Brands Need a B2B Content Strategy to Connect with Stealth Business Buyers
Use an Audience-First Approach to Create B2B Content That’s Valuable, Relevant and Helpful for B2B Buyers
As a B2B marketer looking to build awareness, generate leads or drive sales, it’s essential that you know how your prospective customers navigate the buying process, especially what information they need to get to “yes.”
Today’s business buyers take an increasingly stealthy approach by doing their own research long before they get in touch with you — if they ever make contact. Did you know:
- 75% of business buyers prefer a sales experience that does not include a sales representative (Gartner)
- 71% of B2B buyers consume multiple pieces of content, such as blog articles, videos, white papers and e-books, to help them make a decision, and they share that content with colleagues on the buying team (DemandGen Report)
- 84% of B2B buyers say the winning vendor’s content had a positive influence on their purchase decision (DemandGen Report)
To win the attention of business buyers, you need high-quality, relevant, and valuable B2B content they will rely on to inform their buying decision. To create that content and get it in front of this audience, you need a well-researched B2B content strategy.
At Brunner, we develop audience-first content strategies for a wide range of B2B clients. Our B2B content strategies give clients a roadmap for unified, consistent messaging and storytelling that’s integrated across their marketing channels, all to get their target accounts to “yes.”
Here’s our approach.
Research and Really Know Your Target Audiences
Working from your overall brand strategy, we research your target audiences for in-depth data on who they are, what they care about, and what influences their purchase decisions. We review any audience data and insights your team can provide (including your sales team’s input from their conversations with customers). We fill any gaps using Brunner’s research tools and resources.
Our research includes demographics but goes much further to examine psychographics, from the audience’s personal values, daily routines and habits, along with media consumption and buying influences. For B2B audiences, we dig into your industry vertical and your business model to better understand your audience and their buying journey. From these inputs, we develop a B2B content strategy as a roadmap for creating content your target audiences will find relevant and valuable, to build trust in your brand.
To win the attention of business buyers, you need high-quality, relevant, and valuable B2B content they will rely on to inform their buying decision.
Different Types of B2B Audiences and Buying Journeys
B2B relationships span a range of target audiences and buying journeys, from the number of people involved to the time it takes them to reach a decision. As a B2B marketer, it’s critical for you to understand your buyer audiences.
Here are a few examples.
- Sole proprietors, contractors, business networks. A company that manufactures building materials, like roofing systems or HVAC components, markets its products to professional contractors, from sole proprietors to larger construction firms. To drive demand, the company also markets to end users like homeowners who ask contractors for the company’s products. The manufacturer markets and sells its products directly to dealers and distributors. Each target audience needs content relevant to its role. A buying decision can come quickly or take longer, depending on business conditions.
- Small-to-medium businesses. Business banking is a highly competitive sector within financial services. A bank that wants to serve small businesses in its geographical markets may choose to target specific industry verticals, such as marketing firms, landscaping companies or interior design boutiques. Each type of small business will have specific roles that make decisions about banking services. Those roles can include the CEO and the heads of accounting, HR, and IT. Each one needs helpful B2B content related to their area of responsibility to help inform a decision.
- Large enterprises. Big companies have more complex procurement processes, including buying committees. According to Gartner, the average enterprise B2B buying group has five to 11 stakeholders who represent an average of five different business functions. Buying committees can include the department making the purchasing request and other areas, like finance, IT, compliance/legal, and marketing, that must review and sign off. Each of those areas needs clear, relevant content that demonstrates you meet their business requirements and helps clear the way for approval.
Building a B2B Content Strategy That Maps to Your Audiences and Business Objectives
Once we have a deep understanding of your B2B audiences, we develop an overall audience structure. We work with you to prioritize based on your business goals, then build audience deliverables based on what’s needed for your marketing plan.
- Audience Profiles/Personas — In some cases, such as activating just a few marketing channels (organic social, programmatic advertising), we develop a straightforward audience profile. For integrated marketing plans, we develop full personas with names, photos, and backstories, to support a broad plan that may include creative assets, content development, campaign targeting by channel, and performance measurement. We bring these audiences to life, including the topics, issues and experiences that resonate with them on an emotional level.
For each key audience profile or persona, we develop the following:
- Buyer journey maps — Journey maps trace your audiences’ experiences from their first awareness they need a new product or service to making the purchase and becoming an advocate for your brand.
- Message maps — Message maps provide the primary and secondary messages your brand needs to communicate to each audience, at each phase of their buying journey.
As a B2B marketer, it’s critical for you to understand your buyer audiences.
Additional components of a B2B content strategy and content plan:
- Competitor content audit — Before we start creating content, we want to know what your top 2-3 competitors have in market so we can provide something distinctly different — or go head-to-head with higher quality content your audiences will prefer.
- Search demand analysis — SEO research can identify what information and topics audiences are looking for online. We use that data to identify and prioritize topics as part of your content plan, with confidence it’s what the audience is searching for.
- Audit of your owned content — An audit of your brand’s owned content will show what’s working well, what’s not working, and what’s missing, all inputs for a strategic content plan.
Creating an Audience-First Content Framework
The next step is a content framework that includes:
- Publishing mission. This statement describes what content you’re creating, the target audiences you’re making it for, and how it helps those audiences.
- Content pillars. Think of these as high-level themes you’ll create on-going content about, much like journalists covering their beats.
- Topics and content series. Specific areas or issues your target audience wants to know about on an on-going basis, including content series.
To develop content pillars and topics, we consider what topics your brand’s subject matter experts know more about than anyone else, especially competitors. Your team’s expertise will help produce valuable, relevant, and helpful content that is unique to your brand — something your target audience likely will recognize in their research.
B2B Content Planning: Quality Over Quantity to reach B2B Audiences
Once we have a content strategy, we develop a content plan. We work with clients to focus on developing high-quality content — something those stealth B2B buyers will appreciate. For B2B companies that use CRM/marketing automation, the content plan can include those key content pieces, such as white papers, e-books, that may compel prospect to get in touch.
In DemandGen’s Content Preferences Survey 2023, 54% of respondents said they are overwhelmed by the amount of content available — but much of what they find falls short in quality. That frustration creates an opportunity for B2B brands that can provide strong, helpful content that influences a purchase decision.
Ready to Launch B2B Content Marketing?
If you’re ready to focus on content as a cornerstone of your B2B marketing, we’d love to learn more about the challenges you’re facing and offer some thoughts about how we can help, including a well-researched content strategy. Please feel free to get in touch. We’re happy to chat!
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Kristen Taggert
Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications
Kristen Taggert is vice president, integrated marketing communications, at Brunner, and oversees key service areas including integrated marketing strategy and planning, content marketing, influencer marketing, PR, and social media. Over her career, Kristen has developed marketing programs focusing on the intersection of audience, message, and media for a wide variety of organizations, including many well-known Fortune 500 brands. Before joining Brunner, she held marketing leadership roles at PNC and Discover Financial Services. Kristen holds a BA in Communications from Mercyhurst University.
Christine Zapinski
Director, Content Marketing
Christine Zapinski is director of content marketing, at Brunner and leads the team responsible for content strategy, content development, and content management. A long-time journalist, she is a veteran storyteller and content production professional with more than 30 years of experience building and scaling content operations in business, higher education, news media, and marketing agency settings. She earned a B.A. in journalism from Michigan State University and an M.B.A. from Point Park University.
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