Why Content Marketing for B2B, Plus How-To Tips B2B companies typically sell to a niche market (or markets) and know their customers well.
And that's a huge advantage, because knowing what makes your prospects and customers tick allows you to create quality marketing content (i.
e.
, business-relevant communications) you know they'll appreciate.

How-To Tip #1: Determine the top ten questions prospective buyers ask your sales team, then provide detailed answers to those questions in a series of blog posts or informational videos, or in an Ebook.

The B2B buying cycle is prolonged; often weeks, months, or even years in duration; which affords marketers the opportunity to communicate repeatedly with their prospects and, in the process, deepen the buyer-seller relationship.
Bear in mind however, that achieving this depends entirely on creating marketing content that's viewed by recipients as helpful and useful.

How-To Tip #2: Create an editorial calendar that's aligned with the typical buying cycle.
Indicate on that timeline when to share specific pieces of content, to fulfill the information needs of prospects at progressive stages of their decision-making process.

Prospective buyers usually appreciate being updated on relevant industry news and developments.
Marketers can do their prospects a big favour (that won't go unnoticed) by consistently providing them with the latest and best information.
Yes this takes time, resources, and continuous effort, but isn't the potential payoff worth it?

How-To Tip #3: Research and gather (curate) content from other sources, add your own thoughts and opinions, then put it all together and share it with your community monthly.
In Content Marketing, consistency and continuity are the keys to building traffic and marketing momentum.

Best Practices

• If you're not exactly sure where or how to get started, here's a suggestion:
• define a single objective based on the interests and information needs of your target audience.
  Make a list of relevant topics and pick one to develop content around, then select a publishing format that seems most appropriate (try asking your customers which publishing format(s) they prefer).
  Create content and distribute it to your community on a recurring basis.
  
• Create content that's about what you know, rather than what you sell.
  Your knowledge, of itself, offers value to others and portrays you as a thought leader and trusted advisor -- not just someone who's out to "make a sale".
  
• Don't try to do it all yourself.
  Business blogging, for example, must be frequent and continuous to maximize online search-ability, improve search result rankings, and build a following.
  To distribute the workload, identify latent writers within your organization and then motivate them to contribute to your effort.
  Also, consider hiring a freelance marketing writer to help ramp up your content assets.
  
• Maximize online exposure, presence, and reach.
  Find out what social media sites your customers and prospects visit, then mobilize your organization to become active in those online communities: listening, learning, contributing to the conversation, and forging new business relationships.
  

Oftentimes the smaller B2B companies--and sometimes larger ones too--have regarded marketing endeavours beyond a basic website and business cards as unnecessary.
But the internet and social web have dramatically altered sales and marketing--enabling awareness building, discussion and information gathering, brand building, business development, and marketing communication to happen so predominantly online--that even the smallest companies should get their content mojo on and join the party.
For more information, be sure to read two additional articles I've written on this interesting topic:

Content Marketing - What It Is and Why Companies Should Be Doing It and Content Marketing - Publishing Formats That Spell Sales and Marketing Success

You might also want to reference C.
C.
Chapman's blog at www.
cc-chapman.
com/blog/.