So, you’ve come up with a topic, done your research, and created a fantastic piece of content, perfectly aligned with your inbound strategy and sure to give readers what they’re looking for. You click that faithful “Publish” button.
And now… you wait for magic to happen, right? Wrong.
It’s true that writing engaging, natural-sounding, informative content is one of the best ways to reach your audience, but it’s not the end of the line! Promotion is just as important when it comes to having a successful B2B content marketing strategy.
Having great content without proper promotion is the equivalent of opening a store in the desert—it doesn’t matter how perfect your products are if people don’t know they exist, let alone where they are and how to get to them. Without promotion, the sands of the Internet will make quick work of burying your content in no time.
So what are the best B2B promotional strategies to help you capitalize on your great content? Let’s take a look.
This one might seem like a given, but plenty of businesses leave traffic on the table by not engaging one of the easiest and most common vehicles for delivering content: email.
With the advent of social media and other communication platforms, email might seem dated, but consider this: a recent study showed that 86% of professionals prefer email as their primary form of business communication. That means if you’re B2B and NOT using email, you’re missing out on a significant chunk of your potential audience.
But beyond preference, it’s also hard to deny that 75% of businesses agreed that email marketing provides “good” if not “excellent” return on investment—and the $44 return on every dollar spent is a clear confirmation. Plus, with a CRM, analytics, and automation, email can quickly become the most efficient and insightful ways to share your content.
Social media
Outside of email, social media is one of the absolute best vehicles for content promotion, and of all the available platforms, LinkedIn is easily one of the most effective—and the numbers back it up. Not only do 80% of social media leads come from LinkedIn, but it’s also 277% more effective than Facebook and Twitter as a visitor-to-lead converter.
Of course, much of that has to do with the fact that LinkedIn was designed to be the hub for professional networking, so it shouldn’t be shocking that a whopping 91% of executives believe it to be the top choice for professionally relevant content, making it a core element of any successful B2B content marketing strategy.
When it comes to social advertising, however, Facebook reigns supreme thanks to over 2 billion active users, 75% of whom access it daily. While inferior to LinkedIn for B2B promotion, it maintains significant exposure value by sheer audience volume alone and offers paid features we’ll touch on below.
While Twitter might not boast the conversion rate of Facebook or LinkedIn, it’s certainly one of the most direct and dynamic ways to engage your audience and it’s ideal for influencer marketing. If executed with proper strategy, including employing relevant hashtags and timing tweets to maximize their visibility, you’ll gain access to a vast audience that extends beyond the restraints of Facebook or LinkedIn.
If you want to take it a step further, you can even sign up for a service like Quuu Promote, which shares your content through hundreds of real social media accounts for a monthly cost.
Community engagement
Social media isn’t the only way you can engage your audience. There are plenty of other community-based resources you can use to your advantage.
Instead of relying on a direct connection with prospects, you can also appeal to a wider body of professionals by joining a content promotion group, which aims to connect those who are interested in or create similar content to help each other cross-promote their posts and widen their respective audiences.
Online communities are another great way to gain access to concentrated groups of your target audience, and many of them exist in platforms you’re likely already using. Some of the best groups can be found on Facebook and LinkedIn, which also make for easy individual connections once you’ve established yourself in the group. Other options include Reddit and Quora, both of which boast significant user-engagement. A simple search for topics you cover will help you choose the largest or most engaged groups to start experimenting with.
Paid marketing
Influencer marketing
Like content sharing communities, leveraging influencers—those who have attained a level of respect, trust, and expertise in a particular online community—is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience.
Outside of taking advantage of a pre-established and tailored network, using influencer marketing does one thing better than any other method: reaching the audience in a more meaningful way.
Influencers have their status because they’ve established trust within their community, which means whatever they share and promote is also received with a similar level of acceptance and interest. If you want to maximize your potential with this approach, aim for those with the best engagement rates, not simply the most followers, as they often provide a greater, more meaningful return.
PPC
Even though influencer marketing has dramatically risen in popularity in recent years, it still hasn’t overcome the number one form of paid marketing: PPC (pay-per-click).
While it does take more investment than some of the free methods above, PPC generates solid ROI and claims a majority of buyer-intent keywords (66%), so it should be no surprise that nearly 65% of people click on Google ads when looking to make a purchase online—and that doesn’t even account for the fact that users that access your site through PPC are 50% more likely to convert than a standard organic search.
Facebook ads
Employing Facebook ads is another way to get your content out there and has some promising statistics of its own. According to a recent survey, as much as 26% of Facebook users who clicked on an ad ended up making a purchase, and even with ad costs on the rise, Facebook’s ad impressions have jumped 21%, making it perfectly viable for getting eyeballs on your website.
Conclusion
When it comes to business, especially B2B content marketing strategy, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. But employing platforms that align with your marketing strategy can go a long way in helping you get more eyeballs on your content. For the best results, learn to take advantage of the unique benefits each platform offers to maximize your return so you can stop making the No. 1 most common mistake and start making your marketing count!
