How to write great B2B content

Here at Embryo, the content team loves writing and reading blogs that have great and actionable tips for writing great content. But when it comes to tips and guides about content marketing, a lot of it often revolves around business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. In a way, it’s often easier to write engaging and personal content when it’s targeting consumers directly.

In contrast, writing content aimed at other businesses can often come across as stale and uninteresting.

But the truth is that this doesn’t need to be the case at all. Just because you are writing content for other businesses doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t aim to captivate your reader. As a content marketer, you need to be putting the same time and energy into your business-to-business (B2B) content – but how do you do this? Let’s look at some tips for writing good B2B content.

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What is B2B content?

B2B content is content that companies produce, with the idea of attracting and engaging other businesses as opposed to individual consumers. Ideally, B2B content should be tailored to speak to a business audience. You can do this by honing in on the needs and challenges of professionals (such as how they navigate their marketing budgets), and particularly decision-markers. The aim of B2B content is usually to educate and inform, whilst establishing credibility. B2B content can take on many forms, which we will explore later on in this blog.

There are many things to consider when producing B2B content, and hopefully this blog will shed some light on this. And whilst there are considerations to be made, so long as you follow the usual SEO best practices and exhibit the usual skills of researching, optimising, and speaking to the audience as a writer, then you’re standing in good stead for producing good B2B content.

One of the most important things is understanding your audience. Decision-makers appreciate data-led content that is evidence-based and speaks to their challenges. Whether that’s showcasing how to improve ROI, or pushing productivity improvements, content that aligns with their needs and goals will always do better than generic content.

On the other hand, B2C content is much more about brand awareness, and focused on emotional appeal. As such, the tone in B2B content against B2C can be entirely different. Overall, B2B content plays a critical role in sales and marketing strategies for businesses that want to drive leads from other companies.

Laying the foundations: what to do before you get started

Perform a content audit

Before delving into the creation of new content, it’s a good idea to look at what you’ve already got. A content audit is a great way to do this – this is essentially an analysis of your existing content, to uncover opportunities for improvement. These insights can then inform the content you should be publishing – does existing content have the potential to be reoptimised and expanded? Or, is there inspiration you’ve uncovered to write a piece of supporting content on a similar topic that can connect dots?

Often, updating content can be quicker and easier than starting from scratch again. And, it’s also important to remember that a large quantity of unhelpful content – whether off-topic or unnecessarily lengthy – can do more harm than good. In other words, don’t publish content for the sake of it!

Start by compiling a list of your content pieces on site – this includes all webpages and blog posts. Then, assess their key metrics (so traffic, engagement and SEO performance). That way you can conclude what’s working, what isn’t, and where there might be some quick wins. Alongside this, identify any outdated information, underperforming pieces, and content gaps and assess how well this aligns with your current goals, if at all.

The final step is to categorise your content – what’s useful, what needs improvement, and what should be removed? Use this to guide your plan of action and whether you repurpose or delete content.

Do your audience research

According to Semrush’s State of Content Marketing 2023 report, audience research is the top factor that marketers and business owners put down to successful content marketing. You can’t underestimate the power of doing the groundwork before you start writing a piece of content. Lay the foundations by understanding your audience, what their problems are, and how you should speak to them.

With B2C content marketing, you can be confident that you are targeting specific demographic groups who can be pinpointed to individuals with specific niches, interests and characteristics. For example, a wellness brand targeting people interested in healthy food, supplements, exercise and gymwear.

With B2B content, especially if you want those extra conversions, you need to attract and engage multiple people across departments, job roles, priorities, and interests. This means when writing your content, you still need to keep in mind who you are trying to target, but also the decision makers behind the conversions.

It’s always a good idea in any business to create customer personas and then you can lean into these and ensure you’re producing content that speaks to them and their challenges. Getting to grips not just with industry-specific challenges, but also with role-related challenges is important too. For instance, a Marketing Manager will have different challenges from a CEO. Therefore, the information that they’re seeking is likely to be different too.

Create a plan

Don’t go in blind and put content on the web for the sake of it. Make sure that once you’ve done your content audit and understand who your target audience is, you map out the content that you’re going to produce, and when you’re going to publish it. You could do this by creating a content calendar, and if you use a project/time management system, you could create each piece of content as a task and assign it to the writer if needed.

A distribution plan can also help to identify the best channels to distribute content/from, whether that be directly to the site and then via LinkedIn, email marketing, or even industry forums, to ensure it reaches the right people.

Not only is it important to plan where your content will go and when, but you should also plan out each individual piece before you get writing. Look at what’s ranking well for inspiration, but of course don’t copy. And make sure your keyword research informs the sections you’ll cover in each piece – answer the questions that people are asking Google.

Other tips, tricks and best practices

Create shareable content

While shareability and virality through social media may be something we most commonly attribute to B2C content, the truth is that this is becoming an increasingly important part of B2B marketing as well. Here at Embryo, we understand that professionals are actually more likely to share a piece of informative and authoritative content on a platform like LinkedIn, increasing its visibility in the given industry.

Perhaps the key word here is authority. By creating content that is well-researched, data-driven, analytical and authoritative, you can position the content as industry-leading and massively increase its appeal online.

Stick to the point!

When you are writing content for businesses, it’s important to understand the priorities and busy day-to-day schedule of your potential reader. Business owners and business leaders tend to work throughout the day and don’t have much time to spend reading non-essential content. This is why making content that quick, accessible and easy to read works so well for B2B marketing. A consumer might read something for fun or entertainment – someone making decisions for a business has less time for you to impress them.

Three to six-minute reads are often the perfect length for B2B content designed at targeting new readership, while homepage and service page content benefits from long-form, detailed and thorough informative content for those business readers hoping to research your service. Your tone will always depend on the industry and your target audience, but B2B marketing generally benefits from a simple, natural and slightly conversational tone.

Use data

Valuable B2B content should be authoritative, well researched and, if possible, data-driven. This is why content that is backed up by data performs particularly well here. You can tell your target audience a story through numbers, backing up what you say and having your professionalism shine through.

Start and finish strong

Of course, the entirety of your content should be well-written, but you should pay attention to the headlines and the call-to-action in particular. Start with a very clear hook, and grab the attention of your target audience from the get-go. From there, ensure that your headings are clear and indicate what each section is about. After all, these are busy people, so make it easy for them to scan the information you’re providing!

End with a very clear CTA that guides the reader on what to do next – do you want them to download a guide, schedule a demo, or fill out an enquiry form? A strong CTA ensures that your content leads to a clear outcome.

Content diversification and intent

When implementing a B2B content strategy, content diversity should be at the heart of it. Content diversification alludes to the coverage of many topics, in different formats. In other words, instead of relying on one type of content – like blogs – you’re publishing varied pieces and thus ensuring different audiences, learning preferences, and search behaviours are all catered to.

Content formats are the bridge between search intent and user experience, influencing not only how your content ranks but also how effectively it engages and converts your audience. As such, they play a vital role in capturing search intent, and different types of searches at different stages of the funnel. This is because certain formats are better suited to certain types of searches.

For instance, if someone is asking a question, then a blog is likely the best option. For those searching for a service/product that could be considered high-intent, then a product page will be what’s served to them on the SERP in nearly all cases. Taking this into account, content diversification can help you to show up at every stage of the buyer journey.

Sharing content on social media can help to create brand awareness and credibility, whilst publishing blogs to answer user queries can help tap into the ‘Messy Middle’ stage of the buyer journey, where prospects may be asking questions in relation to your offering, and deliberating which solution or brand to opt for. By showing up at every stage of this funnel, you can ensure that you’re front of mind when prospects come to make that final decision.

Aside from content serving different types of searches/keywords, they also speak to different audiences with different ways of digesting information. They will all have different preferences, available time, and the context of their searches will all differ. As such, diversifying your content formats means you can cater to different users, improving engagement time and site experience as a result.

We asked our Senior Content Writer, Cara Dudgeon, how important she considers content diversification to be in a B2B content strategy. Here’s what she had to say:

“Content diversification is essential in a B2B content marketing strategy because it allows companies to meet their audience where they are, showing up and adding value across the touchpoints in the funnel.

Not only that, but different stakeholders within a business consume content in different ways, whether through blog posts, webinars, case studies, or videos.

Diversification can also maximise the impact of the content that’s been produced, as it can be repurposed with tailored messaging for different platforms. For instance, you could break a report up into bitesized pieces of information, to be published as a social media post.

It’s a competitive market out there, so a one-size-fits-all approach simply won’t work – businesses should keep their content varied across their audience segments and platforms, yet relevant to build trust, nurture relationships, and drive more traffic/leads.”

Types of content to publish

• Service/product pages – core commercial pages with information about what you offer. Separate services/products should have their own pages.
• Blog posts – to target question-based queries and long-tail keywords that are still, in some way, relevant to your industry or offering.
• Long-form guides – long-form guides might be longer than a standard blog-post, and therefore have their own standalone webpage.
• Case studies – give trust signals to both users and search engines by showing proven success for other businesses, and how you have helped them.
• Whitepapers – you could make a whitepaper downloadable on your website and capture email addresses at the same time. These are also good to push on social media, like LinkedIn.
• Infographics – formatting information in an infographic is an easy way for busy decision makers to digest information that you’re providing.
• Webinars – showcase your expertise as a thought leader, by hosting a webinar. It’s your chance to demonstrate your company’s knowledge, whilst also connecting with likeminded people and prospects.
• Podcasts – this is another way to showcase your company’s expertise and knowledge. Inviting prospects onto the podcast is also a good use of this medium.
• Videos – some consume video content much better than a written piece of content. Get stakeholders from your company involved in their specialist subjects, and circulate these videos via email and social media.
• Email newsletters – this is a good way to house different types of content and signpost audience segments to different content that’s most relevant to them.
• Checklists/templates – assist your target audience with something that they could find problematic, by helping them along with a checklist or template to use.

Topical authority in a B2B content strategy

Sometimes, you might have a well-considered B2B content strategy, where you’re publishing regular blogs, yet there still seems to be room for improvement in the rankings. That might be because you’re not focusing enough on topical authority. The key to pleasing Google, and showing users your authority, is to build topical authority. In other words, showcasing to Google that you’re an expert in your field.

Not only does this impress Google, but it gives users a whole web of content to explore, and shows to them that you really know what you’re talking about. The aim here is to become the go-to, one-stop-shop for content and thought leadership pieces related to your sector.

However, it’s a balancing act. Don’t go too broad and talk about everything and anything that could have some loose connection to your industry. Instead, Google appreciates websites that showcase a strong understanding of a particular niche. By signalling your expertise, and pairing this with E-E-A-T signals too, you increase your chances of ranking for related searches.

One of the best ways to do this is to create topic clusters. This is a group of webpages that cover topics related to a particular topic. In a nutshell, you’d have your pillar page which is a core category/service/product page. And you’d then have cluster pages, which are articles that cover the associated subtopics.

Get in touch

Want to find out why Embryo are the marketing agency to deliver your B2B content marketing campaign? Get in touch with us today to discover how we have helped businesses from a wide range of different sectors achieve the results that they’ve been looking for.