Do you deliver the right content at the right time to help consumers through the sales funnel? Content marketing presents a great opportunity for businesses. But if content marketing is going to work properly, you really need to understand how your audience makes purchasing decisions and engages with your brand.
We all know content is powerful, but strategic content is far more effective. In most instances this usually comes through taking the time to invest in a content strategy, but as the stats show most people aren’t working towards a strategy. If you are creating content already, below are a few tips to help move customers through the sales funnel.
How is your content any different from your competitor’s?
If you’re looking at pushing clients further down the sales funnel, your content needs to stand out. Answer your audience’s questions and leave them wanting more. Your content really needs to add value to what the client is searching for. Getting this right is crucial and often it will lead to them consuming more than one piece of content, ultimately falling further down the sales pipeline.
Does your content answer the questions your audience has at that point in the sales funnel?
If your audience has just started looking for a product or service, they will most likely have very different questions from someone who spent some time researching it already.
Don’t just put all of your content out there at once and expect your buyers to find it themselves. Marketing automation software will definitely help you with this. If you’re not at that level yet, structure your content in a way that allows your audience to find it with ease. A great example of this is a downloadable ebook that guides your audience. Alternatively, why not implement live chat on your website for additional help? Live chat is proving a significant way to increase online conversion.
Is your content told in the right way?
Writing another blog or answering 10 FAQs is not always going to be the best solution to conveying your message. There are so many ways to converse with content and I encourage you to think about the best way to do this for the appropriate part of the sales pipeline. Take, for example, a potential buyer who has passed the awareness stage and approached you for a quote. As they move past the awareness stage the same content is probably not what they are looking for. Generally, they might be comparing you and your competitor. A good point here might be to include a relevant video case study to position your brand in a better situation. Video is just one example. You might find that it might be a different piece of content you need to deliver at that stage, but a good content strategy will identify this.
Have a quick look at the content you are producing and see where it lies. Chances are most of your content is about the top of the sales funnel (awareness) and you have no content to help nurture your leads.
If you would like us to take a confidential look at your content strategy, feel free to contact us and we would be more than happy to point you in the right direction.
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Stop the sales v marketing war [podcast]
How to do content marketing research
7 Steps to a winning publication with content marketing
