Content Marketing for BtoB Beginners' Failure Patterns and How to Get Results

Content marketing is effective for BtoB! the pitfalls of

Recently, I often see sites that explain the introduction of content marketing by saying that "BtoB is content marketing" and "Providing content that is valuable to customers is effective in attracting customers."

The field of so-called corporate web marketing has become one of the skills that companies must acquire in order to survive the next decade.
However, because the word "marketing" is a very abstract word, there are many cases where difficult terms are swarming up, leading to high consulting fees, or failure due to starting without a clear understanding.

 

This time, targeting B2B web marketers

• What web marketers and companies tend to fail
• What kind of measures are effective?
• How to use it in conjunction with content marketing for immediate results

I will introduce the points that beginners should keep in mind at least by replacing them with easy-to-understand words.

This article is written for those who

• BtoB sales representative for small and medium enterprises
• Small to medium-sized B2B business managers and their superiors
• Small to medium-sized company owners

What is B2B content marketing?

First of all, do you know what content marketing is? For some reason, I don't quite understand the meaning of italics.

to put it simply

It goes something like this.

To give a concrete example, it is a method of enriching the content of blogs and homepages and having customers come to your company's content.
This article you are reading is also content marketing.
In addition, it is also effective to send information through e-mail magazines and SNS to guide customers to your company's content.

Benefits of content marketing

Content marketing has immeasurable benefits.

① Can be operated at low cost

For example, if you strengthen your company's website or launch a media (blog is often used) that introduces your company's products, you may be able to update the contents only by your company's employees and part-time workers without outsourcing content creation. not.

This reduces visible costs such as outsourcing costs, so you can operate at a low cost.

②Once created content is open 24 hours a day

Content once created never disappears. We will continue to attract customers on your behalf 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
What's more, if you can create content that ranks highly in Google's search results for highly competitive keywords, it may continue to bring immeasurable benefits to your company.

③ You can reach potential customers

By transmitting information that reaches your potential customers, potential customers will naturally be guided to your site.
In addition, by analyzing access analysis, we may discover customers who are visiting with unexpected keywords.
It is not uncommon for a company to change its overall business policy and double its sales by strengthening information dissemination to its customers.

④ By increasing the number of fans of our products, it is possible to build a model similar to subscription

By increasing the number of fans who make repeat purchases of your products, you will be able to build a repeat purchase and subscription model.
Specifically, we sell air purifiers considering the health of our client's employees, and ask them to continuously apply for filter replacement on our website.

⑤ You can brand your company

If you are doing content marketing, you can't do branding unless employees and part-timers advertise verbally or create pamphlets and continue to advertise. However, if you strengthen web marketing, the entire site, e-mail magazine, and SNS will become content and FAQs that appeal to clients, which will lead to branding of the company.

Medium- to long-term marketing method

So far

“Okay. All you have to do is improve your website and blog.

I tend to be.

But there are serious pitfalls lurking here.
What marketing beginners tend to fail is that they overlook the fact that content marketing is a medium- to long-term strategy.

In fact, a medium- to long-term strategy is "a strategy that is difficult to accept" for small to medium-sized business owners.

Most small businesses want results in weeks to months

Most small businesses require sales results on a weekly to monthly basis.
This makes sense when considering the financing of SMEs.

Content marketing, on the other hand, is a medium- to long-term strategy.
You won't see results in weeks or months.
At least six months to a year.
And I don't know if it will work.

Even if you tell your boss in advance that it is a medium- to long-term strategy and go through the company's request for approval, there are many cases where you will not get results!

Of course, we also have a solution for this.
Before we get into that, let me explain why content marketing isn't showing immediate results.

Why content marketing doesn't work

“Despite creating a homepage and enriching the content, it does not lead to results.”
There are many BtoB sales representatives.

When I look at the pages of such people, most of them have staff blogs.

There was a blog post that said, "Today, I went to a customer's place and had a beef bowl at Yoshinoya for lunch", and there was a photo of the beef bowl.

"Our company's XX", the president's self-portrait and happy life are published on the president's blog.

In any case, I think that at first I was doing my best to introduce the product.

However, I gradually run out of ideas and start writing irrelevant sentences.

As expected, such worthless content has decreased recently.
However, if you are going to do marketing using the web in the first place, you need to understand how the internet attracts customers.

Next, I will introduce how to create content that delivers useful information to clients without running out of ideas and produces results.

How to create successful content

Here's how to create content that works.
It is a business model that takes at least half a year to a year to create.
Let's prepare well!

Internal sales are important for BtoB content marketing

You may think, "Suddenly talking about internal sales? Is it really useful?"
But imagine.

The most likely failure in BtoB content marketing is "only the company's web staff are in charge of content marketing"
This is the case.

Why is it easy to fail

1. Marketing progress is not shared internally, making it difficult for superiors and managers to grasp progress
2. Unable to unearth latent product needs

Because that's what it means.

As for 1, information and progress cannot be grasped within the company, so even if the marketing staff thinks things are progressing smoothly, they often say "no" because there are no results.

As for 2, it is important for the entire company to research the needs of your company's products.
There is a saying that if three people come together, they will have the wisdom of Monju.
Content marketing is effective only when multiple people share their wisdom and create content.

Let's do in-house sales to get results.
If you don't keep your internal sales well, all the methods to get results that I'm going to introduce from now on will be useless.

Understanding SEO at a minimum to get results with content marketing

To be successful with content marketing, you need to at least understand SEO.
A simple explanation of SEO is “ a technique that allows customers to be displayed at the top of the search results for the keywords that your company is aiming for ”.

If you don't understand SEO, you'll end up with the cooking and business selfie blogs I mentioned earlier.
However, if you try to master SEO measures, it will be enough to write a book.

here

" SEO is important "

Please understand that.
Here, we will show you how easy it is for web marketers to find keywords.

Targets who purchase your products (clear persona)

We understand that SEO is important.
But actually there is something to do before that.
that is

Who is your target audience for purchasing your product?

about it.

"Clarifying the target" sounds like a very simple thing, doesn't it?
However, it is also a failure of many companies.
It's also possible that you understand, but other content creators don't.

If your company's sales staff had a clear target to purchase the product, they wouldn't be posting photos of their lunch on the staff blog, would they?

For that purpose, the setting of "Persona" is important.

A persona is a typical user image of a service or product .
Age, gender, place of residence, occupation, title, annual income, hobbies, special skills, sense of values, family structure, upbringing, ways of spending holidays, lifestyle, etc. We will set up detailed information with reality.
Even if you don't go this far, at least make it clear who you're targeting.

For example in this article

• BtoB sales representative for small and medium enterprises
• Small to medium-sized B2B business managers and their superiors
• Small to medium-sized company owners

I am writing this article with the assumption that you will come to such a person.

Clarify the selling points of your products

Once the persona is clear, we will create content that matches the sales of the product to the persona.
By clarifying the sales, it becomes clear what keywords to create articles with, so you will not create irrelevant content.

If possible, it would be a good idea to create a list of popular items and share within the company which content has been created.
You will be able to create content that is easy to convey to your boss and management.

Create content with one article and one keyword

The important thing in SEO is
"1 article 1 keyword"
about it.

A "keyword" here is a word that you would search for on Google.

A keyword does not have to be a single word.
Rather, two or three words are now commonplace.

For example in this article,
"B2B Content Marketing"
I am writing with the keyword in mind.
If you read it again, you will understand that this keyword is sprinkled everywhere.

Also, try to include words related to the keyword naturally.
For example, in this article, the words “web marketing, web marketing, SNS” are related words.

Why do you include such related words?

• The content of the article is enriched and the credibility of the article increases
• Even if you do not rank high for your target keyword, you may rank high for other keywords.

Because that's what you're aiming for.

Aim for at least 300 pieces of content

In the case where a company new to web marketing fails

• Customers come because I made a homepage
• Customers come because I made LP (vertical sales page)

I have misunderstood.

From the conclusion, it is unlikely that the target client will gather just by making a little homepage now.

You need to create at least 300 pages of content.
Why is content of about 300 important?

• It will be easier for Google to display high ranking as a reliable site because the content is substantial
• When your customers visit your site, various questions can be resolved just by looking at your website, making it easier for them to purchase or request materials.

Because it works like this.

 

However, 300 is a huge amount.
I think you will be worried about whether you can create that amount of content.
As I mentioned at the beginning, uploading pictures of food and selfies at the company is nothing more than running out of content .

But don't worry.
If you use the "Persona" introduced earlier, you may feel that the content creation of 300 is rather small.

You can also use the following techniques to help you create content.

Create content for potential targets

For example, this article introduces a product called "IZANAMI, a sales list creation tool."
In the case of products that create a sales list, if you raise the expected keywords

"Business List, Company List, Create, Collect"

I think the first thing that comes to mind is " keywords for advertising products ".
In this case, it is easy to reach “customers who actually want to buy the product”.
However, it does not reach "customers who do not know the existence of the product but have a need".

Therefore, we will use personas to create content for keywords that will reach potential customers .

In the case of this product, there is a high possibility that companies that want to implement B2B content marketing have latent needs.

By providing useful information to those who read this article, you may be able to know about the products you want to sell.

The web is a place to solve problems. SNS is a place to find troubles

One of the ways to enrich web content

There is a saying, "The web is a place to solve problems, and SNS is a place to find problems."

What are you looking for when you search on Google?
Most people solve their problems by searching on Google.
I think that is the purpose.

What about SNS?

I often sympathize with the information of people who have the same worries.
For example, let's search on twitter with the keyword "content marketing BtoB".

This is a screen that displays the latest tweets by entering "content marketing BtoB" in the Twitter search window.

You can get information about what kind of articles you should write, such as " How many articles should I write?"

Use SNS to research what kind of worries potential customers have and what kind of information you should send.

Creating a mechanism that makes customers want to purchase or inquire about your products

So far, we have introduced what kind of content is important for content marketing for web marketing beginners.

However, that is not enough.
There is one more important thing.

that is

Creating a mechanism that makes people want to purchase or inquire when they reach your company's content

is.

This time

If you hold down this much, you will graduate from beginners! I'd like to introduce two iron plate methods.

① Create goals under all content

Naturally, text is read from top to bottom.
You can't read from bottom to top.

In other words, it is important to make a goal at the bottom.

For example, there is a free request form at the end of this article.
Customers looking at web pages are surprisingly impatient.
If you get lost just a little, you will easily move to the site of another company.
No matter how short the article is, be sure to guide it to the goal (purchase, document request, etc.) at the end.

However, if you create a product page each time, it will be difficult to replace it when the product is renewed.
If you are using a system such as WordPress or Wix, you can programmatically replace it all at once, or change the goals for each campaign.
We also provide IT consulting called Josys DX.
IT advisors are actually hard to come by, and most of them are expensive.
Our company is doing it at a very reasonable price of 10,000 yen per month + actual work.
First of all, we will respond free of charge, so please feel free to contact us if you have any worries about IT.

②Be able to go to purchase/inquiry from all pages

Another important thing is to make it possible to move from all pages to "Purchase/Inquiry/Document Request".
If you have a website, you probably know where everything is.
But what about your customers?

Are you confused?

At the very least, create links at the top and bottom of the previous page that lead to pages that lead to purchases.

Also, make sure that it will be displayed properly on smartphones and tablets.
Recently, more than 50% of users are accessing with smartphones.
It is also a common mistake that the layout is broken or not displayed on smartphones.

After graduating from beginner

If you put into practice what you've read so far, you'll be well on your way to becoming a web marketing novice.
Finally, I would like to introduce two things you can do after graduating from web marketing.

(1) Clear unit price per page view/number of users

As you actually create content, you will be able to see how many page views (PV) and number of users are per month.
If you introduce Google Analytics, you will be able to understand various items,
First of all, it is a good idea to put aside the difficult items and calculate the unit price by page views or number of users / monthly sales.

Once you have decided on a rough figure, you can see what actions you should take next to increase the PV unit price.

②Find potential keywords

With Google Search Console, you will be able to see what keywords your customers are searching for. When you look at keywords, you may find keywords with high access even though the display ranking is low and the number of searches is unusually low.
That keyword may be the target.
Create content to attract more customers.

There are ways to get instant results with content marketing

We hope that by reading this, you have learned the basics of content marketing and how even beginners can achieve results.

However, the biggest weakness of content marketing remains unsolved.

that is

Successful content marketing takes at least six months to a year

about it.

It's a homepage and content that you've made, so you want to get results immediately and connect it to sales.
Did you know that there are ways to make your content marketing successful right from the start?
There is a way to get the most out of it by using them together.

that is

I'm a DM.

Combined with direct mail (DM), the effectiveness of content marketing jumps up.

DM is an abbreviation for "direct mail".
DM itself is a technique that has existed for a long time, but by using it in conjunction with content marketing, its effect is doubled .

Why you should prioritize DM over content marketing using social media

Social media is one of the most popular tools used in content marketing.
SNS can certainly expect a lot of access when it goes viral.

However, SNS takes a very long time to grow into a popular account.
Especially for corporate accounts, the purpose is "business", so it tends to be difficult to increase followers.

In addition, SNS is likely to be effective in BtoC, but in the case of BtoB, there are few cases where companies follow each other, and it can be said that the effect is weak.

DM, on the other hand, can send information directly to customers.
When using BtoB along with web marketing, first focus on DM sales, and if you have time, use SNS.

A fresh customer list is important for DM sales in B2B

Telemarketing by phone, email marketing by email, and DM marketing by mailing letters.
There are various methods, but a fresh customer list is important for achieving results in BtoB DM sales.

It is effective to purchase a company list from a vendor or collect a sales list from a portal site such as i Townpage, but the most recommended method is to collect the latest information from the Internet.

B2B customer list collection tool

IZANAMI is a recommended tool for creating a customer list for BtoB .
IZANAMI can collect the latest company information managed by Google by industry and region.

For example, you can easily collect a list of flower shops in Sapporo, Hokkaido.
Once you set it up, you can collect it unlimitedly without neglecting it.

Feel free to contact us for a free trial.

For

To summarize the contents of this time

• Content marketing is effective as a medium- to long-term measure
• However, keep in mind that results cannot be obtained in a short period of time.
• Personas are the key to success in content marketing
• DM is effective for launching web marketing and making it successful from the beginning
• Introducing IZANAMI, a tool for creating fresh lists

It looks like this.

What did you think.
When practicing web marketing in a company, unlike personal marketing, there are restrictions on what can be done, and it is necessary to produce results in a short period of time. I hope that you will choose an efficient method and practice marketing that will produce results.