Image Source: Pixabay
There’s a lot of opportunity in Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing, especially since young leaders and buyers are now the decision-makers in many companies. With this in mind, now is the time to reevaluate your strategy to ensure it’s still impactful.
Your review process should start with content. Business leaders are especially attracted to intelligent, robust content creation. They better understand your brand and the value you can bring to their business through it.
That said, many B2B brands are still falling short with content and missing out on opportunities to grow their engagement and sales. If you have content gaps in your B2B marketing strategy, here’s how to identify them.
Table of Contents
Analyze Customer and Marketing Data
Analyzing customer and marketing data is one of the first steps to identifying your content gaps.
You need to see what’s been working and what hasn’t regarding the content you’re putting out. You also need to determine if the content you’re publishing is what your customers actually want.
Comb through the data you’ve collected about content performance on your marketing channels.
Study the content that’s getting the most engagement and make notes on why you think that is. Do the same for the content that isn’t performing.
After this, work through your data on your customers, specifically what you’ve learned about their content preferences. Is what you’re doing aligning with what you know about the content they like and engage with the most?
In addition to analyzing customer and marketing data, examine your buyer’s journey.
Examine the Buyer’s Journey
Digging into the buyer’s journey is essential for identifying content gaps in your strategy. You want to see the connection between your content and how people are moving through their journey with your business.
- Where are potential buyers leaving in your buyer’s journey most?
- What kind of content is associated with those drop-off points?
You may find that you don’t have good content at these points. So not only have you identified potential content gaps, but you’ve specified a possible reason for the exits.
Once you’ve gotten some insight about where the holes in your content exist from your data and buyer’s journey, it’s a good idea to consider common content gaps.
Consider Common Content Gaps
If your data and buyer’s journey analysis didn’t reveal as much as you’d hoped for regarding voids in your content, considering common content gaps may help. Learn from what other B2B marketers have gone through and what they’ve learned.
For example, one of the most underutilized platforms for B2B brands is TikTok. Many marketers think TikTok is all about dance numbers and young users, but business leaders can enjoy social media and short-form video content like anybody else.
So, if you’ve yet to join this platform or dive into creating video content, this could be a huge opportunity in your content and marketing strategy.
Blogs are another overlooked content option in B2B marketing strategies. Of course, there are B2B brands that have put together strong blogs and are quite proficient in terms of B2B blogging — but still many others have yet to tap into this power.
A blog can help you become an authority in your industry and educate your customers on what you can bring to their business. So, if you already have a website but don’t have a blog, there’s a possible content gap.
Email is another area to examine in your B2B marketing strategy. While many B2B brands use email marketing to communicate with their existing customers, this channel can influence relationships with potential customers.
If you don’t have an email newsletter, that could be an opportunity in your marketing content.
Conduct a Marketing Audit
At some point, you have to scrutinize your entire B2B marketing strategy and make notes about the content you’re producing for each channel. In other words, run a marketing audit.
It’s a good idea to conduct your marketing audit over a few days so that it’s not so overwhelming.
Write down detailed answers to the following questions:
- What recommended marketing channels are you missing?
- What results are you getting from the marketing channels you are using?
- What kind of content are you creating on each channel?
- What kind of content aren’t you creating? Why?
- What type of content have you always wanted to make for your audience?
- Do you have the resources to ramp up your content efforts? If not, how can you get there?
- Which channels are you having the most challenging time connecting with your target audience on?
Once you’ve done your marketing audit and clearly understand your content gaps, it’s time to fill them in.
How to Begin Filling in Content Gaps
Identifying content gaps in your B2B marketing strategy is only half the battle. Once you understand where you’re falling short with marketing content, take these steps to fill those holes.
- Create a list of the kind of content you want to create for each marketing channel based on what you’ve learned about your gaps.
- Prioritize the list above based on what channel needs the most help right now and if you have the resources to create the content you want to make.
- Take the first piece of content on your list and give yourself time to create it.
- Give your audience a heads up that you’re trying something new with content so they aren’t startled by the new addition, and then publish it.
- Track the piece of content’s performance and make adjustments as needed.
Conclusion
As hard as it is to know that you’re falling short with content in your B2B marketing strategy, identifying the gaps is critical in getting better results.
Use the tips above to help you determine the holes in your marketing content and take tangible steps to fill them in.
Related posts:
- Best Upsell Emails To Boost Your Revenue - January 26, 2023
- Considering Automation in Your Marketing Process - January 19, 2023
- Content Marketing for the Hospitality Industry - December 8, 2022
Good job here, Luke. Blogging works for me to keep content humming along. The trick is to publish content and build blogger friendships persistently. Creating and connecting fills gaps as you gain exposure to accelerate business success.
Ryan
Relationships really are the secret key to so much marketing and content creation (at least that’s what I think!) I’m super grateful for the site editors I get to collaborate with.
Glad to hear blogging keeps you moving along! Keep publishing and building.
Connecting is very helpful. AnthonyGaenzle.com thrives on the relationships we build with guest bloggers. We don’t accept all submissions, but we’ve built relationships with some very talented folks, and as such, we now have nearly 1000 posts with excellent marketing, blogging, business, advice and more.