B2B Marketers must embrace inbound strategies because they sell complex products and services to a highly educated set of people as compared to B2C Marketers. If you push the B2B prospects through repeated poorly targeted content, they would most likely withdraw. Moreover, by doing so, you come across as a low tech-savvy, aggressive sales company that is not just unprofessional but is unaware of the needs of prospects. So, it’s not just moving away from cold calls and cold emails to content marketing. It’s about creating content that is engaging to your target audience. Your prospects should anticipate your content. This will happen when you establish yourself as a thought leader. A thought leader that can be trusted. A thought-leader that educates. It’s ultimately creating value through your content. It’s not just about content. You can’t be successful in business if you are not creating significant value – through your products or services or through your thought-leadership content.

In order to become an effective content marketer, you need to have a content strategy. Just like you need a digital marketing strategy to become a successful digital marketer. Or you need a hiring strategy to become a successful recruiter. Here are the top 4 reasons why every B2B Marketer must have a well-documented Content Strategy.

1. A well-defined Content Strategy saves time and money

If you have a well-thought-of content strategy, you won’t waste time on creating content around subject areas that won’t help you in meeting your content goals. Some content formats may work better for certain businesses whereas the same format may not work that well for another business. A content strategy will steer you away from taking arbitrary choices that not only waste your time (and the time of your team) but waste a significant amount of money over a long period.

2. Content Marketing has proved to be more effective in B2B

All the researches conducted around Content Marketing mention that content marketing is roughly 3X more effective than traditional marketing in the B2B space. This is a non-intrusive way of engaging with prospects. In fact, prospects willingly share their contact information to access gated content (Content that requires basic business card information of the person opening or downloading the content. The contact info is usually entered through a web form).

3. Content acts as a sales enablement tool

Not just Marketing but Sales and Account Management teams equally need quality content throughout the customer life cycle. Content, in the form of Whitepapers, Case Studies, Reports, etc. are often used by Sales teams to move prospects from the Awareness phase to the Consideration phase.

Whereas timely whitepapers about new product versions or updates are used by Account Management teams for up-selling. New case studies and reports also act as tools to reduce the post-purchase dissonance, if any.

4. Content is one of the most valuable assets for lead-nurturing

Marketers must know that they can just ensure a good buyer journey and a great buying experience. It would be incorrect to think about pushing prospects into buying. Buyers will buy when they are ready to buy not when Marketers are ready to sell (as a matter of fact, Marketers are always ready to sell.). Hence, it would be appropriate for Marketers to focus on nurturing the lead or the prospect. One of the ways to nurture a prospect is to share quality content with the prospect from time to time. This will help to build trust. Nurturing prospects also involves educating the prospect with trustworthy content. This content should not be a product or service pitch or a sales collateral. Marketers should genuinely own the responsibility of educating prospects and help them buy the best product or service for their needs.