6 B2B Copywriting Tips To Engage Readers

When it comes to stakeholder engagement, B2B copywriting doesn’t differentiate from B2C in regards to lingo or personalization. After all, B2B stakeholders are people with emotional triggers, moral values, and ambitions, just like B2C customers and brand followers.

By LINDA FERGUSON

However, writing B2B copy is all about presenting your brand’s value proposition in a manner in which a different company will find it personally beneficial. Adopting such an approach in B2B copywriting will allow you to engage more readers and subsequently convert them into B2B partners and clients.

So, what are the intricacies of B2B copy, and how can you utilize it so that your conversion rate goes up in 2020? Let’s find the answers!

Benefits of Improving your B2B Copywriting

If you want to achieve success in business and life, you should strive for excellence in everything you do. And when it comes to B2B copywriting, you should aim to create perfect copies. Excellence in copywriting will help you to achieve the following results:

— Improve an industry thought leadership
— Gain credibility
— Get new clients
— Increase sales

6 B2B Copywriting Principles to Apply

The good news is that you don’t have to hold a degree in creative writing to write good B2B copies. If you work in the industry for a while and know your target audience well enough, you are more than able to create great relevant content. Apply the following six principles to your writing, and you will achieve outstanding results.

Start with a Brief and an Outline

Every good B2B copy starts with writing a brief and an outline.

So the first thing you should do when writing a B2B copy is to outline the key points you want to present and organize them in a logical way.

Most business people skip this important step and jump to writing a copy without having an outline. They wrongly believe that it helps them to save time. But the truth is that if you don’t have an outline, it will be challenging for you to put your ideas in the right order. You will “save” time on writing an outline but waste much more time editing and structuring the final version of your copy.

How to write a good outline?

— Your copy must have a short introduction, body text, and a brief conclusion. Think about what you will write in each section and specify it in your outline.
— Present general facts first, and then go into detail.
— Use bullet points.
— Add statistics and links to useful resources to your outline, so you will not forget to add them to your article.

Rely on Industry Keywords & Expectations

Every industry is different, and every target audience is special. In some industries, buyers expect sellers to use professional jargon and technical terms; in other industries – buyers prefer to communicate with sellers in simple language.

Let’s consider an example to see the difference.

Here is a B2B copy published by engineering software provider MatCalc. The purpose of this copy is to grab the attention of qualified engineers who work for steel-producing companies. As you can see, the text includes lots of industry-specific terms because it’s expected that everyone who will read this copy is familiar with these terms.

Now let’s take a look at another B2B copy. This copy is published by Avast, an antivirus software provider. Since Avast offers its product to a wide audience – to various businesses from small travel agencies to big enterprises – it tries to describe its services in simple words. The vast majority of Avast’s customers are not familiar with cybersecurity-related terms, so it was the right decision to keep the text simple.

Before you start writing a B2B copy, you should research industry keywords and analyze the target audience’s expectations. You should get a clear understanding of what terms you should and shouldn’t be using in your writing to maximize your content marketing efforts. Here are three things you should do:

— Visit your competitors’ websites. Analyze their texts and define the keywords they use the most.
— Use keywords research tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest to discover the search queries your customers create.
— Look through emails and messages you get from your customers. Define the keywords and language they are using.

Include Reputable Data & Social Proof

In the B2B sector, trustworthiness and credibility is everything. And you should understand that every statement you make should be supported by research data or social proof. To write a good B2B copy, you should use facts and reliable data – not your personal assumptions.

Here are a few useful tips for you:

— Always cite primary sources and add links to the initial research.
— Use relevant, not-outdated information. If you’re writing an article titled Trends in Software Development 2020, ensure that all the statistics you are using have been generated this year.
— Run a survey and share findings with your audience. Use Survey Monkey or similar services for this purpose.

Business Benefits First, Personal Second

You create content to get new B2B clients, let’s name them Company X and Company Y. But you should understand that your content must appeal not to the company, but to the people who work for this company, for instance, Elis Black, a head of the marketing department for Company X, and Claris Noble, a chief marketing officer of Company Y.

Your main task here is to leverage business benefits and personal benefits. You should convince readers that your product will benefit their companies while also bring them some personal benefits.

Take a look at the following example:

“Using our marketing software, your company will increase the effectiveness of ad campaigns by 30%. Your marketing team will be able to automate routine tasks and free up time for generating creative ideas.”

This B2B copy answer two questions that worry readers the most:

— How can this product benefit my company? – Increase the effectiveness of ad campaigns
— How can this product help my team and me in particular? – Free up time for more important, non-routine tasks.

If you want to maximize your marketing efforts, you should follow this example and describe the benefits of your product in the same way.

Keep your Copy Focused & Professional

Your blog posts, social media posts, ad copies, newsletters – everything must look professional and sound professional. Your B2B clients should see it clearly that your company is one of the best companies in the niche and that all your products are created by dedicated professionals.

You are not allowed to make mistakes in your texts. Everything must be written in good grammar and have a good sentence structure.

Also, you should be very careful about using unfamiliar words or industry-specific terms. Pretty often, content marketing teams don’t have a deep understanding of the technologies their companies are using. Content marketers try to add unfamiliar keywords to the texts and eventually fail – they create copies that sound awkward and unprofessional.

To prevent that, content marketers and writers should work together with engineers or other employees who can explain the technical aspects of the company’s work.

If you don’t have a big team, you can get help online. You can check writing websites like Subjecto, where you can find free essay samples, or freelance platforms like Upwork and find writers with a background in your niche. For instance, if you need to write articles about the MRI machine, you can find writers with medical and technical backgrounds.

Edit & Format Based on Brand Standards

B2B customers are busier than B2C customers. They value their time, and they will not waste 20 minutes trying to read a poorly structured article. Keep that in mind creating B2B content.

You should set a brand standard and encourage everyone in your team to follow it. All your branded content must be structured in the same way. You should choose readable fonts, proper colors, as well as suitable formats for headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists.

Why is formatting so important? It makes B2B copies more visually appealing and helps to create a cohesive brand identity. Thanks to established brand standards, your customers will be able to distinguish your content from content created by your competitors.

In Summary

Apply these six copywriting principles to your practice, and you will significantly improve the quality of your B2B copies. It will help you to attract new customers, boost brand loyalty, and achieve other goals you have set.

The success of your business is in your hands. So don’t hesitate to take a step and become a more proficient copywriter.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash