No matter how big or small your sales force, your website can be working around the clock to attract leads. To do it, however, your B2B site needs great content and an effective content strategy with messaging that connects to your target clientele.
Experts estimate that there are 4.5 billion pages on the Internet. What makes yours stand out?
It’s important to be sure your content is customer-focused and provides the information prospects want. To make sure your content does everything possible to warm leads and encourage conversions, remember these principles:
Most people who encountered your website today didn’t wake up this morning planning to become your customer. Instead, they were looking for solutions to problems – problems in your area of expertise. Make sure your content coaches, explains, and helps. This positions you as a trustworthy expert they might buy from later. Provide easy-to-access, free content such as blogs, videos, infographics, and other resources that will help make their decision easy.
Make sure your salespeople clearly understand the demographics, interests, and values of your ideal customer. In the inbound marketing world, we call this ideal customer a target; building a profile for that target helps us understand the decisions they might make. The profile we build is a persona.
Build content around the persona and use social media to access and speak to the online communities where customers like yours gather and form opinions. Show up as a resource and expert in your field, establishing yourself as a trustworthy source of helpful information.
Without analyzing conversion rates and calculating the returns for each piece of content, it’s impossible to know which content is effective.
Use online tools to analyze and compare user behaviors. Look at the number of leads or clients gained from each source:
This will help you understand which content inspires action.
When it comes to lead attraction, content is king. Use these principles and you’ll stand toe-to-toe with the juggernauts in your field by cultivating a stable of repeat customers.
Next, let's check out some other unique content tips to attract leads. Content can be hard at work for you no matter what other projects your team is focused on. Let’s look at key ways to shift marketing effort off the team and turn content into a perpetual lead machine.
An effective B2B content strategy begins with sharing – giving prospects a piece of quality content they want in exchange for an email address. A simple ebook or guide helps you demonstrate your expertise to the prospect and opens the door for more contact with them down the road.
From there, you can “drip” a small amount of relevant, timely email content. A drip campaign is a series of automated emails that are sent to a lead while he or she is in the marketing funnel, but isn't ready to make a buying decision yet. Each "drip," or contact point, contains helpful guidance from your brand and leaves your products or services top of mind. It looks something like this:
Odds are good your sales team members hear the same basic questions over and over. It might be tempting to send prospects to an FAQ that answers their questions, but not so fast! Sending prospects to a long page where they have to scroll and search will turn them off.
Instead, divvy up your FAQ into a number of detailed, relevant blog articles. Organizing questions onto a page lets you offer a more detailed answer without letting your prospect succumb to “scroll fatigue.” They are much more likely to remember the answer, too!
Quality content can be a magnet for prospective customers for months or even years to come. Build connections with respected external publications that accept guest posts from your company, such as Medium, Forbes, or LinkedIn Pulse. This leads informed consumers back to your site.
No matter whether your content is on your own blog or an external site, however, be sure it keeps Step 1 above in mind: your free “share” should lead to gated content that requires a form fill. This get the visitor to content they want, while also allowing you to gather information from them and keep up the communication. Win-win!