Ever heard of the Likert Scale?
Most people have seen it, even if they didn’t know its name.
It’s a survey format where you read a statement and respond with how strongly you agree or disagree.
Let’s do one now:
I am embarrassed to talk about my B2B sales pipeline:
[Strongly disagree – – Disagree — Neither agree nor disagree – – Agree – – Strongly agree]
Let’s try another one:
I am so overwhelmed with organic leads that I might start selling them to competitors
[Strongly disagree – – Disagree — Neither agree nor disagree – – Agree – – Strongly agree]
Did you agree, or disagree with that one?
Most B2B marketers agree with #1 and disagree with #2.
Who’s sitting so comfortably that they could sell their leads?
The 10 examples in this article, that’s who.
If you want what they’ve got, bookmark this post right now.
Really good B2B Marketing is tough, and most of the marketers have lost their way.
Why?
- Busification. The obsessive pursuit of SEO and content calendars makes it easy to distract ourselves with busy work.
- The Sea of Sameness. When in doubt, we look at what the other guys are doing, or what we did in the past, and do it again.
To put it in a sentance: we want to be safe.
Old is safe.
Doing the footwork is safe.
Content calendars stuffed with hum drum blog posts are safe.
In marketing, safe means boring, and it should ring alarm bells in your head.
The best B2B marketers in 2023 are the teams who aren’t afraid of ripping out the traditional approach like old carpet.
Their campaigns are returning to the roots of content marketing, and making interesting, original content.
Seth Godin, be praised.
This article highlights 10 successful B2B content marketing examples that actually work and bring these companies thousands of leads.
None of the tactics are revolutionary.
Most of what we found is stuff that any agency could do. The genius of these pieces lies in their execution.
We’ll dissect them one-by-one to show you how it’s done so you can do it too.
What separates good content marketing from exceptional one?
Content marketing strategies are bad, good, or great, and the bell curve is heavy around “just fine.”
Most do an OK job.
Obviously, no one wants to set their goals to be “OK.” But extraordinary campaigns are clearly rare.
There are a few key elements that show up again, and again, in the best-in-class category.
What increases your odds of reliably producing exceptional content?
1. Your goal needs to be so clear that you can explain it to your kids.
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What message are you trying to convey?
- How does that message reach those people clearly and convincingly?
If you show your campaign to your mother, your brother, or a child, are they going to be able to answer those questions?
2. Your content has to be fun to consume.
By fun, I don’t mean you need to start posting memes on your Instagram account.
Fun can mean entertaining, sure; but it can also mean intriguing and nuanced, or inspirational and actionable.
Whichever direction you take with your content marketing, you must make that content dazzle – and never bore your reader.
3. Don’t follow trends. If it’s already a trend, you’re too late.
Creative and novel marketing is not formulaic. It’s easy to stay on top of the trends and copy-proven techniques, but it’s also a way to come across as tacky and out of touch.
Remember the Purple Cow: you are either remarkable or invisible.
Refuse to be a run-of-the-mill marketer: it’s your creativity and new ideas that have led to your greatest successes so far.
4. Strike the Balance.
Once you’ve added some spice, and your campaign is sufficiently your own, go back to step #1.
Is your goal still clear, and is your audience clear?
Odds are something important was lost in translation.
Confusing marketing is ineffective marketing.
Repeat until you’ve nailed it.
The three mortal sins of B2B content marketing
The worst thing you can do with your content marketing is to publish boring, faceless SEO content with generic headings that look and feel recycled.
Readers can smell low effort from miles away: if your only goal was to check a box in your keyword spreadsheets, it will show.
If you want a snowball’s chance in hell of striking a winning campaign, avoid the three mortal sins of B2B content marketing:
- Never do SEO for the sake of SEO
- Treat bland and generic content like the plague
- Spineless impersonal messages.
Without further ado, here are 10 examples of Content Marketing you can use to recalibrate your sights.
Additional read: Does Cheap Content Impact Bottom-line? Breaking Down The Costs of Content Marketing
The Top 10 Examples of B2B Content Marketing
- Animalz: Everybody Wants Thought Leadership Content
- Chainlink: Education hub
- Sumo Logic: Glossary pages
- Lemlist: I said NO to $30 Million
- Chamber Media: Who is Chamber Media?
- Hubspot: 13 Free Social Media Calendars
- Moz: The SEO’s Guide to Content Marketing
#1 Animalz: Founders of thought leadership content
Animalz is consistently recognized as a leader in content marketing. They run marketing strategies for enterprise companies, startups, and VC firms; you’ve undoubtedly seen their work.
Unlike other agencies, they focus on long-term growth through long-form content. No mushy, lukewarm content pieces.
What makes it great?
Their articles accurately represents Animalz’ focus as a company — differentiation through thought leadership. The in-depth pieces that focus more on storytelling and value than on satisfying Google.
Better yet, they don’t throw buzzwords around: each idea is explained clearly, and Animalz has a very creative way of breaking down complex concepts into their fundamental parts.
This article does what it’s talking about doing. Animalz has created a great thought-leadership piece about thought-leadership.
How you can do it too:
- Your content marketing strategy should not rely solely on SEO.
- Honesty and confidence: to quote the Animalz article, “Thought Leadership starts with asking yourself… ‘What do I have to thought lead with?’”
- Focus on quality writing and think outside the box when it comes to getting eyeballs.
- Think of a unique perspective only you can offer.
Bonus tip: Utilize the power of social media and personal brands
Animalz’s employees consistently post on LinkedIn and Twitter, like Ryan Law, which attracts far bigger audience than Google does.
#2 Chainlink: Education hubs
With new, young industries such as blockchain and Web3, you need an excessive amount of educational content in order to capture the attention of the target audience.
How can they buy your product if they don’t know what problems you can help them solve?
And Chainlink, the industry-standard web3 service platform understands that.
What makes it great?
Screencap from Smart Contracts guide.
New, complex processes are often hard to explain with plain text only.
For that reason, Chainlink incorporates videos, infographics, and visuals to help readers better understand the topic.
Moreover, they focus on covering every part of the problem, ensuring that the reader can find answers to all their questions without having to leave Chainlink’s website.
This allows them to meet the user at every part of their journey, from awareness to conversion, and position themself as trustworthy, reliable entity.
How you can do it too:
- Map out the customer journey process
- Find questions people have at every stage of their journey and try to answer them with in-depth educational content pieces.
- Map out the problems people have that your product/service solves — ensure to explain how you can solve their problems too.
- Enrichen your content with flow charts, infographics, and videos.
If you are a crypto project and want to learn more about how content marketing can help you, check out our in-depth guide on crypto content marketing.
#3 Sumo Logic: continuous intelligence platform
Glossaries are an underrated content marketing strategy.
Sumo Logic, a cloud-native SaaS analytics platform has created hundreds of glossary pages that generate tens of thousands in monthly organic traffic:
Glossaries are also an amazing way to cover ToFu terms that your target audience is searching for.
What makes it great?
Glossary pages are easier to produce than regular blog content or thought leadership. They require a fewer word count (usually from 300 – 1,000 words), simple and straightforward language, and far less time to produce.
Investing in glossaries and covering a wide range of related topics allows Google to recognize you as an authoritative and trustworthy website, increasing your rankings for all website pages.
If you want to start with massive content production but have a limited budget, glossaries can be the right fit. You can get approximately 3-5 glossary pages for the cost of one blog post.
How you can do it too:
- Check if there is SERP potential for glossary pages in your niche
- Do a thorough keyword research to get a pile of relevant keywords
- Prioritize keywords based on relevancy
- Determine the right word count for each keyword, based on keyword difficulty and business relevancy
If you want to kickstart your content production and check if glossary pages can work for you too, schedule free consultations with us.
#4 Lemlist: document your journey
- Content type: Video
- Title: I said NO to $30 million
We already mentioned how impersonal, bland, and faceless content isn‘t going to win you any fans. Making it more personal can spice things up.
Lemlist, a B2B email marketing company, has taken it a step further. They shared a story of the company refusing $30 million in funding, and that created a buzz within the industry – as well as outside of it.
Lemlist helps users send, personalize and automate emails at scale, but their content marketing strategy relies heavily on personal stories. They’re using it successfully to grab attention – and so can you.
What makes it great?
Everybody loves a good story, especially if there’s conflict.
The underdog trope, the overcoming of challenges, the creative solution to an impossible situation… It’s human nature to be interested in stories like that, so use it to your advantage.
Sharing the story of how Lemlist raised, then refused $30 million helped the company to get the tech community talking about them and generate more customers via the buzz the story has created.
Lemlist made a series of interviews explaining the decision, and people got intrigued. When there‘s intrigue, there‘s attention, and where there‘s attention, there‘s leads.
How you can do it too
- Document your business growth and share it online: People love to be a part of the journey.
- Be authentic, don’t just focus on showing your expertise.
- Make your content inspirational, not educational
#5 Chamber Media: video marketing on steroids
- Content Type: Short, cheeky, ‘about us’ video
- Title: A Look Inside Chamber.Media
We talked about the data-driven and the masterful.
Now, let’s talk about the nutty, the creative, and the hilarious.
Chamber Media is an agency focused solely on creating incredible ad videos that combine geeky humor and whacky techniques.
They deliver the message so well they have been featured in AdWeek, Inc, and Forbes and have worked with hundreds of brands like Fabletics, 1-800-Flowers, Potbelly Sandwich, and Tuft & Needle.
Chamber Media’s 100 employees produce over 3,000 live-action, high-production videos per month and to date have made the most anchor videos in the world.
Their work is so unique it’s impossible not to notice it, and they may just be the kings of viral content. To date, Chamber Media boasts over 15 million shares, over 15k press features, over 600 million views AND $800 million in traceable sales.
What makes it great?
The most ingenious element of Chamber Media’s content is that they’re not taking themselves too seriously. This instantly makes them likable and relatable.
This approach differentiates Chamber Media from boring-old video advertising agencies and makes them stand out in a very noticeable way.
It takes courage to go against the grain and be yourself in an authentic way. Still, you’d be surprised how far your creativity can differentiate you from the competition.
How you can do it too
- Integrate humor into your content
- Make short videos and written content on your client’s success stories.
- Instead of focusing on production quality, play on your strengths: maybe it’s wit, humor, or your unique way of storytelling.
- Your About Us page doesn’t have to be a boring, short-form written piece.
#6 Hubspot: the marketing and sales behemoth with 10+ million monthly organic traffic
Content Type: Article + downloadable resources
Title: How to Create a Social Media Calendar to Plan Your Content
Hubspot is the pioneer of Inbound Marketing and one of the biggest influences on digital marketing today.
Hubspot has written on every imaginable marketing topic, and they are driving an insane amount of traffic and leads to their services through content marketing alone.
What makes it great?
Their blog is a goldmine of long-form content pillars, templates, and other actionable resources for marketers to use.
Rookie marketers can dive into Hubspot’s free content and lessons and emerge armed with strategies, templates, and resources they need to launch their career.
By providing free, useful, and valuable resources, you will build your very own loyal and engaged tribe – and they’ll show their appreciation in leads and purchases.
How you can do it too:
- Think outside the box: what would create the most value for your audience? What freebies can you provide to your audience?
-
- Free course
- E-book
- Access to an exclusive community
- Small tool
- A handy template
-
- If you have a massive marketing budget, focus on covering as many relevant topics as possible, ASAP.
#7 Moz: one of the most respected SaaS SEO companies
- Content Type: In-depth, SEO fueled, articles
- Title: The SEO’s Guide to Content Marketing
Originally founded by the famous Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004 as a blog and an online community, Moz has become one of the most widely respected SEO authorities after the launch of their SEO tool suite.
Moz provides accurate and extremely useful tools for SEO ranging from keyword research to site audits, and they offer tons of free resources to get you started.
What makes it great?
This series of articles offers an invaluable resource for aspiring SEOs. It’s like a course broken down into easy-to-consume blog posts. Each of the posts explains content marketing concepts and practices in great detail with lots of helpful examples, data, and pointers.
From an SEO perspective, each of these blog posts ranks for individual keywords that are topically relevant bringing in a lot of traffic and valuable leads. They all build relevance toward the pillar content, and pass authority between an intricately thorough web of internal links.
Moz is not exactly inventing anything new, but they are going at it with so much expertise, in-depth research, and value, that the resulting content is exceptional.
How you can do it too
- Be among the first to cover a relevant topic and go hard on what’s proven to work
- If you have a large topical expertise, break it down to series of blog posts instead of a single large content piece
- Implement topic clusters in your SEO strategy
- Treat your content pillars as a long-term investment
So what’s the ultimate secret ingredient?
If we had to pinpoint that one secret ingredient that makes B2B content marketing work without fail, it’s this: quality. 🪄
Whether you choose the thought leadership path like Animalz, the data-driven approach of Moz, education-based like Chainlink and Sumo Logic, or the quirky and charismatic ways of Lemlist or Chamber Media, the principle stays the same.
Your content has to be highly valuable, inspiring, entertaining, educational, and authentic.
It can be tempting to use cheap techniques like content spinners or AI tools, but they won‘t get you anywhere long-term.
In fact, they may even harm your content marketing efforts – if you consistently produce content that is meh at best, you’ll start losing your audience’s attention and with it, leads, conversions, and rankings.
I mean, here’s what happened to DoNotPay after they published a bunch of generic pages:
Before you start creating any content understand who you’re serving and how you can best deliver value.
Think creatively when about the format and style of your content, and never give in to the temptation to produce half-assed work: for truly extraordinary results, the content needs to be truly extraordinary, too.
And if you have no time for that and want to outsource your content production and know that your graphs will always look like this:
Schedule free consultations with us and check how we can skyrocket your business. 🚀
