Inaccurate, packed with "filler," or completely AI-generated — bad B2B (business-to-business) content is easy to spot and plane easier to find online. According to one study, it moreover financing over $50 billion annually due to wasted resources alone. But what makes B2B content good?
Tough question. With Google promising to prioritize "helpful content" going into 2024 and studies showing that as little as 5 percent of all content assets generate 90 percent of consumer engagement, helpful, engaging B2B content is a north star B2B marketing teams must strive for.
Every seasoned B2B marketer has their own idea of what good content looks like — I know I do — but to get a broader sense of what separates good from bad, I wanted to ask around.
I spoke to leading B2B content marketers (an in-house content director, organ owners, top freelancers, and thought leaders) to find out what they think B2B brands can do to create good content in 2024.
This vendible includes their translating for any B2B trademark looking to get real results from content marketing, plus nine must-haves for B2B content to be considered good.
1. Good B2B content puts the regulars front and center
According to Morgan Short, Director of Content and Web Strategy at Vendavo, the first step to creating good B2B content is to "get relentlessly obsessed with your audience."
Short thinks brands need to spend increasingly time and resources understanding their audience.
To really get to know your customers, Short suggests that brands "survey them. Interview them. Learn their language. Listen intently. Identify what keeps them up at night."
Her favorite example of a B2B trademark putting this mantra into practice is the payments infrastructure provider Paddle and their content marketing project Paddle Studios.
"When you land on the Paddle Studios homepage, you’re welcomed with a Netflix-esque streaming service vibe. They unquestionably produced an unshortened documentary tabbed "We Sign Tomorrow," detailing their vanquishment of ProfitWell. [They moreover have] podcasts like "Protect the Hustle," all well-nigh B2B SaaS growth strategies, and web series like "Churning Point," diving into how SaaS companies retain their customers."
Short celebrates Paddle Studios as a "content engine of shows, web series, podcasts, and guides that are purpose-built for their word-for-word regulars – SaaS companies."
2. Good B2B content gets to the point quickly
According to Stephanie Trovato, a freelance B2B writer for well-known B2B companies, including Oracle, ADP, and Gartner, making good B2B content comes lanugo to "reducing the noise."
She advises marketers to "get to the point" and notes that "people don't need to be wined and dined via content, just requite them what they came for. Once people are in your content, requite them something different."
Among her favorite recent content examples is a sales multithreading playbook from Lavender that gives you the why, why, and how to without sepulture the lede. Instead of a typical "SEO-style" introduction that over-explains the topic, Lavender’s blog gets straight to the point of explaining tactical plays sales teams can use.
3. Good B2B content leans on expert insights and original perspectives
Rosanna Campbell (a freelance B2B SaaS content writer who has worked with brands like Monday.com and Beam Content) says that "Good B2B content contains an original perspective, [and is] backed up by real-world expertise and thorough research."
She likes the "Grow and Tell" podcast by the B2B sales, onboarding, and renewals workspace provider Dock.
Campbell loves the brand’s focus on "really in-depth conversations on exactly how true sales experts do what they do, with tons of specific insights, good punchy conversations led by the Dock CEO, and no marketing puffery."
B2B brands can follow Dock’s lead by reaching out to their customers and internal teams to find experts who might want to showcase their points of view.
4. Good B2B content builds a unique trademark voice
Rachael Pilcher, a freelance B2B SaaS conversion copywriter, thinks unconfined B2B content has a unique trademark voice.
According to Pilcher, modern brands can learn from older content leaders like Mailchimp, whose content marketing had a unique style and focused on inspiring content relatable for small merchantry owners.
She says, "I’d love to see increasingly of a unique trademark voice coming through in B2B visitor content instead of every visitor sounding the same."
5. Good B2B content uses plenty of examples
Bani Kaur, a B2B SaaS writer for brands like Klaviyo and Hotjar, agrees that good B2B content talks at the level of their audience, gets to the point quickly, and advises that B2B brands use plenty of examples.
"It’s unchangingly easier to state and emphasize a point with examples, and good content does exactly that," she says.
Kaur thinks that this blog post by Klaviyo incorporates all three weightier practices.
6. Good B2B content considers formatting, too
Amanda Cross, Content Marketing Manager at Nectar, wants to remind marketers to spare a thought for what their B2B content looks like on the (web) page.
She thinks it's hair-trigger to remember that when writing content for B2B, you aren’t writing for a nameless, faceless corporation but real people. "Depending on your industry, these people may have variegated characteristics, but all people want organized content that’s easy to understand."
For Cross, good B2B content is easy on the eyes.
"I’m a big parishioner in using lots of headers, paragraphs, and bulleted lists. I am moreover shielding of the jargon and language/slang I use in my content. I want to make it easy for the reader to get something valuable from the vendible they read. If you think well-nigh your vendible from a reader’s perspective and retread accordingly, you’re taking the necessary steps to create good B2B content."
She points to a recent Nectarhr blog as an example of well-structured content.
7. Good B2B content offers something truly new
Sarah Greesonbach, founder of the B2B Writing Institute and owner of the B2B Content Studio, feels that content marketers in the B2B space need to start unescapable content like a journalist would.
She says original research and thinking are "a pairing that will only protract to grow in the next few years in B2B marketing" and will help brands stand out in a sea of LLM-generated content.
"AI-developed content can’t touch it [original research] on quality and value for a B2B audience," she says.
Greesonbach’s favorite recent example is the self-ruling email undertow for Bessemer Venture Partners tabbed "Driving SaaS revenue," created by Sarah Bellstedt and Carina Rampelt at Fenwick, with guidance from Christine Deakers, who runs editorial at Bessemer.
She lauds this content as an example of a B2B trademark bringing together the weightier of journalism and creativity to bring something new into the world.
8. Good B2B content is the audience’s friend
Be your audience’s colleague, not their parent. For Nuni Snowden, content writer at PXP Studios, trademark content needs to get on a level with the audience, not whilom them.
For her, good B2B content "speaks to the regulars directly, but like a peer rather than a parent. Good content understands the context of the industry."
Nuni thinks that HubSpot's blog posts and Glassdoor's wares do an spanking-new job of keeping this in mind. Both brands’ content, she says, helps their regulars understand the market without falling into the "boring" trap.
9. Good B2B content has a distribution strategy
You can write, design, or mucosa the weightier B2B content in the world — but if no one finds it, what's the point?
This is why, for me, good B2B content is linked to a distribution strategy that goes vastitude just pressing "publish."
Successful B2B brands mistiness the lines between what happens on their social media, traditional/digital PR, and on-site/SEO content marketing efforts. I think this is a positive trend.
Whether through SEO, third-party syndication, PPC (pay-per-click), or whatever social channels your regulars lives on, good B2B content has to be designed to meet customers in the places where they are most likely to be receptive to it.
A trademark that does this well in the information security space is DeleteMe. To develop their B2B personal information security offering, they write privacy translating guest posts for specialist publications for groups like police officers and school districts.
Similarly, cybersecurity visitor Morphisec repurposes technical content aimed at variegated audiences wideness their blog, newsletter, and specialist security industry publications.
Quality B2B content matters increasingly than ever
According to Gartner, 80 percent of B2B sales will be primarily digital by 2025. Based on how important content has been for enabling sales so far, doubling lanugo on unquestionably useful and relevant content will help brands win a lot of new merchantry this year and beyond.
Something worth your readers’ time will not be a rehash of the first ten results on Google. The experts well-set that to win with content, B2B marketing teams need to run towards quality.
This ways going vastitude narrow content research and planning (like focusing primarily on creating content to match competitor keywords) and finding out what an regulars will enjoy or find useful, interesting, and insightful.