SUMMARY:

Expert articles are the most efficient and flexible form of content for quickly generating leads and awareness on social media.

Many B2B companies write about their products on their own blogs – unfortunately, often with little reach and without any real measurable success. In this article, we show you how traditional industrial and mechanical engineering companies, SaaS startups, medtech firms, and others can use the ReThink180™ method and a systematic process for increasing reach with expert articles to generate concrete leads and sustainable awareness in a short period of time and achieve measurable success. Ready to activate untapped potential? Then read the article below or contact us directly.

About Leadvolution

About LeadvolutionWith over 160 advertising setups for fast-growing startups, exciting medium-sized companies, and over 35 global market leaders, Leadvolution is one of the most experienced social media B2B marketing consultancies in Europe. Within 4-8 weeks, we build a globally scalable social media lead generation system for very specific and complex B2B target groups, generating up to 500 leads per month.

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B2B companies usually do not achieve measurable success with blog marketing and generate questionable “awareness.”

Before writing blog articles, many B2B companies do not consider what they actually want to achieve with them. They hope for “awareness” in a very unspecific way. This often results in unfocused posts with no product reference that do not generate any concrete inquiries. Why? A general article provides superficial information but hardly interests the reader in the company’s products.
The term “awareness” is rarely defined and its actual benefit is usually questionable. Many B2B companies spend a lot of money to generate attention – and often achieve exactly the opposite. This is because people in the B2B environment in particular may perceive “brand building” and “awareness” measures without concrete information as annoying advertising that does not offer them any added value. In the worst case, companies can even create a negative branding effect. Internally, marketers then often find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to justify the costs of awareness, which can sometimes lead to unpleasant discussions due to the difficult-to-measure benefits.
In our opinion, sustainable brand building in B2B marketing can only be achieved if customers internalize concrete information such as product quality and added value, innovation leadership, performance, cost-benefit ratio, and service level, and develop trust in the company. This automatically and permanently inspires them to embrace the brand and understand why they should consider it when the need arises.

Many are stuck in the dilemma of “product interest vs. advertising appeal.”

Many companies write general articles on industry topics (“5 trends in…” etc.) for fear of appearing too “advertising-oriented.” These often generate interest, but if the article does not present the product as a solution, readers are left wondering what problem they should contact the company about or, worse still, which company wrote the article in the first place.
Even if solutions are presented in the content, they are often described in vague terms and are not quantified. A typical example: “Product XY will make you faster.” This leaves the customer unclear as to how much speed they can gain. One percent more would not be exciting for them, but 40 percent faster might be. They cannot therefore decide whether the product is right for them and, due to the lack of clarity, risk wasting time with a pushy salesperson if they do make an enquiry.
Articles that focus entirely on the company or product (“Who are we?”, “What products/services do we offer?” and “What features do we have?”) are unlikely to arouse much interest among customers. Why? This product-centric communication does not allow customers to intuitively recognize why the product is relevant to them, which of their problems it solves, and how it can improve their situation. Since very few customers are willing to do background research, they leave without any interest in the product.

How to achieve conversion rates of up to 5% with expert articles – and generate lasting awareness at the same time

To spark interest, B2B companies should always start their content from the customer’s perspective, i.e., with one of their problems or desires. Customers know their own perspective and can therefore immediately and intuitively recognize that the article could be interesting to them because it shows them how they can improve their situation. There are usually several lines of argumentation that lead to product interest, e.g., quality, cost, effort, etc. Regardless of the “pain point” you choose, you can always use the same structure:

  1. Are you in industry x, working in position y, and have problem z?
  2. Does this lead to unpleasant consequences a, b, and c for you?
  3. We have a solution using approach X
  4. With this, you can achieve the (quantified) results 1, 2, and 3
  5. You can trust us because we have already solved this problem for x, y, and z
  6. “Call to action”: “Would you like to know more?”

These points can be used to develop an argument (a “message”) that, unlike a general “awareness” text, is highly relevant to your target group, generates direct product interest and leads, and also delivers genuine and sustainable brand building. Reason: The customer can now link the valuable solution they have learned to your company name and your product.

Read our expert article here to find out how we develop these lines of argumentation with our ReThink180™ methodology together with customers.

In contrast to a general white paper download, this also increases the quality of leads. Because if the customer already understands the added value they can achieve with a product during the initial consultation, your sales team can enter the sales process directly (unlike when downloading a general white paper).

Would you like to test this for a pilot product? We would be happy to accompany you through this process. Simply arrange a free expert consultation with us here.

LinkedIn also allows you to deliver your expert articles to very specific B2B target groups with a reach of up to 5 digits.

Now you’ve created a well-written blog article. Unfortunately, without reach, it won’t generate any inquiries. However, B2B companies often lack the know-how to make themselves heard on digital channels. They are often left hoping that good content will somehow find its way to the right audience – which usually doesn’t happen.

To maximize the reach of your expert articles (and other content formats, videos, etc.), we establish a systematic process with our clients that we call “Content Booster”:

  • Posts in predefined social media groups and systematic sharing of content by employees and external multipliers such as influencers and partners ensure organic reach.
  • With paid measures, you provide the leverage you need to maximize your reach and ensure that your content is read by (tens of) thousands of people who are relevant to you. Retargeting is particularly recommended here: former users of your website or social media content are your most valuable target group.
  • Finally, social selling offers you the opportunity to send personalized LinkedIn messages with new content to your sales team’s network. This can also be (partially) automated.

Would you like to learn more about the Content Booster concept? Feel free to contact us for a free expert consultationif you need an assessment of your individual digital reach.

Your opportunity to increase sales appointments by 50-100%: Automatically qualify all social touchpoints such as likes, etc.

Expert articles can generate awareness and direct leads simultaneously. If a user has read the article and then responded via a web form, you can even assume they have a high level of interest and prior knowledge. However, the conversion rate of expert articles is 2-4x lower than with formats that are 100% focused on leads, such as LinkedIn Lead Ads. However, you can use social touchpoints to generate significantly more appointments from expert articles – by tracking all likes, profile visits, etc. Because when someone responds to your post about the expert article on social media, the ball is practically already in the court of opportunity. This is your opportunity: Every like and every comment is a good opportunity for a personal LinkedIn contact request, with which you can offer further information. This exponentially accelerates your network growth, and you gain 50 to 100 percent more leads.

The reason why most companies fail to tap into this enormous potential is usually limited sales resources. Systematic, (partially) automated processes can help here. We create these with clients, for example, using Teamfluence, a software that automatically collects all social touchpoints.

Want to learn more about social lead qualification? Read our expert article on the subject.

Figure: Qualification of recorded social touchpoints in Teamfluence

Turn social touchpoints into appointments (optionally also possible via external resources)

Leads can now be qualified in Teamfluence either manually, with AI support, or fully automatically—not by your sales team, but by a separate team, which can also be provided by us if desired. Once a lead has been marked as positive, it is pushed to your CRM. We have also developed a standardized process with an interface and automation templates for different CRMs, which makes it very easy to transfer them to the CRM and create the corresponding contacts, companies, deals, and tasks.

The leads can now be contacted by the separate team (“I saw that you liked the article by my colleague XY – what did you find interesting about it? Would you be interested in a quick chat with him about it?”). Direct calendar access allows you to schedule an appointment with the relevant sales representative and, of course, document it in the CRM system, including the relevant background information.

If you do not have dedicated internal resources for lead qualification, we can offer to take over the entire process of establishing contact and scheduling appointments completely externally.

Last but not least: Expert article content can easily be reused multiple times.

Once you have published the article on your website, you can turn it into more lead-oriented content formats with very little effort. Design a template that allows you to turn an article into a short, concise PDF (we call this an “expert paper”) in 1-2 hours, which can then be offered for download with LinkedIn Lead Ads, shared by your sales team in their newsletter, published as a LinkedIn newsletter, or even promoted as a LinkedIn Document Ad. Have you produced a large number of articles? Why not turn them into an eBook? Internationalization into different languages is also quick and easy.

Conclusion: With the right, efficiently designed concepts, you can easily generate a large amount of valuable B2B content from individual articles. We would be happy to help you establish these approaches in your company.

With Leadvolution, you can implement an initial expert article pilot in 4-6 weeks.

We support you every step of the way, from conceptualization, including topic and project planning, to content creation and publication, to promoting your content and scheduling appointments based on the leads generated. Don’t have a blog section where you can publish articles? No problem, we can also implement appropriate landing pages.

Request a free consultation with an expert now: