Content That Converts: Proven Strategies for B2B Marketers

Kenny Osborne:

It’s really important to think about it. It’s not advertising. You’re not pushing a product. You’re helping your consumers to get smarter and then building that long-term relationship. Because, like I said, sometimes the sales journey is multiple years. It’s a constant give and take and a conversation that’s had on all these content channels and website channels and emails and even podcasts like this.

Announcer:

Welcome to the podcast, B2B Insights, our take on a podcast series where we dive in and discuss all things B2B marketing. B2B Insights is brought to you by AvreaFoster, one of the most respected brand and digital marketing agencies in the Southwest. At AvreaFoster, we build authentic relationships so brands can grow and prosper. Learn more at AvreaFoster.com.

Matthew Petrikin:

Welcome to B2B Insights. I’m one of your co-hosts, Matthew Petrikin, new business development at AvreaFoster.

Dave Foster:

And I’m Dave Foster, CEO and co-founder of AvreaFoster, and we’re joined today by Kenny Osborne, our creative director. Welcome Kenny.

Kenny:

Well, thanks for having me.

Dave:

Well, we’re glad you’re here.

Matthew:

Yeah, absolutely. With all our guests that come onto the podcast, we like to start off with just a couple questions. One: What advice would you give to someone looking to enter the writing, copywrite, brand strategy space — that creative role and where you fit into AvreaFoster? What advice would you give to someone trying to get into the space?

Kenny:

Well, especially in the B2B field, you have to be curious and inquisitive. As you all know, AvreaFoster has a diverse range of clients. So every client is different. Every challenge is different. You have to be willing to listen and learn and jump in the deep end, sometimes without floaties, and just figure it out really fast. Do some really quick research and learn about your clients and their prospects. And it’s always and always a journey.

Matthew:

Absolutely. And my second question, favorite question of all time. If you could have dinner with any historical figure or famous figure, who would it be and why?

Kenny:

Oh, gosh.

Dave:

We put you on the spot there.

Matt:

Yeah, we’ve gotten some crazy answers.

Kenny:

So I’m trying to think… it needs to be someone funny. I would say Robin Williams, just because he would keep me entertained forever.

Matthew:

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Kenny:

I might kick him out of the party, maybe after an hour, but that hour would be a lot of fun.

Matthew:

Yeah, absolutely. So we’ll kick this off, you know, dive into content strategy and content marketing.

Dave:

Kenny, we wanted to kind of get your take and your expertise on business to business content marketing. And we know that that is critically important to our clients. It’s critically important to the success of growing their business for them, and there’s a myriad of reasons for that. And so what we wanted to do is just ask you a few questions, and you can jump in there and kind of give us some guidance on what that looks like. So you know, to start out, why is B2B content marketing just so important?

Kenny:

I always tell people when we’re talking about content marketing, I always go back to this one stat that I heard a couple years ago: 95% of B2B buyers engage in some form of content before they buy, right? So they’re going to look at a case study. They’re going to look at a product comparison. They’re going to look at something, read a blog. And 95% is a staggering number. So if you’re not engaged in content marketing as a B2B marketer, then you’re losing business.

And why is content marketing so prevalent and so important? Well, there’s a couple of reasons, right? The price point is very high. So we’re not talking about an impulse purchase. You’re not talking about buying something at the grocery store. You’re talking about something with a five-, six-, seven-figure price tag. So there’s a lot of research that needs to go into that. The sales journey is long. So a typical sales journey in B2B is anywhere from a couple of months to sometimes a couple of years. We have some clients that have, you know, buying a six- or seven-figure product. That’s a long sales cycle.

And then the buying committee is very large. The typical buying committee for a B2B purchase is about seven different people. So that’s a huge committee. So every one of those people in the committee have different needs and different interests. So today’s B2B buyers are conducting research. They’re reading blogs. They’re looking at five or six different options before they’re making a decision. If you don’t have content out there in the world wide web, on your site, you’re losing business. So content marketing is vastly important, especially in the B2B field.

Dave:

So when you think about defining it, though, a lot of people have misperceptions about content marketing and how it’s different than advertising. You know, when you define it from a consumer’s perspective, it’s a little bit different. When you define it from B2B, it’s a little bit different. And a lot of customers sometimes need clarity around how to define it.

Kenny:

I always like to explain content marketing as storytelling for B2B brands. So it’s about creating that content that is valuable and that you can share, that can attract people and engage people on a human level. So instead of pushing ads, you’re really providing useful and relevant information that helps people solve problems, learn something, just get smart about a topic. It’s less about selling a product and helping people get smart.

I always like to think of content marketing as that super smart friend that always has the best tips, knows where to go. If you say, “Hey, I’m going to visit this town, where should I go? What should I do?” That’s what content marketing is from the B2B buyer side. So it’s really important to think about it. It’s not advertising. You’re not pushing a product. You’re helping your consumers get smarter and then building that long-term relationship. Because, like I said, sometimes the sales journey is multiple years. It’s a constant give and take and a conversation that’s had on all these content channels and website channels and emails and even podcasts like this.

Matthew:

Yeah, that’s interesting. So can you talk to us about the content development process as a whole?

Kenny:

Yeah, at AvreaFoster, we’ve been doing this for, gosh, 30 years — especially in content marketing that’s gained in popularity over the last, really, 10 to 15, years. So there’s a structure, there’s a process. I always like to think of it as having a roadmap, but also adding a layer of creativity on top of that. So we do have very defined steps.

It really starts with understanding your audience and knowing who that B2B audience is. Because it’s different depending on what sector you’re in. You have to understand what the buyer persona is, what their needs are, understanding what that journey is, what the steps it takes to get from awareness to actually buying something.

And then once you have all those foundational elements, it’s really about brainstorming those content ideas that are based on the needs of the buyer. Not on what you want to say and what you want to sell, but what they need to do, what they need to learn, to become a better consumer. And then the next steps are really about developing the content, promoting the content online. And then we always, at AvreaFoster, always need to optimize that. So looking back, you know, hopefully a year in, and go, “Okay, what worked last year?” Hey, if we’re getting a lot of traction on a certain guide or a certain topic, let’s do more of that this year and beyond.

Matthew:

It’s funny, you mentioned to me that you have a trick for audience research. Can you tell us about that?

Kenny:

I think learning about the customers is really, really the most important step, right? So you need to help define your ICP, your ideal customer profile. You need to understand their industry, their company size, their revenue, locations, what their job titles are. You can do a lot of different things to do that. You can just do company research. There are a lot of tools out there, like ZoomInfo, or even ChatGPT is a great way to get smart.

But, I call this my easy hack. I just ask a client, “Okay, tell me who are the last 20 prospects who bought your product?” Just give me their names and I’ll go on LinkedIn, and I’ll look at their titles, and you look at the company size. It’s kind of reverse engineering an ICP by just looking at, you know, who’s bought your product in the last year. That’s a really easy thing to do. LinkedIn is a great tool for salespeople, but it’s also a great tool for doing any sort of buyer persona research. It’s an easy way to really get really smart, really fast about who your ICP is.

Dave:

Yeah, so Kenny, drilling into those, you know, ICPs. I mean, the business buyer is becoming more or acting more and more like a consumer. And so the personas of those individuals we need to be intimately aware of, how do they buy? What are their concerns? Kind of help us understand the importance of those personas in this whole game of content development.

Kenny:

I think buyer personas are really important. You really need to get into the mindset of that buyer, right? It’s a fictional representation of who your buyer is. So we often create, you know, we might name them. We might find a photo of them. Here’s their age, here’s their title, here’s their behavioral patterns, here’s maybe where they live, here’s their favorite brands, right? There might be some really cool things that we can do to kind of build those personas, bringing those to life.

Buyer personas are not new. We do them all the time. It’s a really important step. We’ve gotten so fast and efficient about creating them. It’s really important to build those out so buyer personas are not necessarily new. We’ve just gotten so much better and more efficient on how to build them. We have tools like, I said, ZoomInfo or Salesforce or HubSpot, that can help you build these buyer personas. But it’s really important to get those personas established before you do anything else. It’s really step one. It’s the foundation. Once you start building a content marketing strategy, you have to start with the first building block is those buyer personas.

Dave:

Got it. So once those are established, you know, we talk about our buyer’s journey of our customer’s customer. So obviously, like you mentioned, I mean, buyer personas are critical to getting it right in terms of what type of content to write. But our buyer personas go through a customer journey or a buying journey. Help us understand how to map that once you have that established to that buyer journey.

Kenny:

Like I mentioned, it’s really important that the first step is building that persona. And the next step is figuring out, okay, here’s the person you’re targeting, the committee you’re targeting. Now let’s figure out the steps it takes to get from awareness to consideration to decision. So this is where we really collaborate with our clients.

Oftentimes, you might even get the salespeople on the phone. Because the salespeople are on the frontlines, they understand the time it takes to get people, move people through the journey. So every client is different, but it’s really important to outline the steps it takes. Like I mentioned, there’s always these three steps. There’s awareness, consideration and decision, and each one of those steps typically has a different type of content.

So in the awareness stage, it’s very high level. You’re helping the buyer get smarter. So that might include things like trend reports or white papers or explainer videos — that top of that funnel, that really kind of awareness phase. Each step of the buyer’s journey is different, right? So, each step has a different type of content need. So in, for example, an awareness — this is when people are really learning about your product, or trying to get smart about just the industry in general. So the topics or the content types in the awareness stage might include those really high-level trend reports or white papers or explainer videos.

When it gets farther down the funnel we’re talking about consideration, those might include how-to guides or infographics or those product demos. And then when folks are really getting to that decision phase, when they’re really comparing your solution against maybe one or two others. That’s where you have those case studies, showing them how your product has worked for similar companies, and testimonial videos and the side-by-side comparison. So understanding the buyer’s journey and the buyer persona actually helps us map out what those content types need to be throughout that journey.

Dave:

Okay, Kenny, so you’ve talked to us about audience research. You’ve talked to us about ICP. You’ve talked to us about buyer personas. You’ve talked to us about the journey of that buyer. How do you then take all of that that you’ve learned and turn it into content? The reason we ask this is because, right or wrong, a lot of times we’re asked just, this is some content out there, and it’s not grounded in any kind of strategy, or it’s not grounded, you know, specific needs of that target audience. So how do you take all that and then, you know, translate that into the content itself?

Kenny:

Yeah, this is again, a very collaborative process with the client. Again, maybe bringing in the sales team, picking their brains, doing some interviews, But typically, I like to organize things into what we call content pillars. So what are the three biggest challenges on this buyer’s plate? What are the things that they need to learn, to know, to understand, to unpack, to become a better consumer.

And then from there, we can actually organize content types under those pillars. So really, I think it really starts with those pillars, those big themes. I’m a big fan of doing things in threes, so let’s find three things that the prospect needs to learn about. And then let’s organize all the types of topics that we can put under those themes. And once we have those themes, then we can start assigning, okay, this would be a great infographic, or this would be a great blog, or this would be a great testimonial video or explainer video. So it really comes down to organizing topics, finding that structure, but then adding a layer of creativity on top of that.

Dave:

So Kenny, you talk about these content pillars. Obviously, a lot of resources and research goes into the development of content. And of course, you know, goodness AI is everywhere. It’s so overused, I think we’re kind of tired of it at this point. But at the same time, we use it. So help us understand, you know, how we use it and where we shouldn’t use it.

Kenny:

Gen AI and ChatGPT in general, is a great tool just to get a lot of content ideas, really fast. So it’s all about prompting, right? Today, the best AI engineers are the ones that understand how to use chat GPT to its fullest potential, and it comes down with those those prompts.

So, you know, oftentimes I’ll put: Hey, I am an insert client. I’m a healthcare, health tech pioneer, and I’m looking to target hospital administrators or procurement folks at mid-sized hospitals. Give me some topics that they are interested in and give me 30. And oftentimes they’ll spit out 30 topics, and some of them will be relevant, some of them won’t. So it’s really a volume game. So it’ll give you a lot of these topics.

We need to understand, are these topics relevant? We need to pressure test them. Oftentimes, we’ll bring a bunch of ideas to our clients and go, “Hey, do these seem right?” And there’s always an adjustment phase. But what ChatGPT does, and just AI in general, it helps you build a volume of topic ideas at a rapid pace. And then we, as content strategists and writers and digital strategists, can then mold those into something that feels like it’s the voice of our client or our client’s brand. So ChatGPT is a great tool to have. It doesn’t do your job for you, but it is a tool to help you get smart really fast.

Matthew:

Can you dive a little deeper? I know some listeners may know, but some may not. Can you talk about the development of content? Who does what, where, where does each puzzle piece fit into this scenario?

Kenny:

Yeah, so I’m a writer by trade. I’m a creative director at AvreaFoster but my heritage is in writing. And that’s typically where content starts, is with a writer. So a writer has to decide what those topics are — working with a digital strategist, working with a brand manager, working with the client, and typically, 90% of the time, we start with blogs.

So blogs are the easiest thing to build. Typically, we want to get a content strategy in market. Blogs are the easiest thing to write and build and put on a website. So that’s typically where we start. And we might write a guide or a script for an explainer video, right?

It really typically starts with writing — collaborating with the client, understanding what needs to go in all of these pieces of content.

So it’s really important to have a team of writers that understands the subject matter, understands the audience, understands their pain points. That’s why writers are kind of the core part of the content marketing strategy. And oftentimes, AvreaFoster works with our clients in a lot of different ways. Sometimes we do all the writing, right? We have a team of writers here that can do all the things. We can write blogs. We can write scripts. We can work with, you know, production teams to build videos.

Some of our clients have in-house writers. Or we might ghostwrite something. Or they might interview someone and write a blog on their behalf. So it really is a mix of both. That’s typically how it starts. So that’s from a writing perspective.

But looking beyond writing, there’s an extended team that helps bring this all together, right? It’s not just me. I’m really good at writing, but I could not design a website to save my life. So we bring in web developers to create blog posts and blog pages. We bring in designers to create infographics. We bring in videographers and web developers to bring content to life and bring these videos to life. It starts with writing and starts with the idea and the topics, but then we have to extend that team and really use that team to build all this content.

Obviously, in today’s digital world, content is going to live online. The vast majority of content that we build for our clients lives on their website. So it’s really important to have the web strategy and the content strategy align. Because if we build all this content and we have nowhere to house it, it becomes really challenging. So one of our other writers here, Jon Cannon, wrote a really good blog on this topic. It’s called “web tune up” and it provides a checklist of… Hey, before you even start a content strategy, make sure your website is ready.Make sure there’s places on the website that you can organize it. And if you’re going to create videos and blogs and guides, you need to make sure that there’s an easy way to find those on your site. It’s also about page load speeds and SEO recommendations and internal linking strategies.

So there’s a whole backend part. If anyone’s interested in learning more, definitely go to AvreaFoster’s blog page and you can learn more about how to bring that website, that web strategy and your content strategy to life.

Matthew:

Yeah, and I think people are slowly starting to realize out there that it’s a lot of parts and pieces to make up content marketing and development, and once you have all of the content developed, what comes next?

Kenny:

This is the part that’s probably most akin to traditional advertising, right? So say we have a video or a guide or a blog post or an infographic. The goal is to promote it, right? So this is where we actually create advertising that might live on your website, or your social channels. Hey, I have a great blog post. I need to promote it, typically on LinkedIn or Facebook or even on Instagram. Nowadays, everyone’s promoting everything, everywhere. That’s really the  cheapest and most efficient place to promote your content  — on your own, owned channels, so organic promotion.

But looking beyond that, for a lot of our clients, we’re building massive content strategies, and we’re investing a lot of time and money into these pieces of content. So we need to go out and actually find people out in the world that are searching for that content.

The easiest, most basic place is just starting with search. So that’s where we partner with our digital strategist and develop a search strategy that aligns with our content. And then we start laying in other channels. So in the B2B world, LinkedIn is kind of the gold standard. Most business people are going to be on LinkedIn, so promoting and putting ads on LinkedIn, they can be static ads or carousel ads or animated ads.

So this is probably my favorite part, because it’s really back to the heritage of building campaigns. But there’s also, like I said, Facebook and Instagram. Yes, we’re targeting businesses, but we’re also targeting people. Every person is on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook, so putting ads that get eyeballs back into your content on all of those social media platforms is really important.

If you’re doing any sort of video content. Surprisingly, YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google. That’s a pretty surprising statistic. So if you’re doing any sort of video content, it really needs to live on YouTube. There’s also some other channels. There’s content syndication, where you can actually pay to promote your blogs on, you know, cnn.com or espn.com. You can promote content in a lot of different places where your customers might be. There’s partnerships with trade publications, there’s digital display ads. So there’s just a lot of different places, typically digital. Every once in a while, we might promote content in a print form. It’s pretty rare nowadays. It’s mostly digital.

So there are a lot of different places where we can promote content and our digital strategies. Caitlin does a really good job of understanding the audiences, knowing the channels out there, and she wrote a really good blog. It’s called the eight essential B2B digital channels on our site that I think is really important for any B2B market to look at. So she’s really smart about figuring out how to get this content in front of the eyeballs that we need to get in front of.”

And lastly, I think what we do really well at AvreaFoster is really optimize. Our plan is to do content marketing in these 90-day sprints. So we’ll put content out there for 90 days. Every 30 days, we look at it and figure out, okay, which ads are working the best, what content is really driving the most traffic. And we do a really good job of kind of shifting the focus and pivoting and calibrating our strategy as needed. Like with any campaign, there’s always optimization.

Matthew:

Which I appreciate, because we do it for ourselves on our end, and there’s always a need for a pivot or change, and we always appreciate it on the sales side.

Dave:

So Kenny, any final thoughts? It can be a complex structure to put all this together. But at the same time, you know, we’ve got a methodology here at AvreaFoster that carries us through this pretty much the same way, every time. Every client’s different. Every client has a different persona, and ICP and marketplace and, you know, industry sector and those kinds of things. But all in all, it’s pretty much followed the same way. Any thoughts?

Kenny:

Yeah, it’s interesting. Agency life, whether you’re working in a B2B agency or a traditional agency, or any sort of agency, you need to have a structure and you need to have creativity. So at AvreaFoster, we have a very defined process about how we do everything. But then we have to add a layer of creativity that always is changing. We always have to look at trends. We always need to look at what’s working and what’s not working.

When it comes to content marketing there’s really four things that I like to think about. We need to remember: it’s less about selling and more about educating. There’s a quote from a content marketing expert, and it says, “Content marketing is like a first date. If you only talk about yourself, you’ll never have a second one.”

So you have to remember that, right? It’s a different world. You can’t just go out there and shout and scream about how great your product is. You really need to have a one-on-one conversation, because oftentimes these relationships have to be nurtured over months to sometimes years.

Another key principle is thinking of content marketing as a commitment. It’s not a campaign, right? Yes, campaigns are part of it. We do, like I said, we do 90-day campaigns all the time. But it’s a commitment. You can’t stop doing it. You can repurpose content and you can rethink content. But the world of B2B is always changing, so you always need to make sure to think a couple steps ahead.

And then, always staying ahead on digital. In today’s B2B world, content marketing is, the vast majority, is going to happen on digital channels. So as we all know, digital has changed a lot. I had no idea what ChatGPT was a year ago, and now I use it daily in my work. So digital, staying on top of digital trends is vitally important.

And at the end of the day, it’s all about telling stories in your own unique voice. Because every brand needs to establish their voice first, and then you need to tell those stories through your content in that voice. So it’s really important to understand your voice and make sure that the people on your content team understand that voice, too, and tell stories in a way that really represents you and your brand.

Matthew:

Awesome. Well, Kenny, we really appreciate it. You bring a unique perspective to the content and not only the content marketing world, but the agency life. So we really appreciate you spending the time and talking through.

Dave:

Yeah, thank you, Kenny.

Kenny:

Thank you for having me.

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