8 Ways to Fail with B2B Content Writing

How do B2B businesses find clients? They have marketing and sales teams, of course. But if you reverse the question, the response is not so obvious: Your B2B marketing and sales teams find clients, but how do clients find you?

41% of B2B buyers read three to five content pieces before engaging with a sales representative. In response, B2B businesses are making their brand and expertise more visible by producing the valuable educational content buyers are actively looking for. And it works-B2B businesses that consistently publish blogs enjoy 67% more monthly leads than those that don’t. 

Without producing quality content, organizations fail to entice top-level buyers, risk damaging their reputations, and miss out on crucial leads. 

Let’s take a deeper look at B2B content writing, its benefits, the types you should create, and the eight biggest no-nos when writing content.

What exactly is B2B content writing, anyway?

Content writing sits within your broader B2B content marketing strategy. A content marketing strategy outlines how to attract and engage with new audiences, improve brand awareness, and ultimately boost revenue. One popular content marketing tactic is to publish content writing, which is evergreen written content (such as blogs, ebooks, and email) that aims to generate more high-quality leads. You can publish content writing on your website, as a guest post, or distribute it via social media channels and emails.

The goal of B2B content writing is to establish your business as a leading industry voice. Good B2B content writing focuses on topics relevant to your audience, industry, and business, such as popular pain points, market insights, advice, and solutions. 

From an SEO perspective, you ideally want your content writing to appear at the top of Google’s list when prospects search for relevant keywords. It’s like a lightbulb moment-your buyer realizes they have a problem, and they will see your high-ranking content that proposes a helpful solution.  

B2B vs. B2C Content Writing

B2B content writing educates, engages, and nurtures potential buyers, which is one of the reasons it differs from B2C content. B2C content writers promote their brand obtusely, whereas B2B content writers take a thought leadership approach that is less salesy.
The B2C world also involves fewer stakeholders; the key stakeholder is simply one customer. B2B content writers overcome more hurdles as B2B marketing involves a longer sales cycle with multiple decision-makers, meaning that the content must address the interests and pain points of all parties involved.

Why is B2B content writing so important?

B2B content writing offers needed benefits to organizations, including:

Lead Generation

Thought leadership content writing can increase sales by up to 20%, so it’s no surprise that 97% of B2B executives consider brand marketing an essential tool for revenue growth.

Customer Retention

Marketers attribute content to 32% of successful customer retention. Through engaging content, you can build relationships with prospects and continue to nurture them after purchase. 

Brand Awareness

30% of B2B marketers create content that reflects their brand’s values, and another 16% plan to do so in 2023. Sharing your brand values through content writing creates a sense of trust, projects your expert voice, and builds a community.

Guiding the Buyer’s Journey

Did you know that a sales representative’s influence only accounts for 6% of a B2B buyer’s decision? Instead, B2B buyers are 147% more likely to buy when they can experience a self-driven learning path, such as by reading relevant content.  

What B2B content writing types should be part of your strategy?

While each type of written content has a place in the buyer’s journey and sales funnel, these are generally the best and most versatile types for B2B:

• Blogs – There’s no defined word count for a blog, and it’s usually anything from 300 to 2,000. Blogs are an invaluable SEO tool to put your website and business at the top of search engine results. 

• Ebooks – An ebook is longer than a blog and comes in at over 2,000 words. Ebooks can also include graphical elements, not just large chunks of text. 

• Social media posts – 92% of B2B marketers use social media posts, which are short pieces of content writing tailored to specific platforms and channels.

• Infographics – An infographic is a visually appealing way to present information, statistics, graphics, and data. While it may include more images and numbers than words, it is still a type of content writing. 

• Email newsletters – A regular text or HTML email sent to prospects and existing customers, including brand updates, blogs, and topical news.

What happens when B2B content writing fails?

For every good piece of content writing out there, there are ten terrible ones. No, that’s not a statistic taken from the latest Gartner or HubSpot report—but it will undoubtedly have B2B buyers nodding their heads in agreement. 

A terrible piece of B2B content writing can come in many forms. It might be irrelevant to the target audience, factually incorrect, or simply uninteresting. 

While “bad content writing” is subjective, data is not. You will easily spot an ineffective content writing campaign if you fail to generate any leads (Check your KPIs for poor click-through, reading, and response rates), rank poorly for SEO, or achieve little to no audience engagement.

Luckily, you can avoid an unsuccessful B2B content writing campaign by following the simple steps below. 

8 Ways to Fail with B2B Content Writing?

1. Not Having a B2B Content Writing Strategy

There’s an old saying: “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” This aphorism might be an ancient explorer’s code, but every B2B marketer should make it their motto too. 
Each piece of content writing should push your buyers further down the sales funnel, especially considering that 90% of B2B buyers don’t follow a linear funnel path. A haphazard content writing strategy means your content will function as individual pieces of information, and buyers won’t follow the crumbs that lead to your solution.

When you’re planning your content marketing strategy, you should consider factors such as:

• Your end goal – Lead generation, brand awareness, breaking into a new market)
• Metrics and data points – How will you measure the success of your content marketing?
• Topics – Consider salient questions and their answers, such as “What are your audience’s pain points?”
• Order – The sequence in which you’ll post the content writing
• Distribution channels – Is it for a blog, social media, email, or another channel?

2. Your Content Writing is Shallow and Boring

Buyers consider 58% of content hollow and meaningless. If they give up before reaching the end, the chances are it’s boring, poorly written, or predictable to them. This “giving-up syndrome” doesn’t just happen with long-form content like blogs and ebooks—buyers can give up on your short social posts just as easily. 

To avoid boring content, ensure that your copywriters fully understand the buyer’s business, industry, and pain points. 58% of B2B businesses plan to increase the size of their content teams in the next year. If you’re part of this statistic, select writers based on their work quality and ability to understand your target audience.

3. Not Writing Content for Every Step of the Funnel

Content writing is an excellent top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) strategy because it grabs the attention of buyers who might not be familiar with your business. At the TOFU stage, some B2B buyers don’t know exactly what solution they need, and 60% actively search for brands before even considering a purchase. 

If your TOFU content marketing successfully captures the buyer’s attention, the buyer will likely have many more questions, queries, and concerns. Content writing provides the perfect opportunity to address them in middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) content like whitepapers and checklists, and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content such as case studies. 

4. Your Written Content Is Irrelevant

If you are writing to sell, you may as well be a B2C marketer. B2B content writing strives to provide value to buyers through insights and opinions, which helps build trust. B2B buyers are inundated with sales pitches every day, which is why they prefer to search for relevant content that assists them in researching “jobs” like problem identification, solution exploration, and supplier selection. 
The secret to creating engaging and relevant content for B2B buyers is to pretend to be them. For example, you might think about their pain points and the problems they’re trying to solve. Then you can present your business as the solution through content writing. If you’re unsure what will attract your target audience, consider conducting external feedback and research.

5. Not Optimizing Your Content Writing to Search

The internet is a very, very crowded place. Even if you create a highly unique piece of content, it will still get lost in the sea of B2B digital content without SEO. Failure to optimize your content writing to search engines like Google and Bing means you’re effectively writing for zero readers. 

Make your content writing search engine-friendly by identifying target keywords that your buyers search for, monitoring the best-performing topics and formats, and continually updating your SEO strategy. Semrush notes that it’s often better to rank in the top five for 100 searches a month than to rank on page 11 for a keyword with 100,000 searches per month.

6. You Forgot to Include a CTA

Congratulations, your content was great! Your buyer has read every word and believes that you are a credible, knowledgeable business. So, what next?

Forgetting to include a CTA is a fatal error because it leaves buyers feeling confused and lost in the sales funnel. A call to action should clearly instruct your buyer on what they should do next to continue their journey with you. At the TOFU stage, the CTA could encourage buyers to download the content or link to another piece. When buyers have reached the BOFU stage, the CTA should instruct them to learn more about your solution/product, try it or sign up. 

7. Only Writing Content for Your Website

Writing content for your website is a good idea because it helps you rank higher on search engines, amongst other benefits. However, relying too heavily on it means you miss out on attracting buyers on other platforms like social media. 
Content writing doesn’t need to be hard work if you employ content repurposing tactics. For example, you wrote an ebook. Next, why not condense the ebook into a blog, then create 2-3 social posts and email copy to promote the blog, and distribute everything across different channels? That’s a wide range of content posted on a wide range of platforms that stems from one simple ebook.

8. Not Writing Personalized Content

79% of B2B businesses that use a personalized marketing strategy exceed their revenue goals. Effective personalization cuts through the clutter of non-valuable content and makes buyers feel you are listening to their needs. Without it, buyers might think your content is generic and abstract rather than meaningful and relevant. 

It’s not enough to add the buyer’s name at the beginning of your email. Personalization should be deeply ingrained in the tone of voice of your content writing to differentiate your brand, strengthen your brand perception, and speak to buyers in a relatable manner. 

80% of B2B buyers prefer companies that provide personalized experiences, with 82% saying they want to be treated the same when buying for B2B as they would if they were buying for themselves. Before the thought of combining B2C personalization with B2B buyers breaks you out in a cold sweat, remember there is a way to personalize with ease. 

Seven out of ten marketers use account-based marketing (ABM) to target particular B2B audience segments with personalized, well-researched messaging. ABM tools like Trendemon automatically deliver customized content to your website visitors to capture B2B buyers during their self-serve research stage. Trendemon configures audiences based on ABM attributes and segments, then serves relevant content to push buyers down the sales funnel. 

Give Your Content the Personal Touch with Trendemon

B2B buyers are a bit like cats—they make decisions in their own time and hate being pestered. As buyers complete their research online, ensure your business has a search engine presence and an expert voice through great content writing. By following the tips above, you can be confident that your content writing is A+ every time. 

Don’t let that awesome content go to waste. Trendemon helps you capture B2B buyers’ attention and keep it to build meaningful connections. Generate 4X buyer engagement on your website with Trendemon’s ABM tool, and create aligned content-driven journeys for B2B buyers to follow. 

Request a Trendemon demo today.