How well do you know your customers? Do you know what type of information will pique their interest, and help them make a purchasing decision?
Your prospective and current customers are at different places in the buying journey. With 57% of the buying decision already made before your sales team has a chance to sell, it’s critical that you are generating the right content at the right time to the right audience via the right channel.
At our latest Meeting of the Minds event, a lunch event held quarterly at The Refectory, we discussed that content plays a key role in the customer’s buying journey. To find out how companies are doing, we polled attendees prior to the event and discovered that an overwhelming number don’t have a content marketing strategy. And, though most of those companies are at least generating some content, the majority of them do not tailor it to the individuals who influence the buying journey.
To help ensure you’re effectively reaching your customers, some questions to ask yourselves include:
- Who are you trying to reach and what are some challenges they have?
- Why does your product or service solve their challenge?
- Where is your customer in the buying journey?
But how do you make certain, your content is relevant and breaks through the noise to capture and engage your audiences? That’s were interactive content comes into play. Interactive content is taking your existing content and making it snackable or bite-size in ways that get the audience to ask questions or think about things differently. It entails showing with examples and less touting of features and benefits. For example, turn your customer testimonials into videos, or a white paper into a podcast or ebook.
As we mention previously, tailoring content to different phases of the buying journey is important. For example, in the early phase, you need content that will capture the prospect’s attention (e.g., an infographic or quiz). During the selection process, make certain content shows you understand their needs and have the answer. But don’t stop there! You need to continue to communicate with them after the sale, with personalized content that reinforces value.
Download a copy of the presentation to learn more. And, if you’re interested in developing a content marketing strategy for your organization, please contact Stacy Wood at stacy@marketingworks360.com or call 614-540-5520 for a complimentary one-to-one strategy session.