Sales is an art, not a science.

This phrase implies that there is no right or wrong way to make sales.

Consider Apple—Other than producing pathbreaking and innovative consumer electronics, such as the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and others, Apple is known for its incredible marketing, right?

One campaign included using images clicked by users supported by a caption that simply read “Shot on iPhone.”

That’s it. One image. One caption.

Sure, being the most valued company by market capitalization in the world helps them sell. Still, they indulge in some of the most creative ad and marketing campaigns, most of which include clean minimalistic designs and content approaches.

Apple doesn’t need too much content to convince and convert customers.

However, not every brand, like Apple, can convert potential customers this way. This is why they double down on content marketing strategies to influence leads and drive sales, but this process comes with its own set of challenges, particularly in B2B marketing.

You can’t just put content out there and expect it to be the reason businesses buy your products and services. Especially not in our digital age, where producing winning content is a major driving force for lead gen and sales. Your content has to be unique because generic content is found to be a dime a dozen.

This is what we’re here to explore—where businesses go wrong with their B2B content and how they can fix this.
 

Why Does Most B2B Content Not Convert?

Whether it's B2C or B2B content, the buying decision is made by a human being in the end.

In the case of B2B marketing, it becomes an even longer and tumultuous process as numerous individuals are involved. In fact, Cognism reports that the typical buyer group for a B2B solution involves 6–10 individual decision-makers!

If your content isn’t relatable to even one of them, it could hamper your chances of conversion. However, at the same time, you can’t overload your prospects with content just to address every possible angle.

Meanwhile, if your competitors are keeping up with trends and consistently updating their content to meet customer expectations, they’ll end up convincing the lead to go with them instead.

So, what are the top errors businesses are making with B2B content?

• Flawed Content Strategy

  It’s possible your content strategy is not aligned with the prospects’ needs and preferences. You could be missing the mark simply because you are unable to connect with your potential audience and deliver your message in a clear and effective manner.
  
  If you fail to tailor B2B content as per your target audience, you’ll miss conveying the benefits of your product effectively. Speak the language your audience understands!
  
  Alternatively, you may not be providing them with relatable insights but instead rehashing information they already know, failing to deliver a unique perspective or actionable advice.
  
  This forms one of the biggest reasons businesses fail at content marketing—failure to address domain-specific challenges or pain points.

• Brand Identity Crisis

  Consistency is key. Anywhere and everywhere.
  
  Businesses often forget the importance of maintaining consistent messaging across marketing channels, which instead confuses prospective customers and weakens the brand identity.
  
  In such cases, businesses fall short of convincing their ideal target audience, resulting in leads of poor quality. Imagine the sales team chasing one type of customer, while the marketing team is designing campaigns for another set of customers.
  
  Moreover, the lack of consistent brand content portrays the business as one that lacks authority, credibility, or even expertise in its domain.

• Overselling Your Product

  Businesses often resort to overselling their product rather than focusing on its benefits.
  
  See, if you’re selling packaged drinking water to someone who is thirsty, they’re not going to care about the shape of the bottle or label designs. However, telling them that the water hails from the cleanest freshwater source is thoroughly filtered and includes essential minerals would be more effective.
  
  Brands tend to focus more on the technical details of their product rather than highlighting tangible benefits for customers. This results in the brand alienating the customers and driving them away, likely to a competitor who isn’t overselling.

• Weak Call-To-Action (CTA)

  Once you’ve got the attention of potential customers, it’s important to drive them to perform an action. This could be done either by acquiring their contact information, urging them to make a purchase, or scheduling a demonstration.
  
  Of course, your call-to-action (CTA) may vary depending on the type of content and target business. Yet, using CTAs that do not urge single, direct action might confuse and disinterest potential customers.
  
  For example, if while selling packaged drinking water, a thirsty customer asks to purchase the bottle, but instead your CTA asks them to enter their contact information to ensure a seamless home delivery, you’re likely to lose the customer. Alternatively, if your CTA informs them that by purchasing right away, they can get a 10% discount, they’ll think of you as someone who’s ready and able to quench customers’ thirst.
  
  Essentially, your CTAs must be direct and align with where the customer is in the buying journey. Even without obvious actions, they shouldn’t be left hanging.

• Not Staying Updated

  Sales is a constantly evolving sector, and another major reason businesses fall short is not adapting to changing consumer trends. Failure to keep up with evolving requirements, preferences, and behavior can result in stale, uninspiring content.
  
  Additionally, resisting the use of the latest technology has become a paramount reason for dwindling content performances. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), many content processes can be automated, such as content performance analysis, campaign effectiveness, personalized content, etc.
  
  By employing the best practices, businesses can ensure their B2B content strategy garners the best possible results.
  
  Read on and explore how you can fix the aforementioned errors in your B2B content strategies!

 

How To Fix B2B Content That Doesn’t Convert

 

There are a few tricks that businesses can use while designing their B2B content strategy to maximize audience reach and conversion. Quite often, these begin with getting the basics right—something that businesses occasionally overlook.

• Identify Your Target Audience

  We know this might sound rudimentary, but before designing your B2B content strategy, you must understand the ideal businesses you should be targeting and who you should not. You may want to sell packaged drinking water to people who possess water purifiers, but they’re simply not going to buy it.
  
  You can’t just pick a target and throw all you have at it. You have to analyze your product or service to find your niche business buyers, understand the buyer personas, and target them by positioning yourself as a domain expert.
  
  Once you identify who you’re selling to, you must be aware of their pain points and challenges, understand their decision-making processes, and craft the best way to approach them. Understanding the roles you’re selling to, their motivations, aspirations, challenges, and goals will position you as a problem solver.

• Build Credible Content

  Once you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to engage with them. For this, you’re going to need to create diverse B2B content pieces such as advertisements, white papers, blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies, and others.
  
  These should be informative, engaging, and relevant, while providing solutions to industry-specific challenges. Build it with valuable insights with data-driven analysis and offer unique perspectives that portray your business as an expert or thought leader with credible backing.
  
  Remember, clear and concise content resonates with your target audience, which includes strong CTAs that seamlessly direct potential customers to the next step (as we saw above).
  
  The main goal is to create content that can be distributed and promoted across a wide range of channels and platforms, such as social media, email marketing, podcasts, webinars, industry publications, and more.

• Analyze Your Competitors

  It’s important to know what your competitors are up to, the kind of content they are delivering, across which platforms, and what strategies are working for them. You can then experiment by building on their ideas, adding your unique selling aspects, and maybe even getting ahead of them.
  
  This doesn’t just apply to successful competitors, as even ones that aren’t doing well may provide you with innovative insights.
  
  For example, imagine your competitor is trying to sell packaged drinking water to consumers of fresh fruit juices; they may not see successful sales. However, you could reach out to the business selling fruit juice and sell your recycled water bottles, reducing their costs and giving you eyeballs in front of an audience your competitor was trying to convert.
  
  Similarly, analyzing competitors’ content can give you unique opportunities to position yourself as a trusted brand, boosting your brand recognition.

• Leverage Digital Technology

  It’s no secret that AI technology is raising industry standards with its vast array of benefits, including boosting productivity, reducing turnaround time, streamlining content workflows, reducing costs, and enhancing business operations.
  
  This applies to B2B content marketing as well, where AI helps businesses create hyper-personalized experiences. It’s vital that B2B content marketers embrace AI tools to stay ahead of competitors and meet customer expectations for highly tailored content.
  
  Plus, businesses must also ensure that their B2B content is optimized for mobile devices, as decision-makers may interact with your content on the go. Here, you should ensure short, concise paragraphs, with mobile-friendly formatting that ensures plenty of white space.
  
  Next is SEO, a key component of being discovered online and commanding a healthy digital position. It plays a crucial role in helping your B2B content marketing strategies succeed. Also, leveraging diverse internal and external links can boost your search engine ranking.
  
  However, steer clear of keyword stuffing—Don’t overdo (and oversell) it!

• Test, Refine, And Monitor Your Content

  Once your B2B content strategies are executed and marketing campaigns are live, you may think it’s the end of the road. It’s not.
  
  You must measure the results of each B2B campaign to ascertain its success, generally by tracking key performance indicators, such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversion rates.
  
  This also helps determine which aspects of the content strategy work and which to improve or adjust. This step includes running A/B tests for elements such as headlines, CTAs, visuals, outreach channels, social media platforms, and others.
  
  Here, too, you can leverage digital technologies to analyze the performance of your B2B content and continuously improve to craft content that engages, convinces, and converts!

 

To Sum Up

Creating high-converting B2B content requires a strategic approach that aligns with the audience’s needs, maintains brand consistency, and delivers clear messaging. Here, businesses should avoid common pitfalls like weak CTAs, overselling, and outdated content.

Identifying the most ideal target audiences, refining B2B content strategies, and embracing AI can considerably enhance content effectiveness, coupled with leveraging digital technologies for data-driven insights. You must also test, refine, monitor, and optimize B2B content to ensure relevance and engagement as the digital landscape evolves.

Are you looking to supercharge your B2B content marketing strategies? Contact TechDogs today and learn how to succeed in B2B marketing!