Anthony Greer

How Content Helps Build a Repeatable Lead Nurturing Process Whenever you create something great, you don’t take what you’ve made and start the process again from scratch. The next logical step is to look for ways to improve upon what you’ve done so that the end result is even better. As your team refines it’s lead nurturing process and masters your content utilization, you can become one of the companies that enjoys an 18% average revenue growth compared to companies that don’t have a defined process. Here’s how content can be refined to create a process for repeatable lead nurturing: Relevant Content Nurtures Leads First off, content should be incorporated in every step of the lead nurturing process. Specific kinds of content are relevant for each stage. Stage 1: Awareness The Awareness Stage is about educating your lead to see if your product or service is something that they need. Types of content that you will have in this stage include: • How-to blogs (and other “high-value” blogs) • E-books • Educational webinars • Social media buzz • Checklists • Tip sheets • And more Often, it’s a combination of various types of content that bring inquiring minds to the next stage. Learning what forms of content were the most convincing will show you what aspects of your Awareness content will need refining for future campaigns. Stage 2: Evaluation The Evaluation Stage gives your company the chance to prove to potential customers why your product or service is the best one to fulfill their need. Content for this stage includes: • Whitepapers • Case studies • Product webinars • FAQs • Data Sheets • And more As with the Awareness Stage, various combinations of this content could bring leads to the next stage. If more content is required, then that’s also important to consider in the future. Stage 3: Purchase The Purchase Stage is where the leads themselves decide whether or not to go through with the sale. When they have reached this stage, the content you have provided has educated and convinced them that your product can solve their problem and that it’s probably the best product to solve their problem. Content needed to push the sale includes: • Estimations • Consultations • Free trials • Demos • Coupons and other discounts • And more If you get the sale, you know that your content works! However, there is always room for improvement. Analyze the success of your previous campaign(s) When you measure the success of your campaign, keep content in mind. Meet with your sales team and figure out what content they used and what material they didn’t. For the material they used, determine if there are ways that it can be used better and what aspects of it their leads enjoyed more than others. If a white paper that was supposed to prove why your product is superior to your competitors went ignored, find out why. Maybe a few more visuals or interactive content could better grab your reader’s attention. It also helps to learn how content was used. Sales reps will often rephrase content in their own words to build a relationship with their customers. Marketers create a foundation with the information they make available for the sales team, but it’s up to sales to use that information. If they are using more points or more information from a case study than an expert guide, that knowledge will be helpful for you in your content revision process. For content that they didn’t use, determine if there are relevant aspects of it that can be written in a different perspective. For example, you typically, you won’t just have one buyer’s persona. Grandparents and college students both need cleaning supplies, but the same content might not attract both of them. People and businesses could be using your product or service for a variety of reasons, and you need to have content crafted to meet the needs of your customers. You may need different versions of similar content to mesh with alternative perspectives. After a campaign, you may learn that you are lacking content for a demographic that could’ve resulted in a lead going cold. Determine the Buyer’s Journey(s) When people visited your website, determine what content was looked at (and for how long). If you offered a free e-book or guide, how many of those were downloaded? How many leads progressed to the next stage of the funnel, and what percentage of them needed more information before continuing their buyer’s journey? These are just a few of the hundreds of questions that web analytics can answer for you. Some software can show you the activity history of leads that viewed the content on your website. Analyzing this can allow for you to map out common paths that customers went down on their buyer’s journey. Here’s an example: Jan discovered your toolkit by searching the web and coming across an article on your blog. Intrigued, Jan answered your CTA and downloaded an expert guide what every modern toolbox needs to have. Two days later, Jan read through your products and testimonials pages and subscribed to receive updates via email. A week later, Jan received an email link to a landing page that offered a 20% discount code and knew that it was an offer that she couldn’t refuse. That afternoon, Jan became a customer. Discovering paths like these shows you want types of content drew people in, and also what content needs to be refined so that other leads will take different avenues but end up as customers. Analyzing a buyer’s journey and the most logical conversion pathways allow you to see which paths were the most successful, the shortest, and the most profitable. All of this is relevant information when your team is refining your lead nurturing process. Survey Your Customers Another way to determine what content helped customers along their buyer’s journeys is by asking the customers themselves. Surveying customers about the content they encountered in the funnel will give you relevant feedback about what drove them to the sale and which parts they found uninteresting or ignored entirely. This information could also determine if the content was used during appropriate times. You can ask these questions after a campaign or while they are leads that need nurturing. This allows you to make tweaks on your content as you need to make it. It could also help you understand the frequency at which content should be distributed. Overwhelming a lead with information could drive them from the sale while responding infrequently could make them forget they had a need altogether. 59% of B2B companies say that creating relevant content is their most significant obstacle to lead nurturing success. Understanding what content buyers interacted with, how they found it appropriate for them, and whether or not it persuaded them to proceed down the marketing funnel will reveal if you’re taking a step in the right direction. This knowledge helps you build a repeatable lead nurturing process that you can refine and maximize your potential sales.