About Webs
As a HubSpot partner, Webs helps global organizations optimize their full commercial processes. The Netherlandsbased company assists these organizations in everything from CRM to marketing, so that they excel in all things HubSpot.
As marketing team lead – and because many of Webs’ clients are eager to set up inbound marketing strategies – Annebel van Wijnen is highly focused on content. In addition to
organizing its creation, Annebel must ensure a good match between Webs’ marketers on one side and the Webs client on the other, many of which are B2B organizations that offer
specialized, complex products.
This means that Annebel often requires content writers who are also specialized – in specific topics, industries, or both. Previously, finding them was an organizational pain point. After all, how could Webs create the best possible content without the best possible writers?
By partnering with Contentoo, Annebel leverages the platform’s database of freelance talent – a deep pool that contains the experienced copywriters she needs to deliver the
insightful, high-quality content that Webs’ clients expect and deserve.
Here, she speaks on personalized approaches to clients’ target audiences, driving conversions and lead generation, the expert knowledge and experience of Contentoo freelance talent – and finding that “perfect way of working together.”
Storytelling over sales – and the importance of B2B content
Content is important because, especially in B2B, our customers often don’t tell their stories online. They’re instead all about selling their products without explaining how those products can help their customers.
Content really helps you tell that story. Nowadays, almost the whole buyer journey is online. Potential customers don’t contact sales or your website directly; they just start Googling.
As a company, if you have good content available about how you can help people solve their challenge, you distinguish yourself from your competitors – and you make sure you start helping your customers instead of only selling to them. B2B companies often have really great stories to tell, because they have great solutions. So it’s a pity if they don’t put them out there.
Finding balance in content creation – and targeting specific buyer personas
Our main focus was more on conversions and lead generation. We create content to make sure we guide someone through the buyer journey and make sure we get to know our customers. That’s the core purpose of the content we create.
Some companies target a specific buyer persona that has quite some knowledge about a particular topic. If you don’t create the content in the right way – coming from either someone who doesn’t understand the right point of view or doesn’t have the technical knowledge – it won’t convert or compel as much of your target audience.
We have reallyspecific projects for companies with very specific products, and Contentoo was able to find freelancers who could write really well, but still had a lot of knowledge about the industries they were writing about. And that helped us better target buyer personas.
With Contentoo, we always find the right balance of someone who knows how to write for online purposes and really has knowledge about the topic.
Human-centric content – and how it differentiates and elevates
The pain points of your buyer persona should always be the core of your content. So, “What am I solving for the person reading this? Why should he or she read it?”
We noticed that people who had a lot of experience with a particular subject often wrote about the product too much. It was really difficult for them not to focus on the technical details rather than what the product solved. We needed someone who could take a step back and see our clients’ products from a different perspective.
There’s so much content online. So if you don’t write from those pain points, you won’t make a difference. An emotional impact is really important. It shows that you understand why someone is looking for your product.
If you don’t understand the process that comes before buying a product, you won’t be able to influence that process, and you won’t be able to earn someone’s trust. Especially with B2B, which has long sales cycles, you really need to understand your target audience. We still see too many B2B companies just focus on selling their product instead of helping.
An evolving partnership – and finding a “perfect” way of working together
Our partnership with Contentoo has evolved in the last year. We’re talking blogs, we’re talking white papers, E-books, infographics, trend reports. Both long copy and short copy. We especially use Contentoo for the projects that have a really indepth topic or specific focus.
Contentoo knows exactly what we need and what our customers need, so it’s much easier to find a match with a freelancer. For that reason, we’ll do more projects together. We can really see the added value that Contentoo provides us, because they set us up with freelancers who really know what they’re doing, who know the industry.
Our clients are happy because they get to talk with freelancers who understand their processes; they don’t have to explain everything again and again. The way we continue to evolve is doing additional – and more complex – projects. It helps us help our customers. It’s the perfect way of working together.
Annebel van Wijnen on saved time – and accelerated growth
I used to try to find all the freelancers myself. But if you’re working in B2B with really specific topics, using the Contentoo platform saves me a lot of time. And the quality of your content goes way up, because you’re working with people who have a lot of experience who are only focusing on content creation.
So in the beginning, it costs you some time to set up, but as soon as it is, it helps you accelerate the growth of your content marketing. The most important part was that Contentoo has these really specialized writers for really diverse topics. That was ideal for us and that has really made the difference.
