The B2B marketing world is a difficult place to live in and succeed. The number of potential clients expands at a very slow rate, while competition grows day by day. Plus, your prospects are knowledgeable professionals who know exactly what they need, what they are looking for. This is why you should pay great attention when building your B2B content marketing strategy.
The Content that Sells: Reliable, Documented and Concise
So, what kind of content do corporate buyers respond to? First of all, they do not use emotion when making a purchase decision. Thus, they want content that provides logical reasons for the purchase.
Secondly, they want cold hard data in order to trust a statement or a claim. Last, but not least, they are busy people and prefer content that gets to the point quickly and does not take a lot of time to consume.
There is one type of content that meets all these requirements: case studies.
Case Studies: the King of B2B Content Marketing
While emotion does not play a role in a corporate purchasing decision, the proof is a solid reason to lead to it. Datasheets and product descriptions are fine. But there is always the question: “Is this product/service a good fit for my company?”
Thus, case studies can offer a simple and effective answer by showing how a company in the same niche/industry implemented the product and the benefits they are reaping. Plus, they represent an outspoken endorsement from the client who agrees to be featured in the case study.
If you still need convincing, here are five important reasons why you should include as many case studies as possible in your B2B marketing strategy:
1. Case Studies Showcase Your Work Processes
A corporate buyer needs a full understanding of how you work with your clients. This is a crucial aspect of building a long term relationship with a trusted supplier. And this is exactly what case studies do.
By going through the entire process of winning a client and implementing your solution, the case study shows your work process. Thus, a prospect can quickly determine whether your values and business cultures are similar, making your company a good fit for their needs.
2. Case Studies Are Customer-Centric
When you write articles or white papers for your B2B content marketing strategy, you tend to focus on you: your company, your experience, your products, and your know-how. But now we live in a customer-centric world.
And in the case of studies, the customer comes into focus. This content piece speaks of their pain point, their search for a solution, their decision to select you and their satisfaction at seeing their problem solved.
3. You Can Adapt Case Studies for Various Business Personas
One single case study can grow into several pieces for your B2B content marketing strategy. One approach can show the technical director the advantages of your technology or work processes. Another approach can persuade the financial manager that your pricing policy is flexible and adequate for their budget.
And finally, another approach can persuade the owner/CEO that the way you worked with that client, the post-sale support you offer, etc. make you a trusted long-time partner.
4. Case Studies Help Your Brand Reputation Grow
In this situation, the correlation is clear: the bigger the client, the greater your brand reputation will be. An astute purchasing manager will look carefully at the company names featured in your case studies.
And they will draw a clear inference: if these companies are happy to work with this business, then we can trust them, too.
5. Case Studies Are Evergreen Content
Last but not least, case studies are great content pieces to re-share on your social media pages during busy periods for your marketing team. Instead of coming up with last-minute articles with a lower impact, they can select an outstanding case study from the list and create lots of engagement.
At the same time, case studies can be repurposed into:
- Examples to be used in a webinar
- Supporting evidence in white papers
- Slide presentations
- Live video Q&A sessions.
Therefore, we believe that we do not exaggerate when we call case studies the king of B2B content marketing for 2019.