The B2B space is plagued with generic content that fails to engage its target audience effectively. With an abundance of blog posts, social media updates, and other pieces of content saturating the market, B2B IT services companies often face the challenge of standing out from the crowd and driving conversions.
Let’s do the math here. Over 7.5 million blog posts are published every day. A lot of content is B2C, but let’s assume that about 10-20% of the content is B2B (this is a rough estimate). That leaves us with an average of 1,125,000 B2B blogs being published every day, 46,875 per hour, 781 per minute, and roughly 13 per second.
Of course, these would be segregated across a variety of B2B categories. But they’d still have some bearing with tech because of how pervasive it is in the B2B space. So, you’re looking at immense competition and that too mostly from websites that are already authoritative on the search engine.
It certainly is a challenge to stand out, but one that’s equally rewarding if you do because 70% of people still believe that blogs serve them the best when researching a brand.
What you need to do is create unique and compelling content that resonates with your target audience. This involves conducting thorough research to understand the needs and pain points of potential customers. But even more than that, this involves working along an excellent content brief.
A well-crafted content brief serves as the foundation for creating high-quality content that converts. To ensure success, the content brief should align with the buyer’s journey and the customer’s search intent. By addressing each stage of the journey with educational and informative content, businesses can attract and retain their ideal customers.
What Is a Content Brief?
A content brief is a critical document that serves as a roadmap for content creators in the B2B marketing space. It provides essential guidance to writers by offering sufficient editorial direction, setting expectations for content quality, and ensuring alignment with content marketing goals, brand voice, formatting, and narrative flow.
Its purpose is to provide a clear and concise overview of what needs to be accomplished with the content. By outlining the target audience, target keywords, and the type of content to be created, a content brief helps writers understand the objectives and deliverables of their work. It also includes guidelines for internal and external links, social media platforms to target, and desired outcomes and business goals.
According to a study, 82.7% of content teams rely on content briefs to optimize their content creation process. This statistic shows the importance of this document in streamlining content production, ensuring consistency, and improving overall effectiveness.
The Benefits of Writing a Strong Content Brief
Writing a strong content brief offers several benefits to content teams and marketers.
- Firstly, it improves organization by providing a clear structure and direction for the content creation process. This ensures that the team is aligned and working towards a common goal.
- It enhances clarity by clearly defining the target audience, objectives, and desired outcomes. This helps content creators understand what needs to be accomplished and allows them to create content that resonates with the intended audience.
- A well-written content brief increases efficiency by eliminating confusion and reducing rework. With a clear roadmap in place, content creators can focus on delivering high-quality content that meets the brief’s requirements, leading to improved conversion rates and audience engagement.
Overall, a strong content brief is essential for effective content strategy and streamlined content creation. It ensures that the team is aligned, the content flows smoothly, and the objectives are met, resulting in high-quality content that converts and achieves the desired business goals.
How To Create a Content Brief for B2B Content?
To create a brilliant content brief for B2B content, there are several key steps and considerations to keep in mind.
1. Define the Goal of the Blog
Defining the goal of the blog is a crucial step when creating a B2B content brief. Why? Because every blog post and every goal that it basis itself on can have specific implications.
For example, lead generation aims to drive potential customers to take action, such as filling out a form or subscribing to a newsletter.
Likewise, brand awareness focuses on increasing visibility and creating a strong brand presence among the target audience.
Thought leadership goals aim to position the company as an industry authority by providing valuable insights and expertise.
Lastly, sales support objectives focus on nurturing leads through the buyer’s journey and supporting the sales team.
By clarifying the goal of the blog in the content brief, the content team can align their efforts toward creating relevant and engaging content that supports these objectives. It ensures that the content created not only attracts the target audience but also converts them into qualified leads or loyal customers.
2. Define the Target Keywords
To effectively create a content brief for B2B content that converts, it is crucial to define the target keywords that will drive organic traffic to your content. This can be achieved through conducting thorough keyword research using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Free Chrome extensions like Surfer SEO and Keywords Everywhere can also do the job, albeit from a rudimentary perspective.
Keyword research allows you to identify the most relevant and valuable keywords that your target audience is actively searching for. It provides insights into audience interest levels and competition levels for specific keywords. By understanding these factors, you can strategically select primary and secondary keywords that will optimize your content for search engines.
When defining the target keywords, it is also important to align them with the selected story angle and the reader’s search intent. This ensures that the content addresses the specific needs and queries of your audience, increasing the chances of converting them into leads or customers.
Incorporating target keywords in your content will boost its visibility in organic search results. It enhances your on-page SEO efforts and enables search engines to understand the relevance and value of your content.
3. Define the Target Audience
To write a brilliant content brief for B2B content that converts, it is crucial to define the target audience with a deep understanding of their demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and geographic details. This audience segmentation plays a vital role in the creative ideation process.
The target audience for B2B content may vary depending on the specific industry or niche. Plus, there could be different personas, such as B2B marketers, content marketers, small business owners, business technologists, or even core technologists seeking relevant and educational content to enhance their knowledge and improve their strategies.
- Demographically, they may fall into various categories such as age, gender, job title, and company size.
- Behaviorally, they are actively searching for solutions, seeking guidance, and looking to improve their conversion rates.
- Psychographically, they are driven by a desire for high-quality content that allows them to stay ahead of the competition.
- Geographically, the target audience may be spread across different regions, and their language and cultural nuances should be considered when crafting content.
To make it easier to understand and relate to the target audience, creating buyer personas is highly recommended. These personas represent fictional characters that embody the characteristics, goals, pain points, and motivations of your ideal customers. By clearly defining your target audience and creating buyer personas, you can ensure that your content brief addresses the specific needs and interests of your potential customers, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
4. Suggest Relevant H2s and H3s
Relevant H2s and H3s provide a clear structure for the reader. These headings not only make it easier for the audience to navigate the content but they also help search engines understand the organization of the information.
For example, if you were creating a content brief on “how to create a content brief,” you can include an H2 like “Understanding the Target Audience.” This section can delve into the demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and geographic details of the target audience, providing a solid foundation for the content brief.
Another relevant H2 could be “Creating Buyer Personas.” This section will focus on the importance of creating buyer personas and how they help in understanding the specific needs and interests of potential customers. It can also explain the process of creating buyer personas and provide examples.
For the content structure itself, an H2 like “Crafting Compelling Content Ideas” can help guide the brainstorming and ideation process. This section can discuss various techniques and methods for generating content ideas that will resonate with the target audience.
5. Provide Competitor References
Conducting a competitive analysis allows you to understand their offerings and compare them with yours. This analysis can be categorized into three types of competitors: direct, indirect, and replacement.
- Direct competitors are those that offer similar products or services to your business.
- Indirect competitors, on the other hand, provide alternative solutions that can address the same needs or pain points your business focuses on.
- Replacement competitors are those that can potentially replace your product or service entirely.
To gather competitor references, thoroughly scan through the SERP for the most pertinent content around the search queries you’re targeting. This can help the writer understand the quality being targeted and how comprehensive the article needs to be in order to compete with the competitors.
6. Suggest Internal Linking Opportunities
An effective B2B content brief should include internal linking opportunities that help provide more context for users and search engines. Internal links are essential for guiding users through your website and improving the overall user experience.
In the content brief, it is important to identify existing articles or service pages that cover similar topics. These can serve as valuable resources to link back to within your new content. By linking to relevant internal pages, you not only provide more information to your audience but also signal to search engines that your website is a credible and authoritative source.
Internal linking can help boost your website’s SEO by improving its overall structure and keyword relevancy. It also aids in distributing link equity throughout your site, which can improve the rankings of your pages on search engine results pages.
When suggesting internal linking opportunities, focus on providing links to relevant articles or service pages that cover similar topics. This helps create a seamless transition for users and encourages them to explore more of your content.
7. Define the Intended CTA
The call-to-action (CTA) is the specific action you want your target audience to take after engaging with your content. Whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, requesting a product demo, or downloading a whitepaper, a clear and specific CTA is essential.
In the content brief, clearly specify the intended CTA and align it with the desired action for your target audience. This ensures that your content is crafted to lead users towards that specific action.
There are various types of CTAs that can be used depending on the goal of your content and the target audience. Some examples include:
- Sign up for a free trial
- Download our e-book
- Subscribe to our newsletter
- Request a personalized demo
These CTAs should be strategically placed within your content, such as at the end of a blog post, in a sidebar, or as a pop-up. This ensures that the CTA is visible and easily accessible to your audience.
By defining and incorporating the intended CTA into your content brief, you provide a clear direction for your content team, ensuring that the content is focused on driving conversions and achieving your B2B marketing goals.
8. Lay Out Additional Notes
The “Additional Notes” section in a content brief plays a vital role in assisting the writer in creating a high-quality piece. This section allows the content strategist to provide additional information, resources, and guidance that can enhance the content’s depth, accuracy, and overall quality.
For example, recommending specific books, articles, or research papers can not only provide credibility to the content but also ensure that it is well-researched and up-to-date.
Listing favorite data sources is another valuable addition to this section. Sharing trusted and reliable sources of information can help the writer gather data and statistics that support the content’s claims and arguments. This not only strengthens the credibility of the content but also adds depth and authority to the piece.
Providing links to related blog posts and resources can also be beneficial. These links can serve as references for the writer, enabling them to expand on certain aspects or explore different angles of the topic. It can also help maintain consistency across multiple pieces of content within a content strategy.
An Example of a Comprehensive B2B Content Brief
Here’s an example of how a B2B content brief could look like:
| 1. Title | The Benefits of Implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System for B2B Companies | |
| 2. Objective | To educate B2B marketers about the advantages of using a CRM system in their businesses. | |
| 3. Target audience | B2B marketers and technology decision-makers | |
| 4. Content format | Long-form blog post | |
| 5. Word count | Approximately 1500 words | |
| 6. Primary keyword | CRM system for B2B companies | |
| 7. Secondary keywords | B2B CRM, benefits of CRM system, improving customer relationships, increasing sales efficiency | |
| 8. Search intent | Informative | |
| 9. Content structure | Introduction (150 words) Introduce the significance of CRM systems in B2B contexts and highlight the benefits they offer. [H2] Definition and Importance of CRM in B2B (200 words) Define what CRM systems are and explain their pivotal role in nurturing B2B customer relationships. [H2] Key Benefits of Implementing a CRM System (400 words) Illustrate the advantages of adopting CRM systems in B2B operations: [H3] Improved customer relationships & satisfaction [H3] Streamlined sales & marketing processes [H3] Enhanced data management & analysis [H3] Increased sales efficiency & revenue generation [H2] How to Choose the Right CRM System for Your B2B Company (300 words) Guide readers through the process of selecting the ideal CRM system: [H3] Identify business goals & requirements [H3] Evaluate available CRM options [H3] Consider integration capabilities [H3] Analyze cost & scalability factors [H2] Best Practices for Successful CRM Implementation (300 words) Provide actionable insights for a successful CRM system adoption: [H3] Gain buy-in from stakeholders [H3] Provide thorough training & support [H3] Regularly monitor & update the system Conclusion (150 words) Summarize the key takeaways and emphasize the transformative impact of CRM systems on B2B enterprises. | |
| Good reference sources | B2B CRM Strategy — Top 5 Benefits Of Using A CRM For B2B Sales 4 Top Benefits of Using a CRM for B2B Companies 9 Benefits of Using a CRM for Your Business | |
| Additional Notes | Link to a related webinar on CRM system implementation for B2B companies Include relevant statistics and case studies to support key benefits |
FAQs
1. Is B2B content writing hard
B2B content writing does require a bit of a different approach than B2C content writing. Since the audience for B2B content is typically made up of professionals and industry experts, the content must be well-researched and provide actionable insights that can help them achieve their goals. Additionally, it should be optimized to capture the attention of key decision-makers and compel them to take action.
2. When to use a content brief in B2B content marketing?
A content brief should be used in B2B content marketing whenever you are creating a new piece of content. A comprehensive and detailed brief can help ensure the writer understands the goal of the project, as well as any specific requirements that need to be met. It can also provide helpful references and resources, enabling them to create high-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience.
3. What makes a great B2B content brief?
A great B2B content brief should clearly articulate the goal of your project and provide detailed information about the target audience, message, tone, and style of the content. It should also include additional resources such as related articles, case studies, and statistics that can be used for reference and support. Lastly, make sure to provide any specific instructions or requirements the writer needs to adhere to.