B2B content marketing is no longer restricted to white papers and case studies. It can’t be. B2B buyers — otherwise known as humans like the rest of us — demand more variety, more creativity, and more relevance than the old reliable formats can offer.
Your buyers are hungry for great content. Don’t serve them white-bread-and-mayo sandwiches. Create a loaded buffet of exciting, relevant, helpful content for their entire journey.
Here are the best content types for each stage of the marketing funnel.
Awareness stage: Appetizers
In the first stage, the buyer might not realize they’re even on a journey. You can’t jump right into selling. You have to whet their appetite before they attend your content feast.
Stick with eye-catching, creative but practical content at this stage, using formats like:
- Infographics with meaningful statistics
- Videos that highlight your brand’s values & expertise
- Thought leadership blogs and podcasts
- Social media posts building and engaging with a community
Remember, this stage is about possibility. You want to show people there’s a better way of doing something, introduce your brand as an empathetic expert, and make them hungry to learn more.
Consideration stage: Salad and garlic bread
Now your buyer knows that they have a solvable problem. Thanks to your excellent thought leadership appetizers, they also know that your brand is a source of valuable experience and advice.
Now you can offer them some fresh textures and flavors to keep them engaged and get them ready for the main course.
Keep up your drumbeat of useful, practical content, but you can stir in a few more types:
- Ebooks that showcase original research and influencer insights
- Interactive content to provide novelty, creativity and value
- Webinars that aim to help buyers be better at their jobs
- Customer stories that focus on customer success, not just your brand’s role in it
This stage is about proof — proof that your brand knows its stuff, is here to help, and has helped others in the past.
Decision stage: Main course
Your buyer is seated at your table with their napkin tucked into their collar, ready for an entree. Now is the time to bring your solution to the forefront. At this stage, you can be overt about what makes your company the best one to solve this particular problem.
Make your lower funnel content thrilling and filling with these content types:
- Case studies that show how, specifically, your solution helped solve your clients’ problems (these can be in article, eBook, blog or video format)
- Demo videos that make it clear how your solution works
- Social proof like a compilation of customer reviews or a roundup of social media posts from satisfied customers
- One-sheets that highlight features and pricing in an easy-to-share format
This stage is all about persuasion — equipping your audience with enough information to make a purchase decision.
Retention stage: dessert
Any B2B marketer worth the title knows that marketing doesn’t stop with a sale. Now it’s time to make sure your buyer is thoroughly satisfied and ready to recommend your brand to others. That means sprinkling in a little sweetness, some memorable experiences to leave a good taste in their mouth.
Offer up a decadent dessert with these content types:
- Demos & webinars that aim to help existing customers get the most out of your solution
- Community-building on social media and forums, to help customers get to know each other and become brand advocates
- Customer stories that highlight how customers in their industry have used your solution, and which upgrades are the most useful
This stage is about passion. You want customers to feel passionate about your brand, full of positive experiences, and ready to write that 5-star review.
Create a culinary content experience
In the introduction, I referred to full-funnel content as a “buffet.” That word is important because it reminds us that a customer journey is:
- Self-directed
- Non-linear
- Unpredictably paced
If your potential buyer wants to load up on salad and breadsticks and then go straight to paying the check and having dessert, your content buffet will accommodate them. Full-funnel, varied content is a content growth strategy you can rely on.
Ready to upgrade your content from fast food to haute cuisine? We’re here to help.
About the author
Joshua Nite is dedicated to bringing humanity, empathy, and humor to content marketing. His two ironclad rules: Never settle for commodity content, and never write anything you wouldn’t want to read. Great writing takes heart, soul, guts and rhythm. Josh is also the once and future Pundamonium Pun Slam champion, a stand-up comedian and storyteller, and is getting pretty good at electric guitar. His only weakness: Extreme self-consciousness when writing about himself in the third person.