Published 26 March 2020

B2B Content Syndication – Design a Perfect Brand-to-Demand Strategy

Content syndication is a powerful B2B strategy to expand brand reach, generate demand, and drive revenue. Distribute content to reputable sites, capturing lead information as gated assets. Benefits include engaging tech buyers, enhancing brand reputation, guiding high-quality leads, and improving SEO. Create an effective plan by identifying the target audience, aligning with values, targeting relevant segments, selecting the right content, and nurturing leads. Refer to this blog to harness content syndication to boost sales and maximize ROI.

Introduction

Content marketing goes far beyond creating high-quality content and posting it on your company’s blog. You need to generate more exposure for your content so as to attract and engage qualified prospects for your business.

But the question is:

How can you make your content work harder?

For many best-in-class B2B companies, the answer lies in content syndication.

Yes, you heard that right.

Syndicating content has helped many B2B businesses expand their brand voice. This content marketing strategy has helped them:

Generate demand for their products and services
Discover new opportunities
Move leads down the sales funnel
Drive revenue and profits

In fact, 30% of B2B marketers cite content syndication to be one of their most successful lead generation strategies.

Want to see significant results from your B2B content marketing initiatives?

Then, it’s time to design a perfect content syndication strategy to connect the dots from brand to demand.

But before that, let’s discuss what content syndication is all about, why it is so important for B2B businesses, and how to create an effective strategy.

What is Content Syndication?

Content syndication is the practice of publishing and distributing your content to reputable third-party sites in your niche. It helps you expose your content to new audiences and build a loyal readership.

If your main goal is demand generation, you should have your content published as a gated asset. This will enable you to capture crucial information about leads.

Some of the most common syndication channels include:

LinkedIn posts and SlideShare
Publishing platforms such as Medium and Tumblr
Forums such as Quora
Curated newsletters
Cross-promotion collaboration with reputable niche sites

Why Should B2B Brands Leverage Content Syndication?

As a B2B marketer, you probably know the power of great content.

And, hopefully, you’re already spending a lot of time, resources, and effort in creating unique, valuable, and engaging content pieces.

But what’s next?

You need to get your great content in front of the right audience. That’s where content syndication comes in.

It can have an invaluable impact on your B2B go-to-market initiatives, and here’s why:

IT Decision makers read up to 17 content pieces to make informed purchase decisions. You can engage tech buyers using your content.
Publishing your content on top publications can help enhance your brand’s reputation and establish you as experts in your niche.
Top B2B performers tend to amplify their content’s reach via non-owned channels.
Guiding high-quality leads using more detailed content such as pricing plan comparisons and product features can help you streamline their buying decisions.
Closing deals can get easier when you provide the right information through the right channel to your prospects.
Content syndication also helps you build authoritative backlinks and improve your site’s SEO performance.

Isn’t that great?

But not everyone who syndicates content achieves these remarkable results. Because not everyone does it the right way.

What’s the secret to creating a perfect brand-to-demand strategy?

Let’s find out.

How Can You Create a Perfect B2B Content Syndication Plan?

Here’s the step-by-step process to create a winning B2B content syndication plan for your business.

Start by Asking Yourself the Right Questions!

Like any other marketing strategy, you need to answer the key questions while planning your content syndication initiatives.

Ask yourself:

Who are you trying to impress? – Your target audience
Where can you pick them? – The channels or publications they use to look for information
Who do they trust? – Sites, industry leaders, social influencers, etc.
What type of content do they consume? – Articles, video tutorials, how-to guides, quick checklists, infographics, eBooks, etc.

And then, the most important one:

Which of your content pieces align with these requirements and with the channels your target audience uses?

As your focus is on demand generation, you need to ensure that you only syndicate high-quality, relevant content. It should make sense to your target audience and the audience of your syndication channel.

Source Content Syndication Opportunities

Choosing the right syndication channel is as important as choosing the right content piece to distribute.

Here are a few points you should look for when sourcing content syndication opportunities as part of your demand generation strategy:

Does the channel/publication align with your values?
Is the publication a trusted source of information for your target audience?
Does the opportunity guarantee lead generation?
Will your content provide value to their target audience?
Will they also promote your content via social channels or curated newsletters?

If looking for paid content syndication opportunities, you also need to ensure that you get value for money.

Target Audience Segments That Really Matter

What do I mean by audience segments that really matter?

Let me explain this to you with an example:

If your B2B company offers an email marketing solution, your target buyers primarily include agencies that provide email marketing services to their clients. This means you have the option to target agency owners, directors, analysts, executives, project managers, and other professionals.

Instead of blindly targeting agency owners or directors, you need to analyze the best user personas for your email marketing solution.

Engaging people who are actually running email campaigns and the ones managing them should be your best bet here. All you need to boost your sales is to convince them that your solution can ease their work.

But how?

The answer lies in distributing the right content.

Pick the Right Content to Attract Prospects

Review your content library to find content that can:

Educate the target audience about the challenges they are currently facing.
Provide actionable tips about how they can improve their processes and generate better results.
Introduce your brand and showcase how your product or service can be the ideal solution to their most difficult challenges.

Basically, you should distribute content that aligns with the users’ needs, intent, and the funnel stage they’re in.

Nurture Qualified Leads by Following Up with Them

Did prospects engage with your content? Signed up for your newsletter? Or, downloaded your eBooks?

It’s your turn to connect with them and nurture leads to move them through the sales funnel.

Everything else can wait but not your qualified leads.

You need to converse with prospects who have shown intent via DMs, email, or phone calls. This will help you understand if they are really interested in the solution, you offer and assess how likely they are to buy from you.

What’s the best thing about this process?

You can easily identify low-quality leads and filter them out early. This can help you save time and resources.

Ready to Harness the Power of Content Syndication to Boost Sales?

If done right, it can help you generate demand, qualified leads, and sales for your B2B business. And to do it right, you just need to follow the step-by-step process that I’ve mentioned in this post.

So, what are you waiting for?

Get ready to unleash the true potential of your content by syndicating it across channels to maximize its reach.

With great content and the right syndication strategies, you can attract, capture, and nurture leads, drive conversions, and boost sales. You can also boost the ROI of your content-driven marketing campaigns.

Happy hunting!

Do you have other questions about using content syndication for demand generation? Feel free to ask them in the comments below.