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7 Steps for Creating a Full B2B Content Marketing Strategy

In today’s marketplace, every B2B business including yours need to have a well-planned B2B content marketing strategy.

It is your key for generating more leads and loyal customers, increasing sales and conversions, and maximizing your ROI.

Although B2B content marketing tends to be much more complex and difficult because of the considerable length of the sales cycle and the complexity of the purchasing decision-making process…

Yet, you can still perform well and avoid detrimental mistakes if you create and implement an effective B2B content marketing strategy.

This full guide to creating a B2B content marketing strategy will cover the following points:

What is a B2B content marketing strategy?
Why is a content marketing strategy important for B2B?
7 Steps of Creating a B2B content marketing strategy.
Real-life B2B content marketing example.
Wrapping up.

What is a B2B Content Marketing Strategy?

B2B content marketing is a comprehensive plan developed by businesses to create and distribute content for a B2B audience.

The ultimate goal behind a B2B content marketing strategy is, on one hand, to acquire more leads and prospects by offering educational and problem-solving content that helps other businesses address industry-specific issues.

On the other hand, it aims to increase conversion rates and acquire more loyal customers by creating strategic promotional content.

Why is a Content Marketing Strategy Important for B2B Businesses?

Now that you understand what is a B2B content marketing strategy, let’s see why creating one is so important.

A well-planned B2B content marketing strategy is a critical component for B2B businesses because it helps businesses in many aspects.

However, here is a list of some benefits of creating a content strategy for your B2B business:

Structuring and directing their marketing efforts in the right direction.
Scheduling content by determining what content should be published and at what frequency.
Choosing the right formats for each piece of content.
Implementing the best tactics and practices for promoting the content.
Setting metrics and benchmarks for measuring and analyzing the content marketing efforts. And the list goes on…

And so, without having a well-planned B2B content marketing strategy, your content marketing efforts will lack direction and structure, thereby, your marketing efforts will go in vain!

Insightful Statistics

If you still neglect the importance of creating a B2B content marketing strategy, this implies that you dismiss the importance of the benefits mentioned above too.

However, the following statistics will dispel your doubt by certainty:

According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), businesses that commit to a content marketing strategy have less difficulties with maintaining their relationships with customers.
As reported by CMI, 69% of successful B2B content marketers have a B2B content marketing strategy.
Only 7% of B2B content marketers say that they will not create a content marketing strategy any soon, while 93% are willing to create one or already have one.

Source: CMI.

These statistics should be enough to demonstrate how a well-crafted B2B content marketing strategy is important for your enhancing your marketing efforts.

Now, let’s move to the next section and learn what are the 8 steps for creating a B2B content marketing strategy that will lead your content marketing efforts to success…

7 Steps for Creating a B2B Content Marketing Strategy:

When it comes to designing a well-planned B2B content marketing strategy, there are many steps that should be followed in order to do it accurately.

But before we delve deeper into each step, I will give you a list of the steps that we are going to discover in this article.

Here are the steps that must be followed in order to create a complete B2B content marketing strategy:

Know your target audience.
Set clear goals and objectives.
Develop a content calendar.
Conduct a content audit and a competitive analysis.
Determine the content formats you are going to leverage
Plan strategically your content promotion.
Set KPIs for measuring your content performance.

Step 1: Know Your target Audience:

Understanding your target audience is a cornerstone of a successful B2B content marketing strategy.

In the B2B sector, where sales cycles are longer and purchasing decisions involve multiple stakeholders, knowing your audience can significantly impact your content effectiveness and business growth.

Here is a list of information you should know about your target audience for an effective B2B content marketing:

Industry and market trends impacting their business.
Company size and structure to tailor your approach.
Decision-makers’ roles and influence in purchase processes.
Business goals and objectives driving their strategies.
Key challenges and pain points they face.
Solutions they currently use and their satisfaction levels.
What they value most in vendor relationships (e.g., cost, quality, service).
Preferred channels for research and purchasing.
Buying cycle length and factors influencing their decisions.

Now that you have the enough information about your target audience, let’s delve into the second step for creating your content strategy.

Step 2: Set Clear Goals And Objectives

Your content strategy must necessarily be created basing on your business goals and objectives.

And there is no doubt that for a lucrative B2B business, the ultimate goal of content marketing should be to acquire more loyal customers and drive more sales and conversions.

However, this is just the broad objective.

Your content marketing goals should delve deeper, ranging from establishing brand awareness to engaging and educating loyal customers on the best practices for using your products.

Consider giving the highest priority to one of the following goals in your B2B content marketing strategy depending on the content marketing funnel stage your audience are in:

1. Establishing brand awareness:

If your brand is still unknown on the web and lacks an audience that recognizes its existence.

This makes your target audience aware of your brand should be your highest priority.

Establishing brand awareness can be done through many ways including…

Optimizing your website for SEO.
Becoming active on social media especially on LinkedIn
Becoming active on relevant forums (related to your niche) like those on Reddit and Quora, and the list goes on…

2. Generating leads (or lead generation):

If your brand already has a considerable online presence, and your audience is already aware of your B2B business activities, then your mission at this stage should be generating leads as much as possible.

This can be done through many approaches.

One of them is sharing general content that addresses your audience needs and pain points, and then initiating your product as the ultimate solution for that problem.

This process isn’t done in a single blog post!

In fact, you should keep sharing a lot of non-promotional content that addresses your customers pain points as much as possible.

This practice will help you to gain their trust, and only then you can promote your B2B products as a solution.

3. Driving Conversions:

I think it is clear, if your brand has acquired a considerable number of leads, your next goal should be driving sales by converting those leads into customers.

And this can be achieved through several methods, including…

Creating well-crafted landing pages for your products (services or software).
Sharing content that encompasses case studies, or targeting your leads with promotional content through email, paid ads, etc…

4. Enhancing loyalty and maximizing the customer life-time value (CLV):

If your B2B brand has recently acquired new customers, then your highest priority should not be to acquire more ones.

Instead, it should be to transform these recently acquired customers into not just paying customers but, more importantly, into ‘loyal’ customers.

This can be achieved by creating engaging and educational content that adds value for them.

Or by consistently nurturing them through many channels including email, social media posts, blog posts and more…

Note: Relying solely on content for maintaining and retaining your customers is obviously not enough.

Making your customers loyal for your brand encompasses many other elements including product development and updates, effective sales promotion strategies, and more…

Tip: Follow us on LinkedIn, where we share helpful and useful content on topics complementary to what we publish here, including general B2B insights and more.

Now that you determined the primary goal of your B2B content strategy, it is time for us to move to the third step for creating your B2B content strategy which is…

Step 3: Develop a Content Calendar

Content calendar is a schedule that content marketers use to plan, organize and manage the creation, publication and often distribution of their content.

But before I tell you how to create one, I want to emphasize the importance of it.

Content calendar is an indispensable element in your B2B content strategy.

Without it, you will end up like more than 75% of content creators who publish content randomly.

And this randomness is the factor number one that leads to their content marketing failure.

This because they either create content that doesn’t resonate with their audience at that moment, publish it in an inappropriate frequency, promote it through the wrong channels, or they stop publishing at all!

So, a content calendar will help you in scheduling your content and work so that you don’t go astray.

Content Calendar Components:

To be concise, a content calendar should include three essential components:

What content should be created.
When it should be published (frequency).
How it will be distributed (channels).

1. What Content Should be Created:

In your content calendar, the content you should create must be based on the goals and objectives you determined previously.

For example, if you want to make your target audience aware of your existence and your offers, then you should create helpful and educational content.

And if your audience already knows much about you but they are not interested in converting, then you must publish content like case studies, webinars, product comparisons, email content, etc…

However, your content calendar should include the type of content that will be published, the specific subjects your content will cover.

2. When it should be Published:

This component refers to the publication frequency, the frequency at which your content will be published.

For example, here in HubRefs, we prefer to share 2 blog posts and 2 to 3 social media posts a week.

However, the publication frequency depends on many factors, for example, if you publish a lot of content, but nobody knows about its existence, then you may want to lessen the publication frequency and focus more on promotion.

On the other hand, if your content is well-known and you have a big number of followers, then you opt to create more content on the condition that you can assure prioritizing quality over quantity.

However, the publication frequency depends primarily on your content marketing situation and you are the best one to decide which frequency rate you should opt for.

3. How it should be Distributed:

Once you create your content, you should know which channels you must use to publish it, and which content format you must leverage in order to distribute your content properly.

(We will delve deeper into how to know which channels and content format to use later in this article, so keep reading.)

Now, let’s move to fourth step for creating a complete B2B content marketing strategy which is…

Step 4: Conduct a Content Audit And a Competitive Analysis:

Once you start publishing content, it will be essential for you to review it in order to identify opportunities and gaps.

Along with analyzing the content of your competitors to identify their gaps and then leverage.

And so, in order to conduct an effective content audit and competitive analysis do the following:

1. Conducting a Content Audit:

To measure the effectiveness of your content you should put some metrics and then analyze your content basing on them.

Here are some metrics you must keep them into consideration while reviewing your content:

1. Traffic Metrics:

Page Views: The total number of views that your content receives.
Unique Visitors: The number of distinct individuals who view your content, highlighting its reach.
Traffic Sources: Where your visitors are coming from (e.g., organic search, social media, direct visits), which helps in understanding which channels are most effective.

2. Engagement Metrics:

Time on Page: The average amount of time visitors spend reading your content, indicating how engaging it is.
Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing just one page, which can suggest the content may not be meeting users’ expectations.
Comments and Shares: The number of comments on a blog post or shares on social media, reflecting direct user engagement and approval.

3. Conversion Metrics:

Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action (e.g., signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase) after viewing your content.
Lead Generation: The number of new leads generated from your content, useful for content aimed at driving business growth.

4. SEO Metrics:

Keyword Rankings: The position of your content in search engine results for specific keywords, indicating visibility.
Backlinks: The number of external sites linking back to your content, which can improve search engine rankings and increase credibility.

As for the SEO metrics, I want to add another one that’s linked to your content performance which is your site health.

That’s right, your content effectiveness and your site health are directly linked.

If your site is not well optimized for technical SEO, then your content might not be visible in the search engines results pages (SERPs).

Thereby, no matter how your content is effective, it won’t have any positive impact on your business.

In fact, it will be just a lost of time and resources.

2. Competitive Analysis:

Conducting a competitive analysis in terms of content marketing involves systematically evaluating your competitors’ content strategies to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for differentiation, and potential areas for improvement in your own strategy.

So, in order to do that you must first identify who are your competitors in terms of content.

This means that whether their businesses engage in the same activity as yours or not, if their content addresses the same needs as yours, they are considered competitors.

Second, identify their content’s gaps and weaknesses, and then make sure that your content outperforms theirs in their flawed areas.

Finally, you will have to repeat this process regularly, at least once a quart to make sure that your content is still competitive.

Steps 5: Determine The Content Formats You Are Going to Leverage

For a successful B2B content marketing strategy, you need to integrate different types of content formats such as blog posts, LinkedIn posts, YouTube videos and more…

Because limiting your presence to just one channel could result in missing many lead opportunities.

And your brand might not achieve any recognition, so, determining which content formats you are going to use should be considered essential.

Now, let’s explore some of the most important content formats and when each one of them must be used:

1. Blog Posts

Blog posts are foundational to B2B content marketing strategies.

They’re important, allowing businesses to establish thought leadership, share industry insights, and address common customer questions.

Format: Your content format should be long and well-detailed (between 2000 to 7000 words), and you should use multimedia elements to enhance engagement.
Goals: Drive website traffic, improve SEO rankings, and generate leads.
Best Practices: Incorporate SEO strategies including On-Page and Off-Page SEO, in addition to technical SEO to improve visibility and user experience.

2. LinkedIn Posts

LinkedIn is a powerhouse for B2B marketing, offering a platform to connect with professionals and industry leaders.

Format: LinkedIn posts should be concise, typically under 150 words, while articles can be more detailed, ranging from 500 to 2000 words.
Goals: Build brand authority, nurture professional relationships, and lead generation.
Best Practices: Share industry news, company updates, and professional insights. Engaging with comments and leveraging LinkedIn articles can also enhance visibility and engagement.

3. Videos

Video content can significantly increase engagement and information retention rates.

From explainer videos to customer testimonials, videos can convey complex information in an easily digestible format.

Format: Keep videos concise, ranging from 5 to 20 minutes maximum, especially if the information shared is purely related to the niche industry (this means that the content doesn’t contain any entertainment elements).
Goals: Increase engagement, explain complex products or services, and enhance brand recall.
Best Practices: Use captions for accessibility and ensure high production quality. Host videos on platforms like YouTube to improve discoverability.

4. Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are a direct line to your audience, allowing for personalized content distribution.

Format: Keep your emails concise, ensure that images include alt texts, and always make sure your calls-to-actions (CTAs) are highlighted in the email and appear in the first lines of your copy.
Goals: Nurture leads, keep your brand top-of-mind, and promote content or events.

Best Practices: Segment your email list to tailor content to different audience needs, spend time creating an attractive and well-crafted subject line, and include only ‘one’ clear CTA (not two nor three, only one CTA per email !)

5. Case Studies and Whitepapers

Case studies and whitepapers are essential for demonstrating expertise, providing in-depth analysis, and showcasing real-world applications of products or services.

Format: Ensure conciseness and clarity. Design a professional layout that aligns with your brand, this includes using your brand’s color scheme, fonts, and logo.
Goals: Establish thought leadership, generate leads, and support sales efforts.
Best Practices: Use real data and customer testimonials in case studies. For whitepapers, focus on providing thorough research and actionable insights.

However, the details provided about each content format are just an overview.

This is why I invite you to subscribe to the HubRefs newsletter, where we consistently share (at least once every two weeks) helpful and insightful approaches tailored specifically for B2B businesses.

Now that you know some of the most important content formats, let’s move to next step which is…

Step 6: Plan Strategically Your Content Promotion:

Planning the way you are going to promote your content is indeed the most important step alongside determining which content are you going to create.

This step involves many elements and tasks that you should perform in order to promote your content effectively.

Here’s how to effectively craft a strategy for your content promotion:

1. Review Your target Audience characteristics:

You have already analyzed your target audience and you know much useful data and information about them.

Now, what I want you to do now is focusing only on two pieces of information which are:

The industry of your target audience, their job role, and the stage of the funnel they are in (awareness, consideration, decision).
Channels where your audience spends their time online. LinkedIn and B2B forums, for example, are powerful channels for B2B content promotion.

Understanding your target audience industry, job role and the stage of the funnel they are in helps you to know what content you should create.

For example, if you have a B2B product that solves a specific problem your audience have, and they’re not aware of the problem, your content should not be promotional at all.

Instead, you need to first create content that makes people aware of the problem.

This can be achieved by highlighting the issue and sharing it on your social media accounts, blogs, and through YouTube.

Once, your audience becomes aware of the problem, then you can start creating a promotional content.

2. Include Social Media In Your Content Strategy

Social media is the simplest and easiest way to make your content visible to your audience.

And in order to promote your B2B content on social media, consider the following:

LinkedIn: Share articles, participate in discussions, use hashtags, and engage with LinkedIn groups to reach professionals and decision-makers. Then, continue building your reputation and credibility as a thought leader in your industry.
Twitter: Engage in industry conversations and use relevant hashtags to increase visibility.
Facebook and Instagram: While more B2C-focused, these platforms can still be valuable for certain B2B sectors, especially with targeted advertising.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing is an essential component of B2B content promotion, offering a direct and personalized channel to reach and engage your target audience.

For B2B companies, where the sales cycle is longer and involves multiple stakeholders, email marketing can nurture leads, build relationships, and ultimately increase your content reach and enhance its impact.

Reach: Email marketing allows you to reach your audience (email accounts you have acquired organically) directly, often without problems, and your content will be read if you follow email content best practices.
Impact: Email marketing allows you to tailor your content for every segment, and make variables (like *|first name|*) for every email account in your list, and this makes your content more impactful and effective.

4. SEO and Blogging

If you are planning to start optimizing your blog posts for SEO to promote them and increase their visibility (and it is a must), you must consider learning the SEO basics and best practices, or hire an SEO expert.

Because no matter how your content is helpful and engaging, it will never be visible to your audience if you don’t optimize it for SEO.

5. Paid Advertising:

Integrating paid advertising in your B2B content marketing strategy is a good practice if you want your content to be visible and reach your audience faster.

However, before you launch your paid advertising campaign, you should first choose wisely which channels you’re going to use.

And you should also decide on which message will you deliver (informational, promotional…).

And I think you will not find any problem with this since you have already reviewed your target audience characteristics and you know the stage of the funnel they are in and where they spend their time the most.

So, consider the following practices to enhance your paid advertising effectiveness in the most effective B2B channels:

1. LinkedIn Ads:

Here are the best practices for promoting your content on LinkedIn through paid advertising:

Use LinkedIn’s detailed targeting options to reach the audience most likely to engage with your content. Target by job title, industry, professional interests, and other relevant criteria to ensure your content reaches the right professionals.
Consider Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies for targeting specific companies or decision-makers.
Select the appropriate ad format like sponsored content ( ideal for directly appearing in the feed), or sponsored InMail.
For content that aims to generate leads, such as white papers or webinars, leverage LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms. These forms pre-populate with a user’s LinkedIn profile data, making it easy for them to sign up for your offer.

2. Google Ads

Here are the best practices for promoting your content (blog posts) through paid advertising (Google ads).

For blog post promotion, consider using Search Campaigns to appear in search results for relevant queries or Display Campaigns to reach audiences browsing websites in the Google Display Network (GDN).
Conduct thorough keyword research to identify terms your target audience is searching for related to your blog content.
Use a mix of broad and long-tail keywords to balance reach and specificity. Incorporate these keywords naturally into your ad copy and landing pages.
Write a compelling meta description to draw the attention and interest of users.

These were my pieces of advice for promoting your content.

Now, let’s move to the last step for creating your content marketing strategy which is…

Step 7: Set KPIs for Measuring Your Content Performance:

Many B2B content marketers dismiss the importance of measuring and analyzing the performance of their content marketing efforts (and I was no different).

So, before I tell you how to measure and analyze your content strategy performance, I think I should first convince you of the benefits of this practice.

Here is a list of some benefits you can get if you commit to this practice:

Insights into Preferences: Analysis helps you understand what types of content resonate most with your target audience, including topics, formats, and channels.
Strategic Adjustments: Data-driven insights allow you to refine your content strategy, focusing on what works best and phasing out less effective tactics.
Search Visibility: Analyzing which content ranks well on search engines can inform your SEO strategy, helping you to produce more content that is likely to perform well in search results.
Data-Driven Decisions: With concrete performance data, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts, rather than relying on guesswork or intuition.
Resource Allocation: Understanding content performance helps you allocate resources (time, budget, personnel) more effectively to the areas that will generate the most impact. And the list goes on…

These benefits should be enough to emphasize the importance of this practice.

Now, let’s find out the steps you should follow to measure and analyze your B2B content marketing performance.

1. Review Your Goals

Start by reviewing your content marketing goals. Knowing what you wanted to achieve (e.g., enhancing brand awareness, lead generation, sales, customer engagement) will help you determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) to focus on.

2. Identify Relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Select KPIs that are directly tied to your content marketing goals. For instance:

For Brand Awareness: Website traffic, page views, social shares, and time spent on page.
For Engagement: Comments, likes, shares, and average session duration.
For Lead Generation: Conversion rates, number of leads generated, and cost per lead.
For Sales: Revenue attributed to content marketing, sales conversion rates, and average order value.
For Customer Retention: Repeat visits, subscription renewals, and customer lifetime value (CLV).

3. Use the Right Tools

Leverage analytics tools to track and measure your KPIs. Some essential tools include:

Google Analytics for website and content performance.
Social Media Analytics (native platform analytics or third-party tools) for engagement and reach on social platforms.
Email Marketing Software for email campaign performance, including open rates and click-through rates.
CRM Software for tracking leads, conversions, and sales metrics.
SEO Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs for keyword rankings and backlink analysis.

4. Collect and Analyze Data

Regularly collect data for each KPI and use analytical methods to interpret the results.

Then look for trends, patterns, and insights that can inform your content strategy.

For example, if certain types of content consistently generate high engagement, consider producing more content in that format or on those topics.

5. Benchmark and Compare

Set benchmarks for your KPIs based on industry standards, historical data, or specific targets.

For example you might want to set the following benchmark (8% conversion rate).

Then compare your performance against these benchmarks to assess progress.

Also, consider competitive benchmarking to understand how your content performance stacks up against competitors.

6. Report and Communicate Findings

Create reports that summarize your findings, highlighting successes and areas for improvement.

Communicate these results with stakeholders to inform decision-making and strategy adjustments.

And yes, measuring and analyzing content performance was the last step for creating a well-planned B2B content marketing strategy.

Wrapping Up:

To wrap up, having a well-planned B2B content marketing strategy is crucial for B2B businesses especially in today’s days when content is considered as a king.

So, if you want to make your B2B business visible in search engines and social media, creating a content strategy is the best practice you could ever do.

And creating one encompasses many steps that he have covered in this post, and they must be done without exception.

However, our guide to B2B content marketing strategy best practices ends here.

I hope this was helpful for all of you dear B2B marketers or entrepreneurs. If you liked the content, don’t forget to share it with people you know that you know they might get advantage of it…

Do You Want to Learn How to Leverage Content Marketing and other Marketing Tactics For Generating More Leads For Your “B2B” business? Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our guides.

I'm Soufiane Zagouri, a B2B marketer and the owner of HubRefs. Before founding this business, I dedicated years to educating myself in many marketing aspects like content marketing, SEO and direct marketing, and gaining experience in the B2B sector, with a special focus on content marketing. My insights and strategies are tailored to increase brand awareness and conversion rates.