One of the biggest mistakes I see time and time again with B2B content is missing the point that you’re selling to a human.
B2B and B2C naming conventions have led us to think that each needs a completely different approach, but often they don’t.
When we go to work, we are not able to put ourselves in robot corporate mode. We are still that human who was at home in the morning and has many different motivational drivers.
I’m going to share with you my top five tips for making your content feel more human and making sure it speaks to the people who will digest it. When you get it right, the impact can skyrocket.
1. Be clear about who the content is for and what motivates them
Knowing your customer goes back to the basics of marketing, but often when we get into a frenzy of delivering web content for SEO, it can be forgotten.
When I talk about people, those people are created with motivation at heart rather than demographics. We may be demographically similar and have different reasons for buying. So if you fall into the trap of people-led demographics, you’re missing out on the superpower of knowing your audience.
As humans, there are three ways of seeing the world:
Rationally, looking for weights and measures and wanting to be robust in decision making. This is the way most of us think we make decisions. Contextually, where we want to understand where we are, how others see us and what difference we are making. Emotionally, when we care about how our decisions affect others, we seek to be liked, to have a sense of community.
Humans are not rational. We don’t understand why we do what we do. David Ogilvy said, “People don’t think what they feel, don’t say what they think, and don’t do what they say.” And he was absolutely right.
Most B2B marketing is in the rational space: selling features and benefits. But that’s not what really motivates someone to buy. They have to know, but it won’t be their why.
Therefore, you need to talk to the people closest to your audience and discover drivers who may often be missed by the opportunity they offer. You need to ask why to get to a deeper reason for them to buy your product or not.
For example, we were working with an accounting software company, and one of their key audiences was a “Practice Manager”. All of their marketing so far focused on the features and benefits of the software.
However, speaking to a selection of sales team members, we discovered that the practice manager often used the process of revamping their internal systems as an opportunity to be seen. This was his ticket to get in front of the board and make his impact known.
We ended up with messages based on the idea of being “ready to change the game.” What a different motivator to tell them that our software does X, Y, and Z, just like many of the competition.
Doing this through content and playing to the true customer driver makes a profound difference in the impact content can have on a user.
2. Be absolutely clear about what your content aims to do
If you’re only producing content because there are keywords you hope to rank for, you’re missing a trick. As content creators, we must always be thinking about the point. What do we hope this content will achieve?
I love using the “think, feel, do” framework for any content. At the beginning of the piece, I write what I want the audience to think, feel and do. That becomes the lens through which I check my content, but also, if I struggle to answer those questions, I know I’m not ready to create that content.
You need to understand the content you’re creating, where it will be in the customer journey, and what their goal is. Thinking deeper than just aiming to rank, what is the customer trying to do? Our goals for our content should always be aligned with what the customer wants, otherwise we’re setting ourselves up for failure.
Without clarity on these questions, you’re likely to end up with just-right content that has an incredible chance of serving the business. Whereas if you can answer these questions and focus on the answers when creating your content, your chances of making an impact increase enormously.
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3. Consider format and placement
Your content needs to be in the right place, with the right message and format for your audience.
When we think about SEO, it’s easy to assume that we only want written content, but that’s the wrong approach. Thinking about what you understand about your audience and what they are trying to achieve should naturally lead to considering how best to convey that message and where.
With so many channels to choose from and so much noise online, targeting where your audience is looking and what format they’re most likely to engage with will positively impact the success of your content.
Just because we’re considering B2B content doesn’t mean, for example, that social channels and video content are off limits.
Searching is no longer just about the traditional search engine. You need to broaden your view to ensure that, from a customer journey perspective, you understand where your audience is searching.
4. Integrate your audience’s emotion and motivations into your content
This is not a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You don’t need to completely change your approach to content, as much of what you’re saying is undoubtedly relevant to the user.
Instead, it’s about tying your audience’s motivations to your content’s narrative. So much B2B content makes it safe in a rational place, covering the “facts” about your product or service.
If you can master the art of contextually and emotionally alluding to impact and have the underlying rational message, you’ll hold the user’s attention longer and make them more likely to act.
From a psychology standpoint, I always like to consider the “messenger effect,” a push that takes into account who is the best messenger for a piece of content.
You may find that reinforcing some of the motivational messages can come better from a different source. For example, it can be a testimonial or a case study that subtly frames the motivation.
5. How will you measure content success?
Many companies are just in rotation mode, aiming to hit their content quotas and reach their traffic or ranking positions. The problem with focusing on rankings or traffic is that you miss the point of business.
Going back to the “think, feel, do” model I mentioned above, the “do” part should be aligned with your follow through.
The “do” is what you expect the user to do to digest the content; if that’s something you can measure, even as an engagement conversion, like scroll depth or video view rate, you get insight into whether the content is working. .
It’s easy to measure performance for lower funnel content with the goal of generating an inquiry or sale. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it – having success measures for your upper funnel content is critical to knowing if it’s helping the customer.
A good option for the upper funnel is to prompt the user to sign up for a newsletter or follow on social media, as you can continue to build the relationship.
We should still measure how effective our content is at driving traffic, but true success depends on the user finding the content useful and helping them do what they’re trying to accomplish.
Humanize your B2B content to drive action
The thread that ties the five tips together is to remember that B2B customers are human and shouldn’t require a completely different strategy than B2C content.
When we understand what really drives someone to take action, we can use that to make our content more interesting and motivating, aligning with their why, giving them a greater chance of success.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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