When it comes to the kind of content B2B audiences find most engaging, educational content comes out top.
Adding value is all about giving people the tools and knowledge they need to further their role, improve their business operations or make more sales – and doing it successfully helps to put you top of mind when they start looking for a supplier.
With this in mind, it’s easy to see why B2B newsletters have such great potential. They present a unique opportunity to create and curate high-value educational content for a niche, closely defined audience and deliver it straight to their inbox.
And, of course, it gives you a valid reason to capture contact details and other information about your target market, and to communicate regularly with an audience of people who have registered their interest in what you do. In fact, it’s a perfect way to use consistent, regular, ongoing communication to build strong client relationships and advertise your products and services, while giving readers a great reason to open the email.
But here’s the million dollar question: what do you actually put in your newsletter?
Here are some top B2B newsletter content ideas to get you started
Incorporate video
If you can set aside the time and resources, shooting a short video message to introduce each newsletter is a very effective, personalised and engaging approach. Even better, with a bit of planning and some decent filming gear, you can capture shots of key projects, milestones and company events and edit together a great little overview video of what you’ve been up to for your weekly/monthly newsletter.
This helps to create a friendly, relatable voice (and face) to your newsletter, making it easier to intermingle company news and content marketing without seeming too salesy.
Bear in mind, though, that it’s generally not possible to embed video into the body of your email. Instead, one workaround is to upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo and put a hyperlinked screenshot of the video in the email newsletter, instructing readers to click-to-play.
Use it to showcase your other content
B2B newsletters typically include a short piece of text and image to introduce each item, with an outbound link to the full piece of content. That makes it a great opportunity to bring together all the content you’ve created that week/month in one place, rather than trying to create new content specifically for your newsletter.
… It does, however, mean that you’ll need a solid schedule of blogs, videos, podcasts, eBooks etc. lined up over the coming months, to make sure you always have something new to link to in your newsletter!
Feature curated content
Journalists, artists and creators like Ann Friedman, Rusty Foster and Austin Kleon have turned curated content newsletters into an art form, using tools like TinyLetter to succinctly pull together links to great articles and other content gaining traction in their fields.
While these aren’t strictly B2B, there’s no reason why you can’t do the same. Linking out to intriguing news pieces, exciting research and other items of interest helps to establish you as an authoritative voice and helps you to start a conversation with thought leaders in your field.
Mix in your promotional stuff with content marketing
It’s tempting to use your regular newsletter to push your products, services and latest deals, but make it all about that and there’s every chance B2B clients will soon switch off.
Instead, focus on providing a fascinating mix of educational content and a chatty “behind-the-scenes” update on what you’ve been up to as a company. Then, pepper your newsletter with marketing links that support your other content, rather than dominate it. The key, as always, is to be led by what your audience wants.
For more great content marketing suggestions, download The B2B Content Creation Masterclass.
