a great way to demonstrate the success of your product or service. By showcasing customer reviews and case studies, you can provide prospects with real-life examples of how successful clients have implemented your product/service.
You can use case studies in emails, on social media, and at in-person events to help educate prospects on the benefits of your product/service and how it can help them solve their problem.
You can use Email tools Such as:
Infographics, Charts, and Data Graphics
Infographics, charts and data graphics are powerful content pieces for your customers’ journey.
They help you quickly engage with audiences on social media, as well as build thought leadership.
While Infographics have been around for awhile, today’s tech-savvy world has unlocked the potential of creating stunning visualizations that can drive actionable results.
When creating content for the B2B customer journey, infographics should show off your unique insights and insight into a product or service by displaying trends or processes in a simple yet sophisticated way.
You can also include product comparisons and customer case studies to provide useful information that can be both attractive and informative.
Additionally, incorporating relevant industry news or data graphics will help enhance your business persona and keep prospects informed of current developments in their niche area.
“Social media images have the power to inspire, inform, and engage in
conversation with your followers. Use them wisely to cultivate
strong relationships and build your brand.”
Well-crafted infographics foster value to B2B customers by providing them with an easy to understand snapshot of complex topics or visuals to respond better to questions related to a company’s strategy or products.
Apart from making compelling visuals that attract attention, the information presented in an infographic must be accurate and up-to-date for maximum impact on audiences.
With all this in mind, utilize infographics wisely to create strong relationships with existing customers while engaging new prospects throughout their customer journeys!
Tools to use:
Webinars
Webinars are great content for the B2B buyer journey since they can create meaningful opportunities for engagement with prospects, giving them greater access to the company’s largest asset—its people.
Webinars provide an effective way to share knowledge from experts and provide prospects with learnings that supplement and support their purchase decision.
Additionally, they help companies build a personal connection with prospects that resonates throughout the journey.
Webinar Tools:
When it comes to webinar tools, there are many options available. Some of the most popular include:
White Papers
White papers are comprehensive reports that provide in-depth information about a certain product, service, or industry.
They offer an unbiased opinion on a particular subject and often include research findings and expert analysis.
This type of content is essential for businesses looking to further educate their customers and develop a relationship of trust with them.
Overall, white papers can be used as an educational resource with many advantages:
This type of content marketing makes sure customers get access to accurate data before making any important decisions related to products/services or industries that may affect their future success down the line -all worth taking into account when considering ways on how one business could stand out from others competing in its same field!
White Paper Examples:
e-books and Guides
Webinars are great content for the B2B buyer journey since they can create meaningful opportunities for engagement with prospects, giving them greater access to the company’s largest asset—its people.
eBooks and guides can be a valuable digital content asset in any B2B business. By providing accurate, up-to-date information about topics relevant to their industry, eBooks and guides can offer potential customers insights into the benefits of your product or service.
This custom content can be used to educate prospects on how to select a solution that best meets their needs and determine if your product is a good fit for them.
Effective use of eBooks and guides should also provide detail-oriented information surrounding the various features, advantages, and disadvantages associated with each option available on the market today – regardless of whether it is provided by you or another competitor.
This type of dialogue reflects positively on your brand’s ability to provide impartial advice—advice which helps lead customers to become more informed about their purchasing decisions before making them.
Overall, using eBooks and guides can help enhance customer engagements with brands by delivering credible information in easily digestible formats which facilitate communication between companies and their prospects.
With thoughtful strategy behind its development conceptually intertwined with relevant details focused on answering customer questions—utilizing books and guides can help close deals faster while simultaneously amplifying a company’s overall value proposition over competitors’.
E-Books Tools And Resources:
For webinar tools, there are many options available. Some of the most popular include:
What Kinds Of Content Do People Look For During Each of The Buyer’s Journey?
There is no straightforward answer to this but here is how you can align your content in the buyer’s journey.
When prospects enter the awareness stage, they often look for answers to basic questions such as “what problem do I have?” or “what are my current options?”.
To cater to this need, businesses should create content that provides educational guides or overviews.
The early-stage content could include white papers, any blog posts or videos covering topics related to the product/service being offered.
During the consideration stage, prospects want more detailed information about products/services that could fit their needs best and how these compare with other available alternatives. Content during this period should highlight key features and benefits of solutions as well as showing B2B buyers reviews or case studies that demonstrate how successful your clients have implemented them.
In the decision stage, B2Bbuyers narrow down their choices and evaluate vendors according to various criteria (i.e., quality, price). In this stage of the sales process, comparisons between vendors must be backed up by reviews or third-party reports on the solutions they offer in order to sway prospects’ opinion one way or another.
Once they have made a decision regarding who they would like purchase from, they then enter the purchase stage where they will naturally go look out for terms & conditions as well as any offers or promotions being offered at that time.
How Can Social Media Help With My B2B Marketing Strategy?
An effective content marketing strategy for social media is essential for any B2B business’s success in today’s world since its reach is far wider than ever before.
Social media plays a significant role in promoting brand visibility and improving customer experience during their B2B buyer customer journey stages- from awareness to purchase.
It can be used to target specific buyer roles by leveraging interests and demographics, helping B2B businesses break into new markets and make connections with a potential user.
Strategic types of content has always been a key factor for B2B businesses interested in skyrocketing their social media marketing activities.
Crafting interesting and informative content for customer journeys such as blog posts, videos, webinars, and infographics that focus on a customer’s needs goes a long way towards creating trust within an audience, ultimately giving the company more visibility online.
For social media marketers, it is also important to create and types of content that includes elements of personalization such as CTAs or customer success stories.
By personalizing the content, it can help build relationships with your current customers while inspiring your potential buyer persona to convert from audience into B2B buyers. Additionally, it allows for website optimization which improves both organic traffic levels and conversion rates through improved targeting.
The combination of both strategic content for customer journeysand personalization on social media updates allows B2Bcompanies to address specific issues with detailed solutions which should promote engagement in the form of comments, shares, clicks etcetera on social media channels like Facebook or Twitter. This helps grow the B2B company’s recognition as well as attract more customers who might be looking specifically for products/services related to their industry solutions.
Content is a great way to engage and delight your customers – use it right and you’ll see the rewards!
Need help in having a unified content strategy on social media for your B2B company?
B2B companies can maximize their content distribution efforts by leveraging social media, as it provides buyers with resources, information, and insights throughout their purchase journey. This invaluable asset can help companies reach and engage potential customers, making it an essential tool.
