Are you creating enough informative, persuasive content?
If not, now’s the time to rethink your marketing strategy.
The B2B technology industry has always moved at a pretty significant pace. These days, however, it feels like we’ve entered warp drive. Every week, there seems to be a new AI-powered tool, software solution, or some form of revolutionary hardware to explore.
While all this innovation is exciting – particularly for us tech enthusiasts – it also means the market is incredibly competitive for B2B brands. Standing out in this crowded space is harder than ever, particularly now that AI search engines are renavigating customer journeys, and competitors are using intelligent tools to super-charge content production.
In this market, you can’t just rely on dime-a-dozen content campaigns anymore. You need genuinely valuable content – the stuff that educates, inspires, and convinces your audience to take action, is the only way to nurture sustainable growth.
Here’s how you can create informative, persuasive content that cuts through the noise, builds relationships, and most importantly, boosts conversions.
The Importance of Persuasive Content in B2B Tech Marketing
Ultimately, strategic content should always be somewhat persuasive, and incredibly informative. When you’re creating articles, videos, or guides, you’re not just educating your audience, you’re trying to convince them of something. You might be trying to prove that you’re a credible category leader in your industry, or trying to persuade your audience to test your products for themselves.
Persuasive content is ultimately how you use whatever you create to drive action. Lately, though, creating persuasive content has become increasingly important.
B2B buyers are increasingly skeptical of brands. Only around 46% of buyers believe companies actually deliver on their promises. Plus, now that companies are creating so much AI content at scale, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for companies to know what they can actually believe.
Speaking of AI-generated content, B2B buyers are overwhelmingly bombarded by it. They’re drowning in bland, salesly, AI-generated noise every day. If your content doesn’t do something different – such as share genuine facts, tell a story, or connect on an emotional level, it’s not going to stand out – it certainly won’t deliver results.
That’s a real problem for today’s B2B tech companies. Many of the top vendors we’ve surveyed from the UC, XR, and contact center space all say that lead generation and conversion has become a major challenge for them in the last year.
However, studies also show that educational, informative, and persuasive content drives genuine results. In fact, in one study, prospects were 83.6% more likely to purchase a product from a company that provided educational content.
Creating Persuasive B2B Tech Content: Top Strategies
Creating powerful persuasive content has always been part art, part science. It’s not enough to just write well, or design an amazing infographic or video. AI tools can do that much. You need to really get to grips with your audience, address their pain points, and find ways to inspire trust.
Here are our top tips for success.
1. Get to Know Your Audience
Whenever we share advice on creating amazing content, this tip often rises to the surface – because it matters. A basic understanding of who your customers are isn’t enough today. You need to understand exactly who you’re speaking to, what they want to learn about, what kind of issues they need to overcome, and what goals they want to achieve.
Before you craft any content – from a blog post to a video, ask yourself who it’s for. What’s their biggest challenge, what motivates their decisions, how do they learn about new solutions? Don’t just write for everyone, create content for your customer.
Dive into the data you already have. Transcribe calls and conferences to pinpoint common questions. Speak to your sales team. Survey your customers. Don’t let your audience be strangers.
2. Prioritize Personalization
McKinsey says personalization is a force multiplier, and we’re inclined to agree. After all, what counts as “informative and persuasive” content for one segment of your target audience, won’t necessarily have the same impact on another.
So, go deeper with personalization. Think beyond generic catch-all content. For instance, instead of creating a video showing B2B buyers the benefits of your new AI-powered customer service bot, show them how it tackles specific issues that healthcare, finance, or retail companies experience.
Don’t make personalization something you only think about when you’re creating email or SMS marketing campaigns. Go bigger and broader, to ensure you’re constantly addressing the specific needs of each group you want to connect with.
3. Invest in Emotional Engagement
Data may inform decisions, but emotions drive them. Research shows that 95% of purchase decisions happen subconsciously. They might tell you otherwise, but your B2B buyers don’t really make purchases based on pricing and features alone.
They’re driven by emotional desires, to avoid painful outcomes (like losing customers), or achieve amazing things (like increasing revenue and growth). So, make sure your persuasive content connects with customers on that level. Press on their pain points and show them how your solutions can help them overcome those annoying issues.
Help them visualize what the outcomes of working with you will feel like – will they be less stressed, or more confident? Use personals stories and analogies to build that emotional bridge.
4. Get to the Point in your Persuasive Content
The idea that human beings have an attention span of about eight seconds might be hyperbole, but B2B buyers are limited for time. Sure, they want to do extensive research to ensure they’re investing in the right solutions, but they need insights quickly.
Focus on saying more with less. When you’re writing an article about something like remote work, jump in with facts and figures that frame your story, then immediately get to the main points you want to make. You might even decide to swap in-depth written content with something simpler.
An infographic or interactive spreadsheet could convey a lot of the information your customers need a lot faster than an article in some cases. It all comes down to finding the right balance. Know when your customers need information fast in their purchasing journey, and when they want to dive deeper into details, genuine stories, and background information.
5. Step Up Your Storytelling Game
We all love a good story – even in the B2B world. Adding storytelling into your persuasive content transforms dry, technical content into something memorable and engaging. Stories help readers visualize your ideas, connect emotionally, and stay invested.
Start with an intriguing hook—an unexpected statistic, a bold claim, or a provocative question. Introduce relatable “characters,” such as a frustrated IT manager or a visionary CEO. Describe their challenges vividly, using language that evokes emotions like frustration or excitement. Then, present your product or service as the hero that resolves their pain points.
By incorporating elements like tension, resolution, and clear takeaways, your content leaves a lasting impression. Stories are not only easier to remember but also more likely to persuade. They humanize your brand and make your ideas relatable – the key to building trust in the crowded B2B tech space.
6. Prepare for, and Address Counterarguments
One of the main reasons companies don’t trust vendors anymore is they’re so used to people making huge claims without actually backing them up. You can get an AI tool like ChatGPT to write an article for you filled with statistics and great claims, but 90% of the time, you won’t actually be able to cite your sources. B2B buyers know they can’t trust “facts” inherently anymore.
That means you need to be prepared to back up whatever you say. Don’t just tell your customers that your solution helps customer service teams save 2 hours a week on average. Link to a case study proving it, and explain how the company achieved those outcomes.
Draw on expert opinions (real quotes), testimonials, industry reports, and analytics when you can – but make sure they’re all from reputable sources. Additionally, remember that your customers are probably going to have counterarguments.
If you say, “We have the best collaboration software for finance teams”, then back that claim up with lots of evidence, your customers are still going to say things like “but, it’s prohibitively expensive / complicated / difficult to access.”
Prepare for those moments by addressing the possible objections in your content proactively.
7. Be More Visual with Persuasive Content
Visual content isn’t a luxury in B2B content marketing anymore – it’s crucial. Visual content is more engaging, easier to remember, and better at conveying complex ideas. Plus, it’s 40% more likely to be shared by journalists, consumers, and other brands. That’s crucial at a time when it’s becoming so difficult to actually reach the right customers.
Experiment with different types of visual content, from one-on-one video interviews that showcase your human side and credibility, to product demos, webinars, and even infographics. All of these different types of content give you another way to inform, educate, and entertain your audience.
Plus, they give you the extra clout you need to actually persuade your customers to take the right action. To maximize impact, pair visuals with actionable takeaways. For instance, a data-driven infographic should end with a CTA linking to a detailed whitepaper.
8. Partner with Reputable Publications
Industry endorsements add a layer of trust that’s hard to achieve on your own. Partnering with reputable publications signals to skeptical buyers that your brand is credible and authoritative. Journalists and respected industry publications can position you as a true category leader.
They independently “validate” your business, and whatever it’s saying, which instantly makes your content more reliable and persuasive. Work with leading organizations to promote content that might seem less authentic if you published it yourself, like reviews and comparisons.
Use these platforms to elevate your thought leadership content, such as videos and articles about market trends and new opportunities. These collaborations will expand your reach, and ultimately help you earn the trust you desperately need.
9. Embrace AI Responsibly
Finally, AI is becoming an incredible resource for businesses who want to scale their marketing, sales, and customer service strategies. However, relying on it too much – particularly when you’re designing creative content, can be problematic.
Use AI to transcribe conversations with customers that you can use in your content, convert single assets into multi-channel content solutions, and even draft initial ideas – but don’t underestimate the importance of the human touch.
Add your own opinions, thoughts, and insights to everything your AI tools create. Human beings can step into the shoes of their target audience and empathize with their needs and pain points so much better than a bot can. It’s that real human connection that makes content more persuasive.
Overcoming Persuasive Content Challenges: Quick Tips
The ideas above should help you to craft more persuasive content that informs, educates, and ultimately drives your audience to the right action. Still, there are a few challenges that you might need to address too, such as:
- Staying adaptable: Customer challenges are fluid, influenced by economic shifts, technological breakthroughs, and industry trends. Staying relevant means continuously tracking audience needs through feedback, analytics, and market research. Don’t fall behind on the trends, or your customer’s changing needs.
- Maintaining authenticity: In a world flooded with sales-driven messaging, authenticity is rare, and valuable. As you scale your content strategy, don’t lose sight of the value of transparency and honesty. Hyperbolic claims, fake reviews, and synthesized “expert opinions” won’t get you anywhere fast.
- Overcoming AI skepticism: AI tools make content creation faster but risk producing generic or even misleading material. With increasing concerns about deepfakes and overly automated communication, buyers are skeptical. If you use AI to generate any content, make sure you let your customers know. They’ll appreciate your honesty.
Persuade, Engage and Convert
Persuasive content that genuinely informs, supports, and guides your audience is more important today than ever before. It’s the foundation to building meaningful engagement in an increasingly competitive (and cluttered) landscape.
The ability to really connect with your audience, address their unique pain points, and build trust will define the winners in the B2B tech landscape of tomorrow. Don’t just bombard your customers with amazing claims about what your products and solutions can do.
Step into their shoes, and speak to them on their level. Show them, clearly, how you can help them achieve their goals, and focus on forging long lasting relationships. The results will be incredible, for your brand’s reputation, and your bottom line.