Beating the Blahs with Content Marketing for 'Boring' B2B Industries

There's a rumour doing the rounds that certain B2B niches are not all that exciting and can't benefit from content marketing. On the contrary, traditionally ‘boring’ industries need content the most, and they need it done in just the right way.

It doesn't matter if your business is in a highly saturated market or one that’s as dry as a slice of stale bread; there's no excuse to avoid creating a killer digital marketing strategy. Your business doesn't have to be exciting or glamorous to be captivating online. All it needs is original content designed to engage your audience. Just because your business service is important doesn’t mean it has to be boring.

Like individual consumers, business customers are people too. Content marketing is a great way to elevate the customer experience beyond the day to day of business to business transactions and supply chain management. It can set you apart from classic industries and put your goods and services in a context that’s more appealing to potential customers, and it can really benefit small businesses looking to differentiate.

Fresh Ways to Engage Your B2B Clients with Yawn-Free Content 

So you know you need a B2B marketing plan that involves a good content strategy. Now what? Here's where you get to have some fun and approach your content creatively. Here are some fresh ways to approach content marketing with some unexpected pizazz so that you stand out in an otherwise ‘boring’ field.

1. Generate Content That Solves a Problem

Having defined who you're marketing to with the content you create, you're already in the prime position to solve their problems. Every business client has a pain point that could be related to your products and services. Your job when trying to spice up your content strategy is to find those pain points and create content that solves it.

Maybe you won't be able to be a superhero and wipe out all of your prospect's problems in one fell swoop, but what you can do with your content is strategise to help. Your management consultancy’s clients may have issues with employee retention, so think of a way you can gear your content in that direction to help them out. For instance, you could post a series of videos on your blog covering why most employees leave a company. 

2. Make Sure Relevance Trumps Traffic 

If the days of our content being strictly SEO focused have taught us anything, it is that traffic spikes only yield immediate satisfaction of boosted numbers due to better search engine ranking. Yes, you want traffic to your site, but there is no bigger turn-off to prospects than poorly written, prosaic content that is stuffed full of keywords. SEO will help people find your content, PoV (point of view) might make them glad they did. B2B copywriting is becoming more specialised as a result.

Whatever content you work into your business marketing strategies, keep it relevant. It is an outdated practice, but some novice marketers still use keyword stuffing, and it is a HUGE mistake. It comes across as unprofessional and puts an ugly stain on your brand reputation. 

3. Use Data to Give Content Some Texture

People love good meaty content that they can really sink their teeth into and get their head around. There are a few ways to make your content more "meaty" including: 

• Offering blog posts that tell visitors how to do or achieve something

• Giving a visual infographic of collected stats and information relevant to your product or service

• Sharing statistical data with references

Sungard, a disaster recovery firm, addressed their customer’s needs in the context of a zombie apocalypse, with an award-winning infographic as part of the campaign. This might not be an approach that suits your brand or clientele, but it’s worth bearing in mind that sometimes it pays to so something a little different and tongue-in-cheek. 

4. Never, Ever Forget the Power of Social Media Marketing 

Content marketing ideas come in all different forms, but if you are leaving out social media marketing just because you think you have a boring business, you could be missing an opportunity. You can create sharable content for just about any industry by being mindful of the rest of the tips included here in this very list. 

Moz, a SaaS company in the SEO space, has built its brand reputation around a social media marketing strategy that humanises its brand image. They rank highly in searches in a highly saturated market, and a big part of their marketing revolves around shareworthy social media posts.

It can be daunting if you feel your business has to have a presence on FaceBook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare, Yelp, Google, TikTok and Instagram. As with all B2B media planning, be present where your business customers are, and when they’re more likely to be receptive to B2B content. Intelligent use of marketing automation tools can make producing and scheduling social content much easier to manage.

Likewise, you wouldn’t think that the Twitter account for the Museum of English Rural Life would be a big crowd-puller. However, they were a cult classic followed by thousands thanks to the off-beat humour of their social media strategist long before they went viral thanks to an encounter with Elon Musk.

5. Associate Your Content with Related Interesting Topics

Here's a big one. If you are in a highly concentrated area of business, and it makes it hard to get creative, try linking your product/service with something else interesting and creating content around that. Consider the massive, multinational General Electric. This corporation moved away from product pushing and instead use their content creations to educate people about technology, history, and more. Best of all, they do it with a comedic twist, and it seems to work well for them. They've garnered 22,000 followers on Pinterest, and the brand is taking on an entirely new brand image in the industry. 

Content marketing is a highly diverse tool that can work for any industry when it is utilised in the right ways. A B2B business might be in a ‘boring’ niche or not terribly unique, but a little lateral thinking can inject your content marketing plan with elements that entertain, excite and inform, while getting your brand recognised in your industry.

If you're ready to take your content from hum-drum to oh-wow, contact us at 1827 Marketing. We're waiting to help you out.