As B2B marketers, you constantly strive to reach a broader audience with your content.
Yet, with so much content already clogging up the online world, it gets tougher and tougher every day,
You not only want to get noticed by more of your target audience but also create an impression that entices them to learn more about your brand or business.
By far, this connecting is the most challenging task, and you’ll want to find new ways to stand out in your B2B digital marketing strategy.
It’s time then to consider content syndication.
While both excitement and confusion can surround this method of expanding your reach, it can also become a valid, effective part of your overall demand generation strategy.
Keep reading to learn more about it!
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What is B2B Content Syndication?
B2B content syndication involves distribution of content across third-party channels or platforms to reach a broader audience and grow your leads.
In its simplest terms, content syndication refers to the strategic republishing of your content in more than one location.
It is an element of a B2B demand generation strategy focusing on creating extra exposure for your brand, product, or service.
The distribution process itself provides a way for you to share content on platforms with larger and more diverse audiences, many of which may not, on their own, visit your website.
This may be because they are unaware of the products or services you offer or because there’s already so much competition that someone reaches them first.
By incorporating plans for such syndication in your content marketing plan, you can increase the impact of your content when it comes to drawing in leads.
Examples of platforms for content syndication today include LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Medium, Reddit, and Quora. You can also partner with another business.
Any type of content is eligible, including:
- Whitepapers
- Blog posts
- Articles
- Infographics
- eBooks
- Interactive content, such as quizzes
- Webcasts
- Webinars
- Videos
- Podcasts
Does Syndicating Your Content Hurt Your SEO?
While concerns surrounding your SEO strategy and the potential for penalties imposed by search engines like Google may cause you to hesitate, you needn’t worry as long as you understand how to go about it correctly.
The third-party website will need to declare that the original source of the content is on your website. They can accomplish this by the use of a conical tag.
You can accomplish content syndication on your own or join with a content syndication vendor who is already experienced in this type of lead generation marketing.
These vendors mostly work on what’s referred to as a “cost per lead” (CPL) basis.
Either way, keep in mind that content syndication results mainly in cold leads that you and your sales team will need to nurture along the path to becoming a loyal customer.
Benefits of B2B Content Syndication
Content syndication is, by far, one of the most effective marketing techniques for B2Bs.
To emphasize this more strongly, here is a breakdown of the most common benefits of B2B content syndication.
Improves Outreach
Content syndication allows you to reach new prospects who may not know about the services or products your business has to offer them. It also puts you in front of a much larger audience than your website alone can.
Reaches Targeted Audiences
By understanding your buyer personas, you can select the right partners and platforms to share your content, reaching targeted audiences in an efficient way. In turn, it attracts the right audience for your content.
Excels at High-Quality Lead Generation
You already use your best content to generate leads, so why not increase your chances by working with third-party platforms that work to your advantage. Utilizing content syndication, you can gain higher-quality leads to pass on to your sales team.
Improves Your SEO Rankings
Sharing your content on other high-performing and authoritative platforms can help increase your SEO rankings.
Boosts Brand Awareness
In addition to expanding your reach, B2B content syndication can boost brand awareness. While not all of your target audience will respond right away and interact with you, they will remember you should they need what you offer in the future.
Improves Traffic to Your Website
Content syndication reaches an expanded audience and, as a result, will improve traffic to your site. Be sure your website is ready for them and geared to what they want to know.
Gains Valuable Backlinks
Posting content on third-party websites considered to be authoritative can benefit you with new backlinks. That is, your content will link back to your website, which is a valuable factor in your SEO rankings.
Increases the ROI of Content
You already spend a lot of time and money creating content. Perhaps you do this all in-house or hire freelancers to help. Either way, your marketing budget takes a hit.
With B2B content syndication, that content receives a bigger audience, generates more leads, and helps you win over customers, thus increasing its ROI.
Presents You as a Thought Leader
When your target audience sees you featured on an authoritative third-party platform, they begin to think of you differently. You are now presenting yourself as a thought leader, and potential customers will take notice.
5 Content Syndication Tactics
Maintaining a combination of outbound and inbound marketing techniques is essential for B2Bs today. Fortunately, you can include both types in your content syndication strategy.
For example, with inbound marketing, you can use co-marketing, guest blogging, and PPC promotions. Outbound marketing tactics include sending cold emails and telemarketing.
Here’s a closer look at these tactics:
1. Co-Marketing
Co-marketing is an inbound marketing method where two businesses agree to work together for mutual benefit.
First, you’ll need to identify those companies that also sell to similar customers. This doesn’t mean you need to mingle with your closest competitors.
Instead, avoid co-marketing with those companies that currently compete for the same keywords or phrases as you.
Ideas for how to go about co-marketing once you find relevant partners include:
- Co-author a whitepaper and share it with your prospective audiences.
- Share content on each other’s social media accounts.
- Co-host an online event or webinar, focusing on the questions, concerns, pain points, or interests of your customers.
2. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging brings with it several benefits.
First, you expose your brand, products, or services to an already established audience full of your ideal customers.
They may be unaware of who you are up until this point or need reminding.
Secondly, you gain valuable backlinks to your website content, increasing your website traffic.
Thirdly, your SEO rankings can benefit as a result of the increased website traffic and valuable backlinks.
3. PPC Promotion
For a fast way to drive quality traffic to your content, use PPC promotions.
An easy way to accomplish this is to run a paid B2B content campaign on platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook.
On these two platforms, you can narrow the parameters and directly target a particular audience.
4. Cold Emails
As an outbound content syndication tactic, cold emails are a prime tool to distribute your content to your ideal customers.
You will need to have a list of leads already identified as most likely to respond to keep from wasting too much of your time and money.
Cold emails are especially beneficial if you’ve already found your target customers utilizing another method and now want to get your content in front of them.
5. Telemarketing
Calling your relevant prospects directly and offering to send them your content is another outbound content marketing tactic to use.
To be successful, however, you’ll need to already have a high volume of B2B data, including up-to-date contact information.
In addition, you’ll need a confident, engaging telemarketing team to achieve a higher success rate. One of the better ways to begin the conversation will be to ask questions to gain a sense of whether or not they are ready to make a purchase or not.
This information will guide the conversation and the forwarding of content.
The Importance of Monitoring the Results of Your Efforts
As with any other part of your marketing strategy, it’s important to monitor the performance and results of your campaigns.
By doing so, you can gauge the success of your B2B content syndication strategy and create better campaigns going forward.
What you learn from your monitoring can help you better choose the most effective syndication methods and also prioritize the platforms that offer the highest impact.
In order to do so, track each campaign for the following metrics.
ROI
Your content syndication strategy ROI is your most important indicator for success. Prior to your campaign, however, you need to determine what success means to you.
The most common identifier for B2B companies is monetary results, such as revenue generated compared with cost per lead.
Another popular success metric is the number of downloads of your content.
Lead Volume
The more leads you obtain, the better you may feel about your campaign.
If you attract an astonishingly high number of leads as a result of your content syndication campaign, you’ll see that your preferred strategy, chosen platform, or co-marketing partner is garnishing a lot of attention, so you must be doing something right.
Yet, there’s much more to it than the volume of leads alone.
Lead Quality
Of your lead volume, determine the quality of those leads.
Your B2B content syndication campaign will be considered a success if you receive an influx of high-quality leads eager to find out more about your products or services.
Traffic
You should see an undeniable increase in website traffic as a result of your content syndication efforts.
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Wrap Up
While digital marketing provides various new avenues to get out there and make your mark, it can also be overwhelming.
Start by creating the best content you can, then find ways to get it in front of your targeted audience in the most strategic and effective manner through B2B content syndication.
B2B content syndication is one of the most powerful ways to reach a wider audience, boost brand awareness, generate higher-quality leads, and improve your SEO rankings. As a bonus, it’s also one of the easiest ways to reach your audience.
For more ways to bolster your digital marketing efforts, check out these B2B social media strategies!
