3 Steps to Creating Winning Content for Your Vertical Marketing Strategy

Let’s face it – a lot of B2B messaging is generic. It often tries to speak to everyone at the same time, and in turn, it doesn’t resonate with the intended audience. When the right message doesn’t reach the right market, clients are left sifting through outdated sales content, trying to untangle how your solution applies to their specific challenges.

It’s time to meet buyers where they are in their journey – and that starts by addressing their most unique needs. While your platform or solution may be flexible enough to accommodate industry-specific needs, marketing materials provide the golden opportunity to tell a more personalized story. To keep up, companies selling across industries need to customize their marketing collateral to their vertical buyers. Today’s B2B customers want to feel inspired by the use cases that are relevant and timely to them.

Creating vertical marketing content is a large investment and is guaranteed to add complexity to your marketing mix. However, for the right products, good vertical content marketing can reduce your sales cycles and prove to prospective buyers that you understand the challenges of their industry. It gives sales teams the tools to speak the same language as key prospects, lending them credibility when explaining why your solution is the best fit.

If you’re ready to get started, here are three crucial steps:

Step 1: Strategize

Every piece of content needs to be optimized for impact. Does the industry persona need a more technical explanation of how your product works? Are they short on time, and bite-sized content makes more sense for them? This is where you need to strategize how a persona will engage with your content and what your content needs to communicate, specific to their industry.

Start with a strategy session to identify the challenges most relevant to your target sector. Then, map your messaging to these obstacles to ensure you’re communicating a clear path to success. Without this foundational work, you risk compromising the quality of the resulting content – or focusing too strongly on your own brand story or product specs that don’t resonate with industry buyers. Here are five questions to ask while strategizing:

• What problem is my customer trying to solve? Start with your target persona’s most pressing challenges to understand what specific use cases or features may meet their needs.
• What is my customer’s reason for buying this product or service? Focus on the why, and not just what they’re buying – or who they should buy it from.
• What makes my target buyer’s industry unique? Consider how your prospective buyer may overcome challenges that are unique to their needs and see how you can tell a compelling story that positions you as an industry insider.
• What level of customization does this customer expect from their marketing? Some generic content can be quickly verticalized and deployed. However, for your content to be truly relevant to a specific industry, a total overhaul may be needed.
• Where is my buyer on their customer journey? Prospecting begins at awareness, and relevant, industry-tailored content has a purpose throughout the buyer’s journey. Ensure that your content meets them at the right stage of the process and doesn’t leave them hanging when they need your insight the most.

Step 2: Simplify

Even when you get the message right, it’s easy for sales and marketing content to become too complex, which can keep content from reaching its full potential. You need to strike the right balance between providing relevant information without overwhelming the reader. When creating vertical content for B2B, here are three ways to keep your approach simple.

• Break it up: Buyers often don’t have the time to dive into long, bloated paragraphs. Reduce or break up your content visually to improve readability.
• Make it easier to understand: Cut out jargon and buzz words and correctly incorporate target industry terms (for example, if you’re selling into manufacturing, you need to make it clear you understand the difference between the value chain and a supply chain).
• Start small: If you don’t have the support or budget to launch a large, complicated vertical marketing effort, start small. Focus on blog posts or infographics first. Then add in paid social campaigns. Ramp up, as you gain the resources you need.

Step 3: Show off

Impactful collateral is not just about the right message. It needs to make an impression. However, developing thoughtfully designed content is time consuming. A few high-impact pieces will gain more traction and resonate with industry buyers more than a lot of mediocre content. Basically: quality over quantity.

When designing content for a vertical market, keep in mind these key ideas:

• Showcase your industry knowledge through images: When sourcing photography and illustrations, license high-quality images that resonate with your vertical. Make sure to double check that stock photography models are using equipment the right way to maintain confidence with your reader.
• Align your vertical content with the bigger picture: Even with distinct, verticalized content, you want pieces to feel like they’re part of your brand’s larger story by following consistent brand guidelines.
• Let the experts do the talking: A quote from an industry professional can go a long way, even if you don’t have them on staff. Sourcing quotes from your existing client case studies or interviewing an insider can help boost confidence in your understanding of a vertical’s needs.

Starting with these three steps can help any B2B company feel confident tackling vertical marketing.

If you’re interested in learning more about the value of a vertical marketing approach, watch our webinar: “5 Keys to Activating Your Vertical Marketing Strategy”.

And if you need a partner to support your vertical marketing efforts, let’s chat now.