5 Ways to Build B2B Content That Resonates With Your Audience, and Why They Work
By Harry Mackin
B2B marketing has a content problem: there’s more of it all the time… and the people we actually want reading it have started tuning it all out. We can’t exactly stop the content deluge (look, we’re even contributing to it right now!), so instead we’ve got to figure out:
- Why are decision makers tuning out content?
- How can we keep them from tuning out ours?
Why isn’t B2B content resonating?
LinkedIn-Edelman helped answer this first question in their 2021 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study. Their conclusions aren’t really all that surprising.
Decision makers can really appreciate good thought leadership content (64% said it was a better basis for assessing a potential vendor than marketing materials or product sheets), but…. only if it isn’t boring.
And, frankly, boring is usually exactly what it is: 71% of decision makers said less than half of the B2B content they consumed provided any valuable insight, and only 15% said they would rank any of the content they consumed in 2021 as “excellent” or “very good.”
Decision makers aren’t tuning out content because they don’t care about it or because their attention spans have been eradicated by the internet. They’re tuning us out because, when they DO stop to give us a shot, they don’t think we’re giving them anything they want. Which leads to question #2:
How can we make B2B content that actually connects?
Decision makers already told us what they want: insight. Our readers are looking for thought leadership that provides real guidance on how to navigate situations they find themselves in right now.
Don’t worry: that answer should be frustrating. After all, isn’t that what you’re already doing? Your audience would find all sorts of great insights in your content… if they would just READ IT!
The thing that’s stopping them from doing that must not be what you’re saying, therefore, but HOW you’re saying it. It doesn’t matter if you have the most earth-shattering, game-changing scoop in the history of your industry… if you talk about it exactly like everyone else talks about their listicles or industry awards. We’re all guilty of doing it, and it’s high time we stopped.
Next time you produce some B2B thought leadership content, keep these five guidelines in mind to ensure you’re presenting your insights in a way that actually speaks to the audience you’re trying to grab hold of. You’ll be surprised what a difference it will make — in terms of how fun it is to make and to read.
1 — Get Real
If there’s one hallmark of bad B2B thought leadership, it’s that it sounds like it wasn’t made from inside the industry. In fact, it usually reads like it was made by an alien poorly attempting to conceal themselves as both a human… and THEN an industry professional. That’s probably why, despite buyers consuming more content than ever, 79% report that the content they read is irrelevant to their …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
