With 67% of B2B buyers relying on digital content to research and make purchasing decisions, the importance of content marketing seems like a no brainer. Like a dealership without a car salesman, content marketing produces the kind of marketing material that buyers want: entertaining, educational and largely non-branded.

Content marketing can be tailored for any part of the buyer’s journey. Here are some key ways content marketing can be important to your B2B marketing strategy.

Content Marketing Can Entertain

Let’s say you’re a B2B marketer. Your services are great and now you have an eCommerce website to show prospects all the different services you can do. The problem is, so do hundreds of other B2B marketers. How do you make them aware of you? And, more importantly, how do you make them remember you? The first step may be producing entertaining content.

The key to entertaining your audience is to appeal to their emotions. Make them curious, laugh or even cry (cue Sarah McLachlan). As a marketer, you might produce a new video such as “The Top 10 Dumbest Terms our Industry Created This Year” or an article such as “B2B Marketing Tips You Need to Stop Following.” Whatever you decide to do, make it worth watching, reading and sharing. On this note, your website’s content needs to be easily shared. When your prospects share your content, they generate awareness and virality. It’s a sales funnel and not a sales tube, after all.

Content Marketing Can Educate

Educational content can often work hand-in-hand with entertaining content. And, while it can be entertaining, educational content has the primary role of informing your audience about your product, services or industry. It is great for prospects at the top of the sales funnel as they are researching information about companies like yours.

Educational content takes on many forms. In your company, you might provide a helpful guide to your prospects on determining which social media platforms are right for their businesses or provide information on how to craft the perfect LinkedIn profile. It’s important that educational content represents a learning opportunity for your prospects because, while it grabs those prospects at the awareness stage, it also guides others further down the funnel. Making them laugh at this point won’t help you much – they’re already interested – and now they’re thinking.

Content Marketing to Persuade and Convert

Only after you have both thoroughly entertained and educated your audience have you earned the right to discuss your product or service offerings. Now, you can begin persuading them to convert into customers. A call to action, or CTA, can be a very persuasive piece of content to have alongside a video or blog post if you do it right. Depending on their place in the sales funnel, you might ask them to subscribe to your email list or download your eBook. Just be sure that your prospects know what they will be receiving and that it will be worth receiving.

Now is the moment you’ve been waiting for: tell them about you. What services do you offer? How are they unique from your competitors? How do they improve compliance? How do they minimize risk? This content needs to pull your prospects the rest of the way through the funnel. To convert them into customers, they need to be informed and ready to make a purchasing decision.

A good content marketing strategy should curb the sales pitch, engage your audience and guide potential customers through the conversion process. But, at the heart of this strategy is a need for great content. If you can create things that entertain, educate, persuade and convert your prospects, they just might come out the other side as brand new customers.

Now that you understand the importance of content marketing for your company, join the 80% of B2B marketers that have a content marketing strategy and start converting leads. A content marketing strategy is more than just a regularly updated blog, a popular video or a social media presence – it’s all of that and more. Brandcave does an excellent job of tailoring the perfect strategy to meet your needs. If you’re curious to learn more about how our team can create relevant and engaging content for your business or service, give us a call.