Mastering B2B Content Ideation: Insights from 7 Industry Experts

Let me tell you how I came up with the idea of writing this article.

“I woke up early last week, grabbed my cup of coffee after a quick shower, and opened up the window to watch the amazing sunrise. At that moment, I asked myself, Why don’t I write an article about B2B content ideation?” That’s it,

Wait a second. You don’t seem to believe this story.

Well, yeah, you are damn right. I made it up—it is a lie because first of all, I’m not fit for the 5 AM cold-shower club. Plus, there is no way on earth for any content marketer to come up with ideas just with imagination and even brainstorming.

The pain of staring at an empty Google Doc with no clue of what to type down is what actually pushed me to write this piece.

The idea for this article materialized as a result of me knowing that many content marketers:

• struggle to come up with content ideas that resonate
• put themselves in a loop of sharing the same 2015-fashion type of articles
• spend hours looking for analytics tools instead of jumping on a half an hour call with customers
• blindly copy competitors’ strategies and messaging
• search for sales-related-stats instead of recording a sales call
• think that TOFU content is all about tips and tactics
• think that content marketing is nothing but keyword research
• heavily rely on Gen AI
• and so on…

So yeah, that’s what actually made me write this article.

I can make this list longer, and I bet you also have something to add, but we won’t be giving a holistic look at the content marketing field in this article.

We are going to talk about the way you should think before working on content - the function you should apply to ideate product-led topics and match the points by being intentional with your content.

But hey… Why would you listen to me? I’m just a B2B writer who is just getting a foot in the industry.

Yes, I have a decent grasp of knowledge on the topic, but it is what experts shared with me that brought on Aha! moment.

I will be sharing all of that today.

Let me step aside and introduce the experts to you:

Lauren Lang, Director of Content and Brand Communications at Constructor

13+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Tom Bangey, Senior Director of Content & Community at Juro

6+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Eric Doty, Content Lead at Dock

8+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Adima Timar, Head of Content at Userpilot

8+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Tamara Omerovic, Content Marketing Manager at Databox

7+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Elise Marion, Former Content strategist at system1

6+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Vince Moreau, CEO& Founder at ScaleCrush

7+ years of experience in the content field

LinkedIn- Here

Enough of me, let’s see what experts have to say about their experience.

Enjoy!

On B2B SaaS Content Ideation

What is your number 1# source of content ideas and how do you leverage it?

Tom@Juro: Talk to your customers and sales prospects. All the tech tools and AI and competitor analysis can’t beat spending half an hour with a customer finding out about their problems at work. I would try and turn the notes from that conversation into thematic analysis, and also break down the projects and problems they talk about into disaggregated tasks that can be targeted individually or collectively in content.

Lauren@Constructor: Sometimes it’s difficult for marketing to interact with customers for a variety of reasons. In that case, I’ve found the sales team to be my biggest source of content ideas, especially for product-focused content. They are the closest to understanding customer objections, pain points, and questions that influence the purchase decision, and they are used to thinking strategically about how to use whatever tools are at their disposal (including content) to close the deal.

Here is a graphic, Andy Crestodina - CMO&Founder at Orbit Media- shared with me once for an article, which is relevant to Lauren’s last insight:

Eric@Dock: The easiest source of content topics is starting with problems the product solves directly. For example, how to make a sales proposal, how to create a price quote, and why you should use a mutual action plan instead of a spreadsheet.

Beyond those product-led sources, I also source ideas from:

• Topics frequently mentioned by guests on our podcast (it’s a good indicator of a trending topic that may not show up in keyword tools yet)
• Recorded sales calls, customer support tickets, and discussions with our founder
• Keyword research

On Content ideation, Competitive analysis

Does your competitive analysis affect your content ideation process?

Adina@Userpilot: Yes, we analyze competitors and understand what topics they are strongest with and where they are lacking. We also look at content gaps and prioritize keywords based on buying intent, the possibility of showcasing the product in a contextual way, and pillars (we have months when we focus mostly on one or two pillars)

Lauren@Constructor: Absolutely. Knowing the strategies and tactics that our competitors are using is critical to finding the places where we can differentiate ourselves in the market. In AI, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors, and there are even more tech buzzwords. Being able to educate customers and help them separate the signal from the noise is incredibly important, but first, you have to understand where your competition is coming from.

Vince@ScaleCrush: Yes and no. Sometimes competitors have good ideas, sometimes they have terrible ideas. When they have good ideas, you can use them. When they don’t, discard their stuff.

Tom@Juro: We do leverage competitive analysis, simply as a shortcut - if they’ve won some valuable traffic for a particular keyword, we can skip the keyword research and planning phase and just create content to target that keyword. Note of caution: a competitor ranking for a keyword is just evidence that they have traffic - not that the traffic itself has any value. Vanity traffic is vanity traffic, even if you take it from competitors!

Eric@Dock: I don’t pay too much attention to competition in the ideation process itself. I look at the competition to prioritize my idea to-do list (i.e. what’s most unique).

On SEO Content Ideation

How do you incorporate SEO into your content ideation process?

Adina@Userpilot: We have a highly focused SEO and ROI strategy. Our blog is responsible for over 80% of the MRR so the focus is on producing BOFU content first and then choosing keywords that help build topical authority around our main pillars.

Eric@Dock: For any idea or keyword I’m toying with, I’ll normally spend some time in Ahrefs looking at related keywords. I’ll keep my eye out for underserved or low-difficulty keywords.

But again, SEO plays a bigger factor in how we prioritize which ideas to work on rather than how we come up with ideas. I attach a handful of keywords to each content idea to come up with a rough SEO potential for each idea. I weigh that against other factors like relevance to our product, trendiness or timeliness, and overall just how excited we are about the topic.

Tom@Juro: For our organic channels, we segment our content ideas longlist into high, mid, and low-intent keywords. If you only target high-intent then your website looks a bit spammy, so we mix it up a bit; and then the only logical thing to do is work through the backlog, prioritizing based on search volume, keyword difficulty, and funnel performance of similar pages.

Vince@ScaleCrush: We do customer & market research, competitive analysis- and existing content audits. That gives us enough to determine overarching topics, which we then do keyword research for. Keyword research is the last step in the process :).

Lauren@Constructor: We try to keep an eye on SEO, but in retail tech, we’re in a very saturated market where SEO simply doesn’t make sense as our primary distribution channel. We typically create content ideas based on customer needs and then do SEO research to find search terms with similar intent that we can incorporate into the pieces. But customer needs come first.

On Content ideation, Team collaborations

Do your teammates in Sales, Customer success, or product development work on content ideas with you, if yes, in what manner they do contribute?

Tamara@Databox: We typically collaborate via our preferred project management tool where the dedicated team simply shares their insights in the form of a task. We also have an initiative called “Customer Insights” where the Sales, Account Management, and Onboarding Teams share raw and verbatim insights on things customers say about their use cases, experience, and questions about using the product. Insights are captured through emails, chats, call snippets, and full calls and are available to anyone for product development, content ideation, and more.

I would also like to mention that Product Development teams at Databox not only share content ideas with us but also build additional features and tools like online calculators and performance scores to help marketing with lead generation activities directly.

Elise@System1: Yes — working cross-departmentally is so important in content ideation. You get to use the knowledge accumulated across the customer journey to identify any pain points that may be challenging your customers. You can also focus on important areas of your product that customers may need to be more comprehensively educated on. Using the topics gathered from my team, I use the cumulative knowledge to research keywords that align with those pain points and craft content based on that research.

Lauren@Constructor: Yes! Content creation is a team sport. When you’re dealing with enterprise software and a variety of user personas, it’s impossible for content marketing to get as granular as some of the other teams. But it’s in that granularity where the best ideas for content come from, so we often ask our product, sales, and CS teams for ideas and contributions. I’m very intentional about building a collaborative content culture.

Vince@ScaleCrush: Yes, we do also leverage internal knowledge, but you need to take everything with a grain of salt. People have lots of assumptions about the market and sometimes they’re wrong.

Eric@Dock: Our founder wears many of those hats, so most of our ideation takes place as ad hoc casual chats between the two of us. I also meet with our one account executive regularly just to chat about what content would be useful for him to do his job. For example, he might flag that he needs a case study for a particular customer vertical.

Tom@Juro: Content strategy is derived from our company master plan and ICP, so there’s no risk that content isn’t aligned with other teams. However, if we’re targeting a specific persona we will sense-check the content by utilizing colleagues who talk to them all the time. For example, when we produce new contract templates for our website- part of what we do at Juro-, we’ll work with our colleagues in CS to make sure they fit with customers—for example, a statement of work template is one of the most common contracts in Juro, according to customer data, which validates it as a priority for us. If no customers managed SOWs in Juro, it might not be worth ranking for.

On Content ideation, ( Not-to-do’s)

What is your not-to-do thing while trying to come up with content ideas?

Tom@Juro: If you need to ask ChatGPT for content ideas then perhaps you don’t know your ICP as well as you think you do! Generative AI can be enormously helpful in parts of the content workflow. Still, top-ranking organic content needs (by definition) to be in the top 0.1% of content, which means it probably can’t be written by a predictive model.

Tamara@Databox: Don’t blindly rely on keyword research or SEO tools during your content ideation process. The best SEO tool you can use to create powerful and engaging content is actually your brain. Your brain can comprehend the intent behind user search queries better than any tool and come up with creative ideas, unique perspectives, and compelling narratives that resonate with readers, which is a crucial aspect of SEO. Therefore avoid relying too heavily on SEO tools in a way that may stifle creativity or lead to a "copycat" mentality, where you mimic your competitors' content strategies without considering what truly sets your brand apart.

Eric@Dock: The biggest thing is to leave yourself time to come up with ideas. Once you’re on the content flywheel, it’s easy to get stuck in a heads-down production schedule where you never take time to lift your head up and look around for more creative ideas.

From an SEO perspective, avoid the trap of trying to rank for high-volume, top-of-funnel keywords that don’t relate directly to your product for as long as you can (or at least early in your company’s lifecycle). Start with all the mid-funnel searches your product solves directly. They’ll be easier to rank for and better for lead generation.

Adina@Userpilot: Too many thought leadership articles that might just bring a bit of traffic in the month but no conversions.

Avoid posting content for the sake of posting it. Content should align with a strategy.

Vince@ScaleCrush: Don’t start with keywords in mind - don’t look at search volume too much, and don’t write about something if you don’t think you have expertise.

Lauren@Constructor: My company is an AI company, so I’m actually very bullish on AI. But I would advise against using ChatGPT to help you come up with original content. By its very nature, ChatGPT is going to rehash only what already exists, which is exactly what you likely shouldn’t be creating in most cases. Great content comes from innovation and creativity, from seeing and filling the gaps in what already exists. Treating content like a commodity will give you commodity content – and commodity content doesn’t stand out or drive conversions.

The bottom line

As I told you, no tips and tactics here. Your approach to content ideation is your own tips and tactics. Some articles out there on the SERPs will pull up some stats and facts and tell you to do this and that. although they might be right sometimes, it is none of their goddamn business, it’s yours, your product, and your audience, you decide what works better. There are no plans and standards in the content field anymore, everything is subjective.

Rethink and adapt, rethink and adapt, rethink and adapt.

And hey! If there is one thing to consider doing from this article, it is 100 percent, talking to your customers.

Cheers