Five straightforward B2B copywriting strategies that actually work

What is B2B copywriting? B2B copywriting is fuel for digital marketing: content creation aimed specifically at businesses. B2B copywriting helps businesses showcase their products and services to other companies and, at its core, B2B copywriting creates content that enables businesses to answer questions, solve problems and achieve their goals. 

How do you do B2B copywriting?
The best place to start is by developing a B2B content strategy that outlines the goals and key messages that your business needs to get across. The trick is to focus on delivering value, not selling.   

Once your content strategy is clear, this can be used as a foundation for crafting useful, compelling copy that will resonate with the target audience by facilitating content that helps your customers to succeed.  

By focusing on delivering value to your audience through knowledge sharing, B2B copywriting can become an extremely effective marketing tool. Used correctly, it can attract new customers, or it can help you up-sell to your existing customers.  

But how do you deliver value through content? Let’s take a look at five of the best B2B copywriting strategies to get you started.  

1. Know your audience and understand their needs 
2. Create buyer personas 
3. Get to know your competition 
4. Use compelling headlines 
5. Mix it up with A/B split testing

1. Know your audience and understand their needs 

It’s hard to create B2B content that attracts potential customers or up-sells to existing customers if you don’t know what they want in the first place.  

As a starting point, try picturing your business’s ideal customer. Who are they? What do they want to achieve? More importantly for them, why do they want to achieve these things? What are some of their biggest concerns? What do they struggle with the most? 

Even more important for you: how can your business help to solve their problems?  How can your company enable them to fulfill their business goals and reduce their worries? 

2. Create buyer personas 

If you struggle to answer any of the questions above, you’ll need to research your industry and audience a little more.  You will also find it helpful to create a primary buyer persona to keep in mind, while crafting your website copy and rolling out the rest of your B2B content.  

Why is creating a buyer persona such an important B2B copywriting strategy?  

In today’s content-saturated marketplace, people are looking for a personalised experience. They want to feel like someone understands them. Building out a buyer persona helps you focus on creating this feeling for your audience.  

Generating a buyer persona will help you to:  

• Humanise your customers and relate to them. 
• Get a clearer understanding of their problems. 
• Identify their values and how they define success. 

Creating an audience of one is more effective than simply segmenting them by demographic attributes. 

Keep the solution top of mind during B2B copywriting 

Remember, with B2B copywriting you’re not selling a product, you’re creating value. This means you’re not going to focus on the features of your product or solution, you’re going to focus on the benefits. This means talking about how your product meets your buyer personas' needs by helping to reduce their worries, or achieve their goals. 

Level up: For businesses that are dealing with procurement teams, or complicated decision-making cycles, it might also help to consider creating messaging and content for your influencer personas too - those people in businesses who aren't making the final decision, but who have influence and weight in the target organisation.  Considering their needs in your content strategy could be what swings a buying decision in your favour. 

3. Get to know the competition 

One of the most effective B2B copywriting strategies involves checking out your competition. This helps you find your place in the market and, by identifying your rivals, you can set yourself apart from them.  

Why is competitive analysis an important B2B copywriting strategy? It gives you the context and tools to differentiate yourself from others in your field, helping you to offer something unique. 

Identify your direct and indirect competition 

How do you know who the competition is?  There are two types — direct and indirect. 

• Direct competition: Offers a product that a customer would consider an acceptable substitution for your own in meeting their needs. 
• Indirect competition: Offers alternative products that could meet the same needs for the customer.  

Focus on the direct competition when you're comparing yourself to other companies.  

In analysing your competition, you’ll need to consider the following:   

• What are their sales tactics, and what results do they get? 
• How does their sales process work? Where are they located? 
• What costs are involved in acquiring their products/solutions? (shipping, subscriptions, licensing, etc.) 
• Whose business are they losing, or missing out on and why? 
• How do they market their products?  
• What is their content strategy? What is their social media strategy? 
• How do they treat loyal customers? Do they have a rewards programme?  

Use SWOT analysis to guide your B2B copywriting 

A good, old-fashioned SWOT analysis is a great B2B copywriting strategy that empowers you to pinpoint your company's position in the market. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Once you've assessed the competition, you can see how your company measures up against them. 

• Strengths: What advantages does your company have? What makes it stand out and offer something unique?  
• Weaknesses: Where could your company improve? What are the weak points in your strategy for finding new customers?  
• Opportunities: Are there any gaps in your market? Any unfulfilled needs? How can your business adapt to meet these needs and create a new customer base?   

• Threats: Standards change. Customers’ needs change. Technology changes. By keeping on top of trends and your competition, you’ll be equipped to turn threats into opportunities. 

4. Use compelling, click-worthy headlines  

If you want your B2B content to meet your business goals, one of the most effective things you can do is to write captivating headlines. The success of any piece of B2B content – whether blog article, product page, or email – will vary depending on the magnetism of your headline. 

Why is using compelling headlines an important B2B copywriting strategy? If you fail to make your headlines punchy and clickable, every other marketing step that you take will be a total waste of time. 

5. Use A/B split testing to verify what works  

A/B testing is a critical step. It can be tricky to know what will work without getting objective feedback, so you should test variations on everything from headlines to taglines, articles, and ads. Without testing, you’re just guessing.   

 Why is A/B testing an important B2B copywriting strategy? 

•  A/B testing is the sandbox environment that lets you correct anything that doesn’t perform as anticipated. 
• It gives you the opportunity to tweak your copy, while providing concrete metrics and statistics about your audience.  

Since only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to boost conversion rates, taking this step is an easy way to rise above your competitors. Test, monitor metrics, tweak what’s not working, and test again and again until you get the results you’re after.   

Looking for B2B copywriting strategies that work? 

What is the most recommended B2B copywriting strategy? Outsourcing to the professionals.  84% of B2B marketers outsource content creation. While it can make sense to do the B2B copywriting yourself at first, as you grow you’re going to want to partner with an experienced copywriting agency that can ensure you’ve always got a fresh supply of high-quality copy that meets your needs.  

Are you ready to see how we can help you deliver real value to your customers through the power of B2B copywriting? Let’s talk! 

Want to learn more about the difference between B2B and B2C content? Read more here.