How to Apply Principles From Creators to B2B Marketing

Content creators are in the business of getting impressions. Marketers like you are also in the business of getting impressions. B2B marketers on LinkedIn are going on about how they should copy creators... but it's more nuanced than that.

There's a lot B2B marketers can learn from content creators, but you shouldn't just copy them blindly.

Creators make money from ads and sponsorships. A fitness influencer makes money because Gymshark pays them to wear their athleisure and get views. YouTubers like MrBeast makes money from YouTube watch time and ads. It's an eyeballs game.

As a B2B company, you care about WHO the impressions are from, not just total impressions. You're not selling to consumers (which is everyone), but rather very specific types of people looking for expertise and knowledge on how to run their business.

Just look at Lenny Rachitsky, author of Lenny's Newsletter. His content is centered around product management — and he's made it his living. As of the time of writing, he has over 350,000 newsletter subscribers and plenty of customers that pay for his content. He's perfected a formula here: B2B expertise + the personal touch of a creator = qualified eyeballs and $$$.

Think about Jason Lemkin, who launched SaaSt and the world's biggest annual B2B conference.

Entertainment is important but does not supersede education. Here's what B2B marketers can learn from creators without getting off track:

• They think about metrics other than revenue.
• They make authentic connections.
• They repurpose and redistribute.

People like MrBeast are cool and all, but you want to be about substance rather than entertainment value alone. Here's how you can be more like Lenny and Jason.

1. Track Metrics Other Than Revenue

Don't get us wrong. Revenue is the end-goal metric, and it's important to be able to tie your content efforts to revenue.

But it's also important to consider other component metrics and the time scale.

Content creators like YouTuber MrBeast owe their monumental success to building a dedicated audience. And how did he do that? Through years of following cues such as view count and other engagement metrics and repeatedly creating content that his audience responded to. Thanks to his popularity on YouTube, he could sell merch, launch a burger chain restaurant, and open his own charity.

Bringing it back to B2B, the piece that started Lenny's success was a guest post on Medium. A sudden spike in organic traffic made him realize he had something valuable to offer. And the rest is history.

So, what can you take from this? Look for engagement and participation from your target ICPs to make sure they care about the content before you try to get results from them.

Here are some other top-of-funnel metrics to track that imply your content is gaining traction with your ICPs:

• Monthly social media impressions per channel — How many people viewed a LinkedIn post? How many people commented on it?
• Monthly searches of your company name — Has there been a recent increase?
• Monthly organic search traffic — How many people find your site via Google or Bing?
• Monthly newsletter signups

Quick disclaimer, though — don't lose sight of actionable metrics like revenue.

While useful, engagement metrics and brand awareness fall under "vanity metrics." At some stage, you need to prove that content is consistently helping move business objectives like revenue, or else you leave your marketing team in a vulnerable position.

2. Create Authentic Connections with Personal Accounts

There is a direct relationship between content creators and their audiences. The creator isn't some cold, faceless drone hiding behind a corporate logo. They are the living, breathing representation of their brand — a figurehead that people can rally around.

People are more inclined to trust and follow them because they feel they can connect and relate to them on a human level. The audience becomes more of a fanbase and is far more willing to buy whatever the creator puts their name to.

Nobody cares about faceless corporate brands. They want to care about and connect with someone.

You need to turn yourself, your founders, and your employees into creators in the same way. It's as easy as posting from personal accounts as well as the company account.

Practice Employee Advocacy

Employees are the natural ambassadors of your brand, especially those on your GTM market team, like Customer Success, Sales, and Marketing. Practicing employee advocacy can really extend your reach.

And personal perspectives are a huge focus of Google's upcoming Perspectives filter. It will exclusively show posts on social media and Q&A sites where people share their opinions on a topic. You want your employees and customers to show up there.

Sometimes though, employees may not know what to post, are discouraged by how long it may take, and forget to engage with LinkedIn posts for amplification. Letterdrop can help them repurpose content into social posts using AI and can automate their participation in promoting existing posts. Each process only takes a couple of minutes.

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3. Rethink Distribution

Successful content creators are masters of distribution. They hyper-focus on one channel, and once they have a foundation, they repurpose their content for secondary channels.

Someone like Lenny started with his newsletter but now has a successful companion podcast. MrBeast started with YouTube but expanded as many YouTubers do through live streams and Instagram reels.

Here's how to think about distribution like a content creator.

1. Branch Out Into Different Content Formats

This helps you stand out in the creator economy and is an important part of the future of SEO. Google's SGE will prioritize original content across platforms, so it's worth thinking about saying the same message across formats.

And creators have shown that it doesn’t have to be new content each time. You can repurpose a blog post into a short video, for example.

Manually combing through existing posts to see what to repurpose can take ages. You can publish content in different formats from the publishing page in Letterdrop and repurpose YouTube videos and web pages into social drafts in one click with AI.

2. Create a Consistent (and Realistic) Posting Schedule

Burnout is a common problem in B2B because people can’t commit to posting schedules. Content creators are consistent across social media, which is a key to their success.

Plan a schedule you can commit to. Start small and build up from there.

3. Think About Specific Channels

LinkedIn impressions are different from YouTube watch time. You need to track individual channel metrics and understand how to build those channels.

4. Read and Engage With Comments

Comments are a great way to find new ICPs and see how well your content lands with your audience. Encourage your employees to engage with comments and connect with potential ICPs.

The Future of B2B Is Personal

If there's one thing to learn from content creators? Business is personal. They create a personal brand so compelling that their followers are willing to support them no matter the medium (or the price.)

You and your employees need to become thought leaders and creators in order to win a dedicated audience... without losing sight of the purpose of B2B. Connect with your customers by showing them the value you can provide. It's the future of B2B and SEO in the wake of generative AI.

We talk to thousands of content teams and are actively thinking about the future of B2B and SEO with our software. Feel free to talk to us.