Few would deny that a well-designed blog with high-quality articles and sufficient frequency can be a powerful business tool for B2B focused organisations. Not only does a robust organisational blog demonstrate thought leadership and credibility, it also aids with search engine rankings and with the organisation’s lead generation efforts. A blog that leads the industry can be a tool that benefits various stakeholders.
There was a time when only specialised groups and websites such as LiveJournal leveraged blogs as a means of communicating with their audience. Those days are long gone. Blogging is now an integral part of nearly every B2B firm’s marketing strategy. It is a method to engage with new clients, establish your organisation as an industry thought leader, and share your company’s voice with its digital audience.
HubSpot reports that organisations that use blogs as part of their content marketing mix generate 67% more leads than those that do not. Despite its numerous advantages, blogging is often neglected and underutilised.
What is a B2B Blog?
A B2B blog is a web landing page or a microsite with several sub-landing pages where your organisation may post meaningful, high-quality material for your target audience. Although, in some regards, B2B blogs are similar to B2C blogs, B2C blogs focus generally on the end user of the product/service. The content of B2B blogs varies on the organisation’s nature of business, where the firm is in its lifecycle, the market it serves, and its objectives. Some B2B blogs focus on educating the buyer about the products and services the company offers, some focus on the thought leadership aspect to demonstrate credibility and expertise, while others use various elements to put together the organisational blog.
Examples of B2B blogs
Different organisations use an organisational blog for different objectives. The content of B2B blogs varies on several factors. Here are some examples of organisations that leverage B2B blogs to serve their audience differently…
Drift:
Drift is a conversational marketing tool that is focused on revolutionising B2B sales. Drift’s brand exemplifies its advocacy of conversational, personalised marketing. Their blogs are organised to enhance scannability using lists, are frequently conversational in tone, and feature photographs of actual Drift employees. In addition to providing customer success case studies, subject matter knowledge, and podcast transcripts, they also produce blogs that provide insight into their operations.
HubSpot:
The HubSpot blog has a plethora of material, including best practices, how-tos, infographics, and more. As the creator of the inbound approach, HubSpot essentially developed the concept of utilising a blog to grow your business and has done an excellent job keeping a blog that represents inbound marketing. Their blog categories of marketing, sales, and customer service are aligned with the flywheel, and each category produces a wealth of reader-centric, excellent material.
OpenView:
OpenView is a venture financing firm that focuses solely on B2B SaaS startups in the growth stage. Due to their focus, they have a variety of well-researched, niche-specific information intended for firms in that industry. In addition to providing original content for their blog, OpenView will compile or syndicate blogs from other relevant thought leaders so that visitors can easily obtain a full understanding of the topics.
Vidyard:
Vidyard is one of the best video hosting platforms for marketers, and its material demonstrates the importance of video in marketing. Not only does their blog cover the “why” and “how” of using video in your content strategy, but many of their blog entries also incorporate films to highlight its usefulness.
InsightSquared:
InsightSquared is a sales analytics platform that provides marketing and sales statistics. Their blog offers rich knowledge on pipeline management and the application of analytics to hone your marketing and sales activities and bridge the gap between marketing and sales.
Benefits of B2B Blogging
Having briefly touched upon what a B2B blog is, let’s discuss the benefits of blogging for B2B organisations…
Establish your credibility
Nearly 75% of business buyers conduct about 50% of their research online before engaging with a B2B salesperson. When you publish helpful content, you educate your buyers not only about your products, services and solutions but also about the happenings in the industry; the trends, the challenges and the opportunities available. This helps establish your organisation’s credibility. When you create a content plan that answers the frequently asked questions your customers and prospects need answers to, your credibility increases. By creating content that provides helpful solutions, your prospects and customers start seeing you as a trusted source, and they start valuing your expertise throughout the sales process.
Position yourself as an authority in your industry
Through blogging, you can develop brand credibility and demonstrate to your prospects and clients that you are an industry expert. I do not blame you for second-guessing the value of blogging. After all, the web is awash with a plethora of content.
You can also be forgiven for thinking that your blog might not rank towards the top of search engine pages with the amount of competition out there. You are correct to believe that building a high level of credibility is rather difficult. It is. However, through consistency of releasing high-quality content, you can start climbing the search engine results and also start positioning yourself as an industry authority. By staying consistent in delivering content about your domain expertise, you can establish a trustworthy reputation for your organisation, making it the go-to source for key industry knowledge.
Please note that B2B prospects seek information online. They conduct research to solve the challenges and problems they face. If you are consistently blogging high-quality content in regards to your domain, your prospects will discover your site when they type in the relevant search keywords and terms. If your website’s landing pages are served up in response to your prospect’s search queries, and your content is high quality and trustworthy, it will convert your visitors to buyers. As a business, your actions speak volumes, and by blogging, you are demonstrating your skill and knowledge as opposed to talking about it.
Increase traffic flow to the website
Studies demonstrate that blogging improves website traffic by 55%. In addition, with each blog post you write, Google indexes an additional page that will generate traffic to your website and increase buyer awareness of your company. Each blog post provides you with an opportunity to expand your reach.
Distributing the blog through your organisation’s social media channels creates an opportunity for your audience to share your blog with their network. Each link, each tweet, and each post maximises your opportunity to stay front of mind for your customers and potential customers.
Drive qualified leads to your website
B2B organisations that blog generate 67% more leads in their funnel than the ones that do not. When you have a robust blogging strategy and high-quality blogs being published on a frequent cadence, you have a ‘machine’ that turns traffic into leads. You can accomplish this by including a call to action to download additional material on the topic in each blog article. This free download may include eBooks, checklists, whitepapers, and templates that your prospects can utilise to identify solutions to their issues.
Attract and convert more qualified leads
In addition to attracting more leads to your website, blogging also improves the quality of those leads. When you blog regarding the pain points and challenges faced by your customers, and when you write about the topics that are relevant to your ideal customers, you set in motion the mechanisms to attract the right type of traffic to your website. For example, if yours is an IT Managed Services Provider (MSP) organisation, then the content you write must be focused on what the prospects and customers of MSPs find important and valuable. When you write about topics that are specific to your target audience, you attract buyers who are a perfect fit for your business. When you write about niche topics that appeal to your target buyers, you increase the likelihood that the leads coming to your website are qualified. The more qualified the lead, the greater the likelihood of conversion.
Improve search engine optimisation
A B2B blog can significantly enhance an organisation’s SEO efforts. The more content you have on your website for search engines such as Google or Bing to crawl (read) and index, the more likely your organisation’s landing pages are to appear on the search engine results page when someone enters a suitable keyword or phrase. According to Tech Client, websites with a blog have an average of 434% more indexed pages than those without. To increase your organisation’s chances of being indexed by search engines and showing up in search results, you will need to produce blog content more frequently, and you will need to assure that the content is high quality. It is also important that your content is centred on keywords that are frequently searched by your audience. This will attract more organic traffic to your website, allowing you to convert more potential prospects.
Increase conversions
Blogging is one of the most effective forms of content marketing for achieving high conversion rates. Blogging is an excellent approach to developing relationships with the readership audience and building trust over time. The more valuable and high-quality information you can deliver to your target audience, the greater your chances of establishing a rapport with them.
Conversion rates for blogs and other inbound marketing methods are second only to those of landing sites that have been optimised. B2B blogs can be leveraged to engage buyers across the entire buyer journey, however, if you wish to increase conversions, you will need to ensure that you have buyer-centric content. Not all of your material should focus on broad challenges. It is pertinent to write content about how your products, services and solutions benefit your buyers. Incorporating calls-to-action (CTAs) into your blog post is a crucial aspect of boosting conversion rates with your B2B blog. Ensure that your call to action is visible and written clearly. There should be no doubt in the reader’s mind regarding the next action you want them to take.
Attract talent
Few would argue that we are going through a rather tough period in the talent acquisition space. Call it ‘The Great Resignation’ or ‘The Great Reshuffle’, organisations are finding it rather difficult to find staff. This is a trend occurring across various industry sectors, and it is affecting various job roles in organisations, small and large. If your organisation publishes blogs that are talent focused, your website will eventually start ranking for those blogs. You can even push these blogs out through your social media channels, such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
Attract partners
To succeed in business today, it is important to partner with the right organisations that help deliver optimal value to clients. If your organisation publishes blogs that are partner focused, your website will eventually start ranking for those blogs.
Blogging is a relatively more permanent solution
When you publish high-quality content with frequency, your site’s authority starts rising. Paying for ads (such as leveraging Google Ads or Bing Ads) is a temporary solution, and you need to keep paying for the ads to see an ongoing return. Whereas blogging, done well, leads to an increase in the organic search engine rankings, which is a more permanent solution in comparison to paid ads.
Next Steps
At Resonate, we are a full-stack B2B marketing firm. We specialise in the B2B sector as that is where our passions lie, and that is what we are good at. If you see value in having an industry-leading blog, please reach out to us. We write high-quality blogs that are optimised to be search engine friendly. We write blogs that demonstrate your thought leadership, help establish your credibility, improve your search engine rankings and help you get qualified leads.
