Marketing Strategies to Help B2C Companies Attract New Customers

When I first realized the importance of B2C content marketing, it changed everything I thought I knew about running a successful business.

I was working for an e-Commerce company that boasted over 600 items in our online store and more than 100 items for wholesale customers. I received a new lead, and when I visited his website I was floored. Where we offered 600 items, he barely had 20. But that wasn’t the most surprising thing.

What blew me away was the amount of content on his site. 

We only wrote long descriptions for the top 10 products on our site; my new friend had grouped his items into product families. Then he had written thousands of words about the products in each group. How to use these products, their benefits, customer testimonials, how to spot copycat products… You name it; he had it. 

He believed in these products so deeply that he had transformed his website into a library filled with recommendations and education. 

That was his B2C lead generation strategy: Become the ultimate authority on these products by sharing everything you might ever want to know.

The results?

When I first spoke to him, he had 5 full-time employees and over $30K in revenue every month. That was almost 10 years ago. Since then, he has more than doubled his revenue with the same 5 employees.

This is the power of B2C content marketing. Done the right way, it can act as a lead magnet for years to come. 

In this article, we’ll share the key benefits of B2C content marketing: what it is, why it matters, and how to design a strategy that works for you.

Why Is Great Content So Important for Your B2C Business?

Great B2C content marketing transforms your customers’ needs into wants. And it does it all within the framework of an exciting story in which your customer is the hero.

Sound like a tall order? It’s actually easier than you think. And it all starts to click when you understand one fundamental aspect of human psychology: 

People make decisions with their emotions. They only justify those decisions with logic after the fact.

How should this affect your B2C content marketing strategy?

Simple. 

Whenever you create new content, don’t just describe what something is. Talk about what it does. Remember my friend from the introduction? This is the approach he took, and that’s how he left his competition in the dust.

Let’s say you sell wellness products on your website. Whenever someone comes to your site, they’re probably asking themselves one or more of these questions:

• What will this do for me?
• How will this make me feel?
• What do I get for the price?

And these all boil down to the biggest question of them all… What’s in it for me?

If you want to answer this question for your potential customers, you have to understand the goals, needs, and desires of everyone in your community.

How to Find Your B2C Leads’ Burning Questions

If you want to attract new B2C leads, you need to anticipate their questions and answer them point by point. For every new question someone has about your products or services, you can answer their query with a new piece of content on your site.

How to Anticipate Questions From Potential B2C Leads

1. Research the influencers who are already talking about the types of products and services you offer. Find them in Facebook groups, by reviewing similar products on YouTube, and by searching hashtags on Twitter and Instagram.
2. Someone replying to an email or completing a handraiser form is a goldmine. Take this opportunity to engage them in a conversation — this could be your next blog or podcast episode.
3. If you have live chat, even better! If they’re looking for one of your products, tell them how to find it, but also ask them why they’re interested. This is your chance to clear up any possible misconceptions they might have and build more trust. 
4. Who are your competitors? Read customer reviews on their site, Amazon, and anywhere else they sell their products. These reviews can be a rich source of material that you can adopt for your own site.
5. If you have a retail presence, leverage reviews from Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and similar sites. 
6. Quora and Reddit are great ways to learn what people are talking about. Search these sites for keywords that you find through…
7. Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends. Use these tools to take the pulse of the internet. Whatever you find here can help you verify or disprove any assumptions you might have about what you think people are searching for. 

Once you start looking for questions to repurpose into new content, you’ll start getting ideas everywhere. 

What Does Great B2C Content Look Like?

Email Nurture Campaigns Any emails you send to customers or potential leads should read like they’re coming from a trusted friend. People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy — and they’d much rather buy from people they know, like, and trust.

What kinds of emails are appropriate for your customers and leads?

• Newsletters are a great way to educate your community and remind them of your value. Remember, your goal is to educate your community and give them an easy way to find you when they’re ready to make their first purchase (or their tenth).

• Automated programs are triggered when a site visitor requests more information through a form. Once they complete the form and you have their email address, you can use a marketing automation platform like Act-On to send them nurture emails. These emails should complement what they received from completing the form on your site. Anytime someone signs up for your newsletter or completes one of your forms, immediately send them a confirmation email. These emails have a ridiculously high open rate because this is one of the few times people expect you to email them. Include a link to the ebook (if that’s what you promised), a related blog, or a video (more on this below). This is some of the most valuable real estate you own. Don’t waste it.

• Abandoned cart emails are usually thought of as a way to recover lost revenue, but if you stop there, you’re missing a golden opportunity to build trust. If a potential customer abandoned their cart with product XYZ, you should send them a link to recover their cart. But you should also include a link to a blog about how to prepare XYZ, or surprising benefits of XYZ, etc. The whole point is to go beyond the transaction to build an authentic connection with your community through valuable content.

One final note about incorporating emails into your B2C content marketing strategy: If you really want to wow your leads and customers, reply personally every time someone responds to one of your emails. This is one of the best ways to engage with your audience and keep your brand top of mind. 

B2C Remarketing This is a great way to transform site visitors into members of your growing community. Remarketing ads on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, and other search engines and social platforms are only shown to people who have already visited specific pages on your site. For example, if they visited one of your product pages, you can show them an ad that offers a promotional code and points them to a blog about that product. Writing a good B2C remarketing ad is similar to writing a good email: be concise, be direct, and answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”

YouTube Videos Can you create an animated video showing how your products are made? What about a how-to video? You can even record video interviews with influencers who use your products. The possibilities are endless, and you can always use a tool like vidIQ to find out who’s watching what. Tools like this can help you get more subscribers, which is another great B2C lead generation channel.

Social Posts Any of these sections could be an entire article in its own right. But social media is changing so rapidly, it’s worth considering some of the fundamental guidelines that transcend any platform:

• Let your personality shine through. Your brand has a unique voice. Own it.
• Start a conversation. Social media is one of the best places to connect with your community. Run a contest, create a poll, share a recipe, or reprint a customer testimonial. The possibilities are endless. And whatever you publish on social media should make your readers’ lives better — whether it’s a quick laugh or a lifestyle tip.
• Share your story and be yourself. The only way that anyone in your community will become a customer is if they know, like, and trust you. Not just your business, but you personally. Show them who you are. People want to support individuals who are just like them. If you can make an authentic connection based on shared values, you’re off to a great start.

Podcasts People like to consume content in different ways, and podcasts are rapidly growing in popularity. Podcasts aren’t right for every type of business, but they can do wonders for B2C lead nurturing in certain niches. 

Blogs The grandaddy of all forms of B2C content marketing. Blogs are easy to create, easy to publish, and, if you do it right, they can be one of your best sources of B2C lead generation. Adding new content to your site on a regular basis shows Google that your site is still relevant. And one of the easiest ways to do that is with a blog. 

Here are some tips to make your blog stand out: 

• Be Consistent. Pick a specific day or days of the week and stick to that schedule.
• Explore Related Keywords. Find new keywords with tools like Act-On’s SEO Audit Tool to complement Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
• Cross-Promote Your Other Channels. Promote new blog articles on your social media pages. If you publish a new video, create a blog from the video transcript, embed the video in the blog, and link back to the video on YouTube. And when you email leads and customers, point them back to your blog as a way to learn more.
• Write Like You Talk. When you email leads and customers, it’s best to keep your copy simple, direct, and conversational. These same rules apply when you write a blog, though you have much more flexibility here. In a blog, you can include a video or an animated GIF to prove your point. Your readers will also be much more willing to read long lists in one of your blogs vs in an email. And remember, if you’re going to talk about one of your products, focus on what it does instead of what it is.

How To Succeed With B2C Content Marketing

How do you write content that will always be relevant? Consider this quote from the owner of another ecommerce site:

“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two – because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time… When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

You may not have heard this quote before, but you know the author. It’s Jeff Bezos talking about Amazon.

Keep this in mind as you build your B2C content marketing strategy. Focus on evergreen content that will be relevant forever. For example, if you’re running a promotion for the 4th of July, that’s a great subject for an email, but it’s terrible for a blog. 

Why?

Because no one will search for that content after the promotion is over. If you want to offer a promotional code in an email, that’s fine, but be sure to link back to some evergreen content:

• “How To Use XYZ For ABC”
• “Top 5 Reasons XYZ Is The Best Way To ____”
• “Quick and Easy Summer Recipes For XYZ”

Remember the golden rules of B2C Lead Generation:

1. People visit your site because you have something they want.
2. If you can’t answer their questions, they’ll bounce and go to your competitors instead.
3. If you can exceed their expectations, they’ll be more likely to purchase, come back to your site the next time they have a question, and tell their friends.

Execute Brilliant B2C Marketing Campaigns With Act-On

As you plan your B2C content marketing strategy, look for a consumer marketing platform that can help you multitask and perform well under pressure. Act-On gives you all the tools you need to create forms, build landing pages, construct email nurture campaigns, and publish posts on social media. You can also use Act-On to manage digital assets like eBooks. 

With one do-it-all platform, it’s easy to measure the impact of your content. Because when you’re exploring marketing strategies to attract new customers, that’s the only thing that matters.