Writing For B2B: Your Quick Guide

B2B, B2C, B2 what? If you’re unsure about what these stand for it can be a little confusing, but they’re actually key to defining the way in which content is written. The first thing you do as a writer is think about your audience and how the content you’re about to create will appeal and engage them. That’s where the difference between B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to customer) becomes important, as you will need to adapt your writing style and tone of voice to match.

But, “the content you’re writing is still going to be read by people, regardless of whether it’s B2B or B2C?” you may ask. This is true, but the message and information you’re looking to convey needs to be relevant to the situation and prompt decision making from a business point of view, rather than a customer’s point of view. That’s why it’s important to use language and call to actions that are relevant to your audience instead of having a ‘one size fits all’ approach to your content.

Concise & informative

Firstly you need to consider what situation the person on the other end of your content is going to be in. Put yourself in their shoes, picture yourself receiving the content you’re about to write and think about what you would expect. This will give you the best understanding of the approach you should take and how best to structure your content.

When the business recipient opens your content they’re likely doing it amongst a flurry of other tasks and are looking to absorb key information as quickly as possible. This means you want to only include information that is relevant and essentially ‘trim the fat’ by removing unnecessarily wordy paragraphs. This is where your approach will differ when writing for a customer who will be taking a more leisurely approach to reading your content – when you’re writing for B2B you’ll want to skip out on the fancy lingo and pass on including a quiz to find out what kind of bread you are. 

Don’t be boring!

Just because you’re writing in a business setting doesn’t mean you have to take all of the fun out of your content just to be ‘formal’. Your content still has to be interesting and engaging, you just have to be mindful about how you achieve that. Using images and infographics is the best way to communicate lots of complicated information in a quick and easy to understand format. The use of visual aids also helps break up huge chunks of potentially boring information and turns your mind-numbing word dump into a piece of engaging content.

Highlighting key points, ‘bolding’ important stats and inserting useful headers will help break-down your content into bite size chunks. This makes it much easier for the reader to scan your content quickly and get the information they need before their attention span expires.

Excitement & fear

By this, I don’t mean send them jump-scares in an email attachment or tell them they’ve won the lottery. Appealing to your audiences’ excitements and fears is the number one way to be engaging in any setting. By doing this you’re showing an understanding of their situation and immediately grabbing their attention. You need to be showing the reader how you can help them achieve their most exciting prospects and avoid their greatest fears.

Another important part of writing engaging content is to get excited about what you’re writing and naturally this will be reflected in your TOV/style. If you’re feeling uninspired by your content, this will show too, resulting in a mundane and boring piece of writing. I’m not suggesting you have to go full Leonardo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street, but you want to use positive language and make the client feel like the only problem they’ll have is that they didn’t buy more.

We’re here to help

At Embryo, we are the Leonardo DiCaprio’s of content writing and creating informative, exciting and engaging content is simply in our blood. Don’t feel like you’re stuck out in the cold with boring content, give us a call on 0161 327 2635 and we’ll turn your B2B snoozefest into a piece with so much business potential it’ll make it rain ‘fun coupons’!