Creating a Knowledge Base to Support a B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Creating original content is essential to an effective B2B content marketing strategy. Each piece of content you create should be purposeful, valuable, and credible. Focusing on customer education will also support your customer service strategy, as most customers want immediate answers to their questions. One solution is to create a knowledge base for your startup.

Let’s dive into creating a knowledge base as a central component of your B2B content marketing strategy. 

Quick takeaways: 

• A knowledge base is an online resource of information where customers can find answers to questions on their own

• A knowledge base will benefit your company and customers in a variety of ways

• To create a knowledge base, choose a platform, select key topics, create content using templates, organize the content, and maintain it regularly

What Is a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base is an online resource of information about the challenges your company solves. It’s essentially a library that contains FAQs, articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers, dictionaries, glossaries, product guides, video tutorials, troubleshooting guides, and other useful content. A knowledge base enables your customers to search for answers to questions and issues on their own. 

Benefits

Creating a knowledge base will benefit your startup by:

• Enabling customers to solve simple problems by themselves
• Providing around-the-clock customer service that complements your existing services and support
• Addressing your customers’ different learning styles
• Expanding your global customer base with content in different languages 
• Supporting customer onboarding with links to product guides, FAQs, and targeted content
• Reducing the workload of your customer service teams and making more efficient use of your human resources

How to Create a Knowledge Base

If you plan to create a knowledge base as part of your B2B content marketing strategy, it should be easily searchable for customers and consistent with your brand. Follow the steps below to build a knowledge base for your startup.

Choose a Platform 

Many solutions exist to create a knowledge base for your startup. Select a platform that will integrate with your website, CRM, and other systems. Other than an attractive and intuitive layout, the most important feature is discoverability of content — users should be able to quickly find answers to their questions or problems. 

Choose a knowledge base platform with the following features: 

• Templates for creating consistent content
• Formatting options
• The ability to categorize content (e.g., subjects, descriptions, meta tags)
• Robust search functions
• Multiple language options
• SEO optimization
• Integration with helpdesk and chatbots
• Analytics

Select Topics

You might already have some source material for your knowledge base, such as user guides, FAQs, blog posts, case studies, whitepapers, and other documentation. Other sources of topics for the knowledge base include:

• Basic information about your company and its products or services
• Onboarding documentation for new customers
• Customer enquiries and customer support requests
• Analytics of commonly searched terms on your website
• Interview subject matter experts within the organization

Create the Content

After selecting topics for the knowledge base, it’s time to plan and create the content. Using templates will support a consistent design and layout, and also make it easier to create articles and other content. The platform should include a table of contents, linking, searching, and other functionality.

When creating content, consider the following tips:

• Create a style guide with writing and formatting guidelines to keep the content consistent with overall company branding
• Include a variety of content types (e.g., articles, videos, presentations, product demos, whitepapers, audio recordings, infographics)
• Add visuals (e.g., pictures, screenshots, graphs, videos) to text-based content to make it more attractive and easier for a wider audience to understand
• Employ SEO strategies for content titles and headings

Organize the Knowledge Base

Structure your knowledge base to make it easy for customers to find the content they want. A typical structure involves a home page with topic or category listings and search functions. The home page should feature popular knowledge base articles and content. 

Organize the content in your knowledge base using the following steps:

• Group content by topic, sub-topic, category, department, product, etc.
• Add a search bar so customers can search for solutions using their own terms
• Cross-link related content (e.g., add links to other content within articles and blog posts)
• Add keywords, meta tags, and brief descriptions within all content

Maintain the Knowledge Base

Regularly review and update the content in your knowledge base. When you add, change or remove products or services, you should also update or remove associated content in your knowledge base. When customers ask new questions or requests, update your knowledge base to reflect these trends. Update content titles to mirror the wording of customer inquiries.

Use analytics to track metrics and identify areas within your knowledge base that are doing well or that need improvement. For example, you could track and measure:

• Pages getting the most visits
• Average length of time spent on different pages
• Customer queries covered by existing content
• Customers’ satisfaction with answers

Creating a Knowledge Base for Your Startup

Building a knowledge base should be part of your startup’s B2B content marketing strategy. It’s a proactive approach to addressing your customers’ needs and supporting your customer service strategy. Hubspot’s knowledge base software is one option for creating a knowledge base. 

Need help building a knowledge base that can meet the needs of your startup and customers? Sellerant can guide the way.