Why Is Content Marketing Important for B2B?

As a Head of Marketing, you don't have the time or cash to waste on campaigns that don't convert.

And yet, Google ads are driving up your CAC, and they're not even working. Your prospects hate how ads interrupt their search, and there's been a 14% decrease in ad conversion rates across industries in the past year.

What's more, your Sales team tells you that prospects have no idea what your company actually does — but they know what your competitors do.

You're here because you're considering turning to content marketing to spend your budget more efficiently and educate your prospects. But can it really drive conversions?

Yes, it can. That's why understanding why content marketing is important for B2B is crucial before making any decisions. Content marketing is an evergreen sales enablement strategy that's also great at building your brand. In this article, we'll show you that content marketing is durable and effective at driving inbound leads.

4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Important for B2B

1. Content Generates Inbound Leads

Content is durable, recyclable, and sharable. It generates tons of qualified eyeballs to your pages and brings viewers a step closer to taking action.

Think about it. Someone searches a question on Google, landing on your content page. They book a demo.

Someone sees a video on your LinkedIn page. They book a demo.

Someone may also see your content in one of the above examples and want more content. They subscribe to your newsletter at first and book a demo down the line.

To see this in action, we analyzed Metadata.io's search traffic. The Metadata team keeps up a steady stream of content to their blog, social pages, and newsletter.

In the last six months, they've generated 68.3K in organic search traffic, 30.4K in traffic from organic social, and 1.3K in traffic from email.

They let content do some of the heavy lifting for bringing in leads — and so can you.

2. Content Educates Prospects, Who Become Customers

Content takes prospects on a journey from an unaware → problem-aware → solution-aware → and finally, product-aware state. One final nudge, and they can become customers.

Sales enablement content:

• Helps your sales team educate a prospect on what their problem is costing them. At Letterdrop, we have a problem-aware sequence for prospects who use Webflow sites since our software brings Webflow to parity with WordPress. Here's a piece where we wrote about the issues marketers often experience with Webflow publishing.

• Helps a prospect educate themselves on your product versus alternatives. In this product-aware article, HubSpot compares its own software against that of Salesforce.

• Helps a prospect make a business case to their boss as to why they should buy your product. Case studies in particular are the ultimate pitch to management since they show how a similar company went from zero to hero with the product.

• Can increase response rate if you use content prospecting emails. Since using content in our outbound emails, our response rate has increased by 4%. We used one of our Webflow articles in an email and booked a demo.

• You can even re-engage lost leads or former customers by adding them to your newsletter list. We re-engaged multiple leads recently at Letterdrop after restarting our bi-weekly newsletter. Companies like Clearbit and Mutiny send out really entertaining and informative issues.

3. Content Lowers CAC

Sure, ads are great for the short term — but at what cost?

Running ads against content is a great way to lower CAC, as we've seen firsthand with one of our clients, Explo. This is because well-written and informative content answers search intent, whereas ads interrupt your prospect's search journey.

Marketing teams are moving away from quick revenue hits like ads and investing in sustainable long-haul approaches like organic SEO. And it's not just us saying it — here's Adam Goyette, former VP of marketing at HelpScout, talking to us about just that.

"[Marketing teams] are less likely to do some short-term things where the math isn't adding up anymore. [They] don't want to be in that boat. [They] want to be really efficient with [their] marketing spend." — Adam Goyette

4. Content Builds Your Brand

Great content establishes you as a thought leader in your industry. The more you show your expertise on a subject, the more prospects (and search engines) view you as a trustworthy source of information. From there, prospects are far more likely to want to pay for your services.

A company like Gong.io has great branding — all of their content is upbeat and conversational. As of the time of writing, Gong has generated 967.8K in organic search traffic in the last six months. In 2023 alone, they signed 1,100 new clients. They're a trusted brand, and it shows.

Software products are all starting to look the same. It's easy to copy software.

With so many options out there, people tend to choose the company that they trust the most. And if you're answering their questions, educating them, helping them, and always in front of them, they'll trust you more.

Think About Investing in Content

Content is a successful long-term game that builds trust in your brand and can feed directly into the top line.

It might be tempting to jump right into content blindly — but you may not be ready just yet. We've written a guide to what to try first before investing in content and what kind of content to write.

If you're looking for more information on content marketing, we share industry tips and updates in our bi-weekly newsletter and have written a step-by-step playbook on B2B marketing. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions.‎