Some people feel that the whole content marketing hype isn’t for everybody. After all, who will want to read ‘boring’ content about heavy industries, their functioning, and machinery? Beyond the shallow and quick reads that often comes on our Facebook feed, there is a world of professionals who value content that is crafted with knowledge and experience. To them, the content isn’t boring but valuable and the person/company creating becomes an interesting catalyst who can become a seller or partner.
As someone working in the heavy industry, your aim will be to market to professionals in other companies – in short – Business to Business or B2B marketing. Here are a few statistics that put the industry, in general, into perspective according to the most recent trends published on Hubspot
- Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts.
- 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative.
- B2B researchers do 12 searches on average prior to engaging on a specific brand’s site. 72% of marketers say relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic.
So, here are a few strategies on how to make content marketing for heavy industries work:
1. ‘Boring’ heavy industries actually have a lot of opportunities
Have you seen the number of articles providing beauty tips on the internet?
It is almost like they are solving an epidemic. You may have also read several lists of the 13, 17 or 21 places you should see before you die. You see, these topics are interesting. But these are also simple. Which is why you have half the world writing such topics. On the other hand, it isn’t easy to write about heavy industries without the proper knowledge or expertise and also a passion for writing. The combinations of skills are hard to come by which is why you may see very little well-written content out here. And therein lies an opportunity for you to step up quickly and fill the gap. You’ll get to rank for a lot of your most important keywords which may generate better leads.
2. Solve client problems by writing content on specific topics
You are an industry expert so you must be well aware of the problems that professionals in your industry face. The key here is to ask what are the top problems faced by your clients. How do they connect typically find you? Where do they engage online in conversations?
Once you have a map of these things, you can chart out specific content, especially like listicles that your clients can discover during their online search and by that extension, discover you.
3. Aim for targeted traffic and not just traffic
Though we know that Google is now smarter, the internet still has many sites that promise you 40,000 visitors a month for a small fee. Such schemes have to always be looked up with caution. The traffic may look great on reports but won’t do any good if you don’t get qualified leads from it.
Traffic need not come from extremely in-depth reads. It can be a light but relevant lead that can attract attention. It can be a practice happening in the other corner of the world but something that can be replicated everywhere. eTrading in heavy industries isn’t a common practice. But what if someone did this successfully? It’ll be a model others may want to emulate and should know about.
Once in a while, go light and do something that is beneficial to the industry as a whole.
Remember, if you raise the tide, all the boats will rise.
4. Present advanced data and content marketing
Once you have the traffic coming in attracted by relevant content, it is time to get out your real weapons –your expertise that shines in the form of data. Data can be collected from your own experiments, collated from data available online, or with the help of independent market research experts. Data attracts attention. It showcases trends and is something that professionals take into account during their decision making.
Data need not be boring. Here are some interesting ways to share data:
- Infographics: The visual representation of data is one of the most shared entities on the internet. Presenting several facts in an easy to understand manner, infographics, if well done, can easily go viral and attract attention.
- Blog: Blog posts on data allow you to create long-form content –something that is highly sought after in professional industries. The key to writing blogs that work is two-fold –first, blogs with evergreen content that will hold true for the next few years and second, a blog with futuristic content that will put you in the shoes of an innovator and light the way.
5. Tools to generate ideas
Sometimes, content marketing ideas don’t just ‘come to you’. You’ll have to dig deep into the internet to find answers. These tools are closer than you think and many of them aren’t even paid.
The Title maker: The person who invented this tool did a load of good for all of us in the content world. Type in ‘heavy industries’ in their search bar and watch a magical set of blog topics appear for your term. Some of them like ‘Where heavy industries are headed in the next five years’ is a great starting point.
- Quora questions: Where does the world (or a large chunk of it) go to ask questions? Well, Quora, of course, after Google. And here’s where questions get asked and answered. If you see questions by potential clients, do take the initiative to answer them within quora and also create a blog post about it.
- Blog search: Use the blog search engine to find topics about a niche industry to get a hang of blogs that have been written. It can be a great starting point for you too.
6. White-papers for download
Another extension of your expertise and skills comes in the form of offering white papers for download. The most popular white papers are how-tos and success case studies. Both of these are attention magnets for potential clients and can be a good source to generate leads. They need not be boring either.
But authoritative white papers can’t do the trick on their own. You need to couple it with a well-written landing page that drives home the point on just why there is no way any professional can keep away from downloading.
There isn’t any industry that is boring, too technical or too difficult for which content can’t be written online. With an equal investment in time to write quality content and effort in propagating it, content marketing can become a successful B2B strategy.
And sometimes, it is important to get a little bit of expert help so that you can concentrate on giving valuable inputs while the experts can craft internet-perfect content for you. How about doing that right away?
