How to Create a Content Strategy for B2B

21st March 2021

When I speak to B2B companies, I rarely have to convince them that creating a content strategy is something they should be thinking about. Most B2B companies already know that content can bring in leads, increase customer conversion and help them to become a thought leader in the industry.

But where do you start? In this guide, I’ll share how I approach creating a content strategy within B2B. 

What is a B2B content strategy?

I tend to see the term “content strategy” used interchangeably with a whole array of other strategies and business areas. For example, someone may tell me they need a content strategy when actually they just want someone to write articles for their blog, or they’re thinking about creating social media content. The trouble with these strategies is that they start at the end, with the output. A true content strategy starts the other way, first looking at business objectives and then working through to find out what type of content will help fulfil those objectives. 

So, to put it simply, a B2B content strategy is a complete plan that will look at how you can use content to achieve your business objectives. In many cases, the objective will be to attract or convert new customers. In this case, your content strategy would need to review or build audience personas and find the right channels and types of content to attract or convert that target audience. Part of this may include making website or blog changes (or even building one from scratch), looking at SEO research and analysing how competitors have attracted customers, particularly if you’re an early-stage business.

Say you’re further along and already have a steady stream of leads. Then your business objective may be something like “decrease churn”. Here, your content strategy may be to create video content and webinars that help your customers to use your product more effectively.

If your objective is to raise awareness of your brand and stand out in a crowded market, you may want to create a piece of “blockbuster” content, such as a blog series, a docuseries or a PR campaign.

All of these elements can be one part, or all, of your content strategy.

How to create your B2B content strategy

Here are the steps I would take to build out a B2B company’s content strategy and determine which area within content to focus on.

1. Determine your business objectives

Every good content strategy begins with the business objectives. Here I’ll ask the company leaders or marketing team what their aims are, either for that quarter or more generally. Usually, I find that business objectives tend to fall into three key areas:

Once you’ve determined what the key business objective(s) are, you can then begin to look at how content could help. Here, I find that there is usually a different focus area depending on which one of those objectives need to be met:

Sometimes the business objectives may be to meet all of those needs! In which case, you’ll need to prioritise and create a roadmap for which business objective you’ll tackle first. 

2. Work out what “success” will look like

The next step is to decide what “success” would look like in order to meet those business objectives. This is an important step as it allows you to integrate ways to track your content, based on what the objectives are. 

For example, if your business objective is growth, then your content strategy may need to be “increase the number of SQLs, MQLs or business leads that the company receives”. If you’re looking to do this through search ranking, then you may also want to measure how many keywords you rank for in positions 1-10, and how much traffic you receive by organic search. 

If your goal is to build awareness through content, this may be more difficult to quantify. In this instance, you may want to look at how many branded searches there are per month for your company, how much traffic your website receives, or even how much anecdotal feedback there is on how interesting customers found your content. 

Note down how you will measure the success of your content campaign and map this back to the business objectives. Simplified, this may look like:

Business objective: Get more leads for the sales team

How we’ll do that: Build organic search ranking at the top of the funnel 

What success will look like: Higher number of SQLs via organic search and keywords on page 1 of Google for top of the funnel terms

3. Research, planning and ideation

Once you have your business objectives and an idea of what success will look like, you can begin to look deeper into the content marketing area itself. Here, there could be a whole range of tasks you’ll need to complete in order to build your strategy, depending on what the business objectives are and what you’re trying to achieve.

If we continue using the example above – which is a very common type of B2B content strategy – then you’ll need to build an SEO strategy. This comes after determining which type of content you can create to meet your goals and would involve similar steps to the below:

Once you have answers to all of these questions you’ll be in a much stronger position to begin building your roadmap.

4. Create a content roadmap or calendar

The next step is to begin planning what you’re creating, and when. This will be very different depending on how many content priorities you have, the amount of resource, if you have a team or freelance allocation and any self-set or company deadlines. I like to set out content strategies that can be achieved in a quarter. Any longer than this and I find that the business priorities may have changed and the content strategy will have to pivot, or be stopped altogether. Many B2B companies work to quarterly objectives, often using frameworks such as OKRs (objectives and key results) which map to this nicely. 

Here are a few rough areas to think about that will set you up for success within your quarter:

Map out the tasks

Think about what you will need to achieve each task (whitepaper, blog launch, video series) and work through the different stages. This will help you to work out how long the task may take, but will also ensure you have enough time to plan for things like interviews or research, which may rely on others outside of your immediate team. 

At this stage you’ll likely want to bring in a project management type tool. In the past I’ve used everything from Trello, to Asana, to a simple Google Sheet. The vehicle is not really that important; it’s the adoption you’ll need to focus on. It may be tricky, but ensure everyone is in the tool and uses it as a one source of truth.

Image source: Asana.

Review your resources

Now begin to factor in any additional resources you may need. For example, if you’re filming a video series – do you need a videographer, an editor or graphics? If you’re writing up a whitepaper – do you need to interview people to gain quotes?

You will also want to factor in any structural changes that may be needed to help you achieve your content strategy. This might be website changes that will allow you to upload videos, for instance.

Split tasks by priority and team

Lastly, you may have many different content tasks that all need to happen at the same time. If this is the case, it’s worth breaking those projects down into priorities. You may want to have target launch dates for tasks and then prioritise by the nearest deadline, or by importance of project.

5. Start producing content

Great, you’ve laid the groundwork and now it’s time to begin producing! There isn’t much to this step apart from the need to get going and produce the very best content for your strategy. Try to keep momentum and work through the strategy that you’ve spent so long creating.

Too often I see companies begin their SEO strategy, get distracted half way through, and then end up returning a year later trying desperately to execute it again. Stay focused, driven and set your content strategy up to succeed.

6. Review and adjust or continue

Check in and take a bird eye’s view of your strategy throughout the process. With clients I tend to do this at the end of each month, looking at what we’ve achieved and whether we’re on track to hit deadlines.

I also always have an end of quarter review, checking to see if we’ve achieved what we set out to do. At this stage you can then begin to think ahead to next quarter. At this point, you may decide to set a new content strategy to target a different area, or to build on what you’ve achieved in the quarter just past.

Remember that different content projects will take different lengths of time to show results. An SEO strategy produced in October will likely begin to prove fruitful and hit targets in February, whereas a piece of “blockbuster” content may instantly begin showing results. 

Finally, always track and measure your success. Create an end of month content report, share your metrics with business leaders and inspire your team and freelancers to continue, adjust or change their work depending on your results. 

Thanks for reading my guide to creating a B2B content strategy. If this is something you’d like to dig into deeper, I’d love to hear from you on beth@bethgladstone.com.