B2B copywriting is imperative because you’ll use copy to drive traction in ALL your marketing channels.
To increase brand awareness and engage qualified leads, you use B2B copy for websites, email newsletters, Google ads, and social media ads.
Over 30% of B2B marketers say email marketing is the best solution for lead nurturing. And you need powerful copywriting for targeted email marketing!
Almost 50% of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with your brand.
Guess what? You need impactful B2B copywriting for content marketing too!
But with such a reliance on relevant, fresh, copywriting that captures your brand identity and values… Writing copy that converts is challenging to craft.
So, what does successful B2B copy look like, and how can you write it?
We have a detailed guide exploring how to make the most of your B2B copywriting, as well as the best tips for conversion-driven copy, and some examples of how other brands have leveraged the power great B2B copy.
Plus, we have the ultimate five B2B copywriting AI tools to boost your copywriting strategy!
Ready to get started?
Here we go!
Source: Alex Cattoni
Conversion-driven B2B copywriting starts with an in-depth understanding of your target buyers. Consider who your audience is, what they want to read, and what they will find valuable to solve their pain points.
You can’t target your entire customer base for every piece of B2B copywriting. Segment your audience for more targeted B2B copywriting, and write for that specific segment of your audience.
This factor goes unsaid for almost every marketing strategy because it provides better opportunities to tailor and personalize your copy for your readers. And, of course, personalization results in higher conversions more often than not.
Almost 90% of B2B buyers only want to work with businesses that can prove that they understand their needs and wants.
A common mistake for B2B businesses is that they don’t spend enough time understanding the difference between buyers in this space and how they differ from B2C consumers. When developing their buyer personas, they stick to the cookie cutter method, like only considering basic buyer demographics and pain points.
B2B copywriting requires much more in-depth detail. Your audience comprises professionals and decision-makers. These buyers need much more persuasion and time before making a purchase, making it imperative to know as much about them as possible.
There are also many types of B2B buyers. Understand which group of buyers to target to maximize your B2B copywriting results.
A few of the various B2B consumers include:
When you have a clear idea of the type of B2B buyers you’re targeting, you can then pin down more detailed information.
Some of the features you need to evaluate to understand your B2B audience are:
To make this information easily digestible and actionable, create B2B buyer persona templates!
Emotion is a valuable part of B2B copywriting that converts. However, it’s a little tricky because B2B buyers must also consider and act on logic and reasoning over emotions when they make purchases.
Your audience is more prone to act on your copywriting because your value proposition ultimately contributes to their businesses, not simply because they like you and your product.
It doesn’t mean you can’t embrace emotion for B2B copywriting. When used correctly, emotion can help you seem more organic, human-like, and aware of your customer’s pain points. You only need a few emotion-invoking tactics to make a significant impact.
While logic and reason are the two fundamental reasons for strategic B2B buying decisions, you must connect to your buyers by embracing emotions they may share.
For instance, if you sell goods to group homes for the youth, a wholesome and motivational approach will connect to your audience. But if you sell technology to small businesses to optimize their workflow, depicting emotions like relief or joy due to the ease of time management may work better.
The secret to emotions for B2B copywriting relies on knowing your audience. Because knowing your audience and what they need provides insight into what they feel about the market challenges and progressing their brands.
But we’ve already gone through how essential it is to know your audience for B2B copywriting. So, in which other ways can you tie emotion into your copywriting strategy?
Here are a few tips for successfully using emotion in B2B copywriting:
Using emotion to fuel your B2B copywriting strategy doesn’t mean you have to be soppy or sentimental. You can use a playful and fun approach or a direct approach. The basis of emotional B2B copywriting is simply connecting with your audience.
In all our time writing robust and informative marketing guides and reviews we know research and industry insights are invaluable. These two features add credibility to any claims and give you authority.
While speaking about emotion earlier, we also mentioned how logic and reasoning impact B2B purchasing decisions. And this is why you need research and industry insights!
Don’t include statistics at every point of your copy. Doing this will make your copy unengaging, and you’ll veer off from your goal. Think about it – would you enjoy reading copy packed with underlined hyperlinks and statistics? Probably not!
The goal here is to back up significant claims with research. So, if you’re claiming that 50% of B2C consumers respond well to B2B brands who sell your product, what evidence do you have to validate this?
Without research and insights, your copy will come off like one big chunk of text trying to convince your audience rather than sharing your value.
Not every piece of your copy is for one stage of the buyer’s journey. Craft B2B copy for different stages of your sales funnel to target specific audiences. Create a visual idea of your sales funnel to help you choose what copy to write.
For example, we know that B2B buyers need more persuasion than B2B consumers. So, B2B buyers in the awareness/problem identification stage will need ultra-convincing copy.
And when your buyers move into the solution exploration buying stage, it’s okay to be a little more forceful for conversions. But don’t obligate your audience to convert or purchase from your brand.
Besides considering the features of your B2B copywriting for different buying stages, you must evaluate which mediums you’ll use for each piece of copy.
For copywriting at the problem identification stage, consider how you can make targeted buyers aware of your brand. Rather than directing your copy to make a sale, use your copy to market whitepaper or case studies to help these buyers evaluate your business.
But when you’re crafting copy for the solution exploration buying stage, buyers will have the motivation to visit your website and have a consultation. You must create your copy accordingly. Consider how to direct your B2B website copy toward converting web visitors.
You must also consider how your copy creates links between different buying stages. We mentioned whitepapers are common in the first stage of your sales funnel. So, you’ll use copy to promote these resources. But a sales call is more favorable for the next phase. To link these separate stages add a CTA at the end of your whitepapers, convincing buyers to schedule a call.
Summary: What Makes Powerful B2B Copywriting?
While content writers elaborate on topics, for B2B copywriting, keep it concise and direct. Don’t veer too far away from the purpose of your copy, and use minimal words. In this case, the shortcut is better. Keep to simple (but impactful) words, short sentences, and eliminate any complex phrases.
Using the active voice for your copy ties in well with the previous tip. The active voice helps keep your B2B copywriting concise and offers more of a narrative. Your copy will naturally flow from start to finish, making it easy for readers to understand your value proposition and follow through on your CTA.
For the CTA specifically, the active voice enhances it too. You can stick to words motivating your audience to take action for your business, helping your chances of conversion.
Okay, but what are concrete nouns? These are nouns you can see, touch, taste, feel, and hear.
Abstract nouns describe ideas, feelings, and concepts and are intangible. Some B2B copywriters use abstract nouns for a formal tone. But abstract nouns can make your copy harder to understand.
Concrete nouns directly speak to your audience. For example, you’re a B2B company in the finance space, and use copy like “Helping companies achieve financial freedom”. But this copywriting is too vague. Almost like you’re offering a false or unquantifiable promise and saying exactly what the next business is.
Be specific, like “Helping companies cut costs by 11% per month”. There aren’t any abstract nouns in that sentence, only concrete nouns telling the reader the brand’s value. If you’re shooting for a more playful tone, consider cracking a joke or sharing a relatable, funny story in a few lines.
Fantastic B2B copywriting also requires power words. These are words that add depth to your copywriting and help catch readers’ attention. Power words provoke a psychological reaction because these words are emotionally-charged and spike high points of interest.
A few power words include:
What makes power words different from typical adjectives and verbs is because of the emotional weight they carry. Words like innovative, unique, and interesting don’t engage them. But be modest with power words because you don’t want to bloat your copy with words that don’t give readers accurate and detailed information.
Your tone matters because it reveals your brand identity. You’ll also have to stay consistent in your tone all the time. If you know about branding, you’ll understand why you must pick a voice for your copy and stick to it.
Your audience must associate you with a specific identity or “persona” and developing your brand voice makes a difference.
Social proof is the mother of a credible online reputation, and that’s why it needs to feature in your copy. There are many types of social proof to create a trusted image. Some B2B copywriters opt for wisdom of the crowd and mention or provide figures about their online communities.
If that’s not your ideal approach, you can add certifications, accreditations, recognitions, or reward badges to your images.
Here are other examples of social proof for B2B copywriting:
Social proof can take some time to generate, but it encourages you to get feedback on your buyers’ brand experience.
With every aspect of B2B marketing comes trial and error. Test different approaches and various copy before pinning down what works. Allow yourself to do this without assuming you know everything about your audience and copy to engage them.
Successful copy is finicky. Businesses must continuously track and evaluate their performance before achieving their desired conversion rates.
The best way to go about this is through A/B testing. Never ignore this for B2B copywriting. Create two versions of copy for a specific purpose and determine which garnered more interaction. You can do this for all B2B copywriting, like email copy, landing page copy, and paid ad copy.
How you run your A/B testing relies on each piece of copy. For example, if you’re doing B2B copywriting for Facebook ads, Facebook has built-in A/B testing features. But if you want to A/B test web copy, you can use tools like Omniconvert and Unbounce.
Summary: 6 B2B Copywriting Tips to Perfect Your Copy
This B2B copywriting example proves how a powerful headline for your web copy can persuade your audience. JotForm uses a concise headline using concrete nouns to grab readers’ attention. In only a few words they’ve described why B2B buyers need their products.
The key takeaways:
HubSpot is a popular choice for both B2B and B2C brands. This company provides a vast selection of high-level software to manage all aspects of your sales funnel and customer communications strategy. It’s no surprise HubSpot uses impressive and persuasive copy to entice web visitors.
The key takeaways:
This eCommerce giant takes fantastic B2B copywriting to the next level with an eye-catching billboard. As one of the most trusted platforms for eCommerce stores, Shopify has gathered loads of data to determine what copy engages its audience. And this billboard they used for the “Let’s Make You a Business” campaign confirms it.
The key takeaways:
MailChimp is an email marketing tool that helps businesses start and scale thriving subscriber lists. This software offers a range of robust and reliable solutions for successful email marketing. And they also know how to write captivating B2B copy without saying too much.
The key takeaways:
Linked University used a strategic and direct approach for their B2B Facebook ad copy. They engage readers from the first word and make it simple to understand what they offer.
The key takeaways:
Looking at another example of exceptional B2B copywriting for Facebook ads, SurveyMonkey makes it look easy. This brand keeps its copy short and sweet, just leaving enough information to secure high CTRs.
The key takeaways:
You don’t get a lot of words to use for B2B Google ad copy. But it doesn’t mean you can’t convince buyers to convert. With such a tight limit it only encourages you to use words that matter and engage targeted web traffic, which is exactly what ClickUp does here:
The key takeaways:
Targeted small businesses, Xero states how they can help brands achieve better and faster results for creating invoices. You don’t need to read much to confirm this is what you’re looking for because Xero makes it obvious from the get-go.
The key takeaways:
Summary: 8 B2B Copywriting Examples to Learn From
We tested 11 AI copywriting tools and these five are the best ones:
Best AI Copywriting Tools | Pricing | Our P2P Rating |
Jasper (formerly Jarvis.ai) |
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Writesonic |
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Hypotenuse AI |
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Copy.ai |
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Rytr |
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B2B copywriting is not a walk in the park. But with these proven strategies, you can achieve the results you want. For B2B copywriting, it’s imperative to do extensive audience research first, enhance your copy with emotion, and use concrete nouns. Businesses must also tailor each piece of copy to specific buying journey stages.
With the best B2B copywriting tips, components, and examples, you can craft copy that converts. But remember, this will take a little practice to perfect, so be open to learning curves and track your copy’s performance.
To write B2B copy that converts you must understand your audience well, craft B2B copy with emotion, research and use industry insights and you must write copy specific to buyers' journey. Read this article to find out how to write B2B copy in 2024 and the best examples to learn from for successful B2B copywriting.
The top examples of B2B copywriting that works comes from brands like HubSpot, JotForm, Linked University, SurveyMonkey and Shopify. Brands like Clickup and Xero have also crafted unique copywriting to engage customers and raise brand awareness. This article covers the best B2B copywriting examples and what you can learn from them to create great B2B copy.
The top B2B copywriting tips includes writing specific and concise copy, using an active voice, writing with strong verbs and concrete nouns, and considering your brand tone. Businesses must also include social proof and leverage A/B testing. For details on creating B2B copy and what makes for successful B2b copywriting, read our full article.
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