As a content marketer, you should have a variety of B2B marketing tactics at your disposal to generate awareness about your brand, expand your reach, drive more sales leads, and so on.
When you syndicate content, you are distributing your content to third-party organizations so that they can share or publish it on their platforms.
If you’re not already sharing your content in some way, you should really start. There’s a lot of noise online, so it’s unreasonable to think that you can limit your content to just your blog. Getting your blog posts in front of new people is a good way to get new readers.
What is Content Syndication?
Content syndication is an effective strategy for building thought leadership and boosting brand awareness. Content syndication is when you share your content, like blog posts and whitepapers, on other people’s websites. This can be done for free or for a fee. Some websites and news organizations in specific industries are willing to re-publish your content on their site free of charge. However, usually media sites that are larger charge you to have your sponsored content re-published on their site. Sharing your content in this way is an effective strategy for building thought leadership and boosting brand awareness.
An article content syndication network will help distribute your content on their affiliate sites and charge you each time your content gets clicked by visitors to the publishing site. This will result in clicks on your links and bring visitors to your website.
There is another type of content syndication that is not as well understood. This type of content syndication uses whitepapers, e-books, research reports, or even recorded webinars on a 3rd-party website to generate leads. These programs are often referred to as pay-per-lead programs.
If you look up “content syndication” on Google, the first page of results is full of articles about the first type of content syndication, where you republish articles on someone else’s site. But the second type of content syndication, which is just as relevant and much easier to measure, is where you share gated content (content that requires registration) such as e-books or whitepapers to capture leads.
Content Syndication: Does It Work?
Here are just some of the reasons why content syndication works as an effective marketing strategy:
Capturing a Wider Audience
When you post your content on other sites that have a larger audience, you are exposing your content to more people than you would if you just kept it on your own site. For example, if your blog has a potential reach of 1,000 people, you could potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people by posting it on other sites.
If you have content that is resonating well with your audience, you can create new versions of it to target new demographics. This repurposing of content can be a valuable way to reach new audiences.
Whitepaper content syndication services may also provide access to audiences who are interested in a specific industry or title.
Creating a Steady Online Presence
If you publish content regularly, your brand will become more visible and accessible online. It all starts with offering content that is relevant and helpful for audiences, and then following up with more content that can help nurture your visitors throughout their content consumption journey.
If you want to succeed in your field, it’s important to have an online presence. You can improve your chances by reaching out to websites that are authoritative in your line of business and asking them to help you showcase your content.
I have used content syndication in the past as part of an always-on marketing and lead generation strategy. This strategy allowed us to see which content syndication campaigns resulted in the highest quality leads. It also allowed us to assess which platforms provided the best leads so we could optimize our budget. Finally, since the timing of closed deals for many B2B purchases is well past 6 months, always-on programs allow you to measure the results of closed and won deals over time.
That’s something the sales team (and the CMO) loves!
Boosting Traffic
The main goals of content syndication for businesses vary, but usually include increasing website traffic as one of the top 3 priorities for marketing teams. Keep in mind that you need to bring people to your site before you can start creating awareness for your brand.
Google and other search engines view content that has been syndicated on credible news sites as being high quality and having authority. This then leads to the syndicated content appearing higher in search results over time.
Educating Customers
Once your content has lured readers to your website, you can further engage them by providing more information about your brand or how your products can help solve their problems. Keep the quality high so that readers get great value in terms of the educational, newsworthiness, and entertainment aspects.
In general, your content should only be 20% promotional. The four most effective content types for syndication are: 85% whitepaper, 60% webcast, 50% infographic, and 35% articles.
Improving Lead Generation
To be successful in content marketing, you need to have a clear strategy. It’s more effective to generate leads by publishing your content on sites that attract the same type of audience as your brand. People who share your interests are more likely to be interested in your content, which means it’s a good match for them.
If you want to improve your lead generation, syndicating your content is a great way to amplify your reach and get your content in front of a relevant demographic that might not have been able to see it otherwise. This way, you’re not restricted to your immediate audience of subscribers and followers, and you can optimize your return on investment.
It makes sense that you would want more people to see the content you have worked hard to create. Content syndication is an effective way to reach a larger audience.
In addition to improving your search engine performance, sharing your content also positions you as a thought leader in your industry and could generate more traffic that could potentially result in more qualified leads.
You can use paid content syndication to target prospects based on their demographics, device type, job title or role, company size, and industry type.
Why Bother With Content Syndication?
But what you really want is to convert that traffic into sales and subscribers. So, you already have amazing content and get consistent traffic, but you want to convert that traffic into sales and subscribers.
Most marketing teams rely on having their buyer persona search for a relevant query, then visit their article. They have set up an email capture to qualify the reader, and the lead gets nurtured in an ongoing email campaign.
This type of strategy does work.
While this waiting period can be frustrating, it also presents an opportunity for your potential customers to find your article and be willing to provide you with their contact information.
When you write an article, you hope that it will rank high on Google so that your prospects will see it.
If you are in second place, you will get 20% fewer clicks than the top result.
Your email subscribers are not the only people who are interested in what you have to say, but they are also a great way to get new eyes on your content. By sending your latest content to your email subscribers, you are not only keeping them up-to-date, but you are also getting your content in front of new potential leads.
That’s where content syndication comes in.
Boost the ROI of Your Content
Content syndication is a combination of content marketing (creating content that is valuable to your target customer) and a more proactive approach that includes tactics like telemarketing and cold emailing.
The most relevant prospects for your business who are in the market for your solutions is the best market you can start matching your content with.
Content syndication is a great way to get more leads into your sales pipeline and increase your return on investment.
The Most Popular Methods of B2B Content Syndication
There are two main ways to get eyes on your content. The first is through inbound marketing, where you create content that attract potential customers. You use SEO strategies, social media, and other techniques to be discovered. The second way is through outbound marketing, where you proactively promote your content. You use paid advertising, PR, and other techniques to get in front of people.
Let’s take a look at what those entail.
Inbound Content Syndication: Popular Tactics
Co-Marketing
This is an example of co-marketing: Two companies cooperate on a project for mutual benefit.
Find companies who have customers similar to yours and form a co-marketing partnership.
Although it’s beneficial to have relationships with companies in your industry, you shouldn’t partner with companies who are your direct competitors for organic search keywords.
Here are some popular ways of co-marketing:
- Co-authoring a whitepaper that both companies share with their audience.
- Co-hosting a webinar on relevant pain points your customers have.
- Hosting an event that your ideal customers will want to attend
Social Media
Make sure you are promoting your content on all of your company’s accounts. Also, try to get other popular accounts with relevant audiences to share your content.
This is closely related to co-marketing as your partner company is likely to share your content on their social media channels (and you’ll be doing the same).
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging has many benefits, including improving your SEO with new backlinks and exposing your content to relevant audiences.
Target your guest posting to sites that are read by your ideal customer. Otherwise, you will be wasting your time.
PPC Promotion
PPC platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn are the fastest way to drive relevant traffic to your content.
Both LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to target your ideal audience specifically, as well as choose how much money you want to spend. This is beneficial because it allows you to see if your content is effective before putting more time and money into promoting it.
Outbound Content Syndication: Popular tactics
Telemarketing
One way to syndicate B2B content is to contact relevant prospects and offer your content to them.
It is difficult to get started with this method as you will need a lot of B2B data that is accurate and your team need to be good at communicating if you want anyone to cooperate.
One way to get more sales at Internal Results is to ask customers questions to see how interested they are in buying, and how good of a lead they are.
Cold Email
If you know who your ideal customer is, you just need to get your content in front of them.
You can send cold emails to people you think might be interested in your content.
An email is the most direct way to contact your prospects after a phone call. If you don’t have the contact information you need, Internal Results can help you source it.
Pro tip: Combine your outbound efforts with Intent Data
If you’re looking for leads that are more likely to be interested in your product or service, intent data is a great place to start. Intent data is collected from a variety of online sources and can give you insights into what potential customers are searching for and how they’re interacting with your brand. This information can help you create targeted content and campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your audience and convert into leads.
The data collected from a user’s interactions with a site can help to reveal what that user is interested in, and the specific content they are looking at. This information can be useful in understanding how to better target content and advertising.
This data can identify prospects who are researching topics that are relevant to your company, so you can reach out to them.
If you see that a potential customer is spending a lot of time on your pricing page, it would be a good time to reach out to them with a whitepaper that outlines the benefits of your solution.
Recap – Using B2B Content Syndication to Drive Sales
Content syndication is a process where your content is republished on other websites. B2B content syndication is a powerful way to use your content to qualify, engage, and nurture prospects, turning them into warm leads. By syndicating your content, you can improve your SEO, get more website visitors, and generate more leads.
There are many ways to share your content.
The outbound methods are more controlled, while the inbound methods have a variety of benefits.
Your content will effectively generate SQLs and sales for your company.