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This post was co-authored by Rosalie Morton.
Those of us working in the B2B space know that decision makers are more in control of their buying cycle than ever before. They’re continually educating themselves on new strategies and solutions, evaluating potential partners/sellers and validating opportunities through an ever-expanding universe of content available at their digital fingertips.
As a result, to reach prospects and customers at the right time with the right information across multiple channels, B2B marketers need to start providing relevant, compelling and differentiating content. And they need to know how to put that content to work – using digital, as well as traditional channels – to gain customers at every step of their buying process.
That’s why our strategy is more than simply producing content, but instead driving revenue with content. Our approach carefully and thoughtfully integrates the advanced technology available to marketers today to maximize business outcomes. It’s designed to enhance web traffic, capture and nurture leads, convert them to customers and finally, convert customers to promoters.
Driving revenue with content, or DRC, comprises a six-step process:
1. Know your business and audience.
Before starting a lead generation program, it’s critical to identify your target audiences, or personas. Though they may fulfill different roles in their companies and may have a variety of titles, your target audiences share common problems, needs and wants, for which your offering provides the solution.
2. Determine the communications objective and a clear call-to-action.
Consider your communication strategy and key messages. What exactly are you trying to articulate to your clients? What differentiates your business from your competitors? Is that coming through in your content?
3. Optimize your website and continuously develop content.
The website is where you generate demand, capture leads and where potential customers will find information about your brand, products, services and benefits. Well-crafted, high-impact content takes many forms – helpful how-to videos, eBooks, webinars, blog posts, byline articles, white papers, customer stories, infographics… the list goes on. Written to benefit them rather than to purely promote your business, strategic content delights and educates prospects and improves their business understanding.
4. Extend content throughout your brand’s online presence with inbound and outbound campaigns.
Both of these tactics will lead prospects right back to your website, where they’ll find your premium content gated behind a landing page. Positioning premium content behind landing pages will capture qualified leads. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve created an SEO-optimized landing page template.
5. Capture and track website visitors’ interests and nurture leads along the sales funnel.
CRM and marketing automation helps you observe and understand a prospective buyer’s or customer’s digital buying journey to determine where they are in the buying process and what’s of most interest to them. Your sales team will be able to quickly access customer information, understand customer needs based on their interactions with your website and serve targeted customer touch points.
6. Collect data, measure and continuously improve campaigns.
The data you should consider measuring include key performance indicators for the website, content, social media, public relations, search engine optimization, digital advertising and direct email.
Through DRC, and through measurement across the above mentioned KPIs, you’ll be able to more effectively reach targets and see more clearly how marketing contributed to your company’s revenue.