B2B content marketing rewrites the playbook by meeting buyers where they start — long before they talk to sales. Miss this window, and you’re leaving revenue on the table. From longer sales cycles to deal-killing delays, the cost of neglecting content is steep.
Did you know that 69% of the B2B buying journey happens before buyers even contact a salesperson? That means your prospects are spending months researching, comparing options, and digesting content — all on their own terms. If your content isn’t there to guide them, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to influence decisions early and often.
That’s why a smart, thorough content marketing strategy is non-negotiable for B2B success. When crafted thoughtfully, it connects with prospects at every stage of their journey — from awareness to decision — building trust, answering questions, and ultimately driving more qualified leads your way.
Let’s break down how to make your content work harder and smarter for your business.
- What Is B2B Content Marketing?
- The Importance of Content Marketing for B2B
- 12 Proven B2B Content Strategies
- How To Develop a B2B Content Strategy
- Win Long Term With Smarter B2B Content Marketing
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Is B2B Content Marketing?
B2B content marketing involves creating and sharing useful, relevant content to attract and engage other businesses — not individual consumers. Instead of flashy sales pitches, it focuses on educating, solving pain points, and building trust with decision-makers across a longer buying cycle.
Content marketing for B2B includes white papers, webinars, case studies, in-depth blog posts, and thought leadership — content that proves your brand knows its stuff and can help another business succeed.
The Importance of Content Marketing for B2B
B2B buyers don’t want a hard sell — they want answers, insights, and confidence in their decisions. That’s exactly what content marketing delivers. It helps you show up when potential customers are researching solutions, comparing options, or trying to solve a specific problem. That visibility turns into trust, and that trust turns into leads.
It’s also one of the most cost-effective strategies out there. It’s no surprise that nearly 90% of B2B companies are planning to maintain or increase their content budgets in 2025.
The takeaway: Content isn’t optional if you want to grow. See how much it could move the needle for your business — use our ROI calculator to find out.
12 Proven B2B Content Marketing Best Practices
Now that you have an idea of what B2B marketing is all about, here are some effective content marketing strategies to try.
1. Build Alternative and Versus Pages
Alternative and versus pages are powerful tools for B2B content marketing.
These are prime bottom-funnel content opportunities that reach customers who are already low in the buying funnel and are comparing your business or product to others — whether you want them to or not.
Creating your own alternative and versus pages can be seen as an opportunity for businesses to help shape the narrative by winning the SERP real estate.
It’s also an opportunity to create a true comparison post that highlights where your product service wins and loses. This will help you build trust with potential customers.
As an example, if you search “HubSpot vs. Pipedrive,” you’ll see that HubSpot ranks #1. Ranking for this keyword allows them to own the conversation before Pipedrive or any other third party can add commentary, which drives more conversions for their brand.
The easiest way to find keywords for comparisons is to use Google autocomplete.
This tool was designed to help predict what users may be meaning to search for based on common and trending Google searches. Autocomplete prioritizes popular keywords, so you’ll get an in-depth look at the trending searches involving your company.
To use autocomplete, simply type in your company name, add “vs,” and see what is suggested.
Versus pages should be a direct one-to-one comparison of your brand and competitors, rather than an opportunity to only promote your product. You can be biased, but honest. To create versus and alternative pages:
- Start with an in-depth competitive analysis: This will help you understand how your product or service stacks up against your top competitors and be able to speak on your competitor’s pros and cons.
- Gather your research: Next, you can sift through your competitive analysis to find the key points you want to compare. This is also a good time to think through your biggest selling points and your customers’ biggest pain points so you can be sure to address both in your post.
- Write up the post: Most competitor pages include a chart or table that summarizes the pros and cons of both you and your competitor. Your post should also include a more in-depth dive into the features of both your and your competitor’s product.
A few great examples of comparison and alternative pages include:
2. Interview Subject Matter Experts
Bringing in subject matter experts (SMEs) adds depth, credibility, and original insight that generic content just can’t replicate. Their experience helps you move beyond surface-level summaries and into content that feels trustworthy, authoritative, and genuinely helpful — especially on technical or complex topics.
This kind of expertise is exactly what Google prioritizes with its E-E-A-T framework (experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness). It’s not a formal ranking factor, but it heavily influences how content is evaluated. In fact, Google’s late-2024 updates hit even top-tier sites like Forbes, which lost 29% of traffic due to a lack of clear expert input.
3. Create Industry Studies
Industry studies are an excellent way to increase brand recognition and position your company as a thought leader in your industry.
Original research is a rising B2B marketing trend. It builds authority, earns links, and gives your sales team data they can actually use. To pull it off, start with a topic your audience cares about, like trends, challenges, or tool adoption. Keep your survey short (10-15 questions), use a mix of question types, and target qualified respondents via LinkedIn, customer lists, or industry communities.
Once the data’s in, dig for real insight — don’t just report stats. Highlight key takeaways, surprising gaps, or shifts in behavior. Package your findings into a report, then slice it into blog posts, LinkedIn content, sales enablement, and email campaigns. Better yet, make it a recurring asset your audience looks forward to year after year.
4. Share Your Content Everywhere
Creating great B2B content is only half the job — distribution is what gets it seen. Start by sharing across owned channels: your newsletter, company LinkedIn, and relevant Slack or Discord communities. Then, enable internal teams (sales, execs, customer success) with tailored blurbs or visuals they can post on their own channels.
Go beyond basic promotion. Repurpose key insights into carousels, short videos, or quote graphics for social. Pitch your content to industry newsletters or partners for co-marketing. And don’t forget SEO — optimize your post for keywords your buyers are searching so it keeps driving traffic long after the initial push.
5. Create Ultimate Guides
Long-form guides are a mainstay of B2B content marketing.They’re meant to thoroughly cover a topic from top to bottom and are a great chance to cover a variety of long-tail keywords and related topics in one comprehensive post.
However, long-form guides are not always necessary to rank. User intent is one of the key indicators you can look at to determine whether a post longer than 1,000 words is necessary.
This example from Content Square encapsulates a variety of long-form guide best practices. It includes various numbered lists, bulleted points, and imagery throughout.
The piece also leverages interactive content, which not only makes sense for the subject matter of UX design but also catches the reader’s attention.
Long-form guides don’t have to feel like a slog. Break up walls of text with bullets, numbered lists, and headings. Add relevant images to keep readers engaged and offer visual breathing room. And don’t wait until the end to include CTAs — sprinkle them throughout to catch skimmers and drive more conversions.
6. Keep a Pulse on Your Competition
Competitor research is a great way to uncover topics that are bringing in a lot of traffic or links for your competition.
To do so, plug a competitor’s site into Ahrefs Site Explorer, and sort by “Best by Links” or “Top Content” to see the best-performing posts. You can use this to unearth additional topics to cover and improve upon for your own site.
For example, we took a look at the articles with the most links on HubSpot’s blog and the top content.
From leveraging the above, we can see that most traffic and links are coming from the following content types:
- Statistics posts
- Long-form guides
- How-to posts
- Examples/templates posts
7. Explore Online Communities for Fresh Topics
Keep a finger on the pulse of your industry by signing up for industry webinars, competitors’ e-newsletters, and relevant groups on LinkedIn and Facebook.
This helps you keep up with emerging trends and news within your industry that could provide timely content ideas.
Mining these groups for unique takes and opinions can spark content opportunities that lends well to social distribution, generating leads, and growing an audience.
8. Create Infographics
Infographics are a great way to visually break down a topic into bite-sized, scannable pieces — especially for more complex topics.
Infographics are well suited to top-funnel, evergreen topics related to your industry and are a valuable addition to an industry study.
They are also very shareable, which makes them easy to include in press releases or to use during outreach for link building.
9. Publish Customer Stories
Customer stories or case studies are proof that your solution actually works. And in B2B, that kind of credibility is everything. They help future customers see real-world results, understand your process, and picture themselves in your success stories.
To make yours effective, focus on the problem, the solution you delivered, and the results (with hard numbers if possible). Keep it clear, concise, and relatable. Use quotes, visuals, and a strong narrative to bring it to life, then promote it across your site, sales decks, email campaigns, and social. Don’t let a great case study just sit in your blog archives.
Pro tip: Structure customer story titles to highlight a clear, specific outcome. Use this simple formula: [Your Company] helped [Client] achieve [Impressive Result]. Concrete numbers and strong verbs make your case studies instantly more compelling.
10. Highlight Testimonials and Reviews
Customer testimonials and reviews serve as an effective form of social proof that pulls information on a product or service directly from those actively using it.
In fact, 51% of B2B buyers consult user reviews as part of the purchase cycle.
Display testimonials and customer reviews prominently on your site so customers can easily find and use them. You can also organize them into a dedicated hub or landing page, like Prezi does.
11. Create White Papers or eBooks
For most B2B clients, especially those in sales-assisted SaaS, the potential customer won’t be ready to purchase immediately.
Therefore, capturing potential customers’ emails can get them into the marketing funnel until they’re ready to buy.
To choose a topic for an eBook or white paper, consider the major content categories related to your business. From there, focus on a particular customer need and problem and how an eBook provides a solution.
You can also think about the content hubs you have on your site to see if you can combine blog posts into a more comprehensive eBook.For example, we created this crane rental guide for BigRentz, a client in the construction industry. The eBook breaks down the types of cranes, how to choose the right crane for your job, and crane safety tips — all of which were individual blog posts that we combined into one eBook.
Due to the time and effort it takes to create a white paper, many companies choose to gate this content.
If you go this route, be sure to track downloads, page visits, and email captures to measure performance.
12. Build High-Utility Templates and Tools
Templates and tools are B2B content workhorses — they solve real problems, offer instant value, and drive repeat traffic. Whether it’s a cost calculator, RFP template, or editable planning worksheet, these assets are more likely to be bookmarked, shared, and linked to than a blog post.
Focus on creating tools your audience can plug into their workflow with minimal friction. Make them easy to use, brand-light (so others feel comfortable sharing), and gate them only if they’re seriously high-value.
Bonus: Pair each tool with a blog post or guide to boost SEO and educate users on how to get the most out of it.
Take this content marketing ROI calculator we created. The calculator is a perfect fit for our audience and provides four options (traffic, e-commerce, ad model, and B2B), depending on the user’s needs.
How To Develop a B2B Content Strategy
Below, we highlight a few methods to help you craft a solid content marketing strategy.
Dive Deep Into Product and Audience Research
B2B audiences tend to be a niche subset, with a thorough understanding of their industry.
As Elias Rubel, CEO of Matter Made, discussed above, you should be especially deliberate in understanding the audience, their pain points, and the questions they may have at different stages of the buyer journey.
Be sure to also map content to search intent. Meeting user/search intent is a top challenge for 70.6% of content marketers, so understanding what your B2B audience is seeking at each stage (education, comparison, etc.) will help your content resonate and rank.
You should map B2B marketing content with users at three different stages of the buying journey: top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.
Top of the funnel
Content at this stage of the funnel focuses on creating awareness and building customer interest.
- Content covers relevant topics within your industry.
- Content focuses on beginner education.
- Common content types include “what is” blog posts.
Middle of the funnel
Content at this stage of the funnel aims to drive customer consideration.
- Content should mention your product more specifically.
- Common content types include case studies and webinars.
Bottom of the funnel
Bottom-funnel content is all about driving sales. This is where you get specific and focus on your product’s features and how it compares to competitors, and include things like data sheets or side-by-side comparisons.
Even if AI-powered search serves up answers without clicks, showing up for high-intent queries builds brand recall and nudges buyers closer to a decision.
To create this kind of content effectively, you need a clear picture of your audience and product. Tools like SparkToro can help you identify relevant blogs, podcasts, and influencers in your space. But don’t stop there — listen to sales calls, watch product demos, and dig into FAQs or customer reviews.
Learn how your audience talks about their problems and how your team talks about the solution. Once you’ve nailed your buyer personas and fully understand your product, start mapping keywords to the funnel.
Ideate High-Value Content Topics
Due to the niche nature of most B2B industries, search volume for relevant keywords is often lower than in B2C industries.
Instead of prioritizing keywords with 1,000-plus search volume, focus on cost per click (CPC) to quantify that the topic value will still be high enough to justify investing in it.
Oftentimes, these topics will have a lower keyword difficulty, improving your likelihood for ranking for that topic.
For example, the keyword “vendor management policy” has a search volume of 200 and a keyword difficulty of 0. The cost per click for this keyword is $2. If you multiply the search volume by the CPC, you get an estimated $400 traffic value.
Use Common Keyword Frameworks
One of the most effective ways to build out a B2B content strategy is by applying proven keyword frameworks tied to different stages of the funnel. These aren’t just random ideas — they’re patterns buyers consistently search for when evaluating solutions.
Instead of starting from scratch, use structures like:
- [Product] cost
- [Product] vs. [Competitor]
- [Keyword] template
- Best [product] for [use case]
- [Competitor] alternatives
- What is [industry jargon]?
Plug in your product or service type and you’ll instantly surface high-intent content ideas. Tools like Google autocomplete and Ahrefs are great for uncovering what real users are searching, even if traditional keyword tools show low volume.
Especially for emerging categories or niche products, demand often exists before the volume shows up in the tools. Writing content around these frameworks helps you meet that early demand and capture leads while competitors are still waiting for data.
Measure Your Results Over Time
Identifying the main goal of your content can also help you hone in on the best strategy to achieve the desired results.
Consider whether your main priority is to drive traffic to your site, build brand awareness, or potentially a combination of the two.
Once you have your priorities set, here are a few metrics that will help you track the success of your content strategy:
- Total conversions for blog posts (email sign-up, demo requests, etc.)
- Total pageviews for each blog post
- The organic traffic of your website or blog
- The type of content that performs best
- The rankings of essential keywords
- The links and mentions of your company or content
- LLM sessions (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.)
Beyond tracking these metrics, make it a habit to refresh and improve your content over time. Top-performing B2B content often stays that way because it’s kept up-to-date — Page One content for popular keywords is typically less than two years old on average.
By updating outdated information, adding new data or examples, and aligning with current search intent, you can extend a post’s lifespan and maintain strong rankings.
Win Long Term With Smarter B2B Content Marketing
B2B content marketing isn’t one-size-fits-all. The right strategy depends on your product, your audience, and your goals, but the core principle stays the same: Create content that solves real problems and builds trust.
That means being intentional about what you publish, staying flexible as buyer behavior and search trends evolve, and doubling down on content that drives qualified traffic and revenue.
With over half of Google searches now ending in zero clicks, brand authority and content quality matter more than ever. The brands that win are the ones that refresh outdated posts, use data to guide their strategy, and bring actual subject matter expertise to the table. Siege Media helped Figma grow their Resource Library’s organic traffic value by 2,065% using this exact playbook, and we can help you do the same.
If you’re ready to scale your content without guessing what works, reach out and let our team handle the strategy, writing, and results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Difference Between B2B Content Marketing vs. B2C Content Marketing?
The main difference is who you’re selling to and how they make decisions. B2B content marketing targets other businesses and often speaks to teams of decision-makers such as executives, managers, or technical leads. The buying cycle is longer, more rational, and driven by ROI, efficiency, and trust. Content needs to be educational, data-backed, and tailored to different stages of a complex funnel (white papers, case studies, comparison guides, etc.).
B2C content, on the other hand, targets individual consumers. The goal is usually to trigger quick emotional decisions, so the content is often shorter, more visual, and focused on benefits, lifestyle, or entertainment (like product videos, social posts, and influencer campaigns).
In short, B2B content builds business cases, while B2C content builds impulse.
What Are the Key Aspects of B2B Content Marketing?
Key aspects of B2B content marketing include:
- Audience focus: B2B content targets multiple decision-makers within organizations, so your messaging must address diverse roles and pain points.
- Content types: To support the buyer’s journey, B2B marketing uses a mix of content types such as blog posts for awareness, white papers and webinars for evaluation, and case studies or product demos to close deals.
- Building trust and authority: Expertise matters. Content should showcase your industry knowledge and credibility to build long-term relationships.
- Strategic distribution: Successful B2B marketing leverages channels like LinkedIn, email newsletters, webinars, and industry publications to reach and nurture prospects effectively.
- Measurable ROI: Every piece of content should tie back to business goals, whether that’s lead generation, pipeline acceleration, or customer retention.
How Do I Measure Success in My B2B Content Marketing Efforts?
Measuring success in B2B content marketing means tracking how well your content moves the needle on real business goals — not just vanity metrics. Start by defining what success looks like for you: Is it generating qualified leads, accelerating deals, boosting brand awareness, or nurturing existing customers?
Key metrics to watch include:
- Lead generation: Number of new leads captured from content offers like white papers or webinars
- Engagement: Time spent on page, scroll depth, and repeat visits show if your content resonates
- Conversion rates: How many visitors take the next step — signing up for a demo, downloading a case study, or requesting a consultation
- SEO performance: Organic traffic growth and keyword rankings indicate your content’s discoverability
- Pipeline influence: Track how content contributes to moving prospects through sales stages using CRM data or marketing attribution tools
- Customer retention and expansion: See if content supports upselling, cross-selling, or reducing churn
