8 Tips For Writing Sales Texts For B2B Marketing

Angela Baker, Freelance Writer

The truth is, there are challenges to writing content for B2B marketing. The usual, B2B customer doesn’t have time for much ‘fluff’. On the other hand, jumping right into a sales pitch isn’t appropriate either. The trick is to be engaging and add value.

One important thing to keep in mind is that even though B2B marketing is different from B2C, there is one thing in common. Ultimately, you aren’t marketing to a business. You are marketing to a person. You still have to make a connection. You have to write an email, social media, and other content that resonates. The eight tips below will help you do that.

Tips For Emails

Earn Email Opens With a Compelling Subject Line

You may already know some of the more popular tips for writing a great email subject line. For example:

Use a number in your subject line.
Add power words for emotional impact.
Make it short enough for mobile phone preview text.
Ask a question.
Create fear of missing out.

What you may not know is that you should lead off with your value proposition. That’s right! Before your potential customer opens your email, they should know what you can do for them. No, not all of the details, but enough to trigger an urge to open and read further.

One way to do this is to simply be specific. Instead of using the subject line: ‘We Can Help You With Your Email Campaign’, try ‘Increase Email Open Rates by 40%’. Just remember not to be ‘loud’ and overly sales-ey. You don’t want to trigger a spam filter, or simply annoy someone into swiping your email away.

Share Content That Proves Your Value

Once your recipient has opened your email, you have to further prove your value to them. You might have some success if you tout the value of your product or service. To really be convincing, you’ll have to provide some evidence.

Don’t tell your reader how great your products are. Show them. Share a testimonial from a satisfied customer. If you have case studies, link to those. Consider attaching a whitepaper, or linking to a slideshow presentation. Doing one or more of these things will have more impact on a decision-maker than your words alone.

If you’d like to create a whitepaper or other long-form content, there are tools and resources that can help immensely. These include Grammarly, Trust My Paper, BestEssay.Education, Grab My Essay, WhiteSmoke, Studicus, and Slideshare.

Keep it Short

B2B requires that you remember that the person at the other end of your email is running a business. They don’t have time or patience to wade through a long narrative, or lots of details. Save that information for later, or put it in a newsletter. Instead, keep your email at a reasonably short length. 125 words is just about the ideal length for a sales email.

Give The Reader a Clear Call to Action

Never let your recipient finish your email without telling them what to do next. Before you compose your email, be certain that you have a clear objective. Then, as you close your email out, provide a clear call to action that gives your reader a next step to take. This might be:

Visiting a landing page.
Subscribing to your newsletter.
Setting an appointment.
Reading a whitepaper or watching a video.
Downloading a free trial.

Personalize It

Personalization goes far beyond your greeting. In fact, whether or not you personalize your greeting simply isn’t that important. What’s more important is that you personalize the content of your email. Stock emails may save time, but they won’t get the response that a personalized email will.

Learn about the companies you are targeting. What are their needs? Use the information you gather to align your products and services with your prospect’s business goals.

Struggling to create great emails? We can help you get it right!

Tips For Social Media Content

Get The Length Right For The Platform

It’s not just what you post. The length of your posts matters as well. Posts that are too short don’t have enough information to get decision-makers to take any action. Post that is too long won’t get engagement either. It turns out that each social media platform has a bit of a sweet spot when it comes to the ideal length. For example, the ideal length of a Tweet is between 71 and 100 characters.

Edit Carefully

A poorly edited post is no small matter. It reflects poorly on your attention to detail and can get you off on the wrong foot with prospective customers. Factual errors, spelling mistakes, and poor grammar really stand out on social media. It’s important to edit your posts for accuracy, style, and clarity.

Have a Specific Goal For Each Post

Micah Ferris is a copywriter for Studicus who specializes in B2B social media content. She says, “It’s important for B2B companies to have a social media presence. Unfortunately, in their rush to get out there, too many B2B marketers create social media content without any goal in mind. The result is non-cohesive posts that don’t really work to generate leads.

Before you write or share content on social media, start with a clear goal. This could be driving traffic to a landing page, earning likes and shares, or gaining more followers. Once you’ve done that, you can use social media analytics to measure your results.

Final Thoughts

Writing sales text for B2B can certainly be challenging. You’re often facing a more discerning audience with less time to spend on fluff content. On the other hand, you’re still marketing to people who want to be engaged with relevant content. If you follow the tips above, you should be able to create the kind of content that keeps your B2B customers interested.

About the author: Angela Baker is a freelance writer with a truly entrepreneurial spirit. She is driven to grow her career and constantly working on self-improvement. To that end, she works to share her knowledge by working as a blogger for Bidforwriting, and Supreme Dissertations. She also writes for Live Inspired Magazine.