Many organizations take the kitchen sink approach to content marketing—create a bunch of different content assets and offer them to prospects in numerous ways. Yes, it’s better to provide some content rather than no content, but creating a relevant experience is what takes organizations to the next level.
When building out your 2014 plan, make sure to take a holistic approach to your prospect’s journey. Here are 10 things to consider when building out your plan:
- Strategize on Content Mix – What do prospects prefer? Video snippets? Case studies? Blog posts? etc. You may want to consider surveying your prospects.
- Define Buying Stages – Someone who visits your site and fills out a case study form is a lot different than someone who is in negotiations with your Sales rep. You should consider defining these stages in the buying journey and developing different content for different stages (Early, mid, late).
- Develop Personas – A CTO who visits your site should get messaging that is geared towards the needs of an executive. An everyday user may want to get tips and tricks that help their day-today efforts. Know your audience and deliver the appropriate content.
- Create Geography Based Content – For worldwide organizations, consider regionalizing and even localizing content.
- Don’t Forget the Post Sale Messaging – Many organizations forget to target customers AFTER the deal gets closed. To build customer loyalty and retention, consider creating a three month welcome nurture program. Do something similar three months out from the renewal date. Oh yeah, this will probably help your upgrade and upsell revenue.
- Fast Track Leads to Specific Content – What actions accelerate a buyer’s journey? For example, if someone fills out a form for an evaluation, you should consider fast tracking that lead to a series of emails that talks about the product downloaded.
- Integrate Blog Content – Most organizations have a blog. You’ve already created the content so repurpose whenever possible. Consider how you can leverage that content as part of the nurture communications.
- Pause Content – Decide when and if to pause content. For example, if a Sales rep is actively engaging with a prospect, have a strategy to pause that messaging or change the lead to a different content track.
- Define the Sender – Should the nurture emails come from the lead owner or from a generic email address? Different studies recommend different approaches. Why not test and see which works best for your organization?
- Suppress Recipients – While building out a communication strategy, don’t forget to suppress. Create a suppression list for competitors, disqualified leads and other people you don’t want to mail. Creating a suppression list will boost your results and reduce unwanted emails from hitting the web.
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Mythbusting: 4 Content Marketing Misconceptions & How to Overcome Them. 2013 was the year of content marketing – the concept went from new, shiny object and buzzword to trusted marketing strategy.
For more information on content marketing, check out another recent article by Search Engine Watch on some of the top misconceptions around content marketing.
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