The current renaissance of creative B2B content is a blessing and a curse for B2B marketers. On the good side, it gives us permission to stretch our creative muscles, write fascinating and engaging content, and pair it with eye-catching visuals.
On the bad side, B2B buyers won’t settle for less than imaginative and engrossing content. There’s no skating by with an old-school white paper or a generic ebook. When you’re out of ideas but need to deliver inspiring content, what’s a marketer to do?
Even the most creative marketers can feel uninspired from time to time, or unsure how to give their strategy a jolt of freshness. Here’s how to fuel your next brilliant content idea when you’re feeling stuck.
How to generate great B2B content marketing ideas
The truth is, inspiration is everywhere: Think of Isaac Newton and the apple tree, or how a hamburger inspired the Millennium Falcon’s design. These are just a few ways that you can generate B2B content marketing ideas.
#1: Dig into customer feedback
What’s the best way to find out what content your audience craves? Take a look at what your current customers and prospects are telling you. Their frequently asked questions, interests, and frustrations are an endless source of content inspiration.
Every challenge your customers face is an opportunity for your brand to provide value. Talk to your sales team about what potential customers need to know. Take a look at the most frequently asked questions to your customer service team. Analyze your keyword glossary from a search intent perspective to understand how your customers search for solutions throughout their journey, and why.
By identifying common pain points and frustrations, you can tailor your content to offer solutions, insights, and guidance that truly resonate with your audience.
#2: Find inspiration in pop culture
B2B buyers are people, first and foremost. They listen to music, watch movies, binge TV shows, and even play video games. Tapping into pop culture can help you find common ground and relate on a human level.
One way to do this is to tap into what’s current right now — the latest TikTok craze or hot news story. But that’s a better tactic for social media posts, where you can make a quick reference before the fad has passed.
For blog content, look for topics with staying power. Pop culture titans like Taylor Swift, Star Wars and The Office have inspired plenty of colorful content.
#3: Collaborate with industry influencers
Sometimes the best way to get fresh ideas is by working with a fresh group of people. Among its many other benefits, influencer marketing brings new perspectives, points of view and personalities to your content.
Look for influencers who align with your brand values, target audience, and industry niche. Focus on quality over quantity, prioritizing influencers who are already creating engaging content people enjoy.
For truly creative and innovative content, make sure you’re genuinely co-creating with your chosen influencers. Don’t settle for an endorsement deal or having them quote your features and benefits. Let the influencers show the brilliance that makes them influential in the first place.
#4: Tap your employees
Another way to add fresh ideas is to reach out to your internal influencers — virtually anyone who works at your company. Employees are a treasure trove of knowledge, expertise, and unique perspectives.
Encourage them to contribute to your content creation efforts by sharing their insights, experiences, and ideas. It’s a good idea to actively seek out your social-media-savvy employees and come to them with specific ask.
And, of course, show appreciation by recognizing and rewarding their contributions to your content marketing efforts. Whether it’s through public recognition, incentives, or professional development opportunities, acknowledge the value employees bring to your content strategy and you will encourage continued participation.
#5: Brainstorm with AI
In case you missed the last two years of headlines, generative AI is already changing the way marketers work. And while you shouldn’t use AI to write content for you, you can use it to jumpstart your creative brain.
Ask an AI program like ChatGPT to help you brainstorm ideas for your content. You can get more relevant results by specifying your audience, the type of content you’re looking to create, and any themes you want to include.
For example, I asked ChatGPT: “Can you help me come up with creative ideas for blog posts? My company sells chicken pot pies and our target audience is 30-50 year old business professionals. I’d like to include pop culture references that would resonate with that demographic.”
Here’s one of the responses I got:
“The Working Professional’s Guide to Comfort Food: Why Chicken Pot Pie Is Your Ultimate Stress-Reliever”
This post could explore the idea of comfort food as a source of solace for busy professionals, drawing parallels to iconic comfort food scenes in movies and TV shows like “Friends,” “The Office,” or “Parks and Recreation.”
I may not use this idea as written, but I’m definitely thinking about 90s-00s sitcoms and how I can draw some juicy parallels to my pot pie empire.
Bonus #6: Work with a smart, creative agency
Not to sound like a hipster, but TopRank Marketing was doing smart, creative, results-focused B2B marketing before it was cool. And we’re still honing our craft, pushing boundaries, and helping our clients get creative without compromising their core brand values.
Learn about our content marketing services and how we can jumpstart your brand’s innovation engine.
About the author
Joshua Nite is dedicated to bringing humanity, empathy, and humor to content marketing. His two ironclad rules: Never settle for commodity content, and never write anything you wouldn’t want to read. Great writing takes heart, soul, guts and rhythm. Josh is also the once and future Pundamonium Pun Slam champion, a stand-up comedian and storyteller, and is getting pretty good at electric guitar. His only weakness: Extreme self-consciousness when writing about himself in the third person.
