Can B2B Content Be Sexy?

Let’s be honest, most marketers believe that B2B content is never going to be as exciting as a luxury retailer’s or a high profile consumer goods brand.  I very much play for the opposition on this topic and believe that while sexy might be a stretch too far, B2B content can be exciting and provoke real interest amongst key influencers online

Big brands such as HP, Lloyds and, of course, Google (Adwords) all produced fantastic business focused content in 2012. So what is it the Selfridges’ of this world have in common with these B2B brands? I believe the answer is not to be found in the audience or products, but in creative people who have the resources to deliver.   With these resources in place, B2B content can be made appealing, innovative and, if I may say so even inspiring. So what are the building blocks?

Build a Personality

Google’s Author Rank is just one example of why individual voices need to be part of your content strategy. Your biggest assets are your people, and using them to  create personal brands will enable the audience to relate to your content. Most importantly, this also gives creative license to brands and reduces the risk falling foul of stringent brand guidelines.

Create a story that illustrates solutions to business problems

One less exciting aspect of content creation is structure. Boring as this can be, you still need to make careful choices. You may want to include a lot of detail about your product or service, but you also need your audience to get to where you need them to be in the ‘story’ and too much detail might put them off. This means that you need to structure an article or whitepaper in such a way that balances detail and readability. You could also consider including a video that shows how much impact a product or service can have on a relevant business.

Visually demonstrates expertise

Content doesn’t have to stop at articles. Look for ways to visually represent the expertise you have or the results you have achieved.  B2B content should demonstrate what your brand is doing and why it is doing it so well. Take our client Experian QAS for example; they have created an infographic to demonstrate how important data quality is to customer experience.

Add Value to your Industry

When writing content, we are always encouraged to ensure we are adding real value to the reader and audience. I believe we have to think beyond that in the B2B sector and actually consider what value is being added to the industry as a whole. What better use for content than to bring original research and new insight to your industry?

Why should we care

Content can convert prospects into a sale and creating that killer content might just be the catalyst that you need. Whether it is to convince key decision makers that you company has authority in the industry, or whether the contentitself used for data acquisition content can build a company’s portfolio.

Creating content for outreach has become a core activity for any online business this year and B2B companies are no different. Building powerful link equity for SEO and consistently talking about the same topics not only builds trust with the audience, but with search engines too.

Through creative and inspiring content, even the most complex and corporate of brands and products can have a personality. It has never been more important to build personal brands within businesses, especially in the B2B sector. Word of mouth is and always will be the most powerful sales tool for B2B companies, so creating approachable and knowledgeable personas will help deliver this.