Rebekah Carter
Creating brand-building content is difficult – I know that from experience. For many B2B tech businesses, content is the key to building relationships and generating consistent leads. Unfortunately, many industry leaders struggle to create truly stand-out content that engages their audience.
Sure, you can experiment with a wide range of case studies, guides, and white papers, but creating content that truly elevates your brand requires more work, and more strategy. You need to find a way to use your content to break into new markets, separate yourself from the competition, and establish your company as a true thought leader.
Here, I’ll be sharing my insights on how companies can create brand-building content that paves the way for increased revenue, and opportunities.
Market Definition and Brand-Building Content
As a seasoned entrepreneur and publisher of multiple B2B technology media brands, I’ve learned that market definition is crucial for sustained growth and success. Let’s face it, the technology is constantly evolving—shifting from the internet era to the cloud era, and now into the AI era.
Each shift presents a unique opportunity to carve out new markets, often referred to as the “Blue Ocean” strategy. This involves identifying areas with minimal competition, where businesses can achieve exponential growth by offering market-leading, differentiated products and services.
Companies have endless opportunities to create a unique space in which their brands can thrive. With a focus on innovation and market evolution, companies can identify unmet needs and crafting offerings that are distinct and valuable to customers.
By doing so, businesses can escape the intense competition of saturated markets and establish themselves as leaders in their newly defined categories. However, it takes more than just the right products and solutions to become a market leader. To drive consistent growth, companies need a category-defining brand, and category-defining content.
The Role of Content in Market Definition
Content isn’t just a tool for pushing your website further up the search engine result pages. If all your content does is strive to rank for specific keywords, it won’t deliver genuine results. Content is a dynamic asset, capable of elevating your brand, educating customers, driving demand, and establishing authority.
Brand-building content is how you show your customers why you’re a leader in your chosen niche, what makes you different from the competition, and why they should trust you.
It’s how you increase your authority, in a time when seven out of ten customers choose to purchase more from brands they trust. Effective content is how you go from being part of a new category, to owning a significant portion of market share.
That’s why I’ve found that the most powerful content, whether in written form or in video, starts with the goal of category ownership and authority in mind.
Strategic Brand-Building Content Planning
Planning is essential to creating effective brand-building content. You need to know exactly where you’re going to publish your content, what you’re going to say, and who you’re trying to reach.
It’s not enough to just generate articles, videos, and social media posts en-masse, particularly at a time when the web is saturated with similar pieces. Every piece of content you create need to start with a clear understanding of the goal you want to achieve.
In other words, you need to know how your content is going to position your company within a specific category, who it’s going to resonate with, and how it’s going to deliver value. When it comes to category ownership, the objective should be to place your brand at the forefront of the market, establishing it as a thought leader and the definitive voice in its space.
Brand-building content should be a part of a broader, more holistic marketing strategy, fusing market influence, with educational content, and thought leadership. Creating authoritative content that not only highlights the unique features and benefits your brand has to offer, but builds trust with your customers, is crucial to earning market share.
Something as simple as educating your audience about your market can make a world of difference. Studies show that educational content makes consumers 131% more likely to buy from a brand.
Top Tips for Brand-Building, Category-Defining Content
So, how do you create brand-building, category-defining content? Based on all of the work I’ve done in the editorial landscape over the years, here are my top tips.
1. Understand your Audience
It almost goes without saying, but you need to know your audience before you can create content that resonates with them. One size doesn’t fit all, so do your research. Use market insights, competitor analysis, focus groups, and even social listening to learn everything there is to know about your ideal customer. Find out their pain points, preferences, and expectations.
Tailor every piece of content you create to the customers you want to serve. Speak their language, use their preferred channels, and address their needs.
2. Define Clear Objectives
As mentioned above, great brand-building content starts with a purpose. You need to know exactly what each piece is going to accomplish for your company. Are you trying to educate your customers about the latest trends in your industry, and establish yourself as a thought leader?
Are you focusing on generating demand, by explaining the benefits of your solution, and exploring the challenges they can help your customers overcome? Establish your goals, and the metrics you need to monitor to see if your content is successful.
3. Emphasize Thought Leadership
Our research at Today Digital has consistently found that thought leadership content generates results. In fact, 94% of our respondents said that thought leadership content has helped them achieve better outcomes with their marketing strategy.
So focus on being a true thought leader. Don’t just regurgitate the ideas of other industry experts. Position yourself as a pioneer with unique insights, expert opinions, and innovative ideas that set you apart from competitors.
4. Focus on Quality Over Quantity
You’ve probably noticed that companies are creating a lot more content this day, what with all the AI tools they have to help them come up with ideas and article outlines. However, quantity doesn’t beat quality when it comes to brand-building content.
Prioritize creating high-quality, in-depth content that genuinely benefits your audience in some way. Go in-depth with your ideas, share useful actionable advice, and make your content serve your audience.
5. Incorporate Data and Research
Data and research can add credibility to any kind of content, boost your EEAT scores with Google, and demonstrate authority. In the B2B landscape, where consumers are more influenced by genuine data and details, using statistics can be extremely useful.
Don’t just tell customers why you think a certain thing, back up your ideas with genuine reports, market research findings and more. You can even create your own data by hosting polls on LinkedIn or conducting surveys.
6. Utilize Strong Visuals
91% of consumers say they prefer visual content to written content. Visuals, from infographics to videos, are an excellent way to add context to articles and blogs. They’re also fantastic at helping you to share complex information more efficiently.
Enhance your content with compelling visuals, including infographics, videos, and images, to make it more engaging and easier to digest. Don’t rely on stock images. Build your brand’s presence with images, photographs, and infographics you create yourself.
7. Craft Compelling Headlines
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, headlines are critical to high-performing content. If your customer isn’t engaged by your headline, they’re not going to read anything else you have to say. Write eye-catching headlines that spark curiosity with questions, share valuable insights into what your content will reveal, or explain the benefits of reading to customers.
Use your headlines in your brand-building content as a way to showcase your expertise, authority, and your unique personality. A strong headline can significantly increase click-through rates.
8. Optimize for SEO
Your content shouldn’t just be written for the search engines, as I mentioned above. However, optimizing your content for the search engine results pages does help to boost brand visibility. Familiarize yourself with the latest SEO best practices.
Think about how you’re going to use high-volume, low competition keywords throughout your content, in your meta descriptions, titles, and URLs. Leverage both internal linking and external linking strategies to enhance the customer experience and boost your credibility.
9. Promote Across Multiple Channels
Don’t leave your best brand-building content to fester on your website. Make sure you’re drawing attention to it in as many places as possible. Include links to your latest blog posts and videos in your email newsletters. Share your thoughts on industry forums, and connect with publications.
Make sure you’re devoting plenty of time to social media too. Check where your customers are most active, and build a strong presence on their preferred channels.
10. Measure and Refine
Every piece of content is a learning opportunity, offering valuable insights into your customers preferences, and how you should be spending your marketing budget. Leverage the tools available to you, from Google Analytics, to social media reports to gather valuable insights.
Use the data you collect about conversion and engagement rates to identify the most powerful elements of your brand-building content strategy, and improve future marketing efforts.
Invest in Powerful, Brand-Building Content
Brand-building, category-defining content is a valuable resource for your company. I urge every marketer, business leader, and content creator to embrace the blue ocean strategy by producing category-defining content.
Aim to become synonymous with your market, providing unparalleled thought leadership and direction. This approach will ensure your brand’s success across paid, owned, and earned media, cementing your authority and driving exponential growth.
