Creating your B2B content strategy can feel overwhelming. You have to provide a smooth experience through your content, share the right message at the right time, and use the best channels for distribution. It’s a big task. You also need to generate different types of content based on where your buyers are in their journey, who your audience is, and what you want to say about your brand. Therefore, it’s crucial to know the five main types of B2B content and how to combine them effectively to meet your objectives.
5 Types of B2B Content for Your Marketing Mix
You might assume all content marketing belongs in the same bucket, but different types of content are better suited to certain goals. Here, we’re covering the five basic types of B2B content, along with our tips to help you use each type to your advantage.
1) Brand Content
What it is: Information about your company (not your product): who you are, your Brand Heart (purpose, vision, mission, values), or brand messaging (tagline, value proposition, messaging pillars). Some of this content might only be for internal use; some may be for the public. This content is important as it helps people feel connected to you, share your values, and be part of your community.
How to incorporate it into your content mix:
- Showcase your values. People want to know who you are and what you care about. Translate your Brand Heart into content by showcasing the causes you care about, the way you work, etc. (If you haven’t articulated your Brand Heart, start with our free workbook.) For example, Be Good to Each Other is one of our core values. To share this value with our clients, we created a unique holiday gift: a fine art print based on Benjamin’s Franklin’s pay-it-forward philosophy. It was a piece of content that allowed us to share a piece of our brand story with our clients in an unexpected (but much appreciated) way. To see how other brands turn their values into content, check out these inspiring examples.
- Brainstorm ideas around key brand story pillars. If you have your brand messaging framework (tagline, value prop, and key story pillars/selling points), you have great fodder to come up with brand-centric ideas. For example, a series about your manufacturing processes or the ways you bring your mission to life in everyday ways can be great ways to connect with people. If you need brainstorming prompts, here are 7 ways to tell your brand story.
2) Talent Content
What it is: Content about your employer brand, culture, etc. It is geared toward prospective employees, as well as current employees. It’s basically everything people would want to know about what it’s like to work for your company, what your culture is like, who works for you, what life is like behind the scenes, etc. It’s also a way to celebrate and acknowledge those who do work for you.
How to incorporate it into your content mix:
- Showcase your culture. People want to work for brands they respect and align with (especially in the wake of the Pandemic). Your culture is a huge part of an employee’s experience, so creating culture-based content is an important way to communicate what life is like inside your company. (Note: While this is relevant to prospective employees, your customers are also interested in who you are and how you treat people behind closed doors. Being transparent and giving people a peek behind the curtain only cultivates more trust with those consumers.)
- Tell your employer brand story throughout the hiring process. Employer brand content isn’t just a job description and an employee handbook.
- Turn fellow employees into content creators. This is one of the best ways to give a face and voice to the people behind your brand.
3) Editorial Content
What it is: Content meant to educate, entertain, inspire, or demonstrate your brand expertise or thought leadership to build brand awareness. This can include all types of content, such as articles, guest posts, infographics, podcasts, video, etc. When you think of traditional B2B content marketing, it is usually this type of editorial content.
How to incorporate it into your content mix:
- Focus on value. While brand content is valuable, talking about your brand isn’t always the best way to build brand loyalty. Instead, create content that gives your audience something they need or want, whether it’s tips, tutorials, a unique perspective, an education, or even a laugh.
- Collaborate with a publication. One of the best ways to increase your credibility is to earn placement in a high-profile publication. To increase the likelihood you’ll get that coverage, don’t just create content with an outlet in mind. Reach out and create that content with the outlet.
- Create data storytelling. Your own data is one of the best ways to come up with unique, original, interesting content ideas.
4) Product Content
What it is: Naturally, there is a difference between sales and marketing content. This pillar is for deeper-funnel content, particularly informational content related to your products or services. This includes content about what you do, such as sales materials, demos, explainer videos, informational content, or educational content.
How to incorporate it into your content mix:
- Talk to your sales team. Good content can help your sales team in significant ways, particularly in the time and energy it takes to communicate certain information to prospective (and even current) customers. Find out if there are certain assets that would make the selling process easier or help them enhance the experience for prospective customers.
- Make it more creative. Contrary to popular belief, not all product content has to be a dull brochure. There are so many ways to share this info in a fun and engaging way, whether it’s through video, infographics, interactives, etc. Look for ways to makeover your existing collateral to make it more effective. For example, a lengthy brochure might become a simple infographic. An onboarding email could become a fun interactive slideshow.
5) Performance Content
What it is: Tactical content used to drive a specific KPI, such as landing pages, CTAs, PPC, etc. It’s often supplementary content for campaigns related to other pillars.
How to incorporate it into your content mix:
- Plan early. Sometimes you spend all your time creating a new lead-generating ebook and then quickly slap together a landing page to promote it. But these promotional pieces of content are just as important as their parent piece (e.g., an ebook), so they need just as much attention and, frankly, sometimes even more. Whereas your newest thought leadership article might be 2,000 words, your social ads may boil down to eight perfect words. Treat this content with the same level of investment.
- Refine your messaging. Does your performance content reflect your current voice, branding, and key messaging? Are there areas to improve or opportunities to experiment with different formats, messaging, etc.? Look for ways to test strategically.
How to Bring Your B2B Content Strategy to Life
Now that we’ve covered the type of content you can create, you need to decide how to turn your ideas into a successful strategy.
- Revisit buyer’s journey. Identify what people need to hear at each stage to move them along the path to purchase. This will help you identify what messages you’re missing and how you can use a variety of content to deliver them.
- Curate the right mix. You want to deliver a healthy variety of content to keep people engaged.
- Optimize your processes. No matter how many good ideas you have, you need the skills and infrastructure to create the actual content.