Content marketing takes your prospective buyers through the sales journey and addresses all their concerns along the way. To ensure your B2B content continually reaches and resonates with your audience, you must keep your strategies updated with the latest trends in tech content marketing.
Learn how to use content marketing for IT to convert more of your high-value leads.
Key Takeaways:
- Content marketing builds relationships, educates your audience, generates leads, and converts your prospects
- Create a content marketing strategy that includes capturing your traffic and following up with your leads
- Video is one of the top performing content formats in 2023
🤫 PS: Looking for pricing on custom tech content? Get a price list here
Why Is Content Marketing Important for IT Companies?
Roughly 90% of marketers use content marketing as part of their strategy to reach, nurture, and convert B2B buyers. Because of the success rate of content marketing, most B2B marketers are increasing their content budgets this year.
Content marketing benefits companies in several ways, including:
- Building relationships with your leads
- Generating new leads
- Educating your audience on your products and services
- Converting your leads
- Creating a demand
- Building a community
How To Perform Content Marketing for Tech Companies
You perform content marketing anytime you distribute content with a marketing objective. Follow these five steps of content marketing to ensure your strategies are successful in reaching your business goals:
- Step 1: Establish the goal of your content—Brand awareness, lead generation, conversion
- Step 2: Understand your audience—Who is the primary decision maker? What are their pain points?)
- Step 3: Choose your key performance indicators (KPIs)—How will you know you’re successful?)
- Step 4:Â Create quality, relevant content
- Step 5:Â Measure your results and optimize your strategy
Your content is just one step in your buyer's journey. In addition to establishing content goals and strategies, you should consider the "What's next?"
For example, what happens to them after you attract traffic to your website? You could add a lead magnet to capture that traffic and turn them into leads. Then, you need a step for responding to those needs and qualifying them. Lastly, you need a strategy for how you plan to close the sale with those qualified leads.
Looking at the whole picture, you can respond faster and convert more leads instead of seeing content marketing as an isolated strategy.
5 Most-Effective Types of Tech Content Marketing in 2023
What types of content should you create as a B2B tech company? Here are five content ideas for tech companies to create a successful strategy in 2023.
1. Blogging
Blogs are a live part of your website where you can share regular updates and information with your audience. However, it isn't a place to throw out content for content's sake just to stay trendy. With over 600 million blogs online, your buyers won't waste their time on content unless it has something to offer.
To create a blog that converts in 2023, you need to add more depth and engagement media to the post. For example, you might incorporate quizzes, surveys, and checklists to increase engagement. You can also embed a video from your last webinar.
No matter what you include, three characteristics should remain the same:
- It should be relevant to your target audience—Addresses their pain points and applies to their industry
- It should be high-quality content—Well-written with knowledge and authority in your field
- It should have a specific goal—Why are you posting the content?
Some examples of content that performs well on your blog include case studies, research reports, infographics, and thought leadership.
If you want to increase the exposure of your content, you can sponsor it on social media or in searches to ensure it appears on your target audience's feed and search results.
2. Marketing Videos
The pandemic made video a necessary part of marketing as there were fewer in-person events to make personal connections with potential B2B buyers. Instead, more businesses moved to webinars and other video tools to share information and connect face-to-face with their audience. Video has remained a vital part of B2B marketing.
Today, 93% of marketers say video marketing is equal to or more effective than their other content marketing formats. Of all the different video formats, 51% of B2B marketers reported that their webinars had the best results.
One of the top results of video marketing is generating new leads. For example, when a tech business presents in one of ActualTech Media's multi-vendor webinars, they receive a list of net new leads comprised of tech professionals. The list includes information like their title, industry, and engagement throughout the webinar, which they can use to pre-qualify the leads and fill their sales pipeline.
3. Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are digital assets your audience can download in exchange for their contact information. By gating the asset, you can track your readers easier and qualify your leads as you can see their title, industry, and other information you require in your form.
Lead magnets can be on your website's blog posts or static pages. However, they also work well when you use them in content syndication. Content syndication is when you use a syndication platform to share your digital assets directly with your target audience according to pre-set filters like title, location, and industry.
When you use content syndication, you can reach an audience beyond the regular traffic on your website. You also don't rely on strategies like SEO, which requires your audience to stumble upon your content. Instead, you're taking the content to where your audience is and generating a list of marketing-qualified leads.
Some of the best digital assets include:
- E-books
- Whitepapers
- Infographics
- Tech briefs
- Custom content (like comics)
- Third-party content (like ActualTech Media’s Gorilla Guides)
4. Email Campaigns
B2B email marketing for tech involves multiple different moving parts, and you need them all to sync up to move them toward your final offer.
For example, those within the business who will use your software might not be the ones who make the buying decisions. In addition, you may also have gatekeepers preventing your emails from reaching the necessary departments.
Roughly 79% of B2B marketers say email is their most successful content distribution channel if you use the right strategies.
When you send out your marketing emails, you have several people within the business you can target. Each needs a unique email with an offer curated to their specific needs. For instance, those using the software want to know how it benefits them. On the other hand, managers are more concerned with the financial impact or benefits to the business.
The following chart outlines several types of content you can use in your content marketing email campaigns to reach and nurture your target account lists.
5. Social Media Posts
LinkedIn is the top B2B social media platform. You can share your blog posts, videos, and lead magnets on LinkedIn to reach over 830 million professionals and decision makers. To increase your visibility, the platform offers paid content options that allow you to target your audience to guarantee your content appears on the newsfeed of the most relevant buyers.
Update Your Tech Content Marketing
Improve the performance of your B2B content by giving it an overhaul using the latest data and trends in content marketing. ActualTech Media can help you stand out through unique and tech-specific content that will resonate with your audience.
Contact us to learn more about our custom content creation services.