What is a B2B content strategy? A practical guide

I started freelancing as a copywriter back in 2020, when businesses were still quite happy to pay someone to write a few blogs, update their website and put together the occasional email campaign. The work was often fairly straightforward. A client would send me a brief, I'd write the content, we'd go through a couple of rounds of edits and that would be that.

Fast forward to 2027, and things look rather different. AI can produce an entire month's worth of social media posts in minutes, businesses have more channels to manage than ever, and seemingly everyone on LinkedIn has become a content expert overnight. It's a wonderful time to be working in marketing, provided you enjoy constantly questioning everything you've ever known.

But while the way we create content has changed enormously, I think there's a much bigger issue that businesses still haven't quite got to grips with. They're producing more content than ever without necessarily having a clear idea of what it's supposed to achieve.

And that's why I think content strategy and management have become so important. Because having the ability to produce endless amounts of content is fairly pointless if nobody knows why they're creating it, who it's for or what should happen once it's published.

What does a content strategy actually involve?

When I talk about content strategy, I'm not referring to a spreadsheet full of LinkedIn post ideas or a calendar showing which blogs you're planning to publish over the next six months. Those things can be useful, but they're only a small part of the process.

A proper content strategy starts with understanding what the business is trying to achieve and how content can support those objectives. That might mean generating more relevant enquiries, building awareness in a new market or helping prospective customers understand a complicated product before they speak to the sales team.

From there, you need to think about who you're trying to reach, what information they need and where they're likely to look for it. You also need to consider what your business can contribute to the conversation that people won't find in another hundred articles covering exactly the same subject.

Once you've worked that out, you can start making decisions about what content to create, which channels deserve your attention and how you're going to measure whether any of it is working.

It's not particularly glamorous, and there's usually a fair amount of research involved, but it's what stops your marketing becoming an endless exercise in producing content for the sake of it.

AI has made content easier to create, but harder to get right

I don't think we can have a conversation about content marketing in 2027 without talking about AI. And as someone who's spent years making a living from writing, I've got plenty of thoughts on the subject.

There's no denying that AI has changed how businesses approach content creation. You can now generate ideas, research topics and produce reasonably polished first drafts in a fraction of the time it would have taken a few years ago. For smaller marketing teams in particular, that's an enormous opportunity.

But I've also seen what happens when businesses start treating AI as a replacement for having a proper content strategy. They suddenly have the ability to publish five blogs a week instead of one, so that's exactly what they do. Whether anyone needs those blogs, or whether they're saying anything particularly useful, becomes something of an afterthought.

The problem is that AI doesn't automatically understand your customers, your commercial priorities or the conversations your sales team has every day. It can help you work with that information, but someone still needs to gather it and decide what to do with it.

And when everyone has access to similar tools, the things that make your business interesting become even more important. Your experience, your customers' stories and the opinions of the people working in your business are much harder to replicate than another generic article about industry trends.

I use AI in my own work, and I'm certainly not suggesting businesses should avoid it. But I think there's a big difference between using it to support a considered content strategy and asking it to produce another 20 LinkedIn posts because your calendar's looking a bit empty.

Your content needs to support the business, not just the marketing calendar

One of the things I've noticed over the years is how easily content marketing can become disconnected from what's happening elsewhere in a business.

The marketing team might be busy producing blogs and social media posts while the sales team is having the same conversations with prospective customers every week. Meanwhile, the people developing the products have interesting things to say about the industry, but nobody's thought to ask them.

When those conversations aren't happening, businesses can end up producing perfectly reasonable content that doesn't really help anyone.

A content strategist should be looking at the business more broadly and working out where content can make a difference. If prospective customers are repeatedly asking the same questions before buying, perhaps those questions need answering on your website. If your sales team is struggling to explain a complicated service, maybe they need a useful piece of content they can share after a meeting.

This is particularly relevant in finance and technology, where buying decisions can involve several people and take months to complete. Someone might discover your business through LinkedIn, spend time researching your services and come back several months later when they're ready to have a conversation.

Your content needs to be useful throughout that process, rather than concentrating all your efforts on attracting attention at the beginning.

Someone needs to take responsibility for making it happen

Having a content strategy is a good start, but I've seen plenty of beautifully presented strategies that end up gathering dust because nobody has the time to implement them.

It's easy enough to agree that the business should publish regular thought leadership, create more case studies or improve its website content. Actually making those things happen is where it gets complicated.

Someone needs to speak to the subject matter experts, organise the information and turn it into something useful. Drafts need reviewing, stakeholders need chasing and content needs publishing. Then there's the small matter of checking whether it's working and deciding what to do next.

In smaller marketing teams, that responsibility often ends up sitting with someone who's already managing several other things. Content becomes the task they get around to when everything else is finished, which, as anyone who's worked in marketing will know, is rarely a particularly reliable plan.

This is where content management becomes just as important as strategy. You need someone who understands the bigger picture but is also prepared to get involved in the practical work required to keep everything moving.

You don't need to be everywhere

One of the more exhausting things about modern marketing is the constant suggestion that businesses need to be active on every available platform.

You need a LinkedIn presence, obviously, but apparently you should also be producing video content, publishing newsletters, maintaining a blog and experimenting with whatever new platform everyone's talking about this month.

For some businesses, having a presence across several channels makes sense. For others, it's a spectacular waste of time.

A good content strategy should help you make decisions about where to focus your efforts, based on where your audience spends time and what you're realistically able to manage.

If you're a B2B technology company selling to senior decision-makers, for example, you might get far more value from publishing useful website content and building the LinkedIn presence of your leadership team than trying to maintain five different social media accounts.

And if you've only got the resources to do a couple of things properly, I'd much rather see that than a business spreading itself so thinly that nothing gets the attention it deserves.

Your internal experts are probably your biggest content opportunity

One of the things I particularly enjoy about working with businesses in finance and technology is getting to speak to people who know an enormous amount about their subjects.

You can spend half an hour talking to a cyber security specialist or someone working in financial compliance and come away with enough interesting material for several pieces of content. The challenge is that those people are usually quite busy doing their actual jobs, and writing marketing content isn't necessarily high on their list of priorities.

Without someone taking responsibility for capturing that knowledge, a lot of it never makes its way into the business's marketing.

A content strategist can help identify the people worth speaking to and work out how to turn their expertise into something useful for customers. That might involve interviewing senior leaders for LinkedIn content, developing articles around common customer questions or creating case studies that demonstrate how the business approaches particular challenges.

It's also an opportunity to make your content more distinctive. When you're drawing on genuine experience and informed opinions, you're much less likely to end up publishing the same generic advice as everyone else.

How do you know whether your content strategy is working?

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with content marketing is measuring everything by how much attention it receives.

Website traffic and social media engagement can be useful indicators, but they don't necessarily tell you whether your content is contributing to the business.

I've seen LinkedIn posts generate enormous amounts of engagement without attracting anyone particularly relevant to the company publishing them. Equally, a relatively niche article might bring in a handful of visitors who are exactly the people the business wants to reach.

What you measure should depend on what you're trying to achieve. If your priority is generating enquiries, you'll want to understand which content is bringing relevant people to your website and encouraging them to get in touch. If you're building awareness in a new market, you might be more interested in whether you're reaching the right audience and starting conversations with potential customers.

It's also worth speaking to your sales team and paying attention to the feedback you're getting from customers. If people are mentioning your articles during meetings or arriving at sales calls with a better understanding of your services, that's useful information, even if it doesn't appear neatly in an analytics dashboard.

And don't expect every piece of content to generate an immediate commercial result. Particularly in B2B, where relationships develop over time, the value of your content isn't always obvious from the moment someone reads it.

Do you need a full-time content strategist?

Not necessarily, and I think this is where businesses have more options than they sometimes realise.

If you've got a large marketing team producing a significant amount of content, having someone dedicated to content strategy and management internally might make perfect sense. They'll be close to the business and able to work alongside the wider team every day.

But plenty of businesses need experienced content support without having enough work, or the budget, to justify another full-time employee.

That's where working with a freelance or fractional content manager can be useful. Rather than hiring someone to write the occasional blog, you're bringing in someone who can take responsibility for planning and managing your content, while working alongside the people already in your business.

Depending on what you need, that might involve developing a content strategy from scratch, managing your existing content calendar or working with your internal experts to produce regular articles and LinkedIn posts.

You can also bring in specialist support for a particular project, such as launching a new website or developing a campaign, without committing to an ongoing arrangement.

The important thing is being clear about what you need help with. If you've already got a strong strategy and someone managing it internally, you might only need additional writing support. But if nobody's quite sure what the business should be publishing or who's responsible for making it happen, hiring another writer probably isn't going to solve the underlying problem.

What should you look for in a content strategy partner?

If you're considering bringing in outside support, I'd recommend looking beyond someone's ability to write a good blog.

Writing is obviously important, but content strategy involves understanding the wider marketing picture and being able to connect content activity to what the business is trying to achieve.

You want someone who's comfortable asking questions about your audience and commercial objectives, rather than immediately suggesting you publish more content. They should also be able to work with the people in your business, particularly if your subject matter is complicated and requires input from internal experts.

Experience in your industry can be useful too. In sectors like finance and technology, there's often a fair amount of terminology to understand, and you need someone who can communicate complicated subjects accurately without making everything sound unnecessarily technical.

I'd also pay attention to how they approach the practical side of the work. A strategy is only useful if it can be implemented, so you want someone who understands how to manage content production and keep things moving when other people are busy.

It's time to think beyond content creation

When I started Popcorn Content, most of my work involved writing. Clients needed blogs, website pages or social media posts, and I was the person they brought in to create them.

I still do plenty of writing, and I still love it, but my work has gradually evolved as the needs of businesses have changed. These days, I'm often much more involved in helping clients decide what they should be creating in the first place, how it fits into their wider marketing activity and who's going to make sure it actually happens.

And I think that's where the biggest opportunity lies for businesses in 2027. We've got more ways to create and distribute content than ever before, but having access to those tools doesn't automatically mean we're using them well.

If your business is publishing regularly but you're not particularly sure what you're getting from it, or your marketing team is constantly struggling to keep up with the content calendar, it might be time to look at the strategy behind everything.

Through Popcorn Content, I provide content strategy and management support for businesses, particularly in finance and technology. I work with marketing teams and business leaders to plan, create and manage content that supports their wider objectives, without the commitment of another full-time hire.

If you could do with an experienced pair of hands to take some of that responsibility off your plate, get in touch and we can have a chat about what you need.