Your B2B customers and potential buyers spend a lot of time looking for information online before reaching out to a sales rep. Providing solutions to your prospects’ challenges through pieces like videos, blog posts, eBooks, infographics and other content positions your company as a source of necessary information. At the core of this content are writers who understand both your tech-based products and your customers’ needs.
According to a recent survey report, 75% of B2B buyers said a winning vendor’s content had a significant impact on their buying decisions. Effective B2B marketing content bridges the gap between high-tech products and marketing messaging. It nurtures prospects, turns them into leads and gets them in a buying mode.
Here are four skills to look for when selecting a B2B marketing tech writer or agency to help you develop the right messaging and generate accurate, targeted content.
1. Understanding What Your Business Does
A skilled tech writer needs to be able to interview and converse with analysts, engineers, chemists, developers, and the like to acquire an understanding of your business. With this information, the writer can build the marketing bridge that connects your technology to your customers. The writer must understand your tech-based personnel but talk like your end users. A successful marketing tech writer “gets” your complex products and services and can speak to buyers at various levels of comprehension using words that are common to their industry.
It’s important to note that translating insiders’ tech language into messaging that the non-expert can understand doesn’t mean dumbing down your message, talking down to your audience or minimizing what you do. A skilled tech writer masters this delicate balance to explain your complex tech solutions in a way that isn’t complicated.
2. Comprehending How Customers Use Your Products
You’ll want to make sure the B2B marketing tech writer understands how your customers use your products. They should then be able to demonstrate—within the context of a variety of content pieces—that your products and expertise can provide the right solution to their challenges.
Customers want to know how your company can help them. It’s the writer’s job to describe complex technical details as benefits that your customers need to solve their problems. The messaging must be compelling enough to capture the buyer’s interest, so they won’t have to look elsewhere. With clear writing at the core of your content, you can engage buyers early in the process, make them comfortable with your company and lead them to your offerings that will make their jobs easier.
3. Using Content as Part of an Integrated Marketing Strategy
To be most effective, your content needs to be more than a string of unrelated pieces. Your advertising, emails, SEO efforts, graphic design, content writing, web development, public relations and social media work best when they work together.
The tech writer should be able to create content for—or even contribute in developing—an integrated marketing strategy. Creating a focused marketing strategy starts with defining and evaluating your goals, identifying your key buyer personas and developing a comprehensive road map to reach them. After this groundwork is in place, it is used to create and execute a tactical plan.
4. Writing Under the Guidance of a Messaging Platform
Developing a clear, consistent messaging platform is a key part of your overall marketing strategy. A messaging platform includes elements such as your positioning strategy, B2B messaging plan, unique selling proposition, specific messaging everyone in your company will use through all marketing channels and key points you want customers and the industry to know about your company.
With this platform—which, ideally, the writer should help to develop—he or she can work to determine the right kind of content to reach your audience. Staying on message across all content pieces helps to solidify your position in the marketplace and drive your B2B marketing program.
Next Steps
Keeping up with the demand for informative, relevant and on-message content is a lot of work. That’s why partnering with a B2B marketing tech writer or agency—experienced in building that bridge between technology and the end user—can help your company develop content ideas, keep your messaging consistent across all platforms and capture the attention of customers.
In B2B tech marketing, tactics should be thought of as part of a larger whole, rather than separate pieces. By strategically integrating new and traditional marketing tactics, your marketing program become more effective and cost efficient. To learn more about how you can increase your lead generation and overall marketing, download our free eBook: Modern Integrated Digital Marketing—A Better Path for B2B Technology Marketers.
