Have you been to a shopping mall lately?

Walk around one and you’ll hear hundreds of people talking at once. If you only heard one or two voices, you could distinguish them. When you have a crowd of people, all you can hear is a dull roar.

• Creating a content strategy on the internet is a lot like being in a mall.
• There are so many voices that the roar is deafening, making it impossible to tell one message from another.
• However, with the right tools, you can rise above the crowd and make sure your voice comes across clearly.

It’s also important to distinguish between B2C audiences and B2B. This article focuses on business-to-business audiences. Still, you shouldn’t forget that people and their personalities exist behind those businesses you’re trying to reach.

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #1: Craft Buyer Personas

If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach, you won’t be able to reach the right audience. Create buyer personas, or profiles, to help you decide which arguments and evidence will convince your audience to buy or subscribe.

Identify their goals and their pain points. Once you know what your reader needs, you can show how your product or service will benefit them.

Learn how to sell more effectively to your core buyer persona here.

Research

To decide which audience to target, try looking at your existing customer base. Where do they live? What do they buy, and how often? Track demographics, psychographics, and behavior.

You can accomplish this with surveys or by analyzing existing data. Quantitative analysis gives you hard numbers and statistics, but qualitative analysis provides insights essential to building realistic buyer personas.

You also have many ways to use outside sources for research. Social media monitoring, for example, is a great way to get insights into your market in real-time. However, be careful not to rely on this method too much. Sites like Twitter or TikTok are notorious for being unreliable and subject to volatile swings.

Google Trends tracks how often users search for a term on a day-to-day basis. Typically, people Google topics that have recently been in the news. 

Users also search for subjects they have an interest in, such as products and services they want to buy. Don’t forget to Google your own business and see what consumers are seeing.

You can also buy information from other companies that have already done the work for you. However, this data is expensive and can be out of date. You’re much better off monitoring your customers yourself in most cases.

Summarize, Segment, and Set Up

Summarize the information about your audience with tools like Excel or Access. You can find dozens of sites that will also help you compare data, some of which are even free. 

John Lydgate said: 

“You can please all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” 

Don’t go too broad when deciding which customers to target. Instead, segment your audience based on demographics and other areas of interest.

Once you’ve decided who your core audience is, set up buyer personas. These will help determine which arguments and evidence will get the most interest. They’ll also help persuade your audience to follow through on your call to action. 

Where does your customer live? What’s their socioeconomic and educational background? What types of media do they use, and where do they go when they want more information? 

These profiles help you envision your audience so that you can write copy that feels tailored to them.  

Imagine that you’re marketing to companies that sell novelty jewelry. Some companies may focus on fruits such as bananas or apples, and others may create products showcasing cars or Disney princesses.

If you sell banana-shaped earrings, you’ll want to focus on companies with the more common fruits that everyone recognizes. While the other companies may be interested, focus on the audience more likely to buy.

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #2: Determine Search Query Intent

It’s not enough to have the right keywords for your content — you also have to take search query intent into account. Depending on the modifiers a consumer uses, you end up with different SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages.)

Research and experiment with keywords to see which ones draw the most attention to your business.  Shorter keywords will show up on more SERPs. Long-tail keyword with modifiers (think “small batch bananas” instead of “fruit”) that give more specific information make it easier to get a top ranking.

Navigational

Navigational searches have a specific destination in mind. Users already know what company they want to reach — they’re simply not sure what the exact web address is. 

These terms include: 

• “White House” 
• “Bath and Bodyworks”
• “Architectural Digest” 

They’re probably the most straightforward searches, so they’re easier to optimize for. However, that’s not the only reason that people search the internet. 

Informational

People use informational searches to find answers to specific questions. People write these in natural language as if they were part of a conversation. 

Examples may include:

• “Where did David Ogilvy grow up?” 
• “What’s wrong with the electric grid in Texas?
• “How far am I from the Grand Canyon?”

The search for “Where did David Ogilvy grow up” leads to a snippet at the top of the search engine results page that will inform us he was from West Horsley, England. Google snippets provide quick answers to searches.

Commercial Investigation

Commercial investigation usually happens at the top of a sales funnel. People research and look for reviews and comparisons, including:

• “LinkedIn versus Facebook”
• “Nintendo Switch Reviews”
• “Best Italian restaurant in New York.”

Transactional

Transactional searches happen when people have already made up their minds to buy something. It could be anything from an item in a store or a subscription to a SaaS.

For example:

• “Buy scented candles”
• “Subscribe to Moz”
• “Buy plane tickets to Arizona”

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #3: Check Out The Competition

Identify your direct competitors and research them to look for ideas and points of differentiation. A SWOT analysis defines the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats another company may pose for your business.

• Strengths — Let’s think about a company that sells bananas, like Chiquita. Its strengths are its well-known name and huge market share. 
• Weaknesses — Chiquita has a reputation similar to many international corporations. The brand has faced criticism based on questionable business practices over the years. 
• Opportunities — Identify niches and markets that Chiquita might overlook. Your company could differentiate itself by offering different varieties of bananas that Chiquita overlooks. 
• Threats — Fast food is more popular than ever. People want to save money and enjoy more convenience at the cost of health. 

Other Questions to Ask

When browsing sites and stats for your competitors, consider the following questions:

“Where’s the content being posted?” Is it YouTube, TikTok, or Twitter? Where are they reaching their core audience? Is it worth it to advertise on the same social media sites, or do you want to reach a different audience?

“Which influencers are sharing it?” Influencers are social media users with a large following who use their audience to promote sponsored content. Keep on top of trends — influencers can have a shorter shelf life than celebrities.

Track reactions, engagement, and follower sentiment. Those reaction buttons on social media posts have valuable sentiment analysis information already sorted out for you. For example, on Facebook we have: Like, Love, Care, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

How frequently does the competition update its content? Make sure your blog, podcast, or YouTube channel has regular updates to stay current and fresh in your viewers’ minds. 

As always, look up your competitor’s website and see how it ranks on Google Trends and Moz. Check backlinks, domain authority, and keywords.

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #4: Understand The Buyer’s Journey

Take your buyer personas and think about them critically. Then, try brainstorming with your team and see how many factors you can come up with in each category.

We discussed buyer personas earlier, but we didn't come up with any examples when describing them. So let’s use some hypothetical ones for now, but keep in mind, yours should focus on solid research — not assumptions. 

Take the case of a teenager with acne. For demographic reasons, let's consider people between the ages of 10 and 19. 

Learn about your prospect's stages of awareness in this article.

Empathy Map

• Thinks and Feels — A teenager worries about their appearance on Instagram and TikTok. While these platforms offer a wide variety of filters, they still want naturally healthy, glowing skin they can show off to their followers.
• Hears and Sees — Instagram models and influencers who promote expensive skincare routines.
• Says and Does — Begs parents to buy the skincare products they’ve seen online.
• Pains — They’re frustrated when they don’t get the same results they’ve seen on the influencer’s posts.
• Gains — It gives them a point of commonality for making small talk with other teenagers.

Again, always research when you create buyer personas and empathy maps. Never assume that you understand a demographic without research.

Experience Map

Experience maps describe the marketing funnel and customer journey. These points of contact document the circumstances of the journey. Experience maps highlight all interactions between a business and its customers — from the first interaction to the conversion into a customer and building of a relationship.

The four stages you’ll want to consider are:

• Awareness — Buyer notices a need of theirs that isn’t being met. They hear about your product or service.
• Consideration — Buyer considers whether their problem is important enough to solve. If it is, they think about their options for fixing it.
• Purchase — The conversion. They’ve bought, subscribed, or hired you to fulfill their needs.
• Retention — Buyer brings repeat business and travels through the experience map more quickly in subsequent instances.

Remember that we’re talking about B2B, not B2C. You want to appeal to other businesses, not people. So, while we’re using influencers as an example, these might not apply to a business when you’re trying to convince them.

Or will they? Do your own research and find out. The results may surprise you.

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #5: Define Your Goals

If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you won’t hit the right target. So, what are you hoping to accomplish with your content? Are you looking for sales, or are you increasing awareness?

Here are some goals you may want to reach:

• E-mail subscriptions — Don’t make newsletter subscribers your only focus. Consider how many people open your e-mails. How many people click the links to your page? 
• PDF Downloads — Offering free PDF downloads (after a signup) is a good trick to get more e-mail addresses for your potential client list. Good content sticks in mind and makes your audience more receptive to future advertising.
• Video Views — This is one of many things that YouTube keeps track of on their site. The more views you get, the bigger the audience you’ve reached. 
• Social Media Follows — How many people have liked or subscribed to your company’s page. This metric isn’t always useful. How many people “like” a page and never go back to it? 
• Free trials — A 30-day free trial can be an effective way to show off products you know your audience will love. Many people sign up for a trial and forget to unsubscribe until much later. If they enjoy your product, you’ve given them a big boost in their productivity and made yourself another customer. It’s a win-win situation.
• Webinar Participation — Signing up for a webinar is easy. Getting people to sit and watch the entire show is a challenge. Choose speakers wisely and be sure to include plenty of time for Q and A. Audience engagement is the key to a good webinar. Always make the recording available later for the readers who missed the first broadcast.

Don’t forget to build audience rapport and develop a relationship with your customers. Solid branding ensures brand loyalty. Retaining customers costs a lot less than getting new ones, so reducing churn is an essential goal of content strategy. 

Set goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound:

• Specific — Which metric do I want to meet? Why is it important? Where do I find it? Which resources will you need and which challenges will you meet when pursuing your goal?
• Measurable — Which KPIs will you be using? How will you know when you’ve reached your goal?
• Achievable — How realistic are your goals? Do you have the time, the resources, and skilled workers to accomplish them?
• Relevant — Is your goal appropriate? Do you have the right people, in the right departments, with the right resources to use? Will reaching this goal help your company, or is it something to make you feel good?
• Time-bound — Can you set a specific timeline for each part of the goal? Is it short-term or long-term?

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #6: Track KPIs And Metrics

The amount of data and metadata you can collect on a project seems to be infinite. While we’re not going into detail here, we have some Key Performance Indicators you might include:

• Revenue
• Sales Qualified Leads or SQLs
• Cost Per Click or CPC
• Customer Lifetime Value or CLV
• Conversion rate
• Organic SEO rank
• Return On Ad Spend or ROAS
• Open rate
• Click rate
• Bounce rate

Be sure to crunch the numbers and come up with KPIs relevant to your content and its goals for your business. Don’t waste time on “vanity metrics” that look good without measuring anything meaningful or actionable.

A good KPI is quantitative, relevant, and easy to calculate. Ask yourself whether improving your chosen KPIs makes a noticeable difference in customer loyalty and customer sales.

Way To Craft Powerful Attention-Grabbing B2B Copy That Turns Prospects Into Customers #7: Understand Multi-product Companies

We’re focusing on multi-product companies for this article. For simplicity’s sake, let's picture it as a chart with many products for one buyer type.

Use a product-based approach. Don’t focus on differentiating the audience, but on segmenting the products you have to offer. Consider the top, middle, and bottom of the marketing funnel.

Include a column for each product and have the stages of the funnel in your rows. You can do this with Excel or even on paper if you like a more tangible process.

• Product — Top, middle, the bottom of the funnel.
• Top — Awareness, Interest. Advertising and targeted content.
• Middle — Consideration, Intent. Product details, free trials, and other information-gathering materials. 
• Bottom — Evaluation, Purpose. A sales decision has been made.

Broad versus Granular

Are your goals broad and overarching, or would you like to be more specific? What marketing channels are the most effective? 

• Google ads
• Organic Google results
• SMS 
• Radio 
• Television
• e-books 
• Whitepapers
• Podcasts
• Video Blogs
• Blog Entries
• Etc.

Use multiple channels and different types of content to ensure a broad mixture of exposure and media types:

• Paid — Lead generation, sponsored content
• Earned — Link-building, word-of-mouth
• Shared — Partnerships, social reviews
• Owned — Content marketing, employee testimonies

Inbound marketing attracts consumers with your own channels — your blog, website, or social media channel. Basically, the content you’ve produced.

Outbound marketing is paid or earned advertising on other sites and channels to get a reader’s attention and start the awareness cycle.

Here's how you can authentically position your offer using copywriting.

Let’s Review What We’ve Learned

Content strategy for a business to business (B2B) model will have different goals than business to customer (B2C) interactions. We used the example of a shopping mall, but you could also consider the perspective of the companies that supply products to the stores. 

Do solid research with metadata you already have on hand from existing sales and use other sources like survey research if you have the means to do so. 

A store that sells novelty jewelry will have different needs than a company that sells diamond engagement rings.

How Do You Measure Up?

Consider your ranking on sites like Google or Bing. Include the intentions (Navigational, Informational, Commercial, and Transactional) of the searcher when describing the content of your site to improve your SEO.

Check out the competition and see how they rank. Analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and identify points of differentiation. Create superior content that exploits these weaknesses so you can find your own niche.

How do they manage their social media accounts? Do they track sentimental reactions? How often do they provide new content? What kind of comments are they getting from their users?

Determine Your Core Audience

Use consumer research to build profiles of the customers you want to reach. Consider their needs, challenges, and demographic information such as education and socioeconomic class. 

Take advantage of the data you’ve collected from current customers. Extend your search for other information to focus on market segmentation. Narrowing down your audience helps you to create content that feels personal to your viewers.

Once you have your buyer personas, you can identify your goals. Be sure that they’re SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.) Determine the metrics you’ll use to evaluate your progress. 

Multi-product companies and B2B advertising

A multi-product company offers many products to a few audiences. Rather than focusing on the audience, focus on showing the difference between your products and how they serve your audience’s needs.

Chart the top, middle, and bottom of the marketing funnel. Examine your content to find the areas that need to be filled in or improved. The research you did at the beginning comes into play here. You should have a rich store of information to use.

There’s so much content on the Internet that it can feel like a jumbled mess sometimes. It may seem hard to pick out one voice above the others, but that’s just what you’ll have to help your customers do.

The good news? You have the tools you need to get started.

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