Many B2B organizations fail to nail their content marketing strategies. Let's find out 12 common content marketing mistakes and how you can avoid them.
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| B2B Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid |
12 B2B Content Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them | Instoried
You may make common content marketing mistakes but you don't even realize it.
Take a look at this business email and point out the content marketing mistakes that the sender of this email has committed.
Here are some errors we noticed. The overall text looks very random, sloppy, and unprofessional. The sender has missed the subject line. There is no call-to-action (CTA). There is no personalization.
If you were the target audience or customer, would you have liked to receive such an email? Would you have taken any action on it? Probably not.
This is not a one-off case. Many B2B organizations fail to nail their content marketing. As a result, they fail to achieve the desired business goals. When it comes to B2B content marketing, you have to make it appealing to drive leads and sales.
While you should know the ‘right’ B2B content marketing strategy, it is equally important to know what all elements can go ‘wrong’. So, this article will discuss 12 content marketing mistakes you should avoid and how.
12 Common B2B Content Marketing Mistakes To Avoid
1. Not Understanding the Audience
Who is your target audience? What do they want? Why should they buy your products? Where are they located?
If you fail to define your target audience, you can’t expect to respond positively to your products and content promotion. You won’t be able to write the right kind of words you want to say in content marketing or implement an appropriate SEO strategy.
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| How to Define Your Target Audience |
2. Not Addressing Buyer’s Pain Points
Pain points are defined as specific problems that your prospects or customers experience. They may or may not be aware of it.
If you don’t understand their pain points, how can you solve their problems? You won’t be able to offer any value proposition to them. Your product, irrespective of how good it is in your eyes, is unlikely to attract customers if it doesn’t address their problem areas.
Leverage your customer touchpoints and interactions, and map out the customer journey to identify their pain points.
3. Wrong Link to the Landing Page
According to a survey conducted by Databox, the average conversion rate of a landing page is 26%. But, what happens when a customer visits your landing page and finds that it is either not opening or is a wrong link? You probably lost that customer! A wrong landing page is among the top content marketing mistakes as it is fatal for your conversion rates.
When you create the link to the landing page, check whether it is opening correctly. Always do prior testing before promoting it.
4. Not Using a Strong Headline
Did you know that 8 out 10 will read the headline, but only 2 will read the rest? So, if your headlines aren’t catchy enough, your target audience is not likely to open your email or read the blog and other forms of written content. If the headline isn’t effective, then the entire piece of writing loses its power.
Use an AI-powered tool called Instoried. It analyses your headlines and gives recommendations to make them unique and clickable for higher engagement. It can also generate appealing, SEO-optimized headlines as per the body of the content.
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| Instoried screenshot |
The Expert Institute, a legal service platform, leverages personalized communication in its content strategy optimally. Firstly, they cleaned up their databases to ensure that the first names of all their subscribers were correct. Secondly, they segmented their target audience based on engagement level – less engaged, somewhat engaged, and most engaged. Next, they ran personalized email content marketing campaigns for these groups, offering free white papers, e-books, or links to blog posts, as per their engagement level.
A study from Demand Metric and Seismic showed that 60% of B2B organizations use a content personalization strategy and find its effectiveness very high. So, if you are not personalizing your content, it is a major mistake. Personalization creates a unique and distinct experience between the target audience and your brand.
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| B2B and Content Personalization |
You can personalize the content based on age, location, gender, stage in the sales funnel, and buying behavior.
6. Lack of Professional Language
The B2B target audience prefers a formal and professional language in content. It should portray a business-like tone. If the language is too flashy or casual, it could come across as fluff. The decision-makers who read the content need to know that what you are saying to engage them makes business sense.
Write informative and well-structured content than purely sales-oriented ones. It will help to build a professional language and tone.
7. Wrong Timing
Morning Brew, the daily newsletter that delivers the latest business news, sends their emails to subscribers around 5 to 6 am. The idea is that people can read the news during their commute or before they begin their daily routine. If they had sent the newsletter later in the morning or at noon, it would have lost relevance.
Wrong or inappropriate timing reduces the chances of success of your B2B content marketing strategy.
Find out the time when your target audience is most likely to see your content. However, avoid posting it at odd hours or insensitive times.
8. Not Incorporating CTAs
The target audience needs to be told what you want them to do. CTAs are the perfect way to urge them to take an action you desire from them. Some examples of CTAs are ‘Download Now, ‘Start Free Trial Today’, ‘Click Here’, ‘Subscribe’, ‘Buy Now’, ‘Add to Cart’, etc. If you don’t place CTAs in your content, you won’t witness the expected conversion rate.
Place at least 1-3 CTA buttons strategically in your emails, blogs, the home page, and landing pages. Use bright and bold colors to grab the attention of the target audience.
9. Not Adding Visuals
Most customers skim through the content to get a broad overview. Visuals are a powerful way to present information at a snapshot glance. But, if your content lacks visuals, you are not reaching out to your target audience effectively. Remember that visuals get higher engagement and are remembered longer than only-text form content.
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| Visual content to include in your B2B blog: |
Use visuals such as images, infographics, videos, charts, graphs, slideshares, illustrations, and animations to optimize B2B content.
10. Not Supporting Content with Real Numbers
Moz, an SEO solutions company, is known as the most trusted authority in SEO. When they publish their blogs, it includes statistics, infographics, charts, graphs, and other numerical information to make its content trustworthy and powerful.
Numbers provide authenticity to your content. It shows that you have made efforts to research your content and present comprehensive information. If you do not include the data or statistics in your content, you may fail to capture the interest of the target audience.
Support your content with industry data, research studies, and surveys. You can also use the real numbers and results that your brand has achieved successfully.
11. Not Using SEO
According to Brightedge Research, 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. SEO increases the quality and quantity of traffic to your content through higher rankings on search engine pages. It also increases your digital brand visibility. It helps the target audience find you. So, you could be committing one of the top content marketing mistakes if you are not using an SEO strategy.
Incorporate useful and relevant keywords in your content. You can find keywords based on the buyer persona and competition research. Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz, and Ahrefs to find the right keywords.
12. Not Exploring Different Content Formats
Are you using only blogs or email marketing to publish your B2B content? Either you are not aware of other content formats, or you are undermining their importance. B2B comprises various content types like e-books, white papers, articles, social media posts, infographics, webinars, case studies, offline events, etc.
As per a study conducted by MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute, the top 3 types of content types used by B2B organizations in 2020 were social media content (95%), blog posts/short articles (89%), and email newsletters (81%).
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| The Top B2B Content Marketing Trends to Watch in 2020 |
Mix and match various content formats to reach out to your target audience at various touchpoints. However, limit the usage to 4-5 types of content that work most effectively for your business. Too many content formats can confuse the target audience.
Conclusion
B2B content marketing strategy can give you expected results and higher ROI only if you prevent the mistakes discussed above. You can start with reviewing your overall content marketing strategy against the checklist of mistakes and analyze what could be going wrong. Once you do this exercise, your job is half done. Next, you have to make conscious and sincere efforts to fix these mistakes. You will be pleasantly surprised how your improvised content strategy will open up new business opportunities!