If you’re here, it’s because you know content marketing is valuable and you’re trying to do it better, or you know you need help and want to figure out how to create a reinforcing content program that attracts and retains clients.
That’s what great content does. It gets prospects interested, then walks them through the value you provide. Each piece of content can play a key role in demonstrating and reinforcing your value, and it’s a proven good investment of both time and energy resources.
- Buyers want to review multiple pieces of content (13 is the average number for B2B buyers) before making a decision on a purchase.
- A good content marketing program increases the value of each customer/client. Leads that are nurtured through a strong content strategy spend 47% more than non-nurtured leads.
And, here’s the kicker: Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing, yet it generates three times the amount of leads.
Why? Probably because people who are consuming your content are truly interested buyers, people who are looking for the right solution, not just people who happened to wander by your website because of a rogue search result.
So, we’ve established that content is important. However, if you’re not using the right content at the right times, you may be spinning your wheels and not creating the effective content machine you want.
We’ve put together some thoughts on which content types may work well in each stage of the marketing process.
Awareness: Creating Content that Attracts Your Ideal Buyer
Awareness is — well, what it sounds like — the first connection of a prospect to your brand. In the awareness stage, you’ll want to go where your potential customers are and engage with them in the ways that work best for them.
Where you should connect can be different depending on what you’re selling and who your target audience is. For example, a SaaS company will probably have greater success focusing on LinkedIn, while a jeweler might be more likely to make connections on Instagram.
That’s not a set-in-stone rule, though. For example, upcycled jewelry creator Zoe Wongsam of Hepburn and Hughes promotes beautiful cufflinks and business accessories on LinkedIn and has created a strong following. And LiquidWeb, a managed hosting provider, has an active Instagram account that focuses on sharing testimonials and team member profiles.
Your platforms depend on knowing your buyer and having a good understanding of what they need to know. Once you know, you can narrow down the best places to be. In general, when you’re trying to attract new people, you want to show some of your personality and value, and you want to capture the attention of people who might become buyers in the future.
Some great platforms for doing that might include:
Podcasts
85% of people listen to podcasts for more than seven hours weekly. People listen to podcasts loyally and place a great deal of trust in their hosts. If you can find the right podcasts to showcase your expertise, you might end up picking up a whole host of new fans.
Video
Both paid video (in the form of social media ads) and organic video can help boost your visibility. Depending on your audience, you may want to leverage YouTube and Facebook Live. There might also be a wider net to cast with more niche platforms like IGTV or TikTok.
Video catches attention and people are more likely to stop and watch a video when they’re scrolling through content, which means better engagement and higher relevancy within your social platforms.
Optimized landing pages
If people get to your site because you’re buying PPC ads or because you’re ranking well in organic search (because of all the excellent content you’re producing – see how they reinforce one another?), you need to have pages that tell them exactly what they need to know.
Consider creating specialized landing pages that highlight the specific benefits of a product or service and that lead people further down through your marketing funnel.
Share-worthy social content
Social media content should fall into every single stage of the buying process. At the awareness point, your goal is to get in front of new people.
That means creating content that people want to share. Infographics are shareable and engaging. So are social videos. And so are really good, detailed, informative thought leadership posts.
Facebook groups
Connecting with specialized social media groups can be a great way to get your content in front of more people. If you can’t find one that works for you, start your own!
Influencer Partnerships
Working with influencers can get you in front of a whole new potential audience as well. When you find an influencer whose audience looks like your ideal buyer, figure out a way to coordinate with them. It might be a series of sponsored posts, an affiliate offer or something different — if in doubt, ask the influencer what’s been effective for others in the past. They’re experts in their field and know their audience better than anyone.
One more thing to note about the awareness stage: the more actively engaged you are, the more likely you are to add new followers. When we work with clients, we see their social media traction pick up when they make it a point to engage on behalf of their brand for 15-20 minutes a day.
Interest: Giving Prospects a Better Understanding of Who You Are and What You Do
Once prospects are aware of you, you need to make sure you’re right for each other.
You’re going to want them to understand what you offer so non-interested people can self-select out of the buying process.
They’re going to want to know what you offer and what makes you different. At this stage in the game, they’re going to be voracious devourers of content. They’re going to want to watch, read and download whatever they can to figure out whether you have a product or service that can make a difference in their life/business.
Content that is especially effective in the interest phase can include:
Blog posts
Blog posts are your chance to tell your story. They’re an excellent low-pressure portion of the sales process, as they give your prospects a chance to get to know you without feeling forced into making a decision before they’re ready.
In fact, 78% of consumers prefer to get to know a company via articles rather than ads. when you’re blogging, be strategic. Make sure you’re creating content that aligns and that supports each other.
Your blog posts should work together to deepen the knowledge and interest of your buyer. Make sure you’re promoting these posts on social and creating additional awareness for them, as well as repurposing the content where it makes sense to do so.
Landing Page Optimizations
Are you seeing that you’re coming up more frequently for certain search terms? Make sure you have content on your site that specifically addresses questions that your potential buyers are asking Google. You may need to tweak your existing pages and add clarifications on certain topics or parts of your value proposition.
Social Media
What types of social media posts make sense at this point in the process? You want to have some content people can review when it makes sense for them. You may want to Instagram regularly so there’s a good amount of content on your page. You might consider hosting Ask Me Anything-style live chats on your LinkedIn or Twitter profiles to boost engagement and interaction.
Downloadables
Downloadable resources are items that are longer and more detailed – white papers, executive briefs, case studies, guides, checklists. Your goal is to give them something valuable and meaty, something that really showcases the problems your company can solve for them. And, downloadables lead to the holy grail of content marketing: email.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is your direct one-on-one link to your prospective buyers. Email has the highest ROI among any marketing tools, clocking in at a $42 return for every dollar spent. Like social media, email will also be a part of the remainder of the buying process.
Decision: Where The Client Decides You’re Right for Each Other
At this point, your buyer knows you. They are actively deciding whether to do business with you. Your job at this point in the process is to give them a reason to make the right choice, and these different types of content can help you do it:
Demos
Here’s where you can show off what you do and how you shine. You can offer a demo of your product so you can get everyone together for a conversation. If you don’t have a specific product you can show off (like a software solution, for example), you can still have a virtual conversation or consultation.
For example, we offer free consultations for people who are still getting to know us. This one-on-one interaction gives them a chance to ask us questions and get to know our style, as well as hear some of our expertise for free before buying.
(Also, side note: we’re just fun to talk to, in case you want to schedule a little chat about marketing, the Royal Family, Taylor Swift, college basketball or social justice).
Reviews
82 percent of shoppers use reviews as part of the consideration process when they’re evaluating companies. You want to capture that positive feedback and allow your happy customers to be excellent third-party advocates for you.
Email Marketing
At this point in the process, your emails should be reinforcing everything you’ve said so far. Get an understanding of the top issues facing your potential clients, then send them targeted case studies that focus on their exact issues.
Share testimonials about your other clients who’ve had success. That’s what they want to hear – that you have a solution that can be truly helpful to their business.
Comparison Charts
Hosting a comparison chart that shows you side-by-side with other vendors in your space might be a good fit. Make sure if you’re doing this that you’re not saying anything that might be too aggressive or go off-brand for your business.
You can be factual and show that your checking account is better, for example, or that your social media management tool includes more resources for the same (or better) price.
Social Media
Again, testimonials are so valuable at this stage in the buying journey. Your social media might include text/image testimonials as well as videos and conversations.
You should also continue to position your brand and team as thought leaders. Infographic can be a very valuable social tool to visually engage and drive home some key points about your value proposition.
Action: Where You and Your Client Make it Official
Congratulations! You finally made it to the action phase.
When you have your client ready to seal the deal with you, it’s important to continue nurturing the relationship you’ve built. Think about the kinds of information and guidance that will make their onboarding process easier and will ensure they find success with your products/services.
Some really useful content tools in the decision phase can include:
How To Guides
Walk your client through how to best use your tools/products/services and highlight the ways they’ll build the most successful strategy. You want them to feel like it’s working and their partnership with you is off to a great start, not wondering if they overspent and where the value is in your partnership.
Checklists
A checklist can give them a good idea of how the first few months will go, or lend some of your strategic vision to the content management process.
On-Demand Video Trainings
Keep them engaged with video trainings or guides to get the most out of what you’re offering. These tools can be automated into your onboarding email processes, and can also give them a reminder to reach out, instead of abandoning the product/service.
Emails
As always, email is your direct link to your prospects and clients. Find creative ways to engage and provide value in email. You don’t have to keep selling them, but you should keep making them feel like it’s worth it to read your message – maybe because it offers some extra guidance on your services or maybe because it educates them on something of value in their industry.
Remember, your communications at this point in the process are transitioning your prospect into your customer.
You want them to be smooth, seamless and effective, so you can give them some quick wins/confidence, grow their success and establish their loyalty. You’re building a basis for them to keep doing business with you. Maintaining existing customers cuts your cost of acquisition and can boost your efficiency, as existing customers will spend more and buy more often.
A Few Content Creation FAQs to Support You Through the Marketing Process
Now that you know what kind of content needs to go where, your next step is buckling down and getting it created. These questions might help if you’re planning to dip your toes into new forms of content, or if you’re new to the concept of a reinforcing content ecosystem.
I don’t like being on camera. Do I have to use video in my content strategy?
I can completely sympathize with this. I’d prefer listening to bagpipes and Justin Bieber 24/7 than to watch and hear myself on video.
Video can still play a great part in your strategy without having you in a starring role. Your videos don’t have to feature you, unless that’s really on-brand for your business.
Thanks to different content creation tools like Canva and Animoto, you can create great social media videos that use graphics to get your point across.
Should I mention pricing in my ads?
Whether you mention pricing in your ads is dependent on whether pricing is a big differentiator for you.
Are you marketing your brand as a bargain, or are you using a limited-time sale to create a sense of urgency? If so, including pricing in your marketing can make sense. If not, focus on something else that makes you stand out from others in your field.
Sometimes it makes sense to include pricing in your ads (or on your website) as a way to pre-qualify leads. If you keep getting far into your sales process and people back out at the end due to pricing, helping people self-select out earlier may save you time and energy (and get the right people engaging with you online and in-person).
How many blog posts are enough?
There’s no such thing as enough blog posts (says the writer as she realizes she’s just crossed the 2,000-word threshold on this post!).
Here’s the thing with blogging: your blog content boosts your online visibility on topics that matter to you and to your clients. Blog posts get you visible to the people who want what you offer.
For example, companies that blog consistently have 434% more pages indexed by search engines than those who don’t blog at all. That gives you a much higher chance to get into the awareness stage with some of the people who really want what you have to offer, but just don’t know it yet.
You don’t need to aim for a specific amount of posts. Instead, you need to aim for:
- Getting the information across in a way that makes sense
- Giving your reader the information they need to make a decision
- Moving them further down the sales funnel
And, blog posts can vary widely when it comes to topic and content. You may have blog posts that are testimonials or case studies, that provide statistics, give advice, etc. You have a world of opportunities here to engage your potential buyers, so start writing (or outsourcing!).
How long should my blog posts be?
Your blog posts should be long enough to tell the story you need to tell. You can have a variety of post lengths on your site.
Research shows that longer posts (2300+ words) do better in both traditional and voice search. However, you might have some posts that are short and sweet (500-700 words) because they’re meant to answer one specific question.
Others, like this one or like our primer on marketing automation, may be very long because they’re meant to be educational for the reader and to give them a full picture of a certain area of your business.
The length isn’t the key metric to focus on. Instead, concentrate on making sure your post is addressing your searcher’s intent and answering the questions that are most relevant to them.
Where should I use testimonials?
Everywhere. On your website, on your mobile app, in your email marketing, in case studies, on your social media accounts, in your social media ads, on stickers, on T-shirts, on baby onesies, on tattoos.
Have I made my point?
Testimonials are the best advertising out there because they show potential clients that existing clients trust you and appreciate the services you provide.
They establish an additional level of trust with buyers because they’re not just you promoting yourself and saying how great you are. They’re other people who have skin in the game saying that you made a difference in their business.
Consider these stats from BigCommerce:
- 92% of consumers read online reviews and testimonials when considering a purchase.
- 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- 72% of them say positive reviews and testimonials make them trust a business more.
They matter and they make a positive impact on your marketing. Start collecting testimonials and using your clients’ words to tell your stories today.
Which social channels should I post on?
It depends on which ones fit with your business. Figure out where your customers are hanging out and post/interact there.
You can ask your customers where they are and what they want to hear (use surveys, focus groups, calls and more), and you can also observe the followers/fans of some of your top clients and of influencers in your field.
It’s best to be strategic about this and choose 1-3 platforms to do well, rather than haphazardly posting on a dozen and never making any real headway.
No one is engaging with my social posts. Should I stop?
Don’t stop. Just because people aren’t engaging with your posts, that doesn’t mean they’re not reading them. You’re working toward positioning yourself as a thought leader and a trusted option in your field; it’s not going to be immediate.
Try switching things up if you’re not getting the engagement you want. Maybe you should add some more visuals into the mix, or use surveys and polls to get people talking. Dedicate some time and resources to experimentation and see what works with your audience.
Remember that these social platforms don’t exist out of a desire to be philanthropic. They want to make money. Consider dedicating some resources to social media advertising.
And, like Gary V says, spend your own $1.80 a day – putting your two cents worth into the conversation on others’ posts. The more you engage, the more likely others are to engage back.
To Wrap it All Up…. Start Creating!
When it comes down to it, content is one of the many tools you use to get your business in front of the right people, to prepare them for making a purchase and to keep them connected with you long after the initial sale.
Wondering what kinds of content you need? We can help with a content audit to assess where you’re promoting your brand, where you should be visible and the kinds of stories you need to tell.
We’ve also put together a quick downloadable content planning sheet to help you figure out your next steps. Download it here.
