As a B2B company creating content, it’s important to understand how your audience consumes and engages with content. Following the habits and trends of your average B2C consumer will not help your B2B content strategy. A B2C consumer is able to make impulse purchases as they are the only decision-maker. Whereas a B2B consumer is usually part of a team and requires to undertake more research before making a purchase.

Does blogging reach B2B audiences

Having a blog can benefit your business. According to Hubspot, blogging generates 55% more website visitors and 97% more inbound links on average for a company. However, you need to invest a lot of time and resources to achieve this. You need to have a strategy in place beforehand to ensure the content you are creating resonates with your B2B audience as well as ensuring your content is related to your topic clusters.

Although there are great stats around blogging to reach B2B audiences, great results don’t happen overnight. You need to be creating and publishing blogs on a regular basis to see the results.

Source: Hubspot

B2B audiences are often very busy and don’t always have a lot of time to read a lengthy blog. With the average person only spending 37 seconds reading online content it’s important that your content is compelling, catches the reader’s attention and gives them a reason to read on.

Other kinds of content to reach B2B audiences

Video

B2B video content has grown in popularity over the past year and this growth is expected to continue in 2020. 53% of tech B2B buyers surveyed said that video was the most useful form of content. If you have been blogging regularly, you already have content that you can re-purpose into video content saving you valuable time and resources. You could also create webinars to educate your B2B audience as well as creating testimonial videos from your clients to add a more real and personal touch.

Research by Wyzowl has found:

• 87% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website.
• 83% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
• 80% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales.

Podcast

Podcasts are a great way to educate your B2B audience. You could invite industry leaders onto your podcast for an interview-style podcast or even create a podcast with your team who can share their own knowledge. Another way to really relate your podcast with your B2B audience is by inviting your customers and clients on. Your audience could relate with their stories and will also be different content to your competitors.

Blogging may have been the best way to reach B2B audiences a few years ago, but with the increase in popularity in podcasts and videos set to continue it’s definitely worth investing some time into these formats to see if they are suitable for your business. You may find that blogging is still the best way for your business to reach your B2B audiences, however, breaking down these blogs into digestible videos or discussing the topic in podcasts will help you reach an ever-growing audience you may have not known were there.

Whichever content format you choose, it’s important you don’t go into it lightly. Ensure your content strategy is planned out and you set aside time so you can get your content out consistently. If you would like support with your content marketing, get in touch with the bolt team.