Surveying the market for delivery methods
Most marketers call the messaging they send to their target markets content. Content marketing is fast becoming a household term for anyone who does sales and marketing, but what does it really mean?Everything you communicate has some amount of content in it. Your goal with CRM is to help store that content and track which content is best received. This data gives you insight into why, helping you continuously improve how you market and sell to your target market.
When you write content for your audience, the more useful and helpful that content is, the better. People are tired of being sold to and don’t respond well to repetitive “buy this now” messaging. They want to connect with the brands they buy from. Think about how you can make that connection.
Here are points to consider:- What kind of content you want to deliver: Ask yourself how you can be of service to your target market. What are their pain points? Is there educational material that can help them to address those pain points in a generic way?
Many industries base their messaging on fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and many companies sell products based around that. Can you help dispel myths of those fears with tips and tricks anyone could benefit from? Would links to resources for more information provide confidence in the information you’re providing?
The image below shows how you can offer useful information to leads as a way to gather their information. After it’s provided, you can start an automated marketing campaign or connect the lead with one of your salespeople.
- How to deliver your content: Where does your target market go for information? Do they read blogs? Do they get their information from social media? Who are the influencers and can you reach them to become advocates of your products and services?
In the business-to-business arena, you may want to follow a generally accepted process of directing people to a landing page, where they provide their email address in exchange for a whitepaper or e-book. If that is a method you employ, how will you make it easy for someone to provide what you need to get into your sales funnel? Make your forms short and your calls-to-action clear.
Adapting content strategy for different channels
Apply the same personalization you do in your email marketing to all your channels. Your content is different, depending on how that content is consumed. Someone reading a blog or an e-book has more time than someone on Facebook or Twitter, so you can go more in depth. If you’re writing content for social media, it needs to be short, to the point, and more emotional with human interest.You can also repurpose existing content into different channels. If you write a blog post or e-book, take excerpts and post them in social media as teasers for your longer content. If you have a long video, make a trailer that calls attention to some key points, driving interest in watching the longer film.
Check out how you can use a blog to create compelling content for your target market. By becoming an expert in a field, you bring your target market to your website.
Examples of good content
You can generate content for your leads and clients in a number of different ways. Here are some examples:- Webinars
- Instructional videos
- Videos interviewing your staff or thought leaders
- Whitepapers (short informational papers on a specific topic)
- E-books or printed books
- Landing pages
- Blogs
- Video blogs
- How-to guides
- Buyers’ guides
- Email newsletters
