Evergreen Content Strategy in B2B
It can take weeks or months to develop good marketing content. Especially for B2B or professional services firms where buyers may need a lot of information to make a purchase decision. That’s why it’s important to create content that’s relevant to both your business and your buyers. But what happens next? Should you start creating new content? No, not quite yet. Next, you must find the right channels to distribute your content, promote it regularly, and make slight edits here and there so it stays relevant for years to come. This is the essence of an evergreen content strategy in B2B.
What is Evergreen Marketing Content?
Marketing content that remains relevant and useful over a long period of time is known as “evergreen.” Rather than being tied to a specific event or news item, evergreen content focuses on buyer pain points that will likely remain for the foreseeable future. In B2B marketing, an evergreen content strategy can be an effective way to attract and engage potential customers.
The Role of Evergreen Content in B2B Transactions
By definition, B2B companies exist because they solve a problem for another business. The problem could be simple, like ordering office supplies. In this case, one buyer is likely to have budget authority and discretion to make purchase decisions regarding office supplies. But not all B2B transactions are so simple.
Many B2B transactions are complex. For example, a business could seek to set up a new operating system that integrates across sales, marketing, and customer success. In this example, CFOs, COOs, CROs, and CMOs, will all likely have input on such an investment. In their research, each of these stakeholders will come across content on the web—whether on search, social, or in peer communities—that helps them look at the problem from their unique business perspective. This content can shape the outcome of which company to work with, creating an opportunity for you to differentiate from competitors and win more business.
Content is your expertise at scale. Businesses today will face many of the same complex challenges in the next 3-5 years. If your services help this market, evergreen content could be a key part of your digital strategy. You can help companies diagnose the problem so they find the right product or service.
How to Develop an Evergreen Content Strategy in B2B
Here are a few ways to develop and implement an evergreen content strategy for B2B marketing:
Identify your target audience: Start by identifying the specific audience you want to reach with your evergreen content. What pains do they have? What tone of voice would resonate? This will help you create content that is relevant and useful to your target audience.
Select topics that will resonate: Select topics that will remain relevant and useful to your audience over a long period of time. These could include topics related to industry trends, best practices, or common challenges faced by businesses in your field.
3. Create high-quality content: Invest time and resources into creating well-researched, well-written, and visually appealing content. This will help your content stand out and be more likely to be shared and linked to by others.
4. Distribute your content: Once you have created your evergreen content, increase its visibility and reach by re-formatting the content to be consumed naturally on social media, email, and other channels.
5. Update and refresh your content: As time goes on, it's important to review and update your evergreen content to ensure it remains accurate and relevant. This could involve adding new information, updating statistics, or revising outdated information. See the framework illustration below on how to recycle content.
By following these tips, you can develop and implement an effective evergreen content strategy for your B2B business. If you need guidance or support, check out our content marketing services.
Different Types of Evergreen Content
There are different types of evergreen content. Here are some examples that could be used as part of an evergreen content strategy:
Original research: Collect primary data on your ideal customers, then package it up into content that can be consumed in a number of different formats, illustrated in the image below.
How-To Content: Educate your target buyers and teach them how to solve specific challenges. Don’t worry about giving away too much “secret sauce” because once buyers realize what they need to do and how to do it, they’ll see the value in hiring you.
Case studies: Share real-life examples of how your products or services have helped other businesses solve problems or improve their operations. Case studies have a very long shelf-life and demonstrate social proof of the value of your services.
Comprehensive Guides: Sometimes packaged as a PDF, other times packaged as a blog post, creating a comprehensive guide to solving a specific business challenge can be powerful evergreen content.
By creating a mix of these types of content, you can create an evergreen content strategy that will remain relevant and useful to your target audience over a long period of time.
Remember to regularly review and update your evergreen content to ensure it remains accurate and relevant. You can also promote your content through your website, social media channels, and email marketing campaigns to increase its visibility and reach.
B2B Companies with Evergreen Content Strategies
There are many companies that have implemented an evergreen content strategy as part of their marketing efforts. This can be an impactful strategy for many industries, like accounting, B2B SaaS, consulting firms. Here are a few examples:
HubSpot, a marketing and sales software company, has an extensive library of evergreen content on topics such as inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. They regularly update and refresh their content to ensure it remains accurate and relevant. For instance, their blog post about how to write a business proposal includes templates, outlines, and a step-by-step guide for writing a proposal.
Wrike is a project management tool that enables cross-departmental collaboration and powerful automation. Their library is chock full of evergreen content that addresses buyer challenges like information on budget planning, automating marketing workflows, and templates to use with their platform.
HireDNA helps companies hire better sales talent, faster. Their blog content features topics like the impact of guided sales processes, simplifying sales hiring, and onboarding remote vs in-house salespeople. This content addresses topics that will be relevant for the foreseeable future, giving HireDNA the opportunity to refresh and re-distribute these pages on their primary marketing channels.
YHB CPAs & Consultants is a Virginia-based accounting firm that serves the construction industry. They use evergreen content as part of their blog strategy, providing information on topics like succession planning, budgeting and more. Since these topics will remain relevant to construction companies, YHB is in a position to update and re-promote this content periodically on marketing channels like email and social media.
These are just a few examples of companies that have implemented an evergreen content strategy as part of their marketing efforts. By creating high-quality, relevant content that remains useful over a long period of time, these companies are able to attract and engage potential customers and establish themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries.
Build an Evergreen Content Strategy
Many B2B companies have an opportunity to make the most from their content investments with an evergreen content strategy. Request a free content review today.
