6 SIMPLE ACTIONSTO IMPROVE YOUR CONTENT MARKETING

Increase Engagement • Shorten the Sales Cycle • Win More Customers • Build Brand Loyalty

Customers seek out knowledge to make the best decisions for their professional and personal lives.

Brands that deliver this knowledge will win more customers, shorten sales cycles, wall off competitors and secure the coveted thought leadership position.

Your content marketing efforts will drive higher engagement when you commit to showing, not just telling, how your offering positively impacts a customer’s bottom-line and performance.

You have an amazing story to tell - and your customers actively seek out your expertise.

Use these six Content Marketing Strategies to drive meaningful customer engagement by sharing your knowledge and drive more prospects into a more efficient sales funnel.

Give Your Customers the Knowledge to Make Great Decisions

Your Brand is no longer in control.

Customers no longer start their search for information at your company website. In most cases, customers begin their search on third party sites, trusted blogs and among peer groups.

As a result, brands must alter their approach to introducing products, solutions and services to the marketplace – and this means seeding content wherever target audiences already turn for their informational needs.

There are new channels that should be considered ‘core’ to any launch or on-going campaign to support products, solutions and services in market.

• Did you know that YouTube is the #2 Search Engine – behind Google and bigger than Bing?

• Did you know that relevant LinkedIn Groups deliver higher engagement rates than social display ads?

• Did you know that customers starting their search for information on Slideshare is on the rise?

In short, not everyone starts at Google. And even fewer start at your company website.

A simple strategy to gain visibility with the right audiences is to publish your core content – from whitepapers, product and solution briefs to product demos and customer case studies – on Slideshare, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social ecosystems.

Your customers turn to these sources for information. You must meet them there with a point of view - and then share your knowledge - exactly what they need to make great business decisions.

1 Reach Audiences Where They Already Seek Out Information

SOCIAL CONTENT ECOSYSTEM

PEER AND COMMUNITY ECOSYSTEM

YOUR BRAND ECOSYSTEM

LOOKING TOSOLVE ABUSINESS

NEED

VALIDATINGSOLUTION

SETS

QUALIFYINGYOUR

SOLUTION

Develop additional information assets that speak to industry Mega Trends to give interested customers the ability to instantly relate your key product or solution value propositions to specific business and technology issues customer’s face.

But don’t do this if you aren’t sharing thoughtful knowledge. Simply echoing Mega Trend statements isn’t knowledge.

Pair your point of view of Mega Trends with the traditional sales content to make those presentations inherently more valuable to the audience, to drive deeper discussions when in front of customers and to make the content more applicable to challenges or opportunities customers presently face in their organization.

Establish an editorial calendar so that Mega Trend stories are delivered into the marketplace with a consistent cadence that customers can expect over a period of time. This approach will reinforce your thought leadership – and give customers the unique, practical knowledge they need to make confident technology purchase decisions.

Deliver Mega Trend content into the marketplace in multiple formats so that it can be seeded on third party sites, leveraged across social and mobile properties and readily shared by field sales, partners and community/peer groups.

2

FOCUSEDBUSINESSSOLUTION

FOCUSEDBUSINESSSOLUTION

FOCUSEDBUSINESSSOLUTION

EBOOK BLOGINFO-GRAPHIC VIDEO

MEGA TREND TOPICS

ACTIONABLEBUSINESS NEEDS

Leverage Mega Trends

Companies tend to create consistent content forms to support products in market – from Whitepapers, Data Sheets and Case Studies to Product Briefs, Solution Briefs and Product Demos. These information assets tend to be content-heavy and are typically found buried with your company website. These content-heavy assets are even sparingly used by your own sales teams, partners and internal stakeholders.

To increase engagement and usage levels – and to provide more opportunities to seed this valuable content outside of a Brand’s traditional ecosystem – companies should develop short-form, consumable lead-in assets like Infographics and videos.

These short-form assets will help companies cast a wider net to draw more customers into the sales funnel – and they will provide a natural pathway for customers to discover more in-depth knowledge and information on your website or from your field sales and partner channels.

These short-form assets – highlighting key messages, data points and unique selling points – will capture the attention of interested prospects and draw them in to engage with deeper, more content-rich assets.

When companies pair their core content assets with these simple lead-in tactics (I.e. an Infographic) views, clicks and traffic increase by 100-300%.

Lead-in assets are also voraciously consumed by field sales and channel partners – leading to more customer interactions, more views of your core content and more sales opportunities.

3 Lure Audiences to Your Core Content Assets

MEGA TRENDS

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

EBOOK INFOGRAPHIC VIDEO

YOURDEEP BRAND

CONTENT

Every asset published should provide viewers with a natural pathway to continue their discovery of more relevant, deeper content that builds upon the story. This will draw them farther into the information and sales funnels.

To accomplish this goal, companies should interlink all product assets. For example, a solution brief should include link to videos and product briefs, and videos should include pathways to get to the briefs – both as clickable links when viable and, at a minimum, in the descriptive copy for each asset.

This strategic linking aids SEO and encourages audiences to consume multiple content assets, regardless of entry point.

For all your content on YouTube, be sure to include your URL in the description, and add an interactive link with the annotation tool to the last 20 seconds of the video. Also, improve your SEO rankings by uploading a transcript of your audio content.

4

White Paper

Case StudyProduct Brief

Product Demo Solution Brief

Video

Ebook

Infographic

Utilize Interlinking

When your customers have successfully implemented your products and solutions into their business – and are reaping the benefits – make that work for your brand. Identifying these stories and sharing them in PDF or video formats – and then propagate those assets throughout your website and, most importantly, among your field sales and partners.

For longevity, we recommend that companies continue this approach on an on-going basis to firmly establish their voice and leadership position in the marketplace. Launching a themed series of ‘talk sessions’, ‘customer successes’ or ‘narrated animations’ will help companies build upon the story started at product launch – and give the company a platform to continue sharing knowledge to interested customers.

Video is a highly valuable medium, but doing it with a sense of consistency in theme and rhythm will strengthen your fan base and engagement.

• Customer Success Stories: Interview customers about the business challenges they faced – and how your technology, product or service helped them unlock an opportunity or to address a business challenge.

• Future Talk Sessions: Interview customers about their business opportunities looking forward, and what technology solutions they need to unlock that opportunity. Then, incorporate your company SMEs to show how your solution fills the gap.

• Narrated Animations: Show prospects and customers how your solution works. Demonstrate the benefits and how it will help to drive and deliver positive business results.

Rolling these out as a branded series will maintain the interest of customers – and they will strategically position and solidify your brand as a go-to partner for knowledge.

5

KNOWLEDGE / EXPERTISE

Q1SUBJECTMATTER

Q2SUBJECTMATTER

Q3SUBJECTMATTER

Q4SUBJECTMATTER

STORY 1 STORY 4STORY 3STORY 2

CONSISTENT THEME / BRAND

Maintain Momentum with Serialized Content

Most brands simply say things to customers – telling them how their product or solution can help solve business challenges or unlock business opportunities.

However, showing customers how your product or solution will accomplish these objectives for their unique needs delivers more impact. It provides customers with an opportunity to ‘see for themselves’ – converting skeptics into buyers.

Give your customers a more participatory experience to explore your products and services by creating simple interactive tools that personalize the solutions and content you offer.

Ask customers and prospects to input their data to definitively demonstrate how your product impacts their business. Then, based on their input, match your unique selling points and information assets to meet their specific and unique needs.

This approach will inherently bring more prospects into the sales funnel, will further qualify prospects and will give your sales team rich information about customer needs and sales opportunities.

6 Give Customers an Opportunityto Participate

SALES ENABLEMENT TOOLS

KNOWLEDGE FORGREAT DECISIONS

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