Blogging plays a vital role in buyers’ and customers’ purchase processes. According to a Hubspot report, about 48 percent of companies with a content marketing strategy engage in blogging, 56 percent of marketers find blogging effective, and 10 percent of them say blogging generates the most significant ROI (Return on Investment). The report also found that 54 percent of decision-makers spend more than an hour every week reading and reviewing the content on thought leadership.
When done consistently with a solid strategy, blogging fetches excellent results. It is not about dashing off one-off content pieces but about having a roadmap of intent. How will your blogs/articles map to a story for a buyer persona or a group of personas? To build a solid strategy for business blogging, ask yourself the following questions:
- Which questions go with which buyer persona and at which stage?
- How do they connect? In other words, which questions connect to building momentum with a story for a persona/segment?
- How would you prioritize the content in an editorial calendar?
- What is the takeaway you want them to get from the content and how you will answer it?
- When you create content you also have to think about your linking strategy – will you have a “what’s next” piece of content to link to? When you create blogs, you must ensure it has a continuum. It must have a legacy. Does your blog lead to a ‘what’s next?’ anticipation in the buyer? You must have a continuity plan for your topics. So you need to think in terms of laying these out in a content editorial calendar
However, this article is not about how to build a strategy, and I will discuss that in my upcoming articles. (Follow us on LinkedIn or subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to access our content).
We will return to whether blogging is a worthwhile investment for B2B marketing in 2023. The answer is yes. Why? Because it is capable of doing the following:
Helps you to connect with valuable prospects > Personalizes messaging > Enables buyers to take decisions by building consensus among members of a buying committee. And, where there is consensus, there is a decision – if there is a decision, there is a sale – and when there is a sale, there is revenue, the goal that almost every seller struggles to achieve.
Let us understand the significance of each.
Blogging helps to connect with valuable prospects
How will you attract valuable prospects to your website? Buyers do not visit websites on a whim. They need to learn about you somewhere. Moreover, buying is a side hustle for most, not their usual day job. It’s crammed into the bit of free time they have. Don’t be under the delusion that they have a buying process. They don’t. You have to help them make up their minds to buy; you need to convince them that you can solve their problem.
But how will you do that?
Paid ads are expensive, and once you stop spending, the traffic disappears, so they are not a sustainable option. In addition, the quality of traffic from ads is mostly below par because ads limit your capability to convey the message in full. It’s challenging to offer the complete solution in a few words making people turn away due to lack of clarity.
People who click your ads come to your website presuming you have a solution to their problems. The lack of clarity about you and your solutions, combined with targeting and other limitations, increases the number of mismatches. Most visitors bounce when they see this mismatch. In other words, they are not your prospects, and you have spent a lot of money in ad clicks by inviting the wrong ones to your website.
Email marketing, on the other hand, is a good option, but the possibilities are limited as it only caters to people on your mailing list. But it has a silver lining: to expand your email reach, you need to increase the number of recipients, and blogging helps you achieve that.
Publishing blogs on your website and sharing them on social media platforms with valuable insights helps you get noticed. You can never grab your target audience’s attention on social media unless you provide them with purchase-enabling content and long-form content like blogs is a highly effective attention-grabbing hook.
Additionally, blogging helps your site get listed in Google’s search results, bringing you more visitors. Publish the content they’re looking for, and they’ll find you.
Buyers active on social media are not interested in how great a company you are, what your employees do, how many branches you have, or your annual turnover. They have specific problems, and you get their attention only when you can address them with authority, and blogging is the best way to do that.
Here are a few articles from us on positioning your brand as an excellent guide and not conflicting with your buyers’ and customers’ positions.
Blogging helps to personalize messaging
We live in an era of instant gratification and avalanching messages; most are off-target, irrelevant, or confusing, so your content must stand on dry ground in the deluge of information. How can you make it happen? By personalizing your messaging. It helps you tailor content to fit your customer’s sense of value. If you get the right fit, it will increase engagement with buyers. In my article, How to avoid the commodity trap in B2B Marketing content?, I have discussed this in detail.
Your buyers must find value in what you can do for them. It is tricky because ‘value’ is a high-level term that can mean anything to anyone. How do your buyers define value? In all probability, it’s tied to the use case and the outcomes they’ll gain from solving their problem.
Blogging is the best way to inform your buyers about your value proposition. You can create different sets of blogs for different buyer personas; no other format does this magic of personalization. Blogs allow you to target each buyer persona and align your proposition with their sense of value.
Also, buying committees in organizations are expanding, and every stakeholder’s perspective on ‘value’ differs from others. Blogging helps you create personalized content to address individual views of value and shows them the WIIFM (What’s in it for me) and the WIIFO (What’s in it for the organization).
Here are a few articles from us to help you understand the importance of personalization.
- How to create personalized content at scale in 2023
- Why energy companies must personalize or perish
- Scaling up personalization in the energy and renewables sectors
- Enabling less searching and more finding for auto purchasers
- The three enablers that maximize patient engagement value
- Demystifying patient-centricity for healthcare companies
Blogging enables buyers to take decisions
Gone are the days when buyers had no choice but to engage with vendors to obtain information to make a purchase. Buyers are now self-reliant with all the freely available information.
But, unfortunately, with this clutter of information we’ve created more confused, overwhelmed, and frustrated buyers than informed ones. Buyers are unclear about what to believe and how to compare alternatives. Furthermore, they are unaware of what they don’t know, which often leads to post-purchase regrets. “If we only knew, we would have made a different choice…” they lament.
In his new book, The JOLT Effect, author Matt Dixon states how the culmination of the changes in buying has resulted in a shift from FOMO (fear of missing out) to FOMU (fear of messing up) as buyers move through the buying process. Research has found buyers are so paralyzed they won’t act due to the fear of making the wrong choice. There is a dearth of confidence among buyers, resulting in indecision in over half of them.
Buying is about deciding what to buy and from whom. Without that decision, nothing gets sold, and no revenue is earned. So, enabling buyers to take decisions must be the top priority for every B2B enterprise.
Blogging, when used well, enables buyers to make confident purchasing decisions. It provides relevant information and does away with the complexity buyers are facing, matching the content with their vision of value. It helps buyers make sense of the why, what, and how of exploring their options. Also, blogs can provide information in a phased manner to help buyers digest the content easily.
Here is my article on how buyer enablement is an essential job of sellers: Buyer Enablement is the only way to own a B2B scenario.
Blogging helps build consensus among members of a buying committee
Many touchpoints exist in a significant spending decision or purchasing a complex B2B solution. You must reach all of them and tell the story they need to hear.
In organizations with 100-500 employees, the decision-maker’s sphere of influence consists of at least seven to 10 persons on average. This team may be referred to as a buying committee. It undertakes research and evaluation before recommending a brand or a solution, including yours, to the decision-maker, who, in most cases, is a C-Suite executive. The buying committee does not have the authority to take the final decision; however, it can reject possibilities based on its understanding of a company or a solution.
The decision-maker is at the top of the pecking order, and your communication must appeal to them, but it must resonate with the buying committee, which is the conduit to the company chief.
In today’s competitive landscape, where attention and relevancy are indispensable, targeted, compelling, and empowering, content aimed at people in the decision-maker’s sphere of influence can tilt the scales in your favor. Remember, ministers and advisors always cut a straight path to the leader.
No matter how many members are on the buying committee, it’s unlikely all of them will visit your website. As 70 percent of the buyer’s journey is now digital, their research and evaluations are based on online content, which significantly impacts their purchasing decisions. Your blogs are the beacon that will guide them to you, to engage with them as a team or individually to create a consensus.
The seller who can help them reach a consensus and pose the least risk to their organizations and careers is preferred above others.
Here is my article on why you should write for the decision maker and their advisors: The perils of decision-makers dominating the content ecosystem of B2B enterprises.
In a nutshell
Blogging is the best way to infuse confidence and trust in buyers, and it is perhaps the most valuable way to win in today’s competitive marketplaces. It is also effective for the following reasons:
- It helps you connect with the right buyer match, weeding out mismatches and cutting a straight path to people that matter to you.
- It helps buyers efficiently explore the solutions they need without overwhelming them.
- Ensures their vision on value is clear, helps them see the big picture, and builds confidence that they can achieve their solution with your help.
- Confidence applies to all stakeholders, not just the final decision-maker. Blogging allows you to engage with all and provide them with what they want.
Build your blogs as you build your company. The two are mutually catalytic to your progress and profits. Also, keep your content marketing strategy fluid; it should adapt and attract per the need of the hour.
Keep your finger on the market pulse and an eagle eye on potential buyers’ wish lists so you can continuously craft content that captures their interest. This resilience and creativity will keep you ahead of the flock and get you noticed.
We are here to help and assist you with your goals
All points elaborated above are crucial to help you win over buyers. Blogging your way to success is a highly effective strategy and a lot of work. You need resources, including strategists, researchers, data analysts, subject matter/industry experts, SEO professionals, writers, and veteran editors, to create an ideal buyer experience.
Here is my article on how to achieve your goals with limited resources: Why a full-service content agency an asset in unreliable markets?
We are a full-service agency for strategic content creation, with a team specializing in five industries – healthcare, energy and renewables, automotive manufacturing, chemical manufacturing, Metaverse, Web 3.0 and Blockchain. We possess domain expertise in these industries and have a solid relationship of content-building and strategic inputs with many corporates.
Our team includes experienced marketing strategists, buyer-persona specialists, analysts, copywriters, on-page SEO experts, and editors. They help us stand apart in a content market that predominantly farms out requirements to content mills and freelancers who lack the full-specifications resource advantage.
When telling your story, we look at the bigger picture and have a larger-than-life purpose beyond getting the cash registers ringing. What drives us is crafting meaningful moments for your buyers and consumers – moments that matter to them and you.
Drop us an email, schedule a free consultation with our content strategist, or submit the form on our website. We will get back to you immediately through email, and we will NOT use your contact information to send unsolicited promotional material or call you.
