In this article, we share the 5 most important B2B content marketing best practices that we’ve discovered in our 15+ years of experience in content marketing. While our content marketing focus during this time has been combining thought leadership content with SEO for lead generation, the best practices below apply to all B2B content marketing campaigns. The best practices are:

1. Organize Your Content Around Topical Pillars
2. Use a Modular Content Strategy
3. Target Prospects Across the Marketing Funnel
4. Use Specialized Content to Drive Traffic and Backlinks
5. Conversion Optimize Your Content

We discuss each in more detail below.

Organize Your Content Around Topical Pillars

Regardless of your choice in marketing channels, your content needs to have some level of organizational structure. For years, our teams have championed the use of a hub and spoke model of content organization, in which one “hub” (i.e. a shorter container keyword) contains several “spokes” (i.e. longtail keywords containing the hub) that speak to a variety of search intents, as displayed below: 

Hub & Spoke Model Example

Hub	Spoke	Search Intent
project management tools	best project management tools	Evaluate
	project management tool demo	Review
	project management tools in teams	Solve

We’ve since adjusted our strategy when we realized that several “spokes” do not fit neatly into their respective “hubs.” For example, “project management for teams” may directly target the desired demographic,despite not containing the word “tools.”

We now recommend an organizational strategy that focuses on pillars rather than hubs. The difference between the two is subtle but clear: 

Pillars	Hubs
Focus on the concept behind the keyword, making them more flexible than hubs and allowing teams to more completely cover what the target audience is likely to search	Focus on the keyword itself. This makes them more rigid than pillars, but can allow for more comprehensive coverage of all the variations of a given keyword

On their face, pillars appear a great deal similar to hubs. They typically consist of several keywords grouped under a single topical keyword, each one pertaining to a specific page that will contain content that addresses the search intent behind it. The search intent also has a significant impact on the page type used, since it indicates where the reader sits in your marketing funnel, as displayed below: 

Pillar Model Example

Pillar	Keywords	Search Intent	Page Type
project management tool	project management for teams	Clarify	Blog Post
	project management tools in teams	Solve	Super Blog
	best project management tools	Evaluate	Comparison Blog
	project management tool demo	Review	Landing Page
	[company name] project management tools	Buy	Contact Page

Organizing your content this way allows for a few benefits. First, it allows for comprehensive content coverage. Publishing many related articles will help also establish the writer as an authority, building trust with readers. At the same time, Google begins to see the website as a niche expert and places it higher in the search rankings. Finally, organizing around topical pillars provides a roadmap that makes for easier logistics when planning out a production schedule. 

Use a Modular Content Strategy

Making modular content means preparing it in such a way that makes it easier to repurpose across different marketing channels. The steps for creating a modular content strategy are relatively simple: 

1. Generate a single piece of extra-long content. At minimum, the report should be at least 2500 words that thoroughly covers the topic and is separated into smaller sections, each of which need to be of distinct interest to the target audience. This content should be gated; require readers to provide an email address in order to access it so you can follow up with them using lead nurturing content.
2. Create a blog post for each section. Provided you have appropriately selected your sections, each should make for an individual blog post that can speak to it more in-depth. Create these posts by rephrasing and expanding on the original section.
3. Create social media posts from each insight in the original piece. These smaller pieces of information are perfect for social media posts, which need to be snappier in order to quickly reach the audience and meet the limited character count. 
4. Create an email newsletter. Email marketing is slightly longer than a social media post, but we’ve found that the most effective are still limited in length; emails should be kept to around 300 words and should link to the existing blog posts and the contact page for your website to encourage readers to move quickly to a conversion.

For example, let’s take a look at an imaginary piece on the future of mutual funds. The following table shows how such a report can be broken down across various marketing channels.

Modular Content Strategy Example

Content Type	Description
Initial Report	“The State of Mutual Funds in 2024: Q3 Analysis”
Blog Posts	“Mutual Funds vs Other Investment Platforms in 2024” “Mutual Fund Best Practices”“How to Select the Best Mutual Fund”“Mutual Fund Practices to Stay Away From”“Trends in Mutual Fund Investing, Q3 2024”
Social Media	Numerous posts taken from individual insights in the initial report
Email	~300 word synopsis detailing what’s in the report, linking to it and several of the blog articles that have been written
Webinar	Take the graphics from the report and use them to turn it into a formal presentation
Podcast	Have your host do one or several episodes based on the findings in the report, encouraging listeners to download and read it themselves

Using a modular content strategy allows you to both produce content more consistently and quickly as well as ultimately lowering your customer acquisition cost, since you will be spending less time and money per piece being able to adapt most of it.

Target Prospects Across the Marketing Funnel

Customers typically go through a process before committing to a sale. Although it varies slightly depending on the individual, the most common pathway looks like the image to the right, starting with initial discovery of the product or services and going through several increasing stages before landing on an eventual conversion. 

For B2B content marketing, best practices suggest creating content for every stage of interest which either encourage an overall conversion or moving to the next stage in the funnel, such as:

Content Marketing by Funnel Stage

Discovery Stage	Content Suggestions	Page Type
Discovery	The discovery stage marks the first time a lead comes across your company or product. There isn’t a specific content type for this stage – rather, your strategy relies on your online presence.	Google SERPS Web Ads Social Media Ads
Interest	Reader’s at this stage are aware of your brand, but they may not see it as the solution to their problem yet. Content should be geared towards positioning your solution as the answer to the questions.	Blog Articles Landing Pages
Appraisal	The reader is now considering your company among several of your competitors, trying to decide which is right for them. Gear content towards showing them how your company compares.	Comparison Blogs Super Landing Pages
Confirmation	The reader is seriously considering your company, but they need that final push. Providing them with additional information, particularly on the effectiveness of your product, provides that push.	Case Studies White Papers Landing Pages Product Pages
Conversion	The reader is ready to purchase – the important thing here is to ensure that your pages make that purchase as easy as possible. Provide links to the checkout page wherever possible and clearly mark them.	Product Page Contact Page Checkout Page

Ensuring that your CTAs provide the reader with clear next steps is the key to moving them further down the marketing funnel. Ensure not only that you are providing the reader with plenty of links to additional reading in each piece, but also that each link directs them to a piece that exists in the next stage of the funnel. This streamlines the customer journey and increases the likelihood of an eventual conversion.

Use Specialized Content to Drive Traffic and Backlinks

Fundamentally, good content marketing is about giving readers what they are looking for. Content that is tailored to meet a specific search intent is more likely to accomplish this goal, resulting in it being prioritized by search engine platforms. Similarly, it makes the content more likely to be linked to by reputable sources, which also increases your traffic and raises your online visibility. 

Our teams at FPS use a few pieces of specialized content that we’ve found have great success. The following subsections detail two of our most important; list articles and metrics pieces.

List Articles

List articles are particularly useful when targeting leads that are evaluating your company against your competitors. These articles are designed to answer their questions (i.e. “what company best suits my needs?”) with your own company or services. 

The way you present this information is crucial. For example, let’s look at one of our most successful articles, “The Largest SEO Companies in the U.S. in 2024.” Right off the bat, the article provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of each of the SEO companies on the list:

In addition, the table also provides information that no other page does. In particular, the columns detailing the leadership experience score, average review score, and specialty provide the reader with original insights that create value in the piece. 

Note: Placing your agency as #1 on your own website may seem overly self-serving, but we’ve found it is nonetheless a remarkably effective marketing tool. The most important thing is to ensure that your ranking makes sense on the list.

The sections after detail each of the agencies on the list, including additional information that reader’s asking this question might find valuable, such as: 

• The relative strengths and weaknesses of the agency
• Direct quotes from previous customer reviews
• The agency’s typical clientele
• The background of the agency’s C-suite and management

Most importantly, each section should link to each agency’s contact page, allowing the reader a clear path forward once they’ve made their decision. Ensuring that the target audience clicks on your agency is a matter of ensuring that each section is written in such a way that they are steered towards your agency, while other demographics are steered towards an agency more suited to their needs.

Metrics Pieces

Metrics pieces are articles that detail KPIs and benchmarks that help teams evaluate their performance, as well as offering ways to improve it. They are particularly useful as end-of-funnel content for readers who are seeking solutions to targeted problems (e.g., Low CAC, slow pipeline velocity). They are also good at bringing in backlinks from other organizations, which help increase your online visibility. 

As in the list articles, we format our metrics pieces in such a way that provides value upfront by placing a large table of data at the very top of the page, such as the one in this table in “B2B Customer Acquisition KPIs & Benchmarks: 2024”: 

The following sections should explain each metric mentioned in the initial table, including information that will help the reader answer their initial query, such as: 

• The formula to calculate the metric 
• An in-depth explanation of how the metric works and why it’s used
• Common solutions to improve the metrics performance 
• Benchmarks (include multiple benchmarks to accommodate size) 

These pieces should communicate just how hard it actually is to improve the metrics discussed, and the challenges associated with attempting to do it yourself. This provides the perfect opportunity to discuss the real value brought by your company, giving them an answer to their question.

Conversion Optimize your Content

Regardless of the marketing channel, the goal of quality content marketing is to provide readers with the answer to their question. High-conversion content, however, goes above and beyond the searcher’s query, providing them with the answer to their question as well as those to related ones. 

Providing so much information requires conversion optimization to push readers through your marketing funnel. The following subsections detail the strategies our teams use to improve overall conversions.

Keep Content Skimmable

Above all else, your content should not be a chore for the reader. They should be able to easily skim through the content and be able to identify the important information, after which they can decide whether or not they want to read on. It is the responsibility of those key bits to make them want to read on.

Our teams operate on a few essential guidelines when thinking about skimmability 

• Keep Introductions Short: A good introduction has two qualities. First, it presents the central thesis of your article. Second, it provides a brief outline of the rest of the article. Both of these qualities can be covered in a single paragraph, allowing readers to get straight to the point. 

• Eliminate Fluff: B2B audiences have a greater priority on their time, so reduce your content to the absolute essentials. 

• Reduce Paragraph Size: As a rule, most readers tend to lose focus in especially long paragraphs. It cannot be helped in some cases – certain topics require extensive analysis – but we recommend limiting most paragraphs to 5 lines , maximum.

• Break Up Text Throughout the Page: Utilize multiple subsections, bullet points, callout boxes, and graphics (see section below) to draw the reader’s eye down the page and present information in easy-to-digest bits.

A good way to test skimmability in your content is what we refer to as the “scroll test.” Start at the top of the page and, without attempting to actually read it, slowly scroll down the page. Pay close attention to where your eyes are drawn and ask yourself a few questions: 

• Does the article have an appealing visual layout? 
• Is the text broken up with formatting such as bullet points and tables? 
• Are the graphics eye-catching and easily understandable?

On that note, the next section details the graphics themselves.

Include Helpful Graphics and Tables

Adding to the skimmability of an article are the included graphical elements included on the page. Charts, graphs, tables, and infographics are excellent ways of communicating essential information efficiently. As a rule, these elements should only be included where they are directly relevant. On average, however, we encourage clients to include at least one graphical element per section. 

Adding graphics to every section can be challenging, especially in more qualitative subject matter where the lack of quantitative data rules out charts and graphs. In these situations, we have a few recommendations: 

Graphics Suggestions

Content Type	Challenges	Solutions
Case Studies	Case studies typically describe the process teams went through to solve a clients problem, making it more narrative in nature	Executive Summaries Associated Metrics & KPIs Process Diagrams
SME Interviews	Interviews typically have a set format and highly subjective insights that don’t lend themselves to quantitative analysis	Key Takeaways Bolded Statements
Customer Testimonials	Testimonials are highly personal and narrative-driven, making them unsuitable for graphs or tables	Key Quotes Outcome Highlights Visual Callouts
Regulatory & Compliance Content	Any legal text is itself more regulated and often involves highly detailed information	Feature Highlights Comparison Tables
Product/Service Descriptions	Product/service information typically focuses on features and benefits, which may not be ideal for charts or graphs	Key Item Checklists Summary Boxes

In addition, quality Graphics can also contribute to more time spent on the page, as they can help draw the reader’s eye downward as they look for more information or link directly to the related sections, the case of tables. This increases the time spent on the page and by extension they’re likelihood of an eventual conversion. 

Include Opportunities for MicroConversions & Soft Conversions

Remember that there are many steps on the customer journey towards an eventual purchase. With that in mind, any content that pushes the reader further along that path keeps the door open for a future sale, and for this reason we recommend tracking microconversions. Microconversions are any action taken by the reader that indicate further interest in your company, and include:

• Signing up for a mailing list 
• Downloading gated content (e.g., white paper, case study) 
• Visiting the contact page

There are several ways to promote microconversions in B2B content marketing. Best practices would suggest leaving opportunities throughout the article through multiple links or floating CTAs (like the one from our blog page pictured on the right) that follow the reader down the page, but any conversion optimized page will provide the reader with opportunities for a soft conversion in the conclusion, providing them with a second option if they are not yet ready to buy.

Update Your Content Regularly

One of the best ways to improve the rankings for a piece of content is to update it. On average, an update should alter at least 10% of the existing draft – it should be substantial enough that it feels like some of the content is new, but not so much that removes the value of the original piece. A few recommendations when updating content include: 

• Adding relevant examples to help explain a concept
• Adding more visuals to an article
• Updating time-sensitive content to reflect any changes in your industry
• Link to newer articles
• Expand or remove sections

How often content should be updated depends on the type. More evergreen content (i.e., content that is likely to remain relevant a year from now) typically can wait longer before needing an update, assuming it is ranking well. More time-sensitive content, on the other hand, may require more regular updates.

Update Schedule by Content Type

Type	Examples	Update Frequency
Timely	Quarterly ReportsBreaking NewsEvent/Trend Focused Blogs	3 Months
Seasonal	Holiday-based contentTax Season Content	N/A
Semi-Evergreen	Annual ReportsTech Guides	6 Months
Evergreen	“How-To” GuidesIndustry Glossaries	9 Months

Note: Your industry greatly affects which content type a piece might fall into. For example, a “how-to” guide for a B2B SaaS company is much more prone to change due to the shifting nature of the industry, while a similar article in the funeral industry is not.

The goal of updating your content is to help it reach its “maximum value state,” or MVS. This is the state at which the content so thoroughly satisfies the relevant search intent that there is no need for them to return to the search results. A piece has reached its MVS when it: 

1. Ranks #1 for the related keyword
2. Has a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2.5% or more

Once a piece has reached its MVS, you’ll still want to continue updating as necessary to maintain rankings, though often at a slower rate.

Implementing B2B Content Marketing Best Practices

As this article suggests, implementing the B2B content marketing best practices discussed above is a particularly difficult task, especially for those without a great deal of experience in content marketing. Even marketers with experience will find that ensuring you have the right content for each channel requires specific expertise and adaptability, as these practices change over time. 

For that reason, many companies choose to simplify this process by working with an experienced content marketing agency. Our agency specializes in B2B thought leadership marketing, providing high-level content that drives organic leads across a wide variety of industries. Contact us to discuss a future partnership.