From small businesses to big companies, content marketing has become an essential element in today’s leading generation strategy. If you do it right, it will build a brand image and create a close relationship between you and your customer. But the last thing you need to do is crank out a blog post, e-book, or another inefficient resource – this will not only waste your time but also drive away potential customers.
Creating compelling, strong content and engaging prospects is essential for businesses that hold many books, webinars, and entire conferences to accelerate marketing and sales professionals from around the world. To help customers and engineers create content that learns more about your company’s industrial products and services, ensure to follow the best practices below.
Besides being the best way to connect with potential customers, content is essential (literally) for SEO and improves your position in search engines. It also allows for further development of the brand. Ask yourself: What do you want to know about your business? What tone and messsage do you want to convey to your prospect?
1. Start with a clear goal and plan
Is your end result is that as many customers as possible will contact you or attract more qualified customers? Do you want to promote core product line or increase your reputation in the new market? Defining these goals will help you understand your audience better and thus strengthen your content.
All development initiatives should have a clear plan. For each new material, any sketches you will make to help in the creative process. If it is a blog, which SEO keywords direct your writing? Who is the audience? Which service would you promote?
Determining who makes the content, when you create it, who sets different channels for promotion, and so on. Successful content should be broadcast regularly. Whether you are blogging every day, week, or month, a regular schedule provides familiarity and perhaps foresight among customers. The same thing goes for social media. Make it a usual part of your routine, set reminders, and stick to yourself.
2.Understand what your customers want
Do you want your audience to feel casual, formal, conversational, technical, or something different? Choose a tone and style that makes sense for your corporate brand and resonates with your audience.
During the buying process, consider what kind of people you are communicating with or coming into the market. These different roles need to target people – or represent your ideal customer based on their shopping habits and current market research.
Manufacturers and industrial companies typically target purchasing managers, MROs, and engineers. Think about top priorities, stress points, and general shopping habits. When developing content, keep these characteristics in mind as if you were talking directly to them. As we read content that is specific to them and meets their individual needs, these people – and people behind them – will be able to interact with your content and business more efficiently.
Content marketing works best if you are not the subject. Talk about industry, technology, trends, and solutions. The goal is to help educate and entertain others. Be serious about yourself and your content and avoid giving information about people to whom they do not belong.
Content themes should count with your prospects. If content is not relevant to their business and goals, then it is not of quality. To create content relevant to your audience, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and consider the following:
- Does the content answer the customers’ most frequently asked questions?
- Is this content relevant to my audience?
- Is the content designed to solve customer problems?
If you cannot find answers to these three questions, your content is not a mark of relevance. Keep in mind the daily feedback received from customers. What problems do they have, and do they come to you to solve? It is likely that others in your market will face similar challenges – this will provide an opportunity to solve their problems through content marketing.
3. Communicate real benefits
Your content should benefit your audience in some way – communicate it with a clear title.
How to come up with thoughts and titles on this topic:
Helpful hints or tips: What suggestions can your business give customers to improve processes or lead time? How can you make their work easier and faster without sacrificing quality?
Promotional Items or Mandatory Sales: Provide your readers with the information they can use to make positive changes in their daily lives.
Practical tips and trends: What have you learned in your day-to-day business or industry that can be valuable? Can they share it with others in their network?
If you’re writing something about an expert, you’re promoting your self-paced play – and you’re least likely to reach writer’s block. Personalization is supreme for a lead generation strategy, so tell a story that shows your audience that you understand your world. It is easy for potential customers to see that your business is committed to value creation.
4. Find a marketer who understands your industry
It cannot be easy to find creative people who understand your products and services. If you are looking to start implementing content marketing for your business, we recommend that you build relationships with a few selected freelancers (especially if your marketing budget is low) as marketers have a better understanding of your business. Always be prepared to spend some time with them to review your plan with the guidelines that follow to understand your needs and communicate appropriately to the brand.
With someone who knows your industry, you have the right knowledge and tools to present your company to the right audience and customers.
5. Advertise the most effective form of content
You need to try different types of content to find out which ones are most effective in reaching your target audience. It’s not for everyone, so try to have fun with it – no one always wants to read the same thing!
Instead of the usual blog posts, try some list formats or Q&A interviews. Instead of a standard e-book, test detailed instructions or infographics.
The more interesting your content, the more committed you are to your content and business.
No construction company is very specialized in content marketing. Some readers could be interested in learning more about your specialty, occupation, and offers. Today’s B2B shoppers are digitally native and expect content to be available on-demand optimized for any device, interactive and highly visual – plus 74% of shoppers choose the agent who first added value and insight is. The best practice is to take advantage of the strength of your services, but not to do too much self-promotion.
Characteristics of quality materials for industrial companies
Different content have different lengths
When creating informative content, many people tend to last longer and include as much text as possible in each content. The problem with this approach is that it is not always better. Your website, blogs, and e-books must have the depth to meet quality criteria, but the length varies depending on the subject. Long-form content with a mixture of CTAs within the post and not just positive results and leadership at the end, so we use at least 600 words for blog posts (good length for SEO) and stand out. E-books or white papers aim at more than 1,200 words.
Ensure that you include enough information to provide value to your reader (and optimize for search engines), but you don’t want to lengthen your pieces so long that your reader loses interest by half. “Too long, unread” constant fear is a significant consideration in content development.
Expand long text pages with graphics, images, and multimedia capabilities to break up text and keep your site visitors on the page longer. See the example of text below, which teaches visitors about high-performance content in aeronautics with unique graphic drawings.
Sharing quality content is easy
In today’s social media thinking environment, many have thought first of sharing content created by others to fill a quantitative gap – but it is not unique. We have prepared a list of social media accounts and hashtags that you need to follow to get more inspiration for your own account.
Blogs posting once a month can only be posted once a day, along with blogs, even if they are of high quality. Imagine writing an e-book that exposes the properties and qualities of the content. You can be an instructor if done well – even if the content specializes in your area of expertise. But suppose you are always connected to other sites instead of creating in-house information. In this situation, you end up sharing someone else’s content – and there is a risk that they are getting your leads. Quality content gives a new impetus to the current issue, rather than copying what is already there.
6. Take quality content to the next level with video
Today, the power of video conferencing and video advertising helps businesses stay in touch with customers and sell despite the economic consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic and travel restrictions. Support the written content on the website with videos to show your products more fully and to visit your factory.
Videos help to increase revenue because:
- Video gets 66% more qualified annual leads
- With video marketing efforts, brand awareness can increase up to 54%
- 95% of video messages are live, while only 10% reads text
- 89% of viewers are likely to buy a product after watching a video about the product