Content marketing

How to Boost Your B2B Content Strategy, and the LinkedIn Page Features That Can Help

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Editor’s note: Please enjoy this encore post, which was one of our readers' favorites in 2023. It was originally published on Feb. 9, 2023.

What is a B2B content marketing strategy? How can I execute one optimally on LinkedIn?

Whether you’re learning how to start a B2B content marketing strategy, brushing up on the basics, or looking to achieve mastery through evolving LinkedIn Page features, you’ll find everything you need ahead.

The Basics of B2B Content Marketing Strategy (and the Free LinkedIn Tools That Can Help)

What is B2B Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a practice that’s been around far longer than its current label. It involves planning, creating, and distributing materials that are interesting and useful to your specific audience but do not promote your product or service directly. Brands use this method to develop brand awareness, trust, and affinity with the potential customers they wish to reach.

Meanwhile, B2B content marketing refers to the creation and distribution of professionally oriented content for the same purposes. The idea, most often, is to help people solve business problems and do their jobs better, while subtly guiding them toward your brand and solution.

B2B content marketing is a long-term play and should be integrated with a full-on digital marketing strategy. When done well, it is reliably a very effective approach.

Why is a B2B Content Marketing Strategy Important?

According to the latest B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 71% of respondents say B2B content marketing has grown more important to their organizations over the past year, compared to just 4% who say it’s less important. This data also suggests that documenting your B2B content marketing strategy is of great importance, with 64% of top performers saying they have a documented strategy, compared to 19% of the least successful.

“Strategy” can seem like an ambiguous word, and with good reason: it is broad in scope and should account for almost every element of your brand’s digital presence. The word strategy originated from the Greek term for “general,” and encapsulates the gravity of a general’s duty in planning for battle: they must decipher the strengths and weaknesses of each soldier, they must anticipate the enemy’s maneuvers, and they must fully understand the lay of the land.

Digital strategy isn’t quite as weighty as wartime, but in a crowded marketplace with competition rising and attention shares shrinking, the stakes are high. As such, modern companies must adopt a general’s mindset and see the big picture.

Simply put, creating a B2B content marketing strategy is a must for virtually any business that wants to succeed today. It’s something marketers intuitively understand, but the data also continues to make it clear.

Thinking Through Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Incomplete or incoherent strategies are bound to fail. That’s why it is vital to be deliberate, coordinated, and comprehensive when developing your B2B content marketing strategy. At a high level, there are six components you’ll want to nail down: audience, competitors, objectives, measurement, customer journey, and relationship-building.

Know your audience

This insight will become the basis for everything you do. The more detailed and holistic your audience research – who they are, what are their needs and aspirations, and what makes them tick – the better you will be able to align every piece of your content strategy accordingly.

On LinkedIn, marketers have access to a wide variety of professional targeting parameters, whether posting content organically or via paid. This enables you to get specific and segmented with your campaigns.

Understand your competitors

Presumably, you have already identified who they are as part of your general business strategy, but understanding what your competitors are doing from a content marketing standpoint is key. What do they do that you can do differently, or better? Where is the “white space” – those unaddressed gaps that you have a chance to fill in for your audience?

Set objectives/goals

Clearly defined objectives should be at the heart of any B2B content marketing strategy. These are the incremental goals that ladder up to your ultimate mission: driving sales and revenue. Common B2B content marketing objectives on LinkedIn include:

  • Increasing LinkedIn Page following
  • Expanding branded content reach
  • Driving qualified leads
  • Growing awareness/connections within targeted buying committees
  • Driving traffic to your organization’s website

Measure success

“That which you cannot measure, you cannot improve.” It’s a hackneyed phrase at this point, but the reason it’s repeated so often is that it is eternally true. The only way you can be confident your B2B content marketing strategy is moving in the right direction is if you closely monitor results and metrics, and adapt based on what your audience’s engagement is telling you.

You can inform your decisions through careful research and planning, but ultimately it’s all guesswork until you have actual data to consult. Luckily, LinkedIn offers a robust suite of analytics to measure every aspect of your program. More on that in the implementation section below.

Map out the customer journey

Context matters. As strategies evolve and become more sophisticated, the focus becomes less on what you’re creating, and more on how you’re delivering it. For maximum impact, B2B content needs to reach the right people in the proper context – at the right time and right place. Mapping out your customer’s journey, and identifying which steps they tend to take en route to purchasing solutions in your category, makes this possible. You’ll want to learn:

  • Which terms and topics do they run searches on?
  • Which influencers do they pay attention to?
  • Which content formats do they prefer at various stages?
  • Which social media channels do they use, and how?
  • Which actions and behavior tend to correlate with buying intent?

Create relationships and build trust

There is no greater imperative in the modern marketing landscape. Despite some misconceptions to the contrary, emotion plays a major role in B2B decision-making, and trust gets to our deepest and rawest emotions. Missteps here can be costly. In the words of Kevin Cochrane, former chief marketing officer for SAP: “Once trust has been lost, it’s nearly impossible for brands to rebuild sustainable, honest relationships with their customers.”

So as you devise your B2B content marketing strategy, the overarching objective of building trust and meaningful relationships should always be a factor.

Implementing Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Now that we’ve charted out the definition of B2B content marketing strategy and its most important elements, let’s discuss the ways in which an organization can effectively get one up and running.

Best practices

Every content program should be customized to the needs of the business and audience, but in general, there are a few common traits among top performers.

  • Create documentation: Earlier we referenced research from CMI and MarketingProfs showing that 64% of the most successful organizations have a documented content marketing strategy, compared to just 19% of the least successful. Getting your strategy mapped out in a way that’s centrally accessible to everyone involved is a crucial step.
  • Be consistent: It’s important to maintain a regular posting cadence if you want to build a firm rapport with your audience. On LinkedIn, Pages that post updates at least weekly receive 2x more engagement.
  • Integrate multimedia: Text-only posts have their place, but in general, the inclusion of video and custom imagery are highly recommended. We find that video, specifically, can drive a 5x increase in engagement.
  • Follow the 3-2-1 formula: It’s a good rule for finding the right balance with your content mix. The 3-2-1 model calls for a weekly breakdown of three pieces of industry-related content, two pieces of “proud” content (positivity for your employees or community), and one piece promoting your brand or solutions.

How to generate content Ideas

Developing a consistent and substantive editorial calendar is easier said than done. Even if you understand the reasons for producing a steady stream of content, you still need to figure out just what that content is going to be.

As a springboard, you can check out our rundown of 15 content ideas for your LinkedIn Page. But when it comes to identifying relevant subject matter that will resonate with your audience, we highly recommend using Content Suggestions to surface trending topics on LinkedIn. We’ll discuss how this free tool works shortly.

User-generated content

Few types of content can match the authenticity and relatability of that which comes from fellow users. Many of the most powerful B2B content marketing strategies are partially fueled by customers and advocates who speak genuinely about the brand.

On LinkedIn, it’s easy to keep an eye on what people are saying about your organization. You can track @ mentions in your Page’s activity tab, and then leverage your best content in this area. But make sure to always ask for explicit permission before reusing anyone else’s original materials.

Additionally, the Content Suggestions tool helps you find long-form articles written by your own employees, which you can reshare from your Page for amplification. Members of your team, speaking from their own personal viewpoints, are very influential sources for UGC.

Screenshot of Content Suggestion Tool

The role of 3rd-party content

Featuring content from other reputed sources is a smart move for many reasons. It provides external perspective and credibility for your audience, while still supporting your narrative. It lightens the load on your creators. And it can help you build relationships with other websites and publications.

With that said, you’ll want to be selective about what you share. Again, the Content Suggestions tool comes in handy here because it can help you identify third-party content your audience is already engaging with on LinkedIn.

More than just copy

Here are three popular ways to spice up your LinkedIn content and drive higher engagement on your Page.

  • Infographics: Turn data and information into compelling visuals.
  • Videos: There are so many different ways to utilize this fast-growing medium, and not all of them require huge budget or expertise. For inspiration, check out the big list of B2B video ideas.
  • Webinars/Podcasts: These formats have gained rapid traction, thanks to the inherent serial nature and possibilities for audience interaction. Determine your unique angle, produce content and start driving subscriptions!

How to measure and track success

Page admins can dive into a comprehensive suite of insights through LinkedIn Page analytics. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of your updates and shares. You can also tap into aggregated data around your followers and their professional demographics. This, in turn, enables you to continually refine your content strategy in alignment with what’s working and who’s viewing.

Through the revamped Page Analytics tool, you can now view insights around a variety of dimensions:

  • Content
  • Followers
  • Visitors
  • Leads
  • Competitors
  • Employee Advocacy
  • Talent Brand

How to Use LinkedIn’s Free Content Suggestions Tool

This feature makes it faster and easier for organizations to identify content topics and articles that are uniquely relevant to a certain audience on LinkedIn. Here’s a quick guide to getting started with Content Suggestions:

  1. Log into LinkedIn and select the Page on your sidebar you wish to manage
  2. Click “Content Suggestions” on the top navigation bar
  3. Define your target audience with parameters like industry, location, and seniority (these can be adjusted later)
  4. In the Content Suggestions interface, you’ll be served a list of topics (at the top) and articles (below) being engaged with most by LinkedIn members based on the criteria you selected
  5. You can alter and tweak the list of articles in real time by clicking different topics and audience variables
  6. While perusing the list of suggested content, click through to review and – if the piece fits within your strategy – click the “Share” button
  7. Here you can quickly craft a customized message to accompany the link, and publish it directly to your LinkedIn Page

Master B2B Content Marketing Strategy on LinkedIn

Buyers demand cohesive experiences across brand interactions and touchpoints. A well-defined B2B content marketing strategy enables you to deliver it. To recap some of the points we’ve covered here, you’ll want to make sure you:

  • Fully understand your audience, competitors, objectives, and measurement systems
  • Follow B2B content marketing best practices: consistency, documentation, multimedia integration, 3-2-1 content sharing model
  • Include original content as well as user-generated content and credible third-party articles
  • Use LinkedIn Content Suggestions to keep your pipeline loaded with relevant pieces to share
  • Draw inspiration by following LinkedIn Pages best practices.

Ready to put all of this information to good use and elevate your B2B content strategy on LinkedIn? Download our guide, How Standout Creative Content Boosts Performance.