B2B Content Writing: A Guide to Understanding What It Is and How to Do It
They sit just one letter apart in the alphabet, but the difference between “B” and C” when they follow “B2” is like the difference between black and white, hot and cold, or night and day. “B2B” stands for “business-to-business,” referring to those businesses that serve other businesses as customers. They don’t target you or me or our families and friends - the end consumers. Businesses that sell to consumers - to human beings purchasing goods and services for themselves and others to whom they’re personally connected - are called “B2C” businesses.
Here’s an example. Apple purchases a large volume of chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and uses those chips in the smartphones and tablets it sells to consumers. In this instance, Apple is operating a B2C business, while TSMC’s business - acting as a supplier of components - is B2B. Now, it’s not always rigidly defined. Some companies (Apple is certainly one of them!) serve both businesses and consumers. The key is knowing how content should be appropriately tailored to the right clients.
What is B2B content writing?
B2B content writing refers to the practice of writing content intended for business customers, rather than for individual consumers. As B2B businesses serve other companies, the content they write must target the employees of those companies. B2B content can serve various purposes:
Building general brand awareness
Marketing specific products or services
Explaining how to use specific products or services
Informing about industry trends and problems
Communicating relevant news and updates
As with any other type of business content, the crux of B2B content writing is delivering your company’s intended message to its intended audience articulately, clearly, and with impact.
What’s the difference between B2B content writing and B2C content writing?
While B2B content can take similar forms to B2C and might even share similar motivations, there are myriad, critical ways in which B2B content differs from B2C. First, let’s start with the audience. As the abbreviations imply, B2B content is written for business clients, while B2C is geared towards end consumers - everyday people like you and me. The desires and needs of those audiences are extraordinarily different, and therefore so are the appeals the writing must make.
When we speak directly to consumers, we appeal to something they want or need for themselves or their families and friends. We reflect on how our business can personally impact their human experience. Because they're human, they care deeply about their wants and needs. As a result, capturing their attention is easier.
When we write to a business audience, we’re writing to the employees of that business. The business is not a living, breathing entity with wants and needs to which we can directly appeal. We must instead appeal to the representatives of that business, and the harsh reality is that - in the vast majority of cases - those representatives don’t care nearly as much about the wants and needs of the business as they do their personal wants and needs.
Capturing and holding the audience’s attention, then, is that much harder.
Still, engaging the audience is achievable with B2B content, but the appeals are different. Ultimately, the person you’re writing for wants to excel in his or her role. Your writing can help them do that in a few ways. First, it can make their lives easier. For example, a white paper might share valuable research and insight that will make them smarter in a half hour, saving them the dozens of hours it would’ve taken to do the research and analysis themselves. This type of content can also appeal to their fear of falling behind or missing out - they need to read it or they’ll be out of the loop. B2B content can also introduce readers to a product or service that will help their company generate more revenue or cost savings. Achieving either of these core business pursuits will reflect very well on the reader, improving both the company and the reader's standing in it simultaneously.
Given the differing profiles and needs of the B2B content audience, it’s essential that B2B writing be clear, direct, and actionable. B2B value propositions generally boil down to one of two things: revenue generation or cost savings. Can you help the client generate more revenue or save more money relative to the competition? Tell the audience how and be brief.
You’re writing to an employee who wants to excel in their role. So help them do that, and be mindful of their time as you do.
What are the different types of B2B content writing?
B2B content writing can take various forms, and we encourage you to visit our exploration of ten different kinds of thought leadership content for a deeper dive into each. Here are some of the most common types of B2B content, particularly marketing content:
White Papers. A white paper is a report-style piece of content that leverages thorough research to provide an audience of knowledgeable readers with compelling and original insights on specific subject matter. Typically shared in PDF format, well-executed white papers may be long, but they take care to ease the reader’s fatigue through the heavy use of graphics, an appealing format, and consistent amplification of key takeaways both at the beginning of the paper and with eye-catching headings throughout. White papers are used far more frequently in B2B content than B2C, as they frequently detail industry trends and share insight valuable to industry constituents. Consumers, on the other hand, are not as inclined to seek industry knowledge for knowledge’s sake. They don’t care about trends in the semiconductor industry; they want to buy an iPhone.
eBooks. Similar in some ways to a white paper due to its PDF format, the eBook is a valuable tool for businesses that have how-to guides to share. While white papers are typically heavy on data and conclusions about a specific domain, appealing to a more advanced audience, eBooks may be designed to provide best practices to a novice audience, sharing more general information. In that regard, eBooks might be useful B2B material for prospects or for new clients who are learning how to use and benefit from your product.
Blog Posts. Blogs offer superb versatility and ease of use, allowing authors to share periodical and evergreen content with business audiences. In many cases, blogs could be a reader’s first interaction with your company, having landed on your site through a specific search query. In others, they could be the vehicle through which readers attempt to learn more about your company’s credibility and expertise. It’s easier to click through a few blogs than to download a white paper or eBook, so be sure to put your best foot forward in your blog; if it makes sense, repurpose more robust white paper or eBook content into blog posts.
Case Studies. Case studies are hugely valuable tools in B2B content. Often hosted directly on a company’s website, case studies allow businesses to publicly share success stories resulting from customers’ use of their product or service. Unlike more general marketing copy, which can sometimes make it hard to tangibly understand the use cases and benefits of a product or service, this material typically leverages real customer experiences to illuminate a value proposition. The premise is simple: show how other businesses benefit from your offering, with concrete data and testimonials as evidence.
Newsletters. Work inboxes are incredibly cluttered. If you work for a large company, think about how many internal, corporate emails you receive daily that you don’t even consider reading. The point is: if you’re sending your clients and prospects an email newsletter, it better stand out, and it better deliver value. Otherwise, it’s ending up in the trash, or worse, you’re losing a subscriber. Either way, you risk your most important messaging getting lost in the clutter. The upside of a well-received newsletter is immense though. A robust and engaged email list is valuable because it means your company is no longer as beholden to the whims of social media or search algorithms. You own your audience.
Social Media. Social media is generally more prevalent in B2C territory than in B2B, but it still has its place among business customers. As you might imagine, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are less relevant channels in B2B, with LinkedIn reigning supreme. Social media can offer a valuable vehicle to tease, summarize, or promote your more intricate thought leadership efforts or to share shorter, punchier messages with your busy audience while engaging in a more two-sided dialogue.
How to write B2B content: tips and best practices
Our discussion of the differences between B2B and B2C content delves into some tips for writing for business audiences, but there are numerous best practices worth heeding. While this list could extend in perpetuity, here are a handful of the most impactful and actionable tips:
Know your audience. The rest of the tips listed below are worthless if you don’t heed this one. We should write each piece of B2B content with a specific audience in mind, and we should strive to know as much about that audience as possible. For instance, if the audience consists of potential clients for our business, we should know where they sit in the sales funnel. Are they aware of our brand yet? If so, are they considering our services? What objective are we trying to accomplish with this content? If we can’t answer these questions, we might want to step back and ask ourselves a vastly more important one: why are we writing this in the first place?
Meet your readers at their level. If we know the audience we’re writing for, then we have at least a cursory understanding of how well they understand our industry, our business, or our products and services. If our goal is to make potential customers aware of a problem they didn’t even know they had or a solution they didn’t know existed, then we should probably avoid using industry jargon and language familiar only to experts. If we’re writing a white paper analyzing industry trends for a well-versed and engaged audience, then we better make sure we’re conveying original insight, that it’s accurate, and that we’ve included the data and information supporting our conclusions.
Value brevity and clarity. Our clients are busy, and every moment they spend reading our content is a moment that could be spent finishing other work and clawing closer toward the end of the day. Value their time and cherish their attention. If we confuse them with run-on sentences and flowery language, we lose them. If we belabor points or - worse - take too long to get to them, we lose them. Be brief and be clear. That doesn’t mean we should abandon relevant context or ignore the nuance of complex topics. But know which audiences require this context, and deliver it succinctly.
Find the appropriate voice and adhere to it. We’re competing for our reader’s time, and the pressure of that competition may cause us to take risks to engage the reader. We should, of course, be engaging. "B2B" does not inherently require dry, academic language and a droning tone. We should write like we speak - like people. However, we might not speak the same in a business setting as we would amongst friends at a football game, so we shouldn’t write that way either. Professionalism is important, it just need not be synonymous with boredom. Understand your company’s voice and tone and adhere to them consistently; a departure is noticeable, often for the worse.
Pity the reader. We should make it as easy as possible for the reader to consume our content and precisely understand the message we’ve conveyed. We can achieve this through brevity and clarity, but various stylistic considerations also merit inclusion in your work. If you find yourself listing things, ensure they become bulleted or numbered, rather than buried in the depths of a long sentence or paragraph. Arriving at a key takeaway? Bold it, or better yet, make it a heading. Do the same for each important conclusion. Stumbling through an explanation of data-based findings? Give the reader a break from text - include graphs and charts. Staring at a wall of text? Vary your paragraph lengths and sentence structures. Contrary to high school English class teachings, there’s nothing wrong with a lone sentence standing its ground to deliver a salient point.
Who writes B2B content?
The size of an organization and its resources often determine who is responsible for writing B2B content. A large, well-resourced organization might have specific staff members in the marketing organization charged with writing content. At a startup, anyone from the founder to an intern could own these responsibilities.
However, an internal employee need not be responsible for all B2B content writing. Many companies - large and small - will work with content writing agencies or ghostwriters to build their content archives. An external perspective can be valuable in writing more sophisticated content like white papers and case studies, where agencies can apply best practices and formulas for success attained through a deep catalog of work done for various clients.
If you’d like help writing B2B content so your team can remain focused on its core roles and responsibilities, please contact our team at ThoughtLede. Whether you want to produce case studies, white papers, or blog posts, we’ll apply all the best practices discussed here to position your company as a credible thought leader.