Your Go-To Guide for B2B Content Promotion

Missing Out on Impact: Too Little Content Promotion

Once companies realize how valuable a library of helpful, industry-specific content can be, they quickly jump on the content bandwagon. Creating excellent, high-quality content is a path to great marketing strides, but there is no reason not to help that content reach people. After all, there is a proverbial "tipping point," where enough people have seen your excellent content that your website traffic begins to grow exponentially rather than in a linear fashion. MarketingProfs, for example, found that "many content marketing teams spend 90% of their time on content production and merely 10% on outreach and distribution." Even doubling or tripling one's investment in promotion could drastically change the performance of the posts. Having a good content strategy is essential.

To make the best use of the many hours you spend developing, formatting, and designing content for your company's site, invest time and energy into the promotion of that content. Not only will you take more advantage of the content you already have, you'll get better analytics information as to what direction you should choose for your future content campaigns. Your B2B company works tirelessly to increase traffic, leads, and sales, and excellent content promotion is one of the best ways to make sure more and more traffic comes into your B2B sales funnel.

7 Ways to Fully Use and Promote Your Content

1. Email

Email marketing, as the free path to reach individual leads, remains one of the most effective places to use your content. When you create an e-newsletter for past customers and current leads, you offer a higher value than simply spamming with constant reminders about your product or service. An e-newsletter relies on the strength of your content to draw your customer from the email into the website itself, where your design can continue to move leads through the funnel. If you are going to post new updates, blog posts, or white papers anyway, make sure you are using email in two ways: one, harvest an email address in order to send them larger content offers, like eBooks, and send your list a monthly or quarterly compilation of your new content. You will gain a reputation as a company that cares about excellence for itself, not just for the sales involved.

2. Social Media

Social Media has established a place for many brands to amass their most loyal followers and share excellent information with them in a low-pressure way. By automating a post to your social accounts every time you create a new blog post, you automatically increase the reach and influence of those blog posts. The analytics data on who clicks through from different social media feeds can give you valuable information on whether that social network is valuable to your business, and it can also help you understand what kinds of posts are truly interesting to your fans. You want to give the people what they want!

Another benefit of an active social media page is that you can recycle content at future dates when it will be useful to your clients; if a blog post references taxes for your potential customers, for instance, post on social media about it once a year around the time when people need this information most. Your social media presence gives you the chance to strategically recycle posts and generate further leads from the same content. 

3. Paid Social

Social Media Marketing allows for excellent market segmentation and audience selection at this point in the game, but you still are working with fairly savvy internet customers; they don't always like or want to view ads pushing an overtly sales-y message. By promoting engaging, relevant content, you offer your audience relevant content that is helpful and addresses their pain points. People are more likely to click on an ad for "5 Ways to Improve Your Paid Social Marketing" than a "Request a Demo." When your paid social post looks exactly like someone's News Feed, except for that little "sponsored" word, you will engage your readers far more intensively. 

4. Paid Search

Yes, you can use PPC search engine advertisements to promote straight to the purchase process, but many customers aren't ready to purchase instantly when they click over to your site after searching. They want to get to know your company first, so use your excellent, thoughtful content to bridge the gap between a searcher's openness and curiosity and the moment of deciding to buy. If your customer is, for instance, evaluating CRM software and figuring out which one to buy, use your paid search options to share content that discusses the best, must-have features for a CRM, even as they gently advocate your own brand. Paid search helps you find the people who need a problem solved, so give them the next content they need to move toward solving the problem. Paid search has the advantage of appearing at the top of the first page of search results, and given that a study by Chitika revealed that 95% of searchers don't click to Page 2, it pays to be on the front page!

5. Display Ads

Display ads that retarget your customers can be for your particular product, which is often a very valuable method of getting customers who have moved on to return to consider your product/service again, but you can also share your content this way. When customers realize that the advertisement doesn't immediately put them into a commitment to purchase, they often let their guard down: they do, after all, want to ready your whitepaper on industry trends this year, and what could it hurt? The better your content is at offering real, helpful, and unique information, the more people will trust your flashy display ads to lead them somewhere useful. 

6. Guest Posting

Especially in industries where showing thought leadership bodes well for sales, consider repurposing your content to create guest posts. Popular industry trade publications or general small business and financial magazines online welcome guest posts, and your willingness to write engaging content for them offers you the opportunity to link back to your own library of valuable information. It's just another way to get the word out that your site exists, and that you are providing a product or service that can be of use to those readers. Guest posting is all about finding the right venue, where a huge percentage of the readers will be in your target market; take plenty of time to evaluate this aspect, because 2 well-placed guest posts outperform 200 in random corners of the internet. Neil Patel has cited guest posting as "the most effective inbound marketing strategy," and offers a variety of case studies of success in this arena; with more people pouring more money into content marketing, getting your content read is more important than ever!

7. PR Pitching

When you have a product launch, event, or rebrand that is truly newsworthy, it is worth your while to craft some thoughtful pitches to news outlets, especially journalists who cover a beat that is relevant to your product/service. Even when they cannot immediately use your pitch, journalists like to have their finger to the pulse of what is happening in their industry niche. When they know the big highlights of what is coming up for your company, they can incorporate that knowledge into other articles they may write, offering you exposure and drawing more people back to the content you've created. 

Don't "set it and forget it" when you launch an excellent new content package; promote your content and make sure plenty of people see it! Remember that building great content keeps your readers engaged, but drawing readers to the content is an equally essential step in the process.

Beacon Digital Marketing understands what it takes to make your website and brand stand out in a sea full of competitors. We can help you develop and maintain a website that speaks for your brand and inspires your audience. You have visions, goals, and dreams for your company and website. Let us help you make those dreams a reality and bring your vision to life! Contact us.

Do you have any questions about promoting content on your site or blog? Let us know in the comments below!