In B2B, there are often a finite group of people you are actually trying to sell to and influence. In some extreme cases, that might be just one account. 

It's easy to get sucked into the trap of vanity metrics when talking about any marketing campaign. Views, clickthroughs and conversions are all critical measures of success but not the end goal. The case for many B2B firms is that one of the right people reading your message is more valuable than any number of the wrong people.

So while it might be useful to see those views and reads skyrocket, it's far more important to be delivering your insights to the right readers.

David Ogilvy summed up this sentiment nicely.

"Don't count the people that you reach. Reach the people who count."

With Ogilvy's quote in mind, here are our tips for writing content with the purpose of nurturing target accounts and driving commercial growth:

Where to start? 

1. Define which companies you want to influence
2. List the people within those companies you want to influence
3. Write a list of topics that are important to them. You can discover these by checking out their posts, tweets, likes and shares on LinkedIn. Also, Google their name and company. To point out the obvious, you can ask them.
4. Create content that resonates with these topics

What next? 

1. Share your insight across relevant social networks your targets frequent i.e. LinkedIn, Twitter
2. Identify the people within your team who can help you bring your insight to the market 
3. Share 1-2-1 with a personalised note. Including email, you can also use a LinkedIn InMail, What's App/WeChat, a Slack message depending through which tools you use to communicate directly

Top tip: address the topics using your audiences’ language.